zazed

You are beautiful, love and fortune I send you. Allow yourself to forgive and love yourself too, you deserve this! Infinite consciousness, your true self, accepting and loving /forgiving the limited human self, is enlightenment.

None. Don't think, don't project expectations, just experience what you experience. Its meaningless.

Both you and your wife are equally subjects within your own consciousness. if your human mind is confused and can not cope with awareness, you have a different problem. enlightenment does not change your human mind, it allows your unchanged human mind to continue while you realize it was just a small phenomena within your infinite awareness.. This small phenomena should continue life unchanged as before. Your wife is as much you as your mind is. You are right she is a image in A mind, but it's not your mind. Your mind is also just an image you fell in love with. You are not you.

Depends what musk meant. I assume he was talking about the dictionary/mundane definition of consciousness. We must realise 99% of the world mean something completely different when they talk about consciousness. They are not wrong, we just use the same English word and gave it an entirely different meaning. We should have invented a new word, we are the dumb ones...

First you need to accept yourself completely as you are now, all faults included. You cannot change this moment, as it is already here now. You are already enlightened awareness, but you are resisting your current reality. This reality will not change by becoming enlightened, and spirituality is not a cure for the problems you mention. At least not on its own, and not now. After you have truly accepted that spirituality will not solve those issues, you are almost enlightened. But you will still be stuck with the experience that you are currently resisting because it is not a good one. Which is of course subjective, but understandable. Due to non resistance it will be easier, but you will still be afraid, still struggle with emotional intelligence, but you will accept this experience as your reality so it will no longer be a huge problem. Then try to study some more scientific material, that can give you real knowledge about the problems you face. Study about psychology, and human nature. Try to confront your fears and learn about assertiveness. Seek professional help if it is really bad. That way you can work on solving your human problems. Still keep your spiritual practices going throughout, because they will make it easier to accept and integrate what you learn. But forget the magical thinking, as that is your biggest problem. Enlightenment is about acceptance and awareness of naked experience. Magical thinking is resisting what is and wishing for a Disney solution to your problems, via the magical promise of enlightenment. I've been there many years, i had virtually all the problems on your list. I hope this helps you in some way, it is human nature to resist this.

There is nothing much to say about non duality or enlightenment. So i suppose it would make for a boring read full of padding to fill the pages. You are the awareness in which everything occurs, your limited human self is just one of many phenomena. Nothing your "human self" does can change or impact awareness in any way. However, reading and studying and trying to understand non dualism conceptually on a human level is entertainment. There is nothing wrong with that, if it gives you pleasure and purpose in life, please go for it. Some people watch tv, some read books, some play sports, some study the sciences and some people travel the world. People like us study "spirituality". It is fine to have fun and do things that inspire you, to enjoy the ride of your human existence, while it lasts. There is no duality in living an enjoyable human life and at the same time being the experience in which this life unfolds. Who cares if an author of a random book is really enlightened or not. I've never even heard of Martin.

We are experience in the dream, we are experience in this normal reality, we are experience when engrossed in a movie or book. What changes is only our identification, even a good movie can make us forget the limited self we mostly think we are. Your experience is always constant and always present.It can not be changed by anything. Consciousness is not something that you become, it's about realizing it is what you have always been, and rather accepting what you are not. Its about letting go of the thing we want most to defend and immortalize, our mind and human self.

What Mandy said. The feeling and sensation gets you out of your head and more into experience of the moment. Its not so much that you are more conscious, it's that you are less mind.

Ask yourself. Why do you feel like you need to come to this forum and make this point? What kind of result are you hoping to achieve and for what purpose? Its a bit sad, no? I hope you feel well and happy.

You use the word I, my, me quite a lot, 32 times I counted. meditate on why that is.

