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When you sleep, is there any mind, you, world, thoughts, universe, including word of being or nothingness (by the way these are all thoughts)?

I think it's just a different approach to teaching. To the experience of a human, there are definitely different states of consciousness. But to God, God is all the states of consciousness. These teachers are describing the ultimate truth from God's perspective, and it might work for some, but it's unlikely that this way of teaching will lead to direct experiences of really high states of consciousness. Not impossible, but much harder. It's more for those who are already close to the realization of God as existence, but it might mislead others who are less developed. The realization is very important, but it's not the endpoint for God-realization. The realization of existence will lead to a state of pure beingness, which is needed for awakening. It's really the beginning of higher consciousness since now you can surrender much more easily. @Leo Gura Yeah, both directions lead to each other. When you reach the absolute extreme of infinite infinity, you will end up in absolute nothingness as infinite God/love. The two are merged in the end when you go all the way. The same goes for nothingness. When you reach the absolute extreme of nothingness, you reach infinite God/love. Once they are merged, it's like the ultimate strange loop; every infinity is infinitely nothing and infinitely loving and whole at the same time. All of these differences and ideas and preferences and teachings are infinite love/nothing/us, making this experience more entertaining.

There are levels of comprehension of Nothingness. If you've only had one level of awakening, you have no idea how much you're missing. You are missing as much after your first awakening as you were before your first awakening.

@Leo Gura States exist but they are changes of the objective mind's "awareness." Nothingness is Nothingness and will stay Nothingness. There are not levels of Nothingness other than those perceived by an imagined mind.

@Someone here Nature is often made out more complex than what it really is. there is really no duality in nature other then in humans minds who construct it. Everything is Light. Existence = to stand out. Like the Absolute stands out from it self. The One or the unmanifest is nothing like the forms we see around us but at the same time it is the same. Ancient metaphysics from Greek, indian, egyptian usually has monastic philosophy. Plotinus and the ancient indians, advaita vedanta, is all built upon via negativa. My soul IS not this not that. And through that reach the Absolute. Existence is simple it is one thing. We just complicate it extremely much. You should study the ancients. Even buddha's teaching was the way to the Absolute or the way to Brahman. Pythagoras , plato, plotinus, sri aurobindo, adi shankarya, buddha, meister eckhart and so forth is really wise people. Nikola tesla, Walter russel, and so forth. This is wise people you should study to get some clarity in both science and metaphysics, physics and metaphysics is the same coin. These people have been pointing to the same thing for ages. Everything mainstream and popular is almost always not the ultimate truth. Many people have knowledge but no wisdom. Nothingness is not empty either it is full to the brim. There is no such thing as PURE NOTHINGNESS IMO. Cause to know about nothingness there is still witness to it. Either you postulate the cult of bumbing particles or you postulate the ether/Absolute/god/brahman or whatever you want to call it. These are the only ones who has been seriously proposed. The cult of bumbing particles have a somewhat hard time explaining fundamental things and how things work. The ether does not really in the same way

Solipsism holds that reality, or reality as humans can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial." While I agree that the world is immaterial, I disagree that the world is mentally constructed. My main question to people who adhere to idealism is this: If the world is mentally constructed, it should adhere to the properties of thought. Thoughts can be shaped off our own volition. We can visualise whatever we want, when we want. If the world as we know it is just a mental construct, then why can't we change the world off our own volition? Why can't we just dream up an ice cream in front of us right now? Yes you might say the world has the potential to be infinitely anything, as the world is nothingness, which is of course correct, but there is still something collapsing it to a particular state for right now! And that thing isn't just us dreaming stuff up, if it were, we would be able to control the world through imagination. And who or what even is doing the doing of mentally constructing stuff? If the world is mentally constructed, what is doing the mental construction? Or a better way to say it is, what tool or way are you using to figure out that the world is mentally constructed

Yes, if you didn't stop and go all the way, you would merge into the ultimate truth/God/Nothingness. Your physical reality will melt in infinite love, and everything will merge into one absolute nothingness. In a physical sense, you are dead. But since you are God, you can just recreate reality in an instant and come back if you desire so. Going all the way requires the total surrendering of everything in your existence. Liberation and true awakening is attained after you come back from such experience.

