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I will say one last thing ok. People don't just end up on this site, or being aware of nonduality without having some kind of mental or physical ailment (something wrong with them). It's just an observation of mine...just a very consistent one. Sometimes it's a personality disorder, sometimes it's someone who has massive depression, maybe someone who's just a real loser or anything else that causes you pain. The kind of suffering that is usually constant (every day). It might even be something as small as not being good looking and having low self esteem or something. So then a further point I would make to you mate, is this...if you are suffering on a daily basis with anything...any mental health issues or anything...is this life better than the life where you discover that all of this shit is actually true? If your suffering is it maybe worth it to give it a shot. Sure you've heard that meditation is good for the mind anyway, what do you have to lose. Then just allow yourself to melt into God's presence, you won't know what that means, but that's exactly the point! You aren't meant to know it, your meant to EXPERIENCE it

And how is it you are going to achieve that when all of your fear is grounded in duality? Nondualty is not an ideology, theory, or even a worldview. It is the very nature of yourself and existence. So long as you are operating from duality, you will never be able to overcome fear, master your emotions, or move away from animal behavior. Nor will you ever be cool, calm, collected, or happy. Because all of that is the foundation of being an separate ego self. You're not appreciating yet how deep all of your emotional problems go. They are not something you can just solve with a few self-help techniques. To resolve those issues requires that you literally experience your own death because death is what you're running away from. Nor will you be able to resolves those issues within the materialist paradigm. The benefit to you of nonduality is that you will experience what it means to live for the very fist time in your life. Everything you've done up to this point was a sick joke. You have never actually lived yet. The way life works is: you only get what you give.

This is my first topic. I did a book review already but am not counting that really. This is the first time I've taken the plunge and worked up the courage to ask a question "in front of the class". I'm not expecting long answers from people. In the context of this ramble, how would you describe the possible benefits of nonduality philosophy to me Is it correct to call it a philosophy? I'm not looking for people to do my work for me. I'm not being lazy. I'm just stuck in my current level of understanding. I'm not sure if I should try and understand nonduality or just let that sleeping dog lie for now. I can't work out whether it's something I should have as a foundation (such as deciding if I buy into it or not), or whether it's something that I should consider later on. I really didn't want to ask this. I honestly have tried to read around and use the search function on here. I've read what Nahm has written (via his signature) but I do need to watch the video's in his link. However, from everything I've read online and listened to via YouTube I still can't ascertain what's the benefit to me of (a) understanding nonduality and then possibly (b) buying into it. I get like this with self-development. I can obsess a bit too much on things that might be small detail or not relevant to my needs. I fear if I don't try and understand something I am missing out somehow. Not sure if you need to know some basics about me, or whether it's irrelevant what my little plans and dreams are..... For the last few months I've been getting my feet wet with basic Buddhist teachings. I'm also finding parts of the Bible incredibly uplifting, and much more practical than I thought the Bible would be. I don't know what I think about God. I'm not sure who God is or how God works. I (think) I believe at the minimum there is some Higher Power relevant and active in my life. I feel like I am looked after and that I am supposed to follow a path. With the thoughts I am conscious of, my immediate and primary goal is to manage my general fear, insecurities, to be able to better handle uncertainty, to better manage resentments I hold against people, and to move away from my ego (as I understand my ego to be). To move away from animal instinct behaviour. I want to be cool, calm, and collected. Kind to others. Forget myself. Get outside my own head. My most cherished values at the moment seem to be around openmindedness and humility. If I can get these right I think other good stuff can manifest, such as compassion, forgiveness, gratitude and resilience. I have all these qualities to a degree, but I want more, and better still, I want these values to be better reflected in my behaviour.

And that's what we (hopefully) do here. As I said direct experience is key here. We can argue all day about nonduality wars. There are an infinite number of ways to point to the Dao. And many of them work better for one person than another. If the Bible helps you, great. But you'll find it doesn't resonate with many people here. You'll need to change your approach unless you've just come here to preach to a brick wall. Appreciate this puzzle.

damn, too sad for me then, no nonduality for me, my own vision of the word has been corrupted by my own conceptual projection