Assume you know nothing. Knowledge is irrelevant and over rated. This way you are free to experience life. Knowledge is a crux, as it colors your experience preventing you from being fully aware of what is as it is. Knowledge leads to arrogance, making you choose not to believe what you experience, because you have certain expectations. A baby knows nothing and learns everything at great speed, it is not worried about such philosophical mental masturbations. 2 + 2 = 11 in base3

Autism is a broad spectrum, it also does not imply low IQ. Many autistic people have above average IQ, some even very high IQ. Many become succesful scientists, programmers, mathematicians, anything the requires analytical thinking. it seems some people do not really know what it is. I think, the clear analytical thinking most autistic people have, is surely helpful for the study of the mind. Concepts like non dualism, are surely easier to understand for autistic people. I think it is also easier to understand the fallacies of the mind, and step towards enlightenment, if you have certain problems. Stuff like not being able to make eye contact for example, and still trying, seeing that internal struggle. Or when something impacts the daily schedule of things, realizing perhaps where this comes from outside of control. Autistic people have a tendency to obsess and go into thought loops, solving complex problems in their head. This can be a bit much These can be unwelcome when they need to sleep. Meditation can give an autistic person more control over the mind, and even remove the symptoms. As for enlightenment. A person does not become enlightened. Enlightenment becomes a person. It is irrelevant i think. It is not the brain, mind, thoughts becoming enlightened. It is something outside of human experience entirely. You do not have to have amazing thoughts during meditation for enlightenment, you don't have to have any thoughts at all. Enlightenment is not a sudden "idea" you achieve from thinking very hard as a smart guy.

@Mighty Mouse Experience is an English word, people often use it. It can be used in many ways, to convey many meanings. You are using the world itself out of context to prove a point, creating an argument about something i did not even say. Where did i say: "enlightenment is an experience?" Enlightenment is not the experience i was talking about. But a person still has many experiences, and when you are enlightened, the way you experience the world shifts. You cannot experience what another person is experiencing, as in how they see life, talk, feel think. So you cannot evaluate how that all was impacted by enlightenment. Because of this, you can not measure the change in his experience that enlightenment creates. You can only interact with external circumstances. You can only interact with your own hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, feeling. You see Leo's video, and make assumptions based on what you experience alone. It is your own experience that is being judged by yourself. Not Leo's, never even Leo's, because you cannot have Leo's experience, ever. We are all trapped in our own mind world, to judge another is to judge your own experience of another. It may be totally false, or it may approximate the truth, but there is always distance from the other.

You can never know if someone is enlightened, unless you are able to peer inside their mind and experience what they are experiencing. In my opinion the mind does not go away, the ego does not go away. These are constructs of this being, identity, in our lifetime, part of our illusion. What happens is a shifting of focus of identity. This is called resting as infinite awareness, and at that moment the mind can utter the illogical words "I am God" Its wrong, but its really the mind realizing that the inherent nature of all is this God, or infinite awareness, or everyone being one. Which causes the mind to identify itself as that infinite awareness. When you are able to fully identify as this God being, when the curtains have been fully opened, it does not matter that ego thinks it is itself this God. God does not diminish in power or glory if I think i am God. I cannot reduce what is the ultimate reality, by assuming its identity, it just is. Once you pass that threshold, your thoughts or speech are irrelevant. It's sad that people bicker about such wordings or details. What is spoken is always from the mind or ego. And as such can be misinterpreted or quoted out of context. Infinite awareness does not speak. It watches you speak, and thinks nothing of it. The confusion is, we don't interact with an infinite awareness of God when talking to an enlightened person. We are talking to an ego that has seen a bright light. And that bright light who once thought he was an ego is now released from that limited perspective.

@Mighty Mouse yeah, who would we be without the opinion of others

such joy, beautiful. sadly he didn't lose his judgement on the rest of humanity. i don't think anything much at all, tyvm leo. It's a lot less tho in this video, more explanation,less telling us how unenlightened we are. i liked it.