"Cultivation is named as such because it provides a method of cultivating oneself, a path to walk. There was a saying in the past to the effect of, “This person doesn’t cultivate the Dao, and yet he is in the Dao.” While following a lesser path, he values “nothingness,” or “emptiness.” He lives out his life in this world by following the course of fate. He is at peace with the world. He thinks, “Give it to me if it is meant to be mine, and if it is not, I don’t want it.” He does not follow the typical forms of cultivation. He doesn’t even know what “cultivation” is. Yet there are masters taking care of people like him. And he seldom gets into disagreements with others. This is what people used to call “In the Dao without cultivating the Dao.” Ordinary people can also, like them, manage to refrain from seeking things, but ultimately they will not gain a celestial rank. Such a person will not gain gong (spiritual energy), and can merely store up limitless virtue, a large sum. And many people will do harm to him, for a good person does not have it easy. But this results merely in a large amount of virtue. If he takes up a practice, it will naturally turn into a great deal of gong. If he doesn’t take up a practice, he will probably be blessed in his next life, becoming a high-ranking official or making a fortune. By contrast, most of the people who are in the Dao without cultivating it have special backgrounds, of course, and there are people looking after them. He’s in a state of not cultivating the Dao, and yet his thoughts, his realm, are in the Dao, and so in the future he will return to his original place. Without cultivating the Dao, he is cultivating it—someone is transforming gong for him though he doesn’t know it. His life is full of misfortune, and he suffers and pays off his karma. His xinxing (heart and mind nature) quietly improves over the course of his life, and such is always his state. These are people with special backgrounds. It is hard for an ordinary person to do this. Confucius left to man a way of acting that is befitting a human—the Doctrine of the Mean. Lao Zi taught a method for cultivation. But as it turns out, Chinese people combined Confucian ideas with those of the Daoist school. And, beginning in the Song dynasty, Buddhist ideas started to find their way in. Thereafter Buddhist thought thus changed beyond recognition. And after the Song dynasty, Buddhism incorporated things from Chinese Confucianism, such as filial piety and the like—much content of the sort. But the Buddhist school doesn’t actually contain anything like that. The Buddhist school takes human matters lightly, and in its view, who knows how many parents a person has had over his many lifetimes. Only when you let go of all such attachments and cultivate with a quiet and calm mind can you meet with success. They are attachments. So, after Confucian thought was introduced [into Buddhism], the attachment of familial affection arose." - from Zhuan Falun Volume II : https://falundafa.org/eng/eng/html/zfl2/zfl2.htm

Definitely. However, i am talking about people who are on this path. Psychedelics can definitely increase the level of consciousness, however enlightenment is realization of there is no such a thing as consciousness. Yes but this can be only understood when enlightenment happens, therefore the people who are on this path can easily stuck to have higher mind, which psychedelics provides. Meanwhile all is a thought not even. There is no such a thing as thought, experience, self or even no self. Agreed. However, even experiencing nothingness or infinite nothingness while having thought process is has nothing to do with enlightenment and this experience provides such a thing as state, and people try to reach that so called state in life time. However it is almost impossible to realize there is no one to have to reach a state. Imo, Psychedelics are climbing to hill, however enlightenment is jumping of the hill.

The two perspectives don't exclude each other as the rationalist logicians would like you to believe they do:-) Reality is non-dual but SEEMS dualistic (self-other etc.). Self-realization needs to occur. It's a gradual path with possible break-throughs on the way there. You are "IT" (we can call it Nothingness, Oneness, The Universe, Nature, God, Consciousness, Awareness, Love, Dao, Source, Absolute, Infinity, The Eternal Dreamer, The Selfless Self, w/e floats your boat). But IT has tricked (willingly ofc) Itself into believing Its true nature is a <separate self // dream character // human person> stuck in an outside/external 'world' that doesn't give a damn about you. :-) There is SOMEONE 'to awaken': fucking YOU! Haha. Otherwise you wouldn't be here asking questions! That 'Someone' you can call 'no one', if you want -- although I personally think a more holistic word is to call It God?️ You're God. Wakey wakey over there;) As long as you *feel* like you're 'a form', a thing, a separate self, a concept or a social construct, you aren't enlightened, but still in the invisible chains of ego. It's true that when you then finally fully awaken, you can clearly see that you've actually been just as much IT/God, as you are after awakening. Of course! There truly only IS IT(God). Everything We imagine to not be IT but 'separate, form, divided, apart, different' is exactly that: IMAGINATION (Your Imagination as God! In other words: GOD) Hehe. But until then, until your soul&mind& ego is fully in the light of Your Divine Awareness, you're asleep, right? Asleep as in: you feel mortal. You feel impermanent. You feel separate. You feel like you lack z, x and y. You feel scared. Your inner world is in tension, conflict. You don't feel at peace. You suppress a lot of stuff coming up inside you, because you're scared. And you're scared because you still believe you can die, like something can actually go wrong. That mistakes are actually possible. Imagine for a moment that your experience RIGHT NOW as you're reading these lines and nodding your head...is a DREAM. That it is something You're dreaming, and that you can (and will, sooner or later) wake up from it, exactly like waking up in your bed after a terrible scary night-dream in which a lot of mistakes/wrong-doings were happening. You would wake up and say "pyh! Oh boy! I'm glad all that shit was just a dream and not real! Oh God, haha, wauw - let me get a cup of coffee and enjoy the blue sky." ? ? ?️? So, go with how you feel. ????️⛓️?♾️⚛️??????? In this human life-dream, however, you don't get to wake *up from* the dream. Only physical death does that, of course. However, you can 'still die before you die' and realize -- INSIDE the Dream! -- that IT IS in fact A fucking DREAM ? Awakening/enlightenment is a kind of Lucid Dreaming! You know that you're dreaming, but the dreaming doesn't stop, whereas before enlightenment you just weren't aware of the fact that you were dreaming ;-) ??♾️⚛️??? Good luck, I'm sure you'll get there.

