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I agree. He even admitted that he only does this work for self entertainment because when he is fully conscious, there is noone left to awaken. That's what he told me. To me, that is a form of delusion which needs to be addressed. While he was having his full awakenings, I never awakened with him, I doubt anyone else did either. His worldview is deeply flawed. If you ask him if he exists he will probably say that he doesn't and you are imagining him, or, as he said to me, "I am only as real as you make me." Ask any healthy person the same question, and they will go to their direct experience and rightfully conclude that they are real and exist in some form or another. Leo, you are only as real as you believe yourself to be in your own bubble of experience. Nobody else has control over that but you.

@Leo Gura When you enter non duality and let’s say the conscious defilements are removed. There remains many, many parts of you that refuse to buy into your seeing. That are self involved. Many control mechanisms, tendencies and vasanas remain. This causes a high degree of cognitive dissonance in the newly awakened person. Which can be solved by clinging onto one’s seeing and refusing to acknowledge one’s cognitive dissonance. Merely dismissing it as mind and “remaining as you are”. Which stunts further growth and does not allow for further development or you acknowledge the cognitive dissonance and the underlying issues that cause it. By doing so the first step towards embodiment begins. To simplify what I said. A being who is main aim is survival. Once he sees the dimension of nothingness and that dimension becomes a part of his experience can alleviate his survival issues merely through that seeing. By claiming I am everything. I am eternal. In a rather dishonest fashion or Going against his cravings and the easy way out he can acknowledge that which is hard to look at. That the seeing is one component. A very muddied one due to layers and layers of tension fighting it for lack of a better term.

@Aakash I don't understand what you are saying, what do you mean by - facets. You are saying-' if you want to awaken to the facet fried chicken.' Is there such a thing as - awakening to something or awakening to a facet? Isn't there just awakening. And again you say- awakening to the facet fried chicken means - mystical experience of it getting eaten. And you contradict yourself saying- I never said- experience , when you yourself are saying - mystical experience. "Some people are self love, some people are love (which are not even comparable at all) , some people are emptiness, some people are intelligence, some people are dualistic, some people are totally non -dualistic , some people are absolutely non-dualistic . " Again, I don't know whether what you are saying is true or not. 'Some people are love', no, people are bones , muscles, cartilages, love is an emotion. "All other awakenings are the same" and same= awakening to the facet x which means a mystical experience of x getting eaten. Let's say Buddha awakened, he had a huge 5-Meo DMT like experience. Now where does the thing about facet come in the picture? Did Buddha ever say in his sermons - I awakened to the facet fried chicken, I awakened to the facet diet coke. I am asking this because I am not sure, either you are just goofing around or you are a spiritual master. The rest of what you say about infinity, I agree.

Awakening is tend to be seen as the ultimate goal of meditation. And It is true. The permanent and intuitive realization that there is no separate self is the first stage of awakening. Before one delves deeper into other insights, this radical realization colors and sets the tone for the rest of the practice. This advice is for people who use the 'dry insight' practices like self enquiry to become awaken before developing advanced levels of samatha - mindfulness skills. On the surface, it might appear that self enquiry is the more direct and faster path to awakening. However, most people can't get awaken using self inquiry only. But lets say you are one of the lucky people. You got stream entry all of a sudden before really mastering concentration and awareness skill. But that is not the end of the path. And you should not rely on such a luck based strategy. Stream Entry doesn't turn you into a master-level meditator. It doesn't guarantee stable attention in daily life. It doesn't guarantee strong metacognitive and introspective awareness as a permanent baseline. Not without manual training. These are samatha skills one builds with mindfulness techniques. Self enquiry won't solve all of your problems. Even if it leads to awakening after 20 years of practice. A stream enterer will have easier access to high states of concentration and master the path of samadhi faster than a non-awakened meditator. But the real question is how awakening occurs in the first place? Science currently doesn't have a conclusive answer to this question. One thing for sure is that meditation, mindfulness and Samatha practices which builds stable attention and strong peripheral awareness aids and increases the odds of awakening. Once you master the no-mind and stable attention as a solid baseline before self enquiry, you put yourself ina very advantageous position. You will be living the rest of your life on a natural high if you are doing the practices right. Samadhi requires more work. It takes more discipline. ıt should be done alongside self inquiry. Especially as preliminary work. Samadhi pays off because you never waste your time building these skills. You can spend 20 years practicing self enquiry and 'weak-sauce' mindfulness techniques and really get nowhere. That is not what I'm talking about. 10 years ago, if you struggled to sit for 2 hours straight and now after 10 years, you still struggle doing it, then you are doing it wrong. You are practicing weak sauce meditation. If you struggle strong metacognitive awareness and stable attention after 20 years of meditation, then you don't understand the fundamental skills one needs to build in meditation. You don't practice the right techniques. If you can't reach effortlessness with relative ease after 20 years, then that is not deliberate practice. Don't use talent as an excuse. A better strategy is spending 5-10 years of your life purely mastering mindfulness and samadhi practices. Really emphasizing awareness and high states of concentration both in formal sessions and daily life. This can be done if you practice diligently with the right techniques. Now the rest of your life is going to be spent on self enquiry and similar insight practices. Imagine 10 years of pure self enquiry after mastering samadhi in the first 10 years of your spiritual journey. You are going in and out of deep jhanas, flow states and deep relaxation in daily life interacting with people. Your life changes at this point and some amount of insight penetration occurs even in the most unskilled meditator. If you could access this depth of mindfulness, you are not quite a beginner meditator anymore. You've done a lot of work coming here. Congratulations! Now, what are the chances of permenant realization of no-self here after mastering the fundamentals? Understand that self enquiry is an advanced meditation technique. Success is very slim and requires luck - momentary attunement in a beginner meditator. It only becomes powerful for adept meditators who have high degrees of stable attention, awareness and equanimity. In other words, meditators who've mastered the path of mindfulness. Rather than striving for awakening with craving in a conflicted and chatic monkey mind, you must learn to be patient. Take steps one at a time. Master no-mind first. Awakening is not going anywhere. You are NOT wasting your time. On the long run, you are saving DECADES of spiritual anguish by mastering the fundamentals of practice on the samatha - mindfulness path. No-mind is not an impossible ideal. It can be accomplished. You can tame the monkey mind. It is not some advanced work one does after awakening. It can be mastered more systematically than awakening since it is purely skill-based. Take the time and energy to master samatha practices and you'll be glad you did. I highly recommend reading 'The Mind Illuminated' by Culadasa. That book has everything you need to master the path of concentration and insight development. You can find his version of 'Self Enquiry' explained in the advanced stages of the book for adept meditators. Don't put the cart before the horse. Practice with discipline and diligence. And most importantly, have fun