@Pateedm Ime, using psychedelics in a mature and efficient manner is a learning process. They can be an extremely powerful tool when used wisely and counter-productive when used unwisely. Psychedelics resonate with each person differently. It’s great to learn from the experience of others, yet also listen and trust your inner guide. Based on my experience, here are a few things I think are worth considering for someone that wants to introduce psychedelics into a spiritual program: 1. For newcomers, I would not recommend a full, solid trip more than once every two weeks (e.g. 100ug+ of LSD). More frequent use like every 7-10 days will cause tolerance issues and the “magic” fades. For someone inexperienced,realizations may pile up and confusion and excessive instability in one’s life. For most people, it’s just not tenable long-term. Perhaps one strong trip per month if the mind and body are stable and there is a “calling”. . . One can do dmt and it’s derivatives like Aya and 5-meo much more frequently. Yet I would be extremely cautious about frequent use of dmt related compounds for the inexperienced. Aya retreats can be deeply profound within a mature, grounded spiritual community, yet I think using dmt related compounds multiple times per week solo for a newbie carries huge risks. 2. Integrate. When I first started out, I had very strong seeking energy toward psychedelic realms and integration seemed like tedious side-work. Yet I’ve found integration work to be really important for the mind and body to expand and grow. I would dedicate time between trips to integrate with whatever method works for you. 3. Have a well-rounded spiritual life. I’ve found it important to do other spiritual practices - meditation, yoga, contemplation, running and time in nature - sober. 4. Try different dosages and psychedelics - find what works for you. At one poInt, I found alternating between mini and strong doses to be beneficial. Strong trips are harder to integrate than light trips. For example, I did a strongish trip about once per month (100-150ug for me). and a mini trip of about 50ug once or twice a month. 50ug mini trips in nature were sooo helpful. They are not very taxing on the mind-body and can help integrate stronger trips into “regular” life. As well, microdosing can be beneficial to integrate into regular life. Since microdosing is subthreshold, one can do it anywhere. 5. If you want to explore 5-meo and can get the freebase form, I would recommend an initial exploration through vaping (not smoking). With vaping a person has control on modulating the intensity of the experience in real time. It can be very gentle. One can sit on their regular meditation cushion and reach states in which the ego / personality partially dissolves. If anxiety and panic arises, one can simply put the vape down and relax into the groundless. Over time, one can go deeper and deeper while being kind to the mind and body. I see so many people watching dramatic videos of people on 5-meo flopping around like fish and reading reports about traumatizing ego death experiences- it doesn’t need to be like that. . . In the future I think gentle 5-meo vaping will be used in chill environments integrated with something like Vipassana and nonduality retreats. For example, a morning sober meditation session followed by a nonduality discussion, followed by a gentle 5-meo meditation session, followed by another nonduality discussion.

@arlin It’s in my signature line / hyperlinks “nonduality & meditations”.