If you are interested in stretching and expanding your mind and awareness beyond most of the concepts express in these forums, may I suggest you read the book “Seth Speaks”. If you are awake enough and have reached higher gradations of awareness, such as nothingness and dream realities beyond this 3D experience, you may resonate with Seth’s knowledge. If by chance the book “Seth Speaks” resonates with your state of consciousness and awareness, I highly recommend you read “Unknown Reality” Vol 1 and 2, by Seth. These two Vols will really open your awareness beyond the reality that you, I, and we, have been collectively dreaming together in this limited 3D Earth dream state. Just sharing a few thoughts, ideas and beliefs!

Yup. I like to differentiate between awakening "in mind" and awakening "in heart". What I call "being enlightened" is when BOTH your mind AND heart is fully transcended, awakened. The "heart"-part is the 'hard part' (pun intended) for a lot of atheistic, rational, INTP, Enneagram Five, logical types of people (basically 75% of peeps following Leo). The heart part is hard because you can't become awakened in it: - without pushing your comfort zones to the max - without listening to and allowing ALL of your emotions to come up - without direct experience, actuality. The heart part is especially hard because all INTP/Enneagram Fives are most likely not 'real' introverts, or real logicians, or real nerds or real competition/mental-minded aloof people. Their soul is probably filled with a desire to - FEEL - CONNECT - LOVE - EXPRESS - DEEPLY BOND WITH OTHERS However, all their desire to withdraw from society, to think and rationalize everything, to observe (instead of participate in) life, to create firm boundaries with other people in fear of getting too close to someone etc etc.. is VERY LIKELY survival/defense-mechanism learned in childhood (3-18 years old) due to some pretty intense trauma, that they are NOT fully conscious of today. All fives, intps, go talk to a pyschotherapist, a good one who knows about trauma, and then be honest and open with her (or him) and cry your hearts out. Love <3 The trauma probably has to do with early experiences of getting exluded from the peers' community, and perhaps even bullying, or perhaps father-figures who were emotionally inept / detached. But lots of other possible causes out there. Being awakened in heart is equal to deep inner peace, almost no fear, free expression. Being awakened in mind is equal to deep knowledge of Oneness, Nothingness, the illusory nature of ego/thought, and basically the perspectival nature of reality. A deep knowledge of the mechanics of duality. A deep understanding of relativism/post-modernism, basically a full embodiment of both stage green & yellow thinking. Turquoise requires the 'heart' part + fully integration of stage yellow. Do know that some people are kind-of awakened in heart but pretty asleep in mind. Sociopaths for instance, we could say, zen devils, or some extreme hippies. Likewise a lot of people on this forum are very much awake in mind but seemingly kind of lack the heart part still ( @VeganAwake, @traveler, im looking at you xD). It is basically another more benevolent form of zen delivery, denying their own unconscious attachment to concepts by masking it with their hillarious/sad nihilistic "no-self / no-one / nothingness / nothing to understand / nothing to attain / nothing to realize / no one to realize / nothing to do / nothing to get to / nothing to become / no one to become" - jargon, which all INTPs/enneagram Fives, including me (i've been there) know all too well =D Also guys, now I tagged you for lolz, but you don't have to come in and tell me your repetitious (and often funnily obviously shadow-projective) lines of: "that's just a belief, narrative, story, conceptual-thinking, cute model" "that's just what appears there, and it's perfectly fine - for no one" I got it. You deny Love. But even though you deny it, that it still Love. Reality is fucking Love. How could it be otherwise? :-) <3 What an exceptional post @WaveInTheOcean

