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Found 4,474 results

  1. I am asking you because of your questions. If dreaming is a self-deception, then that would mean that any knowledge in the dream is part of the dream. Even a lucid dream is still part of the dream/deception. All knowledge and things post is part of “the self-deception.” Even you thinking you are awake is a self-deception. You are still dreaming. I am open to the possibility of awakening, but it just seems like it doesn’t exist. According to Leo, nobody on this forum is awake because according to him, he has reach levels of consciousness that nobody else has. Even though, it is possible that other people have had awakenings, when compared to who has reached the highest levels, everyone else’s awakening is mild. Think about this. Let’s say your awakening is at lvl 100 and an alien you meet is at lvl 5000. I think this is why Leo says nobody is awake because he claims he is at that alien level of awareness and nobody else has. The alien makes you look like you haven’t awakened to shit. I hope you can see what I mean here.
  2. But how do you distinguish awakening from regular insight? What is the difference? How do you know whether you actually awakened or had a false insight? I entertain the idea that there could always be a higher level of consciousness that could make me doubt any profound insight I have had. The reason why I say that is because I remember you claiming that complete understanding of reality or omniscience is possible. If that is so, then wouldn’t awakening have to be final; otherwise, your understanding wasn’t complete and you aren’t omniscient. But by Godel’s logic, you cannot ever reach the end. It’s a self- deception to think there is a final awakening.
  3. Why you asking me? Lol I am already awakened. You are the one denying awakening lol. Why isn't a dream real? What is real?
  4. This days most mature post award is clearly taken. In real life, it works more like this: Ken Wilber, One Taste: "Monday, March 24. With the awakening of constant consciousness, you becomesomething of a divine schizophrenic, in the popular sense of “split-minded,” because you have access to both the Witnessand the ego. You are actually “whole-minded,” but it sounds like it’s split, because you are aware of the constant Witness or Spirit in you, and you are also perfectly aware of themovie of life, the ego and all its ups and downs. So you still feel pain and suffering and sorrow, but they can no longer convince you of their importance—you are no longer the victim of life, but its Witness. In fact, because you are no longer afraid of your feelings,you can engage them with much greater intensity. The movie of life becomes more vivid and vibrant, precisely because you are no longer grasping or avoiding it, and thus no longer trying to dull or dilute it. You no longer turn the volume down. You might even cry harder, laugh louder, jump higher. Choiceless awareness doesn’t mean you cease to feel; it means you feel fully, feel deeply, feel to infinity itself, and laugh and cry and love until it hurts. Life jumps right off the screen, and you are one with all of it, because you don’t recoil. If you are having a dream, and you think it’s real, it can get very scary. Say you are dreaming that you are tightropewalking across Niagara Falls. If you fall off, you plunge to your death. So you are walking very slowly, very carefully.Then suppose you start lucid dreaming, and you realize that it’s just a dream. What do you do? Become more cautious and careful? No, you start jumping up and down on the tightrope, you do flips, you bounce around, you have a ball—precisely because you know it isn’t real. When you realize it’s a dream, you can afford to play. The same thing happens when you realize that ordinary life is just a dream, just a movie, just a play. You don’t become more cautious, more timid, more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely because it’sall a dream, it’s all pure Emptiness. You don’t feel less, you feel more—because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living.You become radical and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come pouring through, because it’s all your dream. Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, itsradical effervescence. Pain is more painful and happiness is happier; joy is more joyous and sorrow is even sadder. It all comes radiantly alive to the mirror-mind, the mind that doesn’t grasp or avoid, but simply witnesses the play, and therefore can afford to play, even as it watches. What would motivate you if you saw everything as the dream of your own highest Self? What would actually move you in this playful dream world? Everything in the dream is basically fun, at some deep level, except for this: when you see your friends suffering because they think the dream is real, you want to relieve their suffering, you want them to wake up, too. Watching them suffer is not fun. And so a deep and powerful compassion arises in the heart of the awakened ones, and they seek, above all else, to awaken others—and thus relieve them from the sorrow and the pity,the torment and the pain, the terror and the anguish that comes from taking with dreadful seriousness the passing dream of life. So you are a divine schizophrenic, you are “split-minded” in the sense that you are simultaneously in touch with both the pure Witness and the world of the ego-film. But that really means you are actually “whole-minded,” because these two worlds are really not-two. The ego is just the dream of the Witness, the film that the Witness creates out of its own infinite plenitude, simply so it will have something to watch at the movies. At that point the entire play arises within your own constant consciousness. There is no inside and no outside, no in here versus out there. The nondual universe of One Taste arises as a spontaneous gesture of your own true nature. You can taste the sun and swallow the moon, and centuries fit in the palm of your hand. The pure I-I, the greatI AMness, breathes to infinity and creates a Kosmos as the Song of its very Self, and oceans of compassion fall as tears from your very own Original Face.