@Nahm For some reason it is hard to see what i wrote and what you added. I don't really see you disagreeing with what i say. You are talking about the end result, while i am talking about the process. I agree there is only one you in the end, from the perspective of the second you, the first you is an illusion. When @Joseph Maynor says, "we are a limited perspective", this is the self that is not releases yet, and thus there are two selves still. As long as that belief exists, i say this limited perspective will not become an unlimited perspective. This you is not the enlightened you, it is the lower self. Yes the illusion is the separation. I don't disagree, but i still offer that they are different in flavor. And the difference can be helpful to consider. The first you is the mind, the ego, the world of the senses. As long as we identify with that lower self they are two separate yous. As soon as you identify with the second you, you are not limited to the first you, but the second you also is the first you. The first you does not become the second you however. You always truly were the second you. Seeing them as seperate, and thinking the first you cannot become enlightened is helpful on the path. Because to think the first you can become enlightened is an ego trap. It is not the self that becomes enlightened. This is just playing a mind game for the first you, obviously. But this mind game is belief destroying, allowing the first you to detach from the enlightenment practice. If that makes any sense, its more a tool, than an absolute truth The one watching the screen is the truth, yes. But for everyone who is not fully enlightened, they think they are the character in the movie screen. This is the illusion. But also the trouble, because if we play the ego game, we end up as characters in movie screens trying to get out of the screen. I dont know. Perhaps it can, perhaps it cannot. It can, in the sense that we are talking about it. It cannot, in the sense that we will never fully explain it to each-other, even we are saying the same stuff. It can be embodied at least, in that it shines trough and leaves a residue on the workings of the mind. By saying, can be embodied, or realized into thinking. You are talking about the the first You i was talking about Yes it can be funny, in a relaxing sort of way, like a burden dropped. There is no purpose in remembering the exact mechanisms of it, unless you want to teach or talk about it. From experience. I don't take psychedelics or drugs anymore. I meditate daily, and am increasing my duration. Ok, i will look into it. Sounds fascinating. I am basically making the point against beliefs. In the sense that the first You has beliefs, the one we consider our self when we are not enlightened. And that we are not that first self, nor these beliefs. If we can detach from the expectation of becoming enlightened, we can go into it without beliefs. Enlightenment will become us. Yes. I like to use enlightenment, being, consciousness and god as synonyms. This perceptual flip is what i am talking about. When you stop identifying with the first you, there is a perceptual flip as you realize you were the second you all along. Then only one you remains. Until that flip happens, whenever someone is talking about becoming enlightened, one is talking about the illusion becoming enlightened. And this is not possible. Perhaps it makes no sense from your framework. For me, the desire of wanting become enlightened i realized was holding me back. So my mind came to the conclusion, that it would not become enlightened. Since we consider our mind our true selves, as long as we are not enlightened. I find it helpful to consider what we think of as "me" cannot become enlightened. Something can transcend this, but then we are no longer just our mind, and we have reached it fully. Or rather, it has reached us. Thus i say there are two selves in the original question :D, because if you phrase the question in that way they are in the question.

Yes. I am pointing out that they are not one. And that perhaps thinking of them is detrimental on the journey. By thinking they are one, the self is trying to reach enlightenment. But enlightenment already is, and the self is like a veil in front of it. This is a complex question . Learning, logic and practice. It's what Rupert Spira or Paul Hedderman are almost literally saying. It is also my conclusion during self-inquiry and what i experience at times during meditation. I think it is so, because after everything i learned about the properties of enlightenment, it can only be so. A character on a movie screen, can never step outside the screen, to sit on the couch watching the movie with you. But you can remember you are not a character on a movie screen, but just enlightenment sitting on the couch, watching this character. Here again, there are two you's. In the movie, and watching the movie. If you do self inquiry, this becomes obvious after a while. As a mind you can be aware of yourself, this can be called mindfulness. But who is aware of mind being aware of self? No matter what you do, you can keep peeling of layers of this onion. As a self, you can only realize the final question, "what is aware of this onion peeling activity I keep doing?". The selfish part of us may like to call enlightenment a "higher self", but enlightenment is not a state of self. This attachment to keeping our identity is so enormous, that is requires a kind of dying, it's hard to let your entire life behind. In my experience, when meditating, there are sometimes brief flashes of self dissolution, where i can accept and understand this intuitively. At that point there is no self, there is the experience of experience. Depending on how you remember this after, it may be described as being one, being nothing, nothing exist, we are god. But that is just a memory of the mind, of something that can only exist in the Now and never be a memory, and i have poor memory. It is why we get flashes of enlightenment. During meditation, or experiences using drugs. If we really became enlightened during these experiences, we would keep that state. But it becomes all so fuzzy during normal life. We try to integrate these experiences. But basically this integration is an illusion, it is the lower self trying to grasp at something it is not. It can never be more than a memory to our minds, we cannot reach the absolute Now using our memories of the p ast. Well put. Enlightenment is that which is looking. This is my point maybe, the perspective being looked at, can never look at itself. Our self is the perspective. @SOUL Have you reached a point of total time dissolution? Multiple stars exploding as supernova a billion years ago, forming the entire solar system from its scattered dust including our earth and sun, is your stardust in the Now. Its not a paradox really, it just took a whole lot of time to cook higher elements from Hydrogen in the nuclear fusion furnaces of ancient suns. But this is the ultimate realization yes, and it is a good point to make. Tho i would say: "realize you are not this self, let go, smile and enjoy the 'view'." But i enjoy using more words in my view...