Yup. I like to differentiate between awakening "in mind" and awakening "in heart". What I call "being enlightened" is when BOTH your mind AND heart is fully transcended, awakened. The "heart"-part is the 'hard part' (pun intended) for a lot of atheistic, rational, INTP, Enneagram Five, logical types of people (basically 75% of peeps following Leo). The heart part is hard because you can't become awakened in it: - without pushing your comfort zones to the max - without listening to and allowing ALL of your emotions to come up - without direct experience, actuality. The heart part is especially hard because all INTP/Enneagram Fives are most likely not 'real' introverts, or real logicians, or real nerds or real competition/mental-minded aloof people. Their soul is probably filled with a desire to - FEEL - CONNECT - LOVE - EXPRESS - DEEPLY BOND WITH OTHERS However, all their desire to withdraw from society, to think and rationalize everything, to observe (instead of participate in) life, to create firm boundaries with other people in fear of getting too close to someone etc etc.. is VERY LIKELY survival/defense-mechanism learned in childhood (3-18 years old) due to some pretty intense trauma, that they are NOT fully conscious of today. All fives, intps, go talk to a pyschotherapist, a good one who knows about trauma, and then be honest and open with her (or him) and cry your hearts out. Love <3 The trauma probably has to do with early experiences of getting exluded from the peers' community, and perhaps even bullying, or perhaps father-figures who were emotionally inept / detached. But lots of other possible causes out there. Being awakened in heart is equal to deep inner peace, almost no fear, free expression. Being awakened in mind is equal to deep knowledge of Oneness, Nothingness, the illusory nature of ego/thought, and basically the perspectival nature of reality. A deep knowledge of the mechanics of duality. A deep understanding of relativism/post-modernism, basically a full embodiment of both stage green & yellow thinking. Turquoise requires the 'heart' part + fully integration of stage yellow. Do know that some people are kind-of awakened in heart but pretty asleep in mind. Sociopaths for instance, we could say, zen devils, or some extreme hippies. Likewise a lot of people on this forum are very much awake in mind but seemingly kind of lack the heart part still ( @VeganAwake, @traveler, im looking at you xD). It is basically another more benevolent form of zen delivery, denying their own unconscious attachment to concepts by masking it with their hillarious/sad nihilistic "no-self / no-one / nothingness / nothing to understand / nothing to attain / nothing to realize / no one to realize / nothing to do / nothing to get to / nothing to become / no one to become" - jargon, which all INTPs/enneagram Fives, including me (i've been there) know all too well =D Also guys, now I tagged you for lolz, but you don't have to come in and tell me your repetitious (and often funnily obviously shadow-projective) lines of: "that's just a belief, narrative, story, conceptual-thinking, cute model" "that's just what appears there, and it's perfectly fine - for no one" I got it. You deny Love. But even though you deny it, that is still Love. Reality is fucking Love. How could it be otherwise? :-) <3