This is going to be long (it unfortunately has to be) and thank you very much in advance if you read it. I feel like I've hit rock bottom and would like things to change fast and put an end to my mental illness. I seek your help, literally any suggestions are welcome. Here's my story: I'm 29, self employed online, polyamorous, and I've struggled with panic attacks for the past 6 years of my life. The whole situation is based on a fear of physical illness or a fear of death. In the beginning (first 2 years) I was persuading myself I had all sort of possible medical problems, cancers, MS, etc and was going from doctor to doctor having all sorts of tests. Every test came out clean. The past 4 years though this fear has centered around my heart. This has the problem become self-referring since my fear is actually the panic attack itself. I am worried that I am going to have a panic attack that is going to result in my heart failing or a fatal arrhythmia. Moreover, every time I have a panic attack I also connect the place/activity that I had it in with a very negative connotation and am afraid to go there or do that again. So I basically build trauma on the panic attacks themselves. Sometimes I have managed to heal that by being exposed again to that location or that thing but other times it hasn't gone that well. This problem is butchering my entire life in many different ways. Hobbies, relationships, social life, dignity My relationship with spirituality: I value spirituality very high in my life and I believe that it is my life purpose. I immensely enjoy teaching people about nonduality, alternative ways of thinking, oneness, helping people that have mental problems, helping people self develop and reach higher levels of understanding reality. I am very pro-psychedelic and have also written a small book on these tools and also made presentations about them in psychology meetings. I am mainly in stage turqoise of spiral dynamics with some yellow in there as well bu t I am not enlightened by any stretch of the word. I have a very well founded, really concrete academical understanding of nonduality, what God is, holistic thinking, integrating systems into other systems, fractal perception and various mapping models of the human psyche but I have never experienced God, I have had only brief half ass enlightenment experiences and have never merged with Absolute Infinity. The concepts above make perfect sense to me on an academic, logical level (even though logic self-undoes itself eventually) and I see how every approach on every subject eventually leads towards nonduality but I have never had a first hand experience. I have guilted myself over the quote "who doesn't do, teaches" but since a lot of people are helped by this I have decided to continue teaching and grounding people that have had a spiritual experience through psychedelics or other means, help them integrate it, tripsit others with love and respect, and help people heal by reconstructing concepts in their way of perception. People in my social circle think I'm really smart, fun to be around, easy-going, good-looking and helpful but all this doesn't make me happy, not while I have my mental illness. What I know: I know that my mental illness has at least somewhat to do with my mother. First, she has an immense fear of illnesses and death herself and thus it is very likely that I copied that behavior when I was little (mommy doesn't trust her body, we shouldn't trust our bodies), secondly when I was little she kept freaking out when I was sick with the flu and was always trying to somehow protect my health, and thirdly (and most importantly) I have many times heard her say things like "You're the only thing that matters to me" or "I would die if you died" etc, which on a subconscious level makes me feel very guilty towards death and feel I have to be extremely cautious with preserving my life. The other thing I know is that my situation also has to do with suppressed feelings. I always found it difficult to be emotional, back in time I even found it weak (I was a positivist crusader of logic back then). What has me thinking this is a major cause of my issues is one time during meditation I started crying a lot and taking all my feelings out and after that it was like my anxiety never even existed, never felt that before under any other circumstances. So emotional blockage definitely has to do with it somehow. What I've tried already: Psychedelics: Only small dosages, in the beginning it was fine but after 3-4 trips I started having horrific experiences thinking that I'm dying of a heart issue and getting extremely anxious of doing something in public that would ridicule me. I absolutely love them but haven't touched them in a year. The worst day of my life was on psychedelics where I literally had a 12 hour panic attack. Traditional medication: Currently on ssri (zoloft), it was great in the beginning but it started losing potency, doubled the dose, now starting to lose potency again. Xanax only during attacks, it's very addictive and I don't wanna take it often. CBD and THC: CBD is very mild, THC gives me attacks same as psychedelics if not worse. Other tinctures and herbs: Lavender doesn't work, saffron works amazingly but I can't take it for too long because it causes some blood deficiencies. Psychotherapy: Been to various psychiatrists, none of them helped. I currently started psychoanalysis with a trusted individual that is also an anarchist and very well educated on the subject. Meditation: Works a little bit but doesn't really solve the problem. Hypnotherapy: I couldn't go into trance very easily, I was only in there for 10 minutes. Very calm afterwards but only lasted for a day or two. Accupuncture: Didn't work at all Running: Works a lot but I'm afraid to run because it makes my heart beat fast and it freaks me out. If you reached here THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH for reading and trying to help! Any suggestions would be very welcome and also feel free to pm me. Peace

In my model the mind is not just some electrochemical processes in the brain. The mind in my model is all that is experienced in one's personal consciousness. So even with my definition of consciousness as only an on/off state, how much is experienced in consciousness can be expanded. This can be tested practically within oneself. It should be possible to expand what consciousness is aware of from just being inside the head into the whole body, and even beyond that. One nonduality teacher, Roger Castillo, said that the experience of one's consciousness can move from the head into the heart. And if he is correct, that's then according to my model only one step of expansion and that even further expansion of the mind is possible.

Massive update just happened. It's free to those who have bought the book list in the past. Those who buy now also get the update automatically. This update contains some of the most important books I've ever read on spirituality. New stuff that you've never heard before or seen talked about anywhere else. Not the same old nonduality. Also more books on Spiral Dynamics, ecology, infinity, government, sociology, cult psychology, and more! Don't miss this one. A few of these books will change your whole outlook on life. Some real gems in this update.

The really hardcore nonduality teachings like that of Ramesh Balsekar and Tony Parsons may seem nihilistic. One good thing with my evolutionary nonduality model is that the integration of the evolutionary aspect and Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns bring meaning and purpose to basic nonduality. As I mentioned earlier, the evolutionary feedback principle produces meaning as a growing complexity of manifested reality. It may be tricky to define exactly what meaning means and what purpose is, but it's kind of self-evident that each evolutionary stage building on previous evolutionary stages adds both meaning and purpose to reality. As a side note: It's impossible it seems to me to formally define a model completely. Why? Because what is the definition of definition? It becomes circular!