Good question. Also how do you measure self deception as a harvard professor? How can they be so sure of what happened yesterday is actually so. Did it really happen, is the memory fully correct? Perhaps they remember it as being fully aware? Perhaps the thing that remembers was aware, but they were not actually, and their memory is false? How can you remember what you were doing yesterday, and everything you were thinking while you were doing it? Or do they have a clicker they click every time they think? I would only trust what is happening Now. What would keep track of last week, and why does it matter? Is there a contest somewhere, like a yogi cup?

Charlotte, thanks for your reply and reading my overly long post. This happened to me to. In such a situation, try to ask yourself "why?". Why are you suddenly hooked on this? Why are you doing this? What are you trying to change, what do you intend to gain by becoming enlightened? Only if you fully grasp the reason for your sudden obsession, you can start to honestly go for enlightenment without ego. Because the ego is always the one that wants enlightenment first, to fix a problem, improve a situation. It is the ego that thinks it can become enlightened. In the beginning you are motivated, you think about what you could gain perhaps. But in reality, the actual practice is kinda boring, and not very special. So you start to get bored and perhaps demotivated, this is normal. First forgive yourself. Ask yourself, why do you hate being soaked in ego? Isn't it only the ego that hates? Perhaps the ego has become invested in becoming enlightened. This often happens, the desire to see yourself as this being better than what you are now. Rather accept, that you as Charlotte will not become enlightened. But enlightenment can become something that is. Then sit and see what is, be open to whatever you may find. There is a lot to explore, like space, sound, time within your awareness when meditating.

There is no contradiction, because you are talking about two different definitions of you. The first you is what we consider our selves, as sentient beings, our mind, body, self. The second you is a different you that has no self, this you is everything. It includes the first you, because it is limitless. The first you in your question can never become everything. it will always be a limited perspective. There is no transformation or change the first you can do to become everything. A character in a storybook cannot become its author. The author is the author.

@Outer Meditation, not thinking anything purposefully. Perhaps it is a form of self inquiry, but i don't really talk to myself asking questions. I just try to be aware of being aware. Aware of sounds or thoughts and their origins. If there is a question it is "what is this", but it is all non verbal and thus hard to describe. It could be a kind of seeking, or looking around within awareness. Like allowing layers to fall back. It is definitely a letting go, a surrender, a relaxing into. Sometimes i get into a state where i don't identify as myself, or even don't realize i exist, and there is just something. It is a feeling, hard to describe. I do not claim it to be anything. As soon as i realize it is happening, it breaks. It is very short. Often only seconds. I've done self inquiry some time in the past, and found there was no answer to the actual questions. And its not really about asking mental questions. Because it requires no knowing to go that way. I tend to say, reality is whatever it is. You can philosophize, which i like as a hobby. But no spiritual book, no knowledge, no insight i have ever read, has had much impact on my meditation practice. It is just entertainment, and perhaps even a distraction and ego game.

@Mighty Mouse I'm not saying there is a real physical reality separate from us. It could be reality is nothing, or empty, or doesn't exist. It doesn't matter. Even if nothing exists at all, reality still is. Because that would be reality. Reality, in the sense that there is being experienced, is. You don't need to have a full understanding to meditate, be aware, or to become enlightened. Awareness is not knowledge. We can still philosophize about the true nature of reality off-course, but my point was, that that is actually beside the point.

Yeah.. Reality Is Perhaps we can think many things about it. Perhaps it is a dream. Perhaps it is empty. Perhaps it has 15 dimensions. Perhaps you can bask in ultimate wisdom as you understand it. But it cares not, nor does it require any understanding on our side, to be able to be. Reality, whatever or whoever it may be, is

@Mighty Mouse