I’m not addressing you personally here. These are general observation of social dynamics. The above sentiment could come from someone at Green/Yellow trying to pull Orange up to Green. Or it could come from Orange resisting Green and trying to maintain Orange. These two positions are very different orientations driven by different values and desires. The Green/Yellow person may see the collective good in BI, yet may realize that it may not be practical to implement and there may be unintended negative consequences. The key here is that Green/Yellow values that collective goodness and will advocate for it. Such a person will want things to progress and offer ideas to keep the progress going. For example, they may see some drawbacks in the structure of BI and offer some ways we could modify it to address those concerns and make the proposal more efficient. For example, if BI is funded by rerouting social security funding - it could make both BI and social security programs vulnerable to future dismantling (since social security has much deeper infrastructure). If both B1 and social security was lost, this would not be good for the collective. We may say in this context that the current BI proposal is not good for the collective - yet let’s re-work it to address this concern. Or, a Green/Yellow may say that the most important here is the underlying value of meeting basic needs, yet BI is not the best way and offer other another option to achieve this goal. Orange will have a very different orientation. An Orange person may see the collective good in BI, yet not want to move in that direction because they are anchored in Orange. Similar to Green/Yellow, they may voice support for the underlying intention of the proposal and voice “concerns” about how it’s not practical or it will have unintended consequences. Yet Orange will not want to progress, so they will not offer energy and ideas to progress. Rather, they will delay, stonewall, drag their feet, undercut and make excuses. For example, over the last six years, the workforce at my job has gone from 150 years of being 90% upper-class white to being highly diverse - ethnically, socially and economically. This is had positives for the image and economics of the institution - which is attractive to Orange administrators. The problem is that the administrators are still all upper-class straight white men. There is a lot of grass roots Green, yet Orange administrators resist. They know they can’t resist by rejecting Green values, so they try to appear supportive of Green. Yet they aren’t. They try to appear as being pragmatic and concerned - yet they keep avoiding, delaying or resisting any new initiative toward progress. And often try to slip in Orange level constructs. Just like conservative Blue has “dog whistles” that Green has awakened to, Orange can speak in “code”, in which Green is awakening to. This dynamic can also be seen with corporate Orange Democrat’s resisting progressive Green Democrats.