Now that was wild! Kinda brief, but epic! I can still feel the afterglow... But I'm pretty much completely back at my baseline - if you will. I did nothing fancy to attain this state. I wasn't even attempting to reach any state per se. Just felt like releasing some toxins from my body. Filling it with fresh oxygen. I was breathing through my mouth the whole time. Nice and deep. Kinda fast, too. Eyes opened - staring into the distance. It felt real good, so I kept going. Soon my whole body was overwhelmed with this tingling sensation. It almost feels like a whole-body orgasm. But at the same time it feels like you're dissolving into nothingness. A few more deep breaths and my vision starts fading to black. I knew I was close to passing out, but I kept going a bit longer. The whole time I'm being showered with this warm, fuzzy feeling. I started losing myself in the breath. I could not tell if I was breathing in or out. Shortly; I could not tell if I was breathing at all. And then... it happened. I broke through. Enter 'the super-state'. I can only describe it as being sucked out of your body and spread onto everything. Yup! You're the whole thing now, baby! Perception no more. No need to see anything. I am what I see. No here and no there. No then and no later. In a sense; no now, either. Yes, you guessed it. It was all Nothing. However, there's much to be said about it. Really; one could go on forever. It just seemed so damn real. So much realer than where I'm at now. Yet at the same time; it was dreamy and magical. Totally unreal. At this point I'm weightless. I'm floating. I'm experiencing myself as everything. Literally. I felt what it's like to be a chair. And a TV. And a bed. Even though; 'experiencing' is not the right way to put it, really. That implies a lag. There was no lag. No time and no space for anything to be experienced. No experience and no experiencer. Only Being. In real time. You may think: 'but isn't everything always already in real time?' Well yes... and no. Think of yourself as an antenna. You are receiving the signals in real time... but it takes 'time' for you to receive, decode and process the information. To create a holographic representation of the signals you're receiving. To paint a picture. It's a layer. A snapshot of Reality. So that's the 'lag' I'm referring to. That's the 'veil of perception'. That's how the 5 human senses function, essentially. At least from what I understand. In a sense; you are experiencing time (or anything else for that matter) simply because you use your senses to filter vibratory information. To make sense out of reality. Being 'human' is nothing more but a filtration system - if we go all technical. So in that sense; you can only 'experience' real time in Absolute Unity. You do not know what the 'true now' is until you do not merge with God, completely. Only when there are not two, but only One; you Are. Only when there truly is no before and no after; Now is. Don't let yourself be deceived by thinking you're already IT, and there's nothing to do, nothing to attain, yadayada... Be real with yourself here. Be conscious of how conscious you are, right now. That's the only thing that matters. And also; breathing. Breathing is awesome. So this experience got me contemplating a bit. What is a state of Being? What is a breakthrough? And how is such a drastic jump even possible? Are there levels and degrees to this? Well, to put it as simply as I can; Being is Absolute. It cannot change, ever. It's eternal. While it itself cannot be altered, it can create an alteration within itself - so to speak. It can get drunk on itself. In a sense; you are constantly hallucinating. And that's how states come to be. They are like radio station. It's just a matter of tuning in. The possibilities are endless, really. There are infinite states. But only one Being. It could be also said that there are many, many qualities of Consciousness. And many, many layers and levels of Reality. All of those can be and are being experienced. But are not to be confused with Absolute Beingness. It's the difference between being sober and drunk, really. A 'baseline' frequency is simply a frequency that your system is most comfortable operating on. It's most familiar with it. Any significant alteration in your baseline frequency can be considered a breakthrough. Or a break-down lol. This shift can obviously be attained through various methods and practices. Meditation, breathwork, psychedelics... But one can also be triggered into it by random life-events. Usually people tend to go slow, altering ever so slightly their baseline over time. So obviously when you take a psychedelic for example and it shoots you right through the sky it literally feels like you're breaking through a brickwall. When in fact you're only breaking through the limitations of your mind. Psychedelics are essentially super - accelerators. They alter the rate of the oscillation. They 'raise your frequency'. That's how 'hyper-awarness' comes to be. That's how you can go from ego or object to Love or God-consciousness. That's how there are levels, degrees and states. It's all fun and cool until you become conscious that you're making your own heart beat. And that you're generating the temperature of your body. That you're making your hair and nails grow. Right this moment. You're doing it all out of sheer wiil. You're making the clouds and the trees move. You're making the Sun shine. The wind blow. It's all you baby! One thing to think and talk about it... And another to be conscious of it. If you're not used to those hights, it can quickly become too much. So be smart. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Peace.

@Someone here what your saying is partially true, however just simply being in the present moment will not raise you conciousness to the point where you will awaken. You are not Eckart Tolle or Rubert Spira. Even then... are these guys even really awake? The present moment is such a small facet of awakening IMO, it's like spirituality for dummies. This is obvious when you realize time is illusory, imaginary and just another duality. Enlightenment/awakening/samadhi IS a state. And if you have not experienced this state, then yeah you would probably say something like this. This is simply wrong. This will not awaken you. Honestly, it just won't. Your true nature is Nothingness, however "doing" nothing will not awaken you to God. Leo has about 20 techniques he mentions in his what is God series that will might get you there though. But if your a normal human like 99.9% of us, we don't have 10,000 hours of patience to meditate and do self inquiry. Psychedelics will get you there very quickly if you are serious about Truth. Otherwise your wasting your time and energy in my experience.