  5. And that is why you roll out your own paradigm/set of beliefs (above). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_contradiction Ever heard of non-conceptual Awakening? Non-nonceptual nondual awakened states? What you describe in your post is just a set of beliefs. Awakening and Enlightenment promises something beyond all these conceptual games. When one truly awakens one can throw away all ladders/conceptual frameworks. Until then one better has good and encompassing /integral conceptual worldviews. And paradigms/worldviews/ladders that deny the possibility of the destination of the ladder are... pretty comfy. Nothing to transcend just stay where one is....
  6. Doing that after Full Enlightenment: Can work and does work. Separate self and its regularly occuring suffering gone/transcended. Can generate its own bliss with onboard-devices/awakened nondual states WITHOUT needing specific experiences for that. In other words, total freedom & love. Can do whatever its inclined to celebrate manifestation, including helping "others". Doing that before Full Enlightenment = easing the regular suffering /non bliss emotions caused in cycles by the separate self/ego illusion Gestalt with chasing experiences (this time, quite high up Maslows ladder, with transcendental insights/awakenings/whatever n+1). Doesnt work and can't work. Same project as any other unenlightened being is performing unsuccessfully in a myriad of ways ( maslow pyramid up and down). The mechanism described above works with mathematical precission.
  7. You dont know that. What I describe in my last post works by a different set of rules than the conceptual assumptions in the quote above and in your post. Consider practicing towards actually fully nonconceptual and nondual awakened states in daily life. These will ripen then. Then you will see and realize, if Karma has it this way in your future.
  8. How bright a light bulb is doesn't reveal to us the qualities of electricity that flows through it in creating the light, it shows us the qualities of the bulb. So pointing to the bulb in trying to explain electricity fails to recognize the nature of electricity available isn't shown to us through the amount or quality of light the bulb displays. Us as the metaphorical bulb with how much 'awakeness' someone has doesn't tell us how much consciousness is available to us, it just shows how much consciousness, or 'brightness', we show. A rock and us have the same exact amount and quality of consciousness available, but obviously there is a difference in how aware, awakened or 'conscious' of it we display. So, yes, everything is consciousness but not equally conscious yet the degree of conscious something or someone is, does not reveal the absolute fullness of consciousness that exists and permeates throughout reality which is not dependent on the 'bulbs' ability to display it. It really is surprising how simple obvious this is and still is so illusive to grasp.
  9. Your hasty diagnosis is a defense mechanism of your ego, because now you don't have to take anything I say seriously. Notice that I don't claim to know what you experienced or are awakened too. I'm just claiming that no one has arrived at any final destination, and those who say they did are deluding themselves. Edit: Thank you.
  10. Can't awaken God against its will. God wants to experience delusion and being asleep. Can everyone be Jesus, Buddha, Jesus and Buddha can't be unique if everyone is as awake. Can everyone be good at basketball and be Michael Jordan? No you need some people to be bad at it so Michael Jordan can be special and unique. Once you realize that life is a story, then you realize you need rich, poor, strong, weak, smart, dumb, etc,,, so yeah....things gotta be the way they are or paradoxically it actually wouldn't make sense. If everyone you talked to just suddenly awakened so easily....you would call bullshit and be like....THIS is fake!!! You call this immersive? To make the dream immersive, gotta add some nice juicy conflict, ignorance, etc... Look at the clip above of the Matrix movie...did you see the crap Neo had to go through? Now...what if we just made the entire thing easy for him....nothing to discover and learn. No growth, no failure, no journey.