You elaborated on it way more than what I was thinking but yes you wrote it way more eloquently than me. ? I do think it requires more than a dissolution of thought stories, rather a much more radical shift in consciousness. There is something else happening I can't put my finger on. I don't think soul-lover is wrong. Reality has many facets. Nonduality includes duality. But when there is disagreement I suspect there is either a communication barrier or it is viewed from other facets.

@Truth Addict Alright, I watched the video. The quest of metaphysics is enlightenment through modeling. You create such a complete model of reality that you lose your mind, your ability to verbalize it. The models are only meaningful when they are imperfect, relative. The absolute truth has no mouth to speak and no ears to hear it. There is no point of explaining the perfect model to anybody because there is nobody to hear it, everyone is already 'it'. That is how perfect the model is. The Leo you are seeing on the screen, the one you can talk to, will never be enlightened. He will only speak imperfect models because they are imperfect, because there is someone that does not understand them. It's a peculiar position to be an enlightened metaphysics teacher. That is why the highest teaching is silence and nobody knows the true enlightened masters. So, is it a belief? No, it's his best shot at explaining nonduality, but the fact that something follows out of it, a point of life, should tell you that it's incomplete and personal. Nothing follows from nonduality, there is no everything is one and therefore something. Absolute truth when spoken always curls back on itself and leaves you dumbfounded.

Yes, the dualities in my model are in the infinite string of information. As a simple example, take the finite binary string 1011000110, where the string as a whole represents nonduality and the binary numbers in the string represent dualities. Of course, I'm not claiming that reality IS an infinite binary string, but that reality can be modeled by a single such string. Consciousness is a result of experiencing the string of information in the present moment. Notice that this also allows for consciousness being able to exist outside the body such as in out-of-body experiences (OBEs) because space is not empty but contains vast amounts of energy which when structured in certain ways allows consciousness.

His teachings are pretty terrifying. Think about it, once you have lived through every possible life or reached enlightenment, you just get bored and start again. That means that inevitably, you will all experience being tortured, suffocated to death in a coal mine collapse and every other horror you can and can't imagine. Nonduality brought me peace to begin with but now I fear for what future incarnations hold. How can you all live in peace knowing this?

Here is my attempt to integrate nonduality and evolution. I came to think that nonduality means that reality is changeless. Because if there is some process or entity being able to change reality then that is something changing something else and therefore duality. And if reality changes itself then "what is" turns into "what is not" which again is duality. Leo said in some video that reality is not all possibilities. Reality is all the BEST possibilities, he said. And that I think explains both nonduality and evolution. The process of evolution is necessary as a part of the best possibilities in order to produce beings such as us humans growing and learning and becoming unique creators with more and more power. So the suffering and evil we experience in our little world at the moment is just a temporary learning, development and growth "tool". The content of reality can be modeled as an infinite string of information containing all the best possibilities including the process of evolution. That string of information is changeless! And timeless! And time appears as a result of experiencing the entire string of information in a single instant, which is this present moment we live in. This experience will go on forever since the string of information is infinite. What is nondual is the whole infinite string of information as a whole. The string just is, and it's simply one out of all possible strings of information. For example a binary string like 01010101010101010... wouldn't produce any universe or evolution, but out of the set of all possible infinite strings at least one is able to produce the universe we live in.

I believe that the Bible describes the truth but often in metaphors. I also believe the other major religions describe the truth from different perspectives. But I also believe nonduality is true, such as Ramesh Balsekar's teachings. So I'm not a pure Christian, and in some ways I'm even an atheist!

@Gili Trawangan You've only seen the tip of the iceberg so far. What you're missing is that this field of consciousness which everything is, is infinitely intelligent. Everything you see is materialized by this pure intelligence via Will into being. "Physical reality" is actually occuring inside a giant Mind which "thinks" it into being. Like a dream. Start to deeply notice the intelligence of every little thing around you. Every particle of dust is filled with infinite intelligence. Once you start to notice it, it will take your breath away. You've just gotten to used to overlooking the intelligence of everything. Also, there is no how. The very mechanism of reality is before you on full display. Reality does not work via any mechanism. It is impossibly direct. The how is the what. What a thing is is exactly how it is coming into being. In nonduality there are no mechanisms because those are all dualistic. It's hard for people to appreciate how radical this is. It means, for example, that your sense organs are not actually causing your perceptions. Nonduality denies sense organs basically because all of that is mechanical, dualistic, and indirect. Nonduality breaks all scientific chains of causation. From a certain level of consciousness you will see that there is no causation at all. Everything is instant manifestion. As if the whole universe exists in suspended animation. It is Eternal and Absolute. Keep tripping and you will discover more of these facets of God. Awareness is nothing. Even to call it a witness is too much and incorrect. There is no witness. The witness is nothing. If you turn your gaze back in on itself and ask what it is, you can feel there's nothing there. That's your so-called "witness". Just zero.