Indeed. But have you read my post? Let me quote for ya: But yes, "an absolute PoV" is an idea. There isn't really one... Except there is. It is this. :-> :-< Yes yes. All is well, I didn't say anything else. I may totally miss your point here (I do know what you mean though). But I feel like saying (not necessarily directed to you dear fellow intrepid traveler)..: Enough of this spiritual bypassing. A rapist is a fucking rapist. It's bad. Rape is bad, mkay. It's all Perfect Imagination, but within the context of 'THAT' (life/dream/maya): RAPE IS BAD. A RAPIST IS BAD. Do not hurt others (=yourself). Yes. However, we gotta make distinctions between the words as concepts & then what the words are pointing to I say "Infinite Love" , "Oneness", "Consciousness", "God", "Infinite Imagination" or "Absolute Perfection" and yes, when you listen to them your brain interprets them and the result is not necessarily what the words are pointing to, just as my finger pointing to the moon is not the moon. Absolute Truth does exist (my words try to point to that, even though I know its futile:D), however. Not as an idea or a concept or story. All my wordplay "Love, God, Oneness, Imagination" is conceptual/idealistic/stories in nature, yes, yes, but I'm just using them to try to point to that-which-cannot-be-pointed to (Absolute Truth), hehe, but only seen/realized/directly experienced. lol. Absolute Truth cannot be doubted when first realized, however. Absolute Truth is the source of all doubt, of all falsehood, all lesser truths, of life, of existence, of everything. It can't be communicated. That Reality is Perfect/Good/Love/ is not a belief or an idea. Explicitly, It sounds like it is an idea or a belief-system or a story. But implicitly it is not an idea or a belief or a story. You can't argue with Absolute Truth when first realized. The "I am not this, I am not that"-approach (nothingness/no self-realization) is highly effective and I used it myself. Ultimately, that approach (& accompanying insight) has to be transcended as well though, because it has its limits. The realization of nothingness / no-self is a lesser truth. It is true enough, and VERY useful to grasp fully (the implications of it and so on), but it is not Absolute Truth. The "major problem" with the method/'attachment to the realization on its own' is that it is inherently dualistic in nature. By saying "I am not this, I am not that" .. or "it is not that, it is not this ... or "there is no self, there is nothing" ... or "the self is an illusion, no-self is the truth" etc. etc. we create dualities: truth - non-truth illusion - real nothingness - something self - no-self right - wrong And Absolute Truth is beyond all that. Absolute Truth isn't possible to express with words, but if I try, I would say it encompasses all dualities, it is the source of it all. I would call it God, in lack of a better word. Or Love. Reality is a real illusion. There is no self and no no-self either. There is the Selfless Self. There is something which is nothing. There is true beliefs which are false. There are wrong ways which are right. There is lots of evil in the world, but it is love. There are mistakes which are Perfect. Non-duality. All opposites are two sides of the same COIN. THAT COIN IS THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH = GOD = LOVE. Ultimately, it is all just God. And when you have first fully bathed in the awareness/realization of what "God" actually FEELS like (direct experience) (through letting go of all beliefs/ideas/fear/insecurities/filters, so nothing remain but the Light of God), there is no doubt left. You now "know" God is not an idea, but the realest of all real and unreal things. It's you. The perciever has become the perceived. The perceived, the perceiver. Full circle. The snake biting its own tail. Oneness is seen again. All illusory seperation gone. All boundaries dissolved. Everything fusing into Itself out of Itself.

Exactly. But what is the only thing illusion can exist within? Truth. What is the Source of illusion? What is. God. Self. Existence. It’s like a mother and a fetus. Is the creation separate from the creator? Sure! You can conceptualize it that way, but there is also a fundamental and undeniable connection between the two. Without mental definitions, what separates them? Without mental definitions, what separates you from Truth or what is. Yes, I’m talking about even the character that has never been yet we are still capable of discussing it. We talk about an illusion as if it is something that isn’t real, but for it to even be in discussion, it must exist on some level. The illusion is real, but that does not mean it is always interpreted in ways that point to what is real. Ironically, we are having a discussion in an illusion where we are talking about what the lack of illusion is as if we have experienced it or somehow know what we are talking about. This is stating that somehow Truth was discovered through something which is somehow not also Truth or separate from Truth. It’s like the species/Individual that discovered God/Source/Truth/Pure Awareness/Nothingness/No experiencer which creates everything and entirely supports the existence of the character is somehow different from the character. It’s a tad absurd I would say. You are Everything. There are no divisions. All is One.