What does the word ‘non-duality’ point to? The world created by thought, the world of words, language, and concepts, is the world of opposites. ‘Up and down’, ‘this or that’, ‘inside and outside’, ‘right and wrong’, ‘black and white’, ‘true and false’, ‘positive and negative’, ‘me and you’ and so on. The world of words, language, thoughts, concepts, is a dualistic world of apparent opposites. But, in reality, do opposites exist? What we are really pointing to when we use the word ‘non-duality’ is something that goes beyond all of these mind-made opposites. But how can we talk about something that goes beyond opposites, when even our attempt to talk about non-duality is dualistic? So, what the word non-duality actually means is really very difficult to describe or put into words. In fact, you could say it’s impossible. For we are not talking about non-duality as opposed to something called duality, we are not talking about pro-duality as opposed to anti-duality.In fact the non-duality we speak of is not the opposite of anything. This is impossible to understand logically or rationally. To see what is being spoken of, we must go beyond our ordinary way of thinking and seeing. ‘Non-duality’ is actually a translation of the Sanskrit word ‘Advaita’, which simply means ‘not two’ and points to the essential oneness (wholeness, completeness, unity) of life, a wholeness which exists here and now,prior to any apparent separation. It’s a word that points to an intimacy, a love beyond words, right at the heart of present moment experience. It’s a word that points us back Home. And despite the compelling appearance of separation and diversity there is only one universal essence, one reality. Oneness is all there is – and we are included. What we are really trying to do when we say ‘non-duality’ is point to life as it is right now, before the appearance of concepts and labels; before thought creates a world of things: table, chair, hand, foot, fear, me, you, past, future. What is life before thought? Can we even talk about that? Is it possible to capture non-duality into words? When we speak of non-duality it can sometimes seem like we mean ‘anti-duality’, that we are against duality or that it’s wrong or false or even dangerous. This can then lead to dogmatic thinking and religiosity and to the proclamation of rightness: “You are dualistic and I am non-dualistic! I am more non-dual than you!” That is the religion of non-duality. We are more interested in the truth of non-duality. Is non-duality a religion or belief system? Non-duality isn’t a new belief system, a religion or a ‘how to’ guide to living. It makes no promises about the future. Of course, it canbecome a belief system or religion, however, like anything can. You could start to believe that there is “no self, no ‘me’, no time or space and that everything is an illusion” – and non-duality could become your new belief system. That’s what happened years ago in my own experience; non-duality had become my new belief system, although at the time I actually believed I was free from all belief systems! When someone subscribes to non-duality as a system of belief, there’s just someone there – a separate person – believing that they’re no longer a separate person! And then perhaps they go round telling everyone that they are not a separate person. Secretly they experience themselves as a separate individual but they have taken on a set of concepts, they are living with a new image of themselves as beyond all images. You can believe you are not separate, but you can still feel separate, and experience yourself as separate. There’s a world of difference between simply believing that you are not separate, in other words, intellectually taking non-duality concepts on as a new belief system, and really seeing what those words are pointing to in a very deep way. Here, we are interested in the seeing of non-duality, not just talking and arguing about it. We can talk and argue about non-duality concepts until we are blue in the face, we can argue about who is right and who is wrong and who is more ‘nondualistic’, but we would really be missing the point of all this. Is it possible to reach a non-dual state or become spiritually awakened? Isn’t it fascinating how automatically thought (or ‘the mind’) tries to turn what we are talking about into some kind of special state or experience. Thought hears about ‘non-duality’ and wants it. And it asks, ‘How do I get it? How do I reach it? How do I see it? Who can take me there? Who can transmit it to me? Who can teach me it or give it to me? Where will I find it?’ It starts looking for something called ‘non-duality’. It starts waiting for it. It lives in hope. That will inevitably happen because the individual is always a seeker. A separate person is always looking for something. We might seek wealth, success, power, fame, or we might seek for ‘spiritual’ things instead – but really it’s all the same seeking. The spiritual seeker might seek awakening, enlightenment or a non-dual state instead of money and power and success – but deep down, it’s the same movement. Time is always involved in seeking. What we search for is always in the future. We say, ‘One day I will find non-duality. I’ll get into the non-dual state or have an awakening experience or my person will drop away magically.’ So, stop right there! You’ve already turned non-duality into a future goal. Stop and look and see where this seeking begins. So, this incessant seeking takes on different forms? Yes. Ask anybody on the street what they are looking for, and they’ll probably say they’re looking for peace, happiness, success, popularity, power, love, acceptance, understanding, fame, glory. Someone who identifies themselves as a ‘spiritual person’ might be looking for an altered state of consciousness, or some kind of transformation, or an enlightenment experience, or they may be seeking to no longer seek anything anymore! Everyone is looking for something. This seeking takes many forms but really it’s all the same seeking. It seems as though everyone is looking for different things, but actually what we are looking for, deep down, is the same. Basically, everyone is in pursuit of the same wholeness (or oneness, or completeness, or whatever you want to call it) – a wholeness that is already here, but is ignored in our pursuit of a future completion. That’s where it all begins: looking for something better in the future. Looking for the next moment that will be a better moment, a more full moment, a more complete moment. And of course, non-duality could just become something else you are looking for. We could turn non-duality into our new goal. But the word ‘Non-duality’ actually points to what is already present here and now, within this present experience, as this experience. We’re not talking about a new goal for the seeker. We’re talking about life as it already is. non-duality is not in time. If life ‘as it is’ is already perfect why do we continue to seek? The real question is ‘Who is seeking?’. What is this seeker? Where is it? Can I find it now? And is this seeker who I really am? I seem to be a separate individual who is looking for something to complete myself, but is that really who I am? Does this seeking really define me? Am I really something that is incomplete, something that seeks completion in the future? You pass through all these different layers of questions and ultimately you get to the fundamental question: ‘Who am I?‘ That’s where everything leads to in the end. So, who am I? If you ask most people that question, they’d probably reply with a story about who they think they are. They’d give you a description about what they’ve done in the past and maybe what they dream of doing in the future. They might tell you a story about their role in life – that they are a father or mother, or a business person or baker -where they work and live, and how many children they have. They’ll quite literally tell you a story about the past and future. They’ll basically tell you a story about who they were in the past and who they think they will be in the future – not who theyare in this moment. But the question is, ‘Who are you now?’ Normally that question is answered by describing the past or an imagined future. We are living with a thought-created story about ourselves. I am a shop keeper, a doctor, a lawyer, an artist, a spiritual person. (Someone who calls themselves a ‘spiritual person’ might even tell a story about how they are not a person, that they’ve transcended time and space and that they have no relationships because they have no self and there are no others. Despite the content of the ‘I am’ story, it’s still a story! Maybe, if you see yourself as ‘enlightened’ you have convinced yourself that you are not telling a story, that you’re beyond stories. But isn’t that just another story? We all seem to live with an image of who we are.) It’s a case of mistaken identity? Exactly. Is the image of yourself who you really are? Does it define you? And here’s the problem. When you live with an image of yourself, that image can always be improved; you can always have a better story. If you have the identity that you are successful business women and you’re making a lot of money, maybe you hope that one day you’ll make a fortune and be a famous millionaire. Or the story could be that you’re a spiritual person and one day you’ll become enlightened. So, are you saying enlightenment is just another story? Well, it’s always about ‘me’ completing myself in time, isn’t it. The enlightenment story is equal to the ‘one day I’m going to win the lottery’ story.Within the story you are always incomplete and always moving towards a future completion. On some level we feel incomplete now – there’s a sense of lack, or of not being whole. Everyone lives with that, although not everyone admits it or realises it. This is how the search begins: the sense of being incomplete now, that something is missing now. Then there’s the urge for a future fullness, a future completion. Something wants to complete itself in the future, but it begins with a present sense of incompleteness, a sense of lack. That goes right to the root of it all – a sense of lack that everyone is trying to escape in various ways. The sense of lack doesn’t seem to go away, it might for a while but it soon comes back. Well yes, this is the problem. Even when you get what you want and you think you’re satisfied, very quickly dissatisfaction starts up again: ‘I finally got what I wanted but it didn’t complete me.’ After twenty years of spiritual seeking you finally have the awakening experience you always wanted, but you still don’t feel complete. You make a million dollars and then you realise you still feel a sense of lack. You finally find the man or woman of your dreams, and you still want more. This is the problem with trying to complete yourself in time, trying to complete yourself through getting stuff and having experiences. There’s always more. There’s always a future. Why does the seeking, or the sense of lack eventually start up again? Buddhists see that everything is impermanent. However amazing, blissful, or apparently fulfilling something is, it will pass. Whatever you have you can lose. If you finally got all the money you wanted, it wouldn’t be enough because you can always have more money. You can be more successful, more famous, move loved, more spiritual, and so on. You attain the tenth level of consciousness (whatever that means) and then you want to be on level eleven. You want to get to the top! The self wants to be bigger, faster, stronger, more. Basically, we want to be special in some way – the self wants to stand out against other selves, and complete itself. It wants to be something, not nothing. We want to be certain about who we are and have a fixed and complete story about ourselves. But the nature of stories is that they can never be complete. And so the seeking goes on and on – always waiting for a permanent sense of total completion that never comes. How exhausting! I don’t think people realise how exhausted they are! We live on autopilot and we don’t question our seeking until this way of living breaks down, and we call that suffering. When everything is going your way and you’re getting everything you want – if the seeking mechanism is working for you – why would you question your reality? But what tends to happen is that it sooner or later life stops going your way! Then we find out that we are not in control of life and that we can’t have what we want. This whole seeking mechanism starts to break down and we suffer. When you are suffering you might start to ask, ‘Is this who I really am? Do I really need all this stuff I believe I need?’ So, we are all suffering in some way? Yes. Some people appear to suffer in extreme ways and others seem to suffer less, but everyone is suffering in their own way, even if they don’t realise it. Like we’ve said, ultimately life brings you to the question: ‘Who am I?’ Everyone comes to that question in their own way. Eventually you might start to ask why you’re suffering and question all these fundamental assumptions we’ve been talking about. Often people come to the message of non-duality through suffering, pain or distress. In other words, when the seeking begins to fail on some level, something else can begin to open up. What does the message of non-duality have to offer the suffering seeker? The wholeness or completeness that you are looking for is not be found in the future. The wholeness that everyone is looking for is actually already here within this present experience, within this present moment. The wholeness that you’re looking for – is what you are. It sounds like a total paradox when you try to understand it with thought and it really goes against everything that we are conditioned to believe. It’s not about understanding this with the mind, with thought – it’s about really seeing this for yourself, in your own experience. In a way, this offers nothing to the seeker – it is the experience of being a seeker in the first place, that’s the illusion. And it’s that illusion that this message exposes. If we ultimately cannot understand this message intellectually is there anything that can be done? No one can give this to you or teach it to you. You need to see it for yourself within your own present experience because that’s all there is. You won’t see it in someone else’s experience. It’s not a second-hand thing. It’s about this experience, right now. It’s not something to find in the future. The wholeness you look for is already appearing as everything that’s happening now: as these thoughts, sensations, feelings, sounds, smells. Perhaps this is the wholeness we’ve been seeking. And perhaps wholeness doesn’t look, sound, smell, feel or taste anything like your idea of wholeness – your concept of wholeness! Everyone is looking for their concepts of wholeness (or enlightenment, freedom, love) but true wholeness is not a concept. It’s what is already here prior to concepts. So again, here’s the paradox: perhaps there is only ever wholeness, and within that wholeness we go out into time and space and look for wholeness! Within Home, we’re all looking for Home. Everyone is trying to come Home, but they are already Home. They are what they seek, and do not realise it. So, the message of non-duality points to this ever-present completeness – in the midst of present experience. We are like waves on the ocean, looking for the ocean, longing to be part of it? Yes. That’s a great metaphor. You are like a wave in the ocean experiencing itself as separate from the ocean. The wave asks, ‘When and where will I find the ocean? Who can give the ocean to me?’ But the wave was always the ocean, from the very beginning, even in its seeking! It’s the ocean looking for itself. Even within the ocean’s failure to find itself it is still the ocean; every wave is one hundred per cent water. As all the authentic spiritual teachers have been telling us for hundreds and thousands of years, you are what you seek. Although ‘non-duality’ is just a word, what it points to is the possibility that you are not who you think you are. It’s the possibility that what you are is not this seeker, broken or incomplete. What you are is simply this open space of awareness (consciousness, awakeness, Being) in which absolutely everything seems to come and go, and that space is already at rest; it’s already Home. Is this open space that I am impersonal or personal? Well, it’s neither and both – unfortunately that question implies that it could be one thing or another thing. But space is not impersonal as opposed to personal. Thought creates opposites but in reality there are no opposites. When thought appears in the space, immediately there appears to be a world of opposites: up and down, light and dark, inside and outside, or impersonal and personal. All opposites depend on each other;all the pairs of opposites arise and fall together, and the open space holds all of this. The personal life story is just something that is appearing and disappearing in the open space that you are. ‘You’ appear and disappear in you! Does that mean that the space is impersonal? It’s impersonal in the sense that it holds all personal stories as they appear and disappear. But at the same time it’s not opposed to the personal, because that would be another story! The open space is not a rejection of anything. Like we said before, non-duality is not against duality; it’s the open space in which every thought, feeling and sensation is allowed to appear and disappear. It is the ocean that does not reject any waves, because it is all the waves. So it’s not really personal or impersonal – it holds all these concepts as they come and go. Anything can become a new form of seeking for the individual, a new identity. Yes exactly and if we’re not careful the ‘impersonal space’ state can become food for a new form of seeking! ‘One day I’m going to reach or become an impersonal state of pure consciousness.’ It’s another way of being special: ‘Everyone else is stuck in the personal but I’ve transcended it!’ It’s the same seeking, the same game; it’s just taken on a more subtle form. This open space is not something that the individual, the character, the seeker can attain. It’s the same seeking mechanism as: ‘I have gone beyond the self.’ Only a self would proclaim that! It’s like a wave claiming that it’s beyond the ocean. The seeker is very sneaky! The seeker cannotreach this open space for the seeker appears in this open space. Why do we need to tell any story about ourselves? Yes, and why can’t we just be the space in which all stories are allowed to come and go? Why do we need to hold on to any one of these stories? At the same time, we do not need to reject any story. Again, if you’re not careful, non-duality just become a new war -a war againstimages: ‘I’m not that image!’ But the very moment you say you’re not something you’ve definedyourself! You’re defining yourself again, and again, and again when you say ‘I’m not that! I’m not that!’ You start to see the genius of this seeking mechanism. It’s absolutely, infinitely ingenious!It wants to be something, anything: ‘Let me tell a story about myself, any story! I don’t care what it is!’ What is always open to be discovered is that what you are is not an image. It’s not any image; not even the image that you’re beyond images! Not even the image that ‘I am not an image’.You are not the things that come and go, but at the same time (and this is crucial) what you are is not separate from everything that comes and go. What you are, as the space in which everything comes and goes, isintimate with all of those things, in the same way that the ocean is inseparable from the waves. So, ultimately there are no separate waves. The ocean is appearing as the waves. The ocean is the waves. Then you can’t even distinguish between the ocean and the waves. In present experience, the waves of the ocean appear as thoughts, sensations, images, feelings, sounds – everything in present experience is simply a wave. What you are as the ocean is the waves as well! You are not the thoughts, sensations, images, but at the same time, what you are, as the open space in which all of these appear and disappear, is totally intimate with all of this. So, awareness and the contents of awareness are the same thing? Yes, awareness and all that appears in awareness are absolutely intimate! The ocean cannot reject the waves, why would it? Awareness, wholeness, oneness, or we could call it consciousness, takes form as everything that appears. Consciousness is not some blank empty slate behind everything. That’s how the mind interprets it. The mind interprets these words asthings. Consciousness is not a thing – it is everything that appears. This is why you cannot talk about non-duality! You cannot talk about intimacy. Rooted in that knowing that this is impossible to put into words, we are still free to play with words. We know we cannot use words to capture non-duality; we’re just using them as pointers. We are pointing to something that ultimately cannot be understood by the mind, it cannot be captured. Every wave that appears contains the ocean. That which we are pointing to is within every experience; whether you are in the office or sitting on the meditation cushion, walking in a supermarket or attending a non-duality lecture. Whether there is extreme pain, or intense sadness, that is still the ocean. It is the ocean appearing as pain, the ocean appearing as sadness. Oneness is not limited to a particular experience. It expresses itself as all experience. So, the invitation is to come back to present experience, and rediscover the ocean, and that invitation is always there, in every experience, in this experience. This present experience is the ocean that you have always been seeking without realising it. What is actually happening right now? What is appearing in this present experience? I don’t mean the story of what’s happening to you, I don’t mean what do you think is happening; I’m saying look at what is actually happening now. Come back to the present thoughts, sensations and feelings and rediscover who you really are in the midst of these waves of experience. What you truly are must be there within every experience, otherwise it can’t be who you really are. If it’s something that comes and goes, it can’t be who you really are. Who you really are, as the ocean, does not come and go. Where does suffering come into this? If who we really are is complete why do we suffer? Suffering is forgetting who you really are. We suffer when we don’t see this completeness – this intimacy – within the present experience. When we don’t see that every wave that’s presently appearing is part of the ocean and therefore allowed in the ocean, we start trying to escape this moment to attempt to reach the next moment. We experience ourselves as not whole or somehow broken so we attempt to move away from this moment. In truth, that movement is not actually possible but we try anyway because that’s how we are programmed. We try to move away from this moment to get to the next moment, to tomorrow or next year or to ten years time. We start to use time to achieve this. This is the origin of suffering. We try to escape what’s happening now. We try to run away from aspects of our present experience. We try to escape these thoughts, sensations and feelings and get to a future place where things will be better. That’s the movement of suffering. Within suffering you’ll always find seeking. Seeking is the basic mechanism behind all of our suffering. We label certain elements of experience ‘bad’ or ‘negative’ or ‘dark’ or ‘dangerous’ or ‘unhealthy’ and that’s because of our conditioning. We have been conditioned to label things as ‘fear’, ‘sadness’, ‘anger’, and do on, and to judge these as negative, or not-okay, or bad, or sinful – basically as expressions of incompleteness, as threats to completeness. Because we don’t seethe completeness in these waves, because we can’t find the ocean within these so-called ‘negative’ waves, we try to escape them and that movement ‘away from’ creates the suffering. Then we create stories and identities around this suffering: ‘Oh, I’m a victim of my suffering. I’m a victim of fear and pain! Why is this happening to me? How can I escape this experience?‘ Suffering is a great teacher. Maybe it’s the best teacher but we often don’t see that, because we don’t realise what suffering really is. Normally, we do all sorts of things to avoid, deny and numb our suffering. We take medication, drink alcohol or try to distract ourselves. Of course, there’s ultimately nothing with doing these things either! But suffering is always an opportunity; it’s an invitation to discover the completeness in what you are running away from. Which aspects of your experience right now are not okay? Which waves (thoughts, sensations, and feelings) of the ocean are being rejected right now? Which waves are not being seen as part of the ocean? Basically, what are you at war with? This is always the question that suffering leads you to. Within the experience of suffering you’ll always find seeking. You can believe as much as you like that you’re not seeking, or that you are free from the self, but whenever there’s suffering there’s seeking. It’s the story of ‘me’ looking for something, escaping something; it’s the story of incompleteness or of feeling that there’s something wrong with you. So, the invitation – not a demand – is to take a look at what you are at war with right now. What’s the story? What are the images you are trying to hold up? What are you defending? What are you rejecting? What are you running away from? Look a little deeper. Perhaps these images of yourself are not who you really are. Maybe these stories don’t define you. We suffer when we try to hold up images of ourselves – ‘I’m strong, I’m enlightened, I’m a success, I’m loving, I’m kind, I’m happy’ – which conflict with life as it is. And in the end, all images conflict with life as it is – no image can match this moment. This moment is the fire that burns up all images. In this moment there could be pain, sadness, fear –any image that says that what’s appearing shouldn’t be appearing, that you should be happy, or free from pain, is a false image. Is this about cultivating more presence? What I’d say is forget about trying to become more present; that can just be another form of seeking. It’s a beautiful idea, but it’s still the same seeking mechanism. ‘One day I’ll be present!’Ultimately, you cannot become more present; for you are presence itself. Like the word ‘non-duality’, presence is just another pointer to life as it is. It’s another pointer back to who you really are. There is already presence and there is only presence. Everything is already appearing inpresence. There is only this moment. The past and the future happen now; they appear in this presence, asthis presence. There are memories about the past and thoughts about the future appearing in this presence. It all happens now. Every sound is a present sound; you’ve never heard a sound that wasn’t now. You’ve never heard a sound in the past and you don’t hear a sound in the future! You’ve never smelled anything that wasn’t smelled now. Ultimately, you’ve never seen anything that isn’t seen now. It’s all present! So, it’s not really about a separate entity becoming more present; it’s about rediscovering presence here and now. Presence could just be another word for consciousness, awareness or Being; pick your favourite word! What you are is presence itself, so you cannot become ‘more’ present, just as the wave cannot become more or less ‘ocean’ than it already is. And that’s always there to be discovered. Life is the constant invitation to discover this in the midst of present experience. Life is the constant invitation to discover who you really are in this moment. Who discovers this? Well, who asks that question! Source: https://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/writings/what-is-nonduality/ I really liked this interview. It's like a neat summary of non-duality in an everyday language.