  11. If he consumed an Consciousness altering substance with an open mind he would probably instantly awaken. His desire to go to Islam is just his ego pulling him away from truth. Deep down he knows this....but ehhhh....it shows you the nature of God. God wants to explore. You cannot awaken God against its will, God will awaken on its own terms. I don't blame him, he is in his 20's I have no clue how my life would have been impacted if I awakened that early. I truly think early to mid 30's is an appropriate age. Part of the Spiritual Path is nihilism, not sure if it is healthy to be exposing large amounts of 20 year olds to nihilism.
  12. Once one is awakened, does everything lack purpose and actual intention? Does purpose become anything one wants to see? Does purpose become fluid; without purpose? Does purpose lack purpose once awakened?
  13. Consciousness is all there is. And Consciousness can fully comprehend itself. This self-comprehension is Absolute. In other words, you gain absolute clarity into what everything is. Do not muddle this matter by invoking the notion of Maya. Maya refers to the lack of self-comprehension of consciousness. God-Realization is the unraveling of Maya. This does not mean that experience stops. People here love to confuse awakened consciousness with a lack of experience or "Nothingness" or formlessness.
  14. So the next day after my "Insanity trip" I had a strong gut feeling day that I need to do 3.5 gram shrooms again. I had some anxiety, but decided that I had no choice. Within 30 min after consumption i started to feel the effects. Not much visuals, but for some reason colors from flowers and sky started to seem even brighter. It was like someone turned up the brightness of colors inside my brain. Reality started to seem like a rainbow. I was in awe of how beautiful reality truly is. Here is my last trip if you want to read it: 30 min after onset my mind went silent. I just sat in the chair observing followers, buildings and the sky. Then my awareness and intelligence increased. I suddenly got this power to think more clearly than ever. It was like my eyes finally opened up for the first time. I started to develop curiosity for reality. I just sat there contemplating different questions about my personal life mainly and existence. So I asked these questions: “What is my purpose in life?”. “Why am I doing anything at all?” Then I realized that the reason everyone in life is doing anything at all is because of LOVE. I actually don't know why, but i just sat there and all of the sudden I was in love with myself and existence. My love for existence and everyone just expanded to a higher level. Looking at existence and listening to the silence, I realized that I am all alone. Everyone is imaginary. I even hesitated to post this report since, wtf is the point if i am all alone. I was just sitting with tears running down my face. Could never fathom that love is so bloody beautiful. I realized unconditional love for existence and everyone. Devils and the so-called evil people are doing it for love. Hell, torture, rape, murder and even suffering is love and beauty. (Disclaimer i don't justify rape or murder, i only report what i exprience in this trip) I started to fall in love with myself. I realized that i am complete and perfect as iam. Love is the only thing you need. You don't need friends, women, sex, money and fame. Love is all you need. The reason for people being unhappy is because of a lack of love. I started to legit feel invincible. I did not even care if I died. Nothing could hurt me since I was so deeply in love with existence and myself. Love is there for all eternity, so there would be nothing for me to lose or gain at that point. Everyone is just trying to express love in their own way. So I could see that my purpose in life is to express my love for reality in my own meaningful way. For example, a life- purpose can be a way to express love. Either by doing something selfless or selfish. It's all the same. I had empathy and love for everyone. Even the most evil acts I would love. Evil does not exist, it's just love. Anyway, love did not just affect me psychological, but also physical. I started to feel a comfortable cozy warm feeling all over my body. I started to feel warm in my body even though the temperature decreased during nighttime. I was uncomfortable in my body, but the pain turned into physical euphoria. I am not sure how to explain how pain becomes euphoria. It is like suffering and euphoria becomes the same, I could no longer tell the difference between the two. I started to get mental clarity, I started to feel sober or normal. I was able to think straight with much more awareness. So i was like to myself: fu*k it i am going to take my dog for a walk up the mountains in middle of the night on a Monday while on the peak. I started to cry while walking, realizing how goddamn beautiful love is. I was like just keep repeating to myself, “holy fuck, is this real”. So I would walk for 2 hours with my dog, just taking in the sights and falling in love with everything. Anyway this trip was so shockingly beautiful that I still have a hard time believing love and beauty could be so WOW. There are no words for it. Wow is the best word to describe my trip Lesson I have learned: I need to be able to first develop my love for myself before I can expand my love for others. Love is the one true thing I truly need in life to be happy. How much hate is robbing me of my own happiness. I have now a desire to develop my love for myself and the world. Also I started to realize that I need to put up boundaries and respect myself enough to not let unconscious people drag me down in life. Dont be a people pleaser. A people pleaser lacks respect and love themselves. Also this trip would have never happened had it not been for this gut feeling telling me i need to do shrooms today, after a bad trip. Don't get me wrong, i am just stracthing the surface of understanding love. I am not going to claim i am awakened. I am far from done.