@Blackhawk No, Im not attributing any human quality and I completely get your point. You have to see it by yourself to understand it. I realized that it really doesnt make sense to explain these things. Theres no way I can explain how I came to know it rather than just knowing it. Who the heck would relate such joker nonsense to GOD? Lol. But see just as @Mason Riggle showed me alan watts explanation on it. Coincidence? No. I actually perceived GOD laughing like a maniac inside me, through me, at himself and at myself as well. The Christians were right, you can actually hear God speak to you and communicate with him directly like praying. Its just too different and mystical as how church/society teaches. I could hear God telling me to relax and trust him, that its all a game and everything will be alright. There was no voice saying it but i could hear it. I know it sounds crazy to the logical mind, thats why I said it doesnt makes sense to speak about this. That same day I had a laugh attack at my job when I realized such thing. I couldn't stop laughing at my superiors everytime I saw them talking in a serious manner and my peers being serious, lmao. My consciousness instantly shifted and love energy was flowing for a while, it was as if God entered in me, people could perceive an energy Shift in my eyes, since they were surprisingly looking at me. It was a cool mystical experience. That same day I had a storm of realizations. Some of them were that God as in the bible is quite right, meaning He truly is above and always watching you from everywhere. He is always knocking at your door, looking for you to recognize Him and ultimately worship Him in humility. Because that God is you. That even thou you realize God in someway like love, nothingness, Infinity, etc. , it doesnt mean to realize him in a totally different way IS false/wrong. GOD is to be realized in a multi-perspective way. The whole purpose of life is just to find God. You will go through many things until finally ending there. Another one that shocked me was being selfish. Not falsely selfish, but TRULY SELFISH. Being Truly selfish with yourself in a complete, earnest, integral and honest way is true goodness for all. And lastly, while people (ignorants) are laughing at Him for not proving His existence, He is laughing his ass off at them for their unexistence.

Imo it's much more than that. And idk how your definations go but i think it's weird to put nirvana before self realization. Here's how I'd define it in simple terms. 1. Searching For The Ox - You searching for ultimate contentment in daily life without actually realizing it so you go after money, sex, power, fame, etc. Or you hearing about enlightenment and going for it loosely which is direct pursuit of the ox. 2. Seeing The Footsteps - Getting glimpses of something but not quite sure. Being very interested in philosophy because you see some value in it that you cant really pinpoint. (Your philosophy really being spirituality, but you do not call it spirituality because you dont like that .) Or maybe you do consider yourself spiritual and you are some buddhist monk who has been going at with meditation and have started to see something you are not quite sure. Tons of nuances. 3. Seeing The Ox - A mystical experience of any of the facets of awaking. Or multiple experiences. See how in this picture, there is only tail or a part of the ox shown? Because you rarely see it in full the first time. 4. Catching The Ox - Trying to be able to embody whatever you have realized fully. Like tryna embody self-realization/god-realization after initial seeing. 5. Taming The Ox - After you have embodied it, you keep going deeper and deeper into your understanding and awakening, 6. Riding The Ox Home - You embody even the deepest parts of those realizations. You know you do not exist, there's only God, but also are in a state of no mind. You let life truly unfold on it's own without any interference because you cannot interfere in the first place, This is state of pure bliss. As stated in the poem. End of suffering. Your biggest obstacle to knowing the full truth is bliss now, the opposite of suffering. 7. The Ox Transcended - True end of seeking. 8. The Ox & Self Transcended - Despite all your realizations and embodiments, there was still some percentage of self/ego left, maybe 0.0000000001% but it was there. Now it has gone completely. Even without you seeking, because once you have embodied those realizations, those realizations act as a flame that slowly melt away your delusions even without you trying. As stated in the poem "Could a snowflake survive inside a burning flame?". You understand God even deeper, passed the hurdle of bliss. Emptiness, nothingness. You probably cannot say anything about this emptiness at all. 9. Return To The Source - Grounding yourself back to earth. Coming back into the world. 10. Re Entering The Market Place - You do not preach, do not teach. You are so fucking enlightened that you can hand people realizations without any effort. In my definition of Nirvana, it is merging back into the source. So that'd be the death of your body. You cant have Nirvana or Mahasamadhi until your body is alive and kicking. Atleast that's my defination. Keep in mind my accuracy goes down from Taming the ox onwards. As taming the ox is as far as I can see lol. Also this is all mental masturbation without the work. We tend to project our journey and understanding of spiritualty onto the meaning of these stages, why? Because we want to be as high as we can in this 'model of enlightenment' to feel good about ourselves and then declare that to the world. Imo these stages have a fuck ton of nuances and go much deeper than what I said in this reply.

@OneIntoOne In the absolute sense, everything is imagined and pretended/self-created/"hypnotized." You are God pretending to be a being that thinks enlightenment is just self-hypnosis, which in itself is self-hypnosis. It still doesn't give you any clarity in what self is and what hypnosis is. Enlightenment can be defined in many different ways, and it has many different degrees. But the definitive point for me is if you have had a direct experience in absolute source/love/nothingness and no longer have any doubt about what you are, after this point is liberation. Now the only way for you to find if this is true is if you reach that point. Same as how for you to truly know that if enlightenment is just self-hypnotization, you would have to become enlightened first. The only way out is through. So keep going. Your ego is trying to trick you into stopping doing the work. It happens often on this path.

@The0Self You can delude yourself into nothingness. Might take some discipline, but i don't see why its not possible. And hurray! i'm Enlightened.