Resurrecting Jesus - Embodying the Spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic by Adyashanti Adya gives beautiful commentary on Jesus from an Awakened Non-Dual perspective “Of course, there are those churches today that are inspired by the real living presence of Christ, but as a whole, Christianity needs new life breathed into it. It needs to be challenged to awaken from the old structures that confine spirit, so that the perennial spirit of awakening can flourish once again.” “Imagine if you took it on in yourself to reorient your life trajectory toward your divinity. Your divinity: I so loved the world, that I gave it all of myself. Imagine your birth as an act of pouring yourself forth into life as a loving means of redemption. Imagine your human life as what you have come to redeem. And when you’ve fully awakened to all of it, then you’ve fully redeemed your human incarnation.” “Spiritual autonomy is knowing who and what you are—knowing that you are divine being itself, knowing that the essence of you is divinity. You are moving in the world of time and space, appearing as a human being, but nonetheless you are eternal, divine being, the timeless breaking through and operating within the world of time. To Jesus, spirit is everything. Nothing matters more than spirit or, as I like to say, divine being. Divine being is what Jesus is here for; it is the vitality source from which he moves, from which he speaks, from which his critique arises. He is the living presence of divine being. He’s a human being too, but he’s here to convey divine being, and that comes out most clearly in the Gospel of Mark. This gospel uniquely conveys Jesus’ search for himself. Mark’s Jesus is a Jesus who is very much a searcher: he’s looking for his identity, he’s looking for his role, he’s experimenting, he’s finding out what works and what doesn’t. He’s on a journey, and he’s inviting all of us along for that journey with him as if we were also the disciples.” “Once again, eternity is peering through the latticework of time and space, and this sense of eternal stillness and deep freedom is what the iconic image of the seated Buddha conveys. What this image doesn’t convey is a sense of humanity, of a real flesh-and-blood human being. But in the Jesus story, it’s as if the still point that the image of the Buddha evokes within us becomes” ― Adyashanti, Resurrecting Jesus: Embodying the Spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic UK Audible link: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Resurrecting-Jesus-Audiobook/B00JFAL5GO?pf_rd_p=1f9c9693-8f74-4098-8f15-d9ce59415341&pf_rd_r=ECGR744PXNWBE18JCT14&ref=a_pd_Fallin_c5_PN_1_2