  15. Is the goal not to slowly increase the dose to reach higher altered states of consciousness. I am not sure how much a dose affects how awakened a person is. I always assumed I needed to increase my dose to like 5 grams or higher before I could reach awakening. Would it not be more reasonable to lower my dose to 2.5 then?
  16. I agree with you, ultimately this is not a criminal case 'yet'. So if Brand is as loving and awakened as he claims he would at least accept the possibility that he could've acted in a way that hurt others during his drug and sex addicted days, especially something like the 16 year old who, just her very age is extremely suspect. If he was truly awakened he would come out with something like 'although my actions weren't technically illegal I know I hurt these women etc'. The fact that he is just blaming people out to get him is actually more in line with narcissism and actions of a cult leader because he's only speaking to his die hard followers. It's a shame because he has shown growth since the days these actions happened but he obviously still has some deeper need for fame and adulation that is still active.
  17. @Hardkill The 80s had the AIDS epidemic and people like Fauci was the one that spreaded the fake news that gay men get AIDS easier. Socially things were worst back in the 80s and 90s for people but economically better because 5-10 years of hard work would allow someone to pay off their home while now its 30 years. I don't think there has been ever a year where wars don't exist, people were just less exposed so they weren't aware of the injustice in the world. Spiritually there are more awakened people today than the last 30+ years. Now novice meditators can do a week long retreat and actualize. In the 90s and early 00s, only a handful of people awakened. Today a poor kid from a village in India, Vietnam etc can learn to program and get a 6 figure income within 10 years. The opportunities around the world have risen while taking away opportunities for people in a place like America. Big Pharma and companies that sell food around the world have centralized now and what people eat so our food is far dirtier and less pure than before. Cancer rates and chronic disease is on the rise because the stuff people are putting in their bodies isn't helping that. So then it becomes really hard to say if things are better or not.
  18. I would say that Leo probably has realized the absolute infinity with psychedelics, but that doesn't matter, for him this is a competition and he will never admit that a rival is right. never. Whatever you do and whatever you say, he is going to look for the weak point, and he is really going to believe that you are deceived and that you are an ugly, stupid and miserable clown, because never, impossible, never, could he say: well yes, osaid, or anyone is awakened, and look, I would say that he has reached deeper levels than me in the spiritual dimension. nor osaid, nor buddha, nor christ nor all the mystics of india together. forbidden. They are all fagots clowns full of shit, seems that he needs that. It's weird, if you really realize the absolute you want that another people realize too, because it's wonderful, you want to share it, and you want that other people go deeper, to get inspired in them . If you really broke your ego, you can't be obsessed about being the best anymore
  19. Now all jokes aside this dialogue was about something much deeper. It was about whether or not you need Love to be awakened. What is your thought? According to the idiot it's all lower states of consciousness...even enlightenment itself.... Do you have any thoughts on the matter or do you just wanna chime in to poke fun?