Exactly. We agree, bro. The body -- and everything, including the sense of being a self inside a skull/ego -- is ultimately seen to be: imagination = formless Nothingness = Love.

God is Love bro. Which also happens to be Formless Nothingness ??☯️????❤️

I have been contemplating on what makes sound and movement different from silence and stillness respectively. But as I observe deeper and deeper, I cannot seem to find a difference between them. It's a mindfuck for me. When listening to music or someone talk, silence itself seems to define the sound. I couldn't interpret the sound if there was no silence. But I tried to focus on does silence actually follow the sound? And if silence does follow the sound, what is sound while it is happening. All I got when looking into this was a mindfuck. That sound IS silence, But then how can I differentiate between sound and silence if they are literally the same thing. I have no idea. It makes no sense, yet it does. Sound seems like a wave into awareness, that pops up and down in different frequencies. But even it is popped up, it is no different from silence. I have no idea how this is. Same with movement and stillness. Movement is literally just infinite amount of stillnesses. But even without that way of thinking, it still is equivalent to stillness. It lead me down a rabbit hole. I had to contemplate distance/space. I realized that I just imagine space/distance including the feel of it(Just like Time). And it's not just about me seeing technically 2D images through my vision. It's the fact that there is literally no difference between any sensation at all. Vision = Sound = Every Other sensation(Physical, emotional or mental like thoughts). And that vision and all sensations are happening at the same singularity which has no location and no dimensions to it. It's literally nothingness. I am imagining everything including myself, and the imagination itself is part of imagination. A strange loop. So it's not that everything is beyond space and time, there is literally no space and time. What the fuck?

I think my main point here is that everytime we speak or write... we are always telling a story, even when we are trying to convey/point to a 'non-story' ;-) So this is exactly my 2nd point: what actually matters is *experience*, FEELING, consciousness, perspective. So while it's all fancy to go meta ((and IMO go highly conceptual, which is I why I guess you're also a Five!)) and say: "oh well, in truth there never was a separate self that could be dropped in the first place, so nothing actually happened to no one" ... This is IME some kind of mild spiritual bypassing, cos that is -- at least to me -- not how it felt, these times I had profound ego-deaths. It very much felt like my sense of self dissolved into, well, Nothing/Everything :-) And it was profound. We might just be different, and you guys may prefer to not talk about it much and to not make a big deal out of it. So your way of describing such an awakening experience may be to just say "the veil was lifted. There was and never were a self to begin with. Just Nothingness". And I can vibe with that too, sure❤️ But you see, my friend, to me, it doesn't matter if we call it "something" or "nothing". I can vibe with both opposites pointing to the ineffeable. The only reason I go so much 'anti-no self" here in this thread against you and Veganawake, is because I smell dogmsticism about whether 'nothing' or 'something' are equally true (they are! Just two different perspectives pointing to the SAME ineffeable Truth). To me, both opposites point to the same ineffeable Truth. (Sorry to repeat myself lol). If you insist on one end of the spectrum being more "right" than the other, you are -- in my humble eyes -- still stuck in dualistic thinking. What I am interested in is the "best way" to communicate truth//point to truth, to a normal stage orange person. Even though I'm aware all souls need to hear something different. But I think the best way to speak to a stage orange guy, is to take their level of consciousness/their perspective/"the ground they are standing on" and then turn it on its head; show them the paradoxes that arises when you take their belief system/logic to the extreme! I think, thus, it is by far best -- along the way at least -- to speak to him in a way that includes both the perspective of 'something' & of 'nothing' and not just parrot one of the "stories" ( ;-) ). If you tell to a normal stage orange guy that is inquiring into spirituality: "there is no self, so there is nothing to drop, nothing to get to, nothing to achieve", I don't think it will help him much. I'd prefer to say something (?) along the lines: "What does this self you speak of consist of?" ... etc.:D Experience is what is. Trying to go beyond experience is an alluring trap that easily makes you stuck in concepts instead of The Now/Present Moment (feels much better to be 'stuck' in the latter, I tell you!). Seems like we are (sort of) on the same page after all ? Oh, as I said, I do like them. I just like to play The Devil's Advocate, when I sniff something is out of line ? My sniffing may be wrong, though, hehe. But it's still fun. Good! Now we can go a level deeper and say "yet, something IS opposite to nothing!" , although it simultaneously is not hehe. Non-duality is such a strange loop. If I say 'nothing is not opposite to something', I have simultaneously implied that it is! Haha. Okay I'm just lolling around now. Gotta stop ? In regards to the Enneagram model, if you're not a Five, whar core type are then? 9? ??❤️?