3 cosmic characters ? God (the risen life. The awakened life) ? Satan ? Initially called the God of mastery but now renamed as Hale. Only 2 things exist in the universe that make sense. ? Intent or will or purpose (motive) ? Ability or skill or weapon The motive is represented by God. The skill is represented by gwael.

He ain't awake yet. And though he dwells with the awakened he will not realize that he is the awakened until he opens his mind.

It's a universal question - the chicken or the egg? Some people say that awakening will happen when it is ready to happen, and that those drawn to the path are already in the process of waking up. Others say that those who do a spiritual practice become more 'accident prone' to awakening. The overarching "story" from those who have awakened is that ultimately it is down to grace. The ego self cannot "cause" awakening to happen, because it is not happening to the ego self. If you feel the call to awakening, it is likely that consciousness is calling you, not the other way around.

IMO you create everything, so I suppose that if you are not really awakened it can be quite scary to be, just be without ego. I tell you because I had an experience where I didn't know who I was when I was waking up from bed, and it was really scary for me. At that moment I wasn't doing any practice. Now that I know it is different, I think that is you are very deluded you can be in that state for a long time and that would be (I think) what Christians call it "hell". In fact, you are doing it to yourself.

@Key Elements A saintly man, is none other than a crook in disguise A crook knows himself to be a crook. A wise man knows himself to be a fool or playing the part of the fool. The idea is not that if any of these man, awakened to different facets. They would be woke. The idea is that all these men are already woke and the truth realisation of this woke ness. Is nothing other than truth itself.

For the past few days I've been questioning why so many enlightened masters are men and why the love realization seems to be absent for some of them. I stumbled upon this lady's writing and was absolutely blown away. I bought and read this book. https://www.amazon.com/Grail-Path-Achieving-Transformation-Emotional/dp/0692558837/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=the+grail+path&qid=1565441524&s=gateway&sr=8-4. For the logical (masculine) type, kundalini energy will need to be raised through the base chakra. Kundalini energy is feminine energy that comes from the earth, below. The Hero's Journey is an illustration of this path. For the emotional creative type (feminine) masculine energy is received from above, (Father Sky, our Heavenly Father) requires grounding from the higher chakras. His or her path is taking expansive love and creative connection and focusing it in a logical practical manner that can benefit others. She calls this the "Grail Path" "The Grail Path and The Hero's Journey are diametrically opposite paths. The Grail Path utilizes the Divine Power of Grace to cleanse the inner being and grow the Divine Child. The Hero's Journey uses the Divine Power of Kundalini to initiate the inner transformation of killing the ego and heightening the sense. It does not matter if you call these twins Dark and Light, Bread and Wine, Yin and Yang, Lightning and Snake, or Adam and Eve. These mystical twins, through their metaphorical portrayals, show up through the ages and in a multitude of cultures." Basically to go full circle, and become Christ-like and awakened to love you raise the kundalini energy through the Hero's Journey then follow the Grail Path. Jesus was aware of the two paths as he accepted Mary Magdelene as a disciple, which was really radical at the time. The disciples complained. This is from the Gospel of Thomas. Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life." Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven." I also ordered this book because it is supposed to be the Tao version of The Grail Path. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062501933/ref=rdr_ext_tmb Ramana Maharshi speaks of the heart on the right, but that's because there are two energies and two paths, there's physically one on the left and one on the right. More about the different energies and the balancing of them in yogic traditions here. https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/balancing-act-2 I'm concerned because I feel that people who are born artistic, and in touch with their emotions (most women) are misunderstood and mishandled when it comes to their approach to this work. We are telling a lot of people to go about things ass backwards. Will you help me change this? I know this forum is mostly made up of masculine, logical types, but we need to understand ourselves and integrate BOTH!