To fully predict the future is impossible as Stephen Wolfram has shown with his definition of computational irreducibility. However, reality can still be deterministic. In fact, reality in the bigger picture can be changeless! And change is just a secondary effect of the changeless information being experienced in the single now moment and with infinite information, the change will go on forever yet still the whole of reality is changeless. In a changeless reality the new earth already exists and is inevitable. Nobody is doing anything, not even some God, being or process. Nobody can change anything. We do have free will yet our choices and actions are a part of the changeless reality, so it's the appearance of free will one might say rather than actual free will. And this is nonduality. In true nonduality nobody can do anything, not even existence itself, because that would be duality: a doer doing something to something else. Or reality changing itself, which also is impossible because that would mean "what is" turning into "what is not", again duality. And with the hypothesis that nonduality is true and that the new earth is inevitable, we can make a prediction about when the new earth will emerge. Even though full prediction of the future is impossible, SOME things can be predicted, such as: tomorrow the sun will rise again. I predict that we will have a new earth within decades from today. Because look at for example mainstream media and politics. Have you even seen anything more ridiculous and cartoonish than the phony conflict between "angry" Democrats and "arrogant" Trump? It's just a staged food fight basically. It's like in the movie A Beautiful Mind where (spoiler alert) the agents seemed very real in the beginning of the movie and then near the end of the movie the agents became more and more cartoonish and ridiculous. The same with the world today where we now see that basically everything is phony and staged as f.

@andyjohnsonman This is explained by the notion of a soul. A soul is an individuated unit of cosmic consciousness which holds data even if you as the body/mind disappear. All souls are still ultimately one so this doesn't contradict nonduality. It just means there are layers to reality you are not aware of yet. Don't hold your body as primary. Soul is primary, body is just a costume it wears. Think of yourself as a hydra creature. Each head is one lifetime. Any head can be lost and the creature still lives on.

Maybe just a little bit more theory to explain the autopilot practice. If I let the autopilot inside me take control over my actions and with my ego mind being only an observer, isn't that duality? And the autopilot, isn't that just the same as my ego mind, only that I now have split myself even further? The answer is that, yes it's a duality. However, the global collective consciousness is also duality! The global mind is a planetary self, in our case planet earth. The next evolutionary level as I mentioned earlier is a galactic consciousness, which too is a separate mind although enormous. So the idea with the autopilot practice is to move from separate ego self to a planetary self. In some ways that's less than achieving oneness, nonduality or enlightenment. On the practical level I think of it as achieving super powers, in a very tiny way at first, but then more and more abilities will emerge.

@Serotoninluv One other thought that came up. If your mind insists engagement with the concept of solipsism, what would happen if you let go of identification and just explored it? Human minds are conditioned to think in opposites. It may think “I have to choose between solipsism or it’s opposite: not solipsism”. This puts a lot of stress on the mind and body. Such opposites are constructs of the mind. If your mind insists on conceptualizing it, you may find that aspects of solipsism have value and can be integrated with aspects of nonduality, reincarnation, the LOA etc. One could also observe the direct experience. When thoughts of solipsism arise, what is the experience? Are the thoughts related to feelings in the body? Which comes first; the thought or the feeling? Are the feelings bothersome? Curious? Could you convert an uncomfortable feeling of a solipsistic thought into a curious feeling?

@Truth Addict If you spot it, you got it. Did anyone guide Dr. Strange to a manifestation of his True Nature? So. . . I also am in a bit of a personal transformation dilemma. That rascal @Nahm won’t show me how to build a crystal grid that transcends nonduality, stage Coral and 5-meo. So I guess I better go create a grid without an instruction manual. I don’t know how to create it, yet I do.

this post blew my mind because I'm reading man and his symbols right now. As far as I can tell Jung doesn't talk about that kind of stuff. He isn't a nonduality teacher. He is still a genius and I highly recommend him. His take on archetypes, mythology, and psychodynamic theory is very good.

Yes and no. Since God is all God ultimately creates all. Since you are God, you create all, including your own suffering. That's the trickery of nonduality. All formulations of it never quite capture both sides of it.