  20. You are completely deluded. I am not sure if I should even dignify a response here, but I will. I don't have to continue any work because I've awakened to God. There is no more work. Please quote me where i said its not possible to become God realized sober. I simply said its not in your genes- nor is it in Leo's. Nor is it in 99.9 percent of the population. I am special, in that regard, although relative to human Interaction I tend to be a freak.
  21. The meaning of life? If you have awakened - you will know that it is to align yourself as close to God as you can. This means being as selfless and as loving as you can, eliminating all bias. Can you do that? It's quite the challenge - but it's one that you have been given. The Truth is, you will never fully alleviate all bias while in human form. God placed you in an impossible position by design. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't try your best.
  22. Exactly we aren't quibbling over details here. Reality is Love Absolutely. That's it. It's not a concept, it IS LOVE. Hell even NonDual speakers like Tony Parsons doesn't deny this and he loves focusing on the nothing/appearance terms in his communications. If you haven't awakened to love, then you do not know what you are. You have yet to meet yourself and you are looking at yourself all the time lol.
  23. Lol by whose metric? I consider him to be awakened to something. But based on his videos I do not consider him Enlightened.
  24. Oh boy. This is it. Everything. Imagination. Including Alan Watts. Including me as a person. Including you as a person. Including "being asleep" -- including "being awake". Death. Life. Two sides of the same coin. Ultimately, no difference. Only the difference YOU imagine there is (as God). Everything. Imagination. Nothing. Real. Unreal. Real. Everything. Nowhere to get to. Everywhere to get to. Sing. Dance. Play. Enjoy. Live. Let go. Love. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door ... It opens - I've been knocking from the inside!" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just like a meteor falling down from the sky and destroying your living room is: - not your doing, - nothing to do with you, - out of your control, - not your own free choice, likewise is "insert-your-name" (with your body and with all your 'problems', inclinations, thoughts, feelings etc.) that coincidentally was born out of your mother's stomach (and ruined 'your peace')...: - not your doing, - noting to do with you, - out of your control, - not your own free choice. ((( However, one could also turn the above completely on its head and say that the metor impact WAS/IS my doing, and that my birth into (= out of) this world likewise WAS/IS a free choice that *I* took ☯️ ☯️ ☯️ ))) But if the above is true what are 'you' then? 'What am I?' I/You are That/He/She which dreams , imagines: - that a meteor (perhaps) fell down and ruined your house ?? - that "insert-your-name" was born and is currently xx years old, has an ugly/nice/normal/abnormal body, study/work with yyy and has zzz problems, hhh thoughts & worries & regrets, fff inclinations, sss dreams. And what IS 'that' ??? I don't know. No one does. Because it cannot be known - as in "traditional knowledge" can be known. It can only be. You are IT - already! Always. One can never not be 'IT'; the only (imagined) difference is whether you're aware of 'IT' or not. Consciousness. You could call it God, Love, The Eternal Dreamer, The Dao, The Absolute, Infinity, Eternity, Nothingness, Everythingness, Consciousness, Spaghetthi-Monster... In some way, it really doesn't matter what we call/name 'Reality', since <words/thoughts/logic/concepts/rationality> naturally never can contain IT. Sometimes it may even be wise to not try to call it anything! What is Reality? THIS: ................ *smashing a gong* ... and we won't give it a name! Can you bite your own teeth? Can eyes looking out ever see from where they are looking? Can a fist grasp itself? What a caterpillar calls the end of the world -- we call a butterfly! Luckily we got music, dancing, embodiment/physical activites, sex (tantra), meditation, breathwork, psychedelics, art .... that can in a much better way can contain ("show us") 'IT' than words/thoughts/science/logic/conceptualizing can! THIS IS IT! THIS. HELLO! YES. THIS. NO - NOT THAT. THIS! HA HA HA <3 <3 <3 The finger pointing to the moon ..... is NOT the moon. You cannot eat the menu! The map is not the terrotity. It is a SILLY idea to try to live life in your head all the time! (It can be very good and fine to think and reflect and contemplate a lot -- but you have to be practical about life too!) Form, emptiness. Emptiness, form. Life, death. Death, life. Good, bad. Evil, Good. Implicit, explicit. Outer, inner. Internal, external. External, internal. Physical, mental. Mental, physical. Material world, Consciousness. Consciousness, the outside world. Being, Nothingness. Nothingness, Everything. Up, down. Down, up. Worse, better. Better, worse. Self, other. Other, self. Free will, determined/controlled. Determined, free. Illusion, real. Real, dream. The real unreal --- The unreal real. Form is Emptiness --- Emptiness is Form. Hell, Heaven. Both here. Now. What you see is solely determined by 'the inner game'; that is: how you look at the world; from where? From which point of view? Which perspective? Believe in the story that gives you most inner joy. Anything else is a form of silly autism. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The world -- existence, life -- will never be good unless you are willing to see its goodness. What you experience depends on how you look at things. When you look with judgement -- either upon yourself, the world or both -- life seems twisted and empty. When you begin to look with an open heart and mind, life becomes fascinating and full of both meaning and mystery. When you realize the perfection, intelligence and beauty of everything in existence precisely as it is (without the filters of ego; yes, drop them - let go!), you see that every outcome is a good one. You start to live life fully without fear and regret. You learn and move on. When you look with love instead of judgement, you see a whole different world. Life isn't easy all the time. You're not alone. For there to be joy, there has to be some pain. So instead of looking at the painful life-phases that you're undergoing as "bad", look at them as absolutely necessary and beneficial in the long run for your own growth and eventual happiness. Remember, nothing lasts forever, everything passes away at some point. 0. Knowledge is but a rumor until it lives in the body/bones. 1. Reality is non-dual. Non-duality means: Not one, not two. The question is: do you get it or not? For example, let's take the extreme duality: good - bad . Obviously complete opposites. Right? Well, not so fast. "Apply non-duality to it": Reality is not: bad Reality is not: good (either) Reality is not: "good AND bad" (paradox). Reality is: ________________ (Or you 'could' say: "bad-good"). 2. To let go of power is to gain power. 3. To let go of control is to gain control. Life is about all the contrasts! As a wise man said: - The heavenly highs, one is capable of reaching, are directly proportional with the unknown depths, one has the courage to dive down into. - The apparent seperation / division / fragmentation, paradoxes, opposites ... only exist in the divided mind, based on subject-object-relations ... ((( that is how the illusionary, separate self -- the ego -- survives; or we could say that 'opposites/duality creates the illusion of ego'; a kind of 'strange loop' that is almost impossible to 'get out of' (impossible because 1. it is imaginary, 2. you imagined it yourself and deep down want to stay in it, 3. in a sense there is nothing to get out of; you *trying* to get out (becoming awakened / enlightened) is what keeps you in 'it' (= asleep, ego) ... - It is "possible" though, just like it is possible for a larva through 'rebirth' to become a butterfly; the larva is in a beautiful away ALREADY the butterfluy, just like an acorn contains the whole tree ... ))) ... - but from the Level of Unity (The Heavenly Self's Consciousness; God's point-of-view) all these 'apparent' opposites/paradoxes -- all fragmentation, division, seperation -- are dissolved & melted 'back into' what they truly are & have always been: Your Imagination - Oneness. One. Zero. Unity. Harmony. Oneness. Lila. Divine play. Game. Theater play. An Eternal Dance. Musical Music. The Bottomless Bottom. The Gateless Gate. The Ground of Being. The Groundless Ground. God. Unconditional Love. Nothingness. The Eternal Dao That Cannot Be Spoken. Buddha Nature. Christ Consciousness. Pure Awareness. Infinity. Source. The Absolute. Goodness with a capital G. Just Love. ☯️?????❤️?? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The difficulty in realizing this to be so is that conceptual thinking cannot grasp it. It is as if the eyes were trying to look at themselves directly, or as if one were trying to describe the color of a mirror in terms of colors reflected in the mirror. Just as sight is something more than all things seen, the foundation or "ground" of our existence and our awareness cannot be understood in terms of things that are known. We are forced, therefore, to speak of it through myth—that is, through special metaphors, analogies, and images which say what it is like as distinct from what it is. At one extreme of its meaning, "myth" is fable, falsehood, or superstition. But at another, "myth" is a useful and fruitful image by which we make sense of life in somewhat the same way that we can explain electrical forces by comparing them with the behavior of water or air. Yet "myth," in this second sense, is not to be taken literally just as electricity is not to be confused with air or water. Thus in using myth one must take care not to confuse image with fact, which would be like climbing up the signpost instead of following the road. Myth, then, is the form in which I try to answer when children ask me those fundamental metaphysical questions which come so readily to their minds: "Where did the world come from?" "Why did God make the world?" "Where was I before I was born?" "Where do people go when they die?" Again and again I have found that they seem to be satisfied with a simple and very ancient story, which goes something like this: <<< There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again. But just as the hour-hand of the watch goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can't have any one of these without the other, because you wouldn't be able to know what black is unless you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-side with black. In the same way, there are times when the world is, and times when it isn't, for if the world went on and on without rest for ever and ever, it would get horribly tired of itself. It comes and it goes. Now you see it; now you don't. So because it doesn't get tired of itself, it always comes back again after it disappears. It's like your breath: it goes in and out, in and out, and if you try to hold it in all the time you feel terrible. It's also like the game of hide-and-seek, because it's always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek for someone who doesn't always hide in the same place. God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear. Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that's the whole fun of it—just what he wanted to do. He doesn't want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self—the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever. Of course, you must remember that God isn't shaped like a person. People have skins and there is always something outside our skins. If there weren't, we wouldn't know the difference between what is inside and outside our bodies. But God has no skin and no shape because there isn't any outside to him. [With a sufficiently intelligent child, I illustrate this with a Möbius strip—a ring of paper tape twisted once in such a way that it has only one side and one edge.] The inside and the outside of God are the same. And though I have been talking about God as 'he' and not 'she,' God isn't a man or a woman. I didn't say 'it' because we usually say 'it' for things that aren't alive. God is the Self of the world, but you can't see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can't see your own eyes, and you certainly can't bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding. You may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that he isn't really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember, too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad. It's the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but the point of the game is to put the mess into good order, and the one who does it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards once more and play again, and so it goes with the world. >>> This story, obviously mythical in form, is not given as a scientific description of the way things are. Based on the analogies of games and the drama, and using that much worn-out word "God" for the Player, the story claims only to be like the way things are. I use it just as astronomers use the image of inflating a black balloon with white spots on it for the galaxies, to explain the expanding universe. But to most children, and many adults, the myth is at once intelligible, simple, and fascinating." - Alan Watts, The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center. You find the jewel, and it draws you off. In loving the spiritual, you cannot despise the earthly." - J. Campbell. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “This is IT! So you don’t need to do anything at all… It’s just the way it is. What’s required is a sort of act of super relaxation.. It’s not just letting go. It’s being with yourself as you are without altering anything.” ~ Alan Watts “When you look for your own mind, that is to say, your own particularized center of being which is separate from everything else, you won’t be able to find it. But the only way you’ll know it isn’t there is if you look for it hard enough, to find out that it isn’t there. And so everybody says ‘All right, know yourself, look within, find out who you are.’ Because the harder you look, you won’t be able to find it, and then you’ll realize it isn’t there at all. There isn’t a separate you. You’re mind is what there is. Everything. But the only way to find that out is to persist in the state of delusion as hard as possible…. So if a person believes that the Earth is flat, you can’t talk him out of that. He knows it’s flat. Look out the window and see; it’s obvious, it looks flat. So the only way to convince him it isn’t is to say ‘Well let’s go and find the edge.’ And in order to find the edge, you’ve got to be very careful not to walk in circles, you’ll never find it that way. So we’ve got to go consistently in a straight line due west along the same line of latitude, and eventually when we get back to where we started from, you’ve convinced the guy that the world is round. That’s the only way that will teach him. Because people can’t be talked out of illusions. There is another possibility, however. But this is