The common answer we hear from someone enlightened or awakened about many things that happen in this dream, is that its all concepts, believes and notions that collapse in nothingness. Still this sounds very very simple to me, if nothingness is the ultimate and fundamental source and the ego wants to create a narrative and meaning out of things that happen in the world. Does it mean being enlightened shoswsyou there is absolutely no mystery to the world and things that happen and it is only for us to simply "be"? I mean there seems to be a mysterious force that is leading things to somewhere, according to the collective consciousness. So many things like, Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, ancient prophecies, the Egyptians and their pyramids, Atlantis, the Annunaki and the story of the true origins of human kind,Adam and Ebe and so forth and so on. There is so much mystery on earth that it doesn't seem valid to say it's all concepts that collapse and it is only the ego trying to create a narrative. I mean all the beautiful creative languages, the not solved mystery of how did humans really evolve on earth, are we a mixture of apes and intelligent ETs? Are these ETs gods/brothers going to show themselves to us anytime? How are our actions and our characters really determined? How is it that the character of everyone is so precisely detailed in astrology and forms ones path? Saying that there is nothing and God consciousness just created us to "be", and not rely like the whole truth, because there seems to be so much unresolved on earth alone and so many mysteries come up. Every single event thing on earth is created by gods creative imagination and it seems so much more rich than for us only to "be". Because just logically, how many humans throughout modern and even ancient history and especially nowadays just manages to simply "be" most are driven by the ego characters and desires and by an unconsciouss consciousness and finally are driven by god to mark something in history.

Truthority has been banned from this forum. It is obvious he will keep creating distractions if he was allowed to stay. I swear, after managing this place for 3 years, it's getting too easy to spot the troublemakers before they even get warmed up. So I am less oepn to giving them second chances these days. I don't like banning people, but it comes with the territory. P.S. I've noticed a good clue that some new member is likely a devil: his username will contain a word such a Truth, Enlightenment, Consciousness, Infinity, or some noble phase like "The Awakened One" or "I Love Truth". It's a classic sign of a devil to co-opt such terms. If the username sounds too noble, be very suspicious.

@Keyhole @Salvijus @Rinne @The Awakened Viking @mandyjw @Corpus @OBEler @Rinne @Richard Alpert @Enlightenment @NoSelfSelf @Zigzag Idiot @Nahm day 6 update no sleep, very fatigued had tripping like feeling like 4 times tinnitus grew louder, heart beat went rapid, felt weird sensations of energy, mostly around intestine it can go to other parts of the body when i observe overtime can go up to legs,ass forearm, the worst part is the brain since i can feel it pumping blood harder, mind was very active wide awake when this happened impossible to sleep it feels like a stimulant (note no feeling of leaving body slight this time) i'm starting to wonder if this is really kundalini energy or just some unknown drug turning on and off stuck at my intestine, even though i did poop as mentioned over 4-5 times by now and poop'd another one last night the method of administration was with filtered white vinegar only (ingredients on the bottle said it had filtered water + filtered white vinegar) any chance it's because of that that this is so on going? or is it really all in my head a ptsd or hppd.. i'm deseperate for answers hence i pinged eveyrone, sorry guys, i just want to rest and have peace, if anyone has any idea if vinegar messes with the meo after effects of trips let me know @Aeris i dont have the energy for sport but i'll try walking more often Edit: i Looking at phone i noted timing of when i felt like i started tripping 2:56am 3:31am 6:56am 10:22am the timing isn't always accurate sometimes i would be late by a few minutes since i'm trying to let go seeing if anything is changing

That's an awakened Being for ya.

@Esoteric Disclaimer, I JUST discovered this, am not an authority and really don't want to mislead anyone so please take what I say with a grain of salt. I would forget about raising kundalini energy for now and try to ground your energy instead. The author warns strongly against raising kundalini energy if you've already stared "The Grail Path." See how it makes you feel. I have the exact same stomach area blockage, in fact, I had a strange stomach pain start right before I had my awakening and it's still persists. Consider that you may have been born awake to kundalini energy or awakened in already at some point in early life, raising more of it may cause a storm or imbalance. If it doesn't feel right it isn't right, your inner being knows, even if it's against ancient traditional teachings, your inner being is far more ancient than that, and it speaks to you through feelings and sensations. I would focus on grounding your energy. I kept getting headaches whenever I tried to raise energy. I can tell when I'm working through a pain or block, and this was not that kind of feeling it was a "NO!" kind of pain. For some their path is open to the higher selves, they need to awaken to love and their creative self they need to open the higher chakras. For us, we were born awake to that but struggle with the realities of life here on Earth. For example I've always been a hopelessly messy artist type. Difficulty with managing time, difficulty focusing, very controlling about money, lots of base chakra imbalance problems. In the past we were taught that we must be retarded spiritually to be struggling with such aspects in life, but in reality our path is happening in reverse. Consider how you might work to solve your lower chakra problems, not because you missed something along the way at the start of the path but because they might very well be the last leg of your journey. There's a lot of Christian symbolism in her writing, Jesus was a rare master of both paths and may be a map to teaching/helping all types to awaken fully.

@Aeris Hehe This one had 4 - 5 different stages with played all sorts of music but yes mostly psy, deep jungle, soulful, those type of vibes that hit the spot and reconnect you with mother nature @Jed Vassallo That's amazing! and yeah its an experience like no other, these gatherings raise the frequency of the planet so much! I love being out in nature and everyone there behaves like a direct extension of nature fully expressing itself. There's a deep oneness that occurs if you observe deeply, its like everyone's on natural autopilot and nature has activated and awakened all her cells to celebrate and express themselves. All the colour and art you see is just that, nature expressing itself. Especially the children, they make my life <333 Peace & Love <3

@The Awakened Viking i don't think i broke through no, at the start of the trip i remember just dropping on the floor, could not make it to bed it was just that strong when it hit me, i started seeing some white/greyish energy, which slowly changed now i remember bits and parts of these next part i'm not sure what came before or after i remember i had no location or place no space, neither time, i remember pure blanking out but conscious then i suddenly remember all these sensations, i knew everything about this place i was in, it was very familiar, a place i have been there over and over, right now i don't know anything about it in this human state, but when i was there i was so familiar with it, like i knew everything about it and i knew how it would feel if i moved some energy and i knew some strange energy vibration like language, this doesn't make sense probably because i'm poorly translating it, like i'm not sure if it was conscious movements of my space, or was i just in the body unconscious trying to move around feeling such familiar sensations of being re birthed? however it was so shocking familiar it was so scary, not my first or last time for me to sense that, then suddenly i just became pure lungs, just 2 large soft organs, i was nothing but the lungs, not even the body or spinal cord, later on i evolved and turned into my spinal cord and eventually the mind, and i was just slowly coming into consciousness as i was breathing and breathing and breathing realizing what was going on, here i freaked out and just started fighting it breathing to stay alive didn't want this anymore just wanted to go back to mundane life, i felt more appreciation to life, the thought that came by i don't want this anymore was the moment the 5meo hit me as i was falling down unconscious too fast on the floor before reaching bed which made me not want to let go for some reason, my instinct just wanted to fight back the rest of the trip was just me sitting still on the side of my bed breathing and breathing for an hour, eventually i could walk an hour and a half later, and i went a few hours just wondering later on i tried to go to bed and you know the rest from my starting post, i would just try to spend my whole day trying to get sleep since i wasn't getting any even in the mornings, was pretty much fatigued always i think my ego or mind just wants to block away thoughts about it being illusion so it continues the illusion by blinding me more from my true nature of reality, psychologically i just keep telling my self that it's a chemical and is messing with my sensory perception as i refuse to believe what happened, my ego just has too much fear, i just will pamper it and accept it as it is, i already believe in nothing and infinity/oneness anyway, and there is no right or wrong on either path that one wants to live whether deluded or awake, just trying to keep my sanity in check for now since apparently being god is too much to handle

This is what happens @Schahin There's two points of view, the relative and the absolute. From the relative POV you are a person, limited, etc. So, from the POV of the person, you have no free will. In fact, the problem is that you are identifying with the person, that's why the teachings say "you don't have free will". You think you have no free will because of your identification with the body/mind/person. You are in a low consciousness place. (Like I am too). But now, you are confused. Because you are getting awake to the fact that you are God. And if you are God then why you don't have free will? You see???? what you are doing? You are god, and you ask why you don't have free will. That "you" who doesn't have free will is the person, the ego. God always had free will. And you are it. But because of the identification with the person, you think you don't have it. Why? Because when you identify with the person or the ego you want things that God doesn't. Because God has free will he does what is better for "you" to become awakened. But maybe you feel that this that you are doing for your good, to become awakened, because you are in the ego Perspective, you think is bad and that you don't have free will and blah blah blah... If you see it from the Absolute POV you have free will, if you think you are a person, so you see it from the relative POV you have no free will. Both are truth.

@AlldayLoop Have you awakened enough to see that you are totally alone? And that there is no other then you? Your not just the hope for humanity. Your it's outcome.

@AlldayLoop More awakened cultures realize these ppl as Shamans.

@winterknight ?? To that which has awakened, it awakens to the always and already, inherent divine love of it'Self. It's this always and already inherent divine love, that allows everything to be "as it is". It's why "everything, as it is" or "This"(the only 'this" that is), as it is, is perfect 'as it is". The "I am that I am",the "everything and nothing" the indescribable whole, is already perfect. Love shines in, and as, this wholeness. No one , has a personal claim to it as something "I' have known, "I" have awakened to or achieved, over another. It's what is and has always been so. And is readily available to all. See "what is not",and" what is" shines , as always having been the case. And who's the one to say or presume as to who,or who hasn't, awakened to what "I" have. It is pure assumption based on a duality of "me" and 'them" of which there is no such thing.

That changes everything. I thought you do as you said "low consciousness business" in your OP. If we were to say that, then the opposite of it is just as problematic as it is. The need to fap always can be controlled by being neurotic, but that's not a healthy form of sexuality. Same with not wanting sex at all, it can be forced by "deluding" oneself of separation and difference. As you see, both are problematic. Okay, that, in my opinion and experience, is unnatural and needs to get fixed as soon as possible. Not by being neurotic, of course, but rather by bringing awareness into why this is the case. In my case, it was fear that caused the absence of desire. In your case it's the "yet unknown reasons". Maybe you could take a closer look at them. I'm not saying that you're being dogmatic about not wanting to have sex. It seemed to me from what you said that you think that an awakened person shouldn't desire sex but rather use it as a tool for procreation, it's just like thinking that hunger is an illusion and that we shouldn't eat or drink unless we want to survive, which is simply a thought coming from the mind, in other words, the mind governing our lives. So if you don't think so, then that's great. Yes, that's true. I believe we'll get there in the future. We'll eventually come back to our animalistic nature only in more organised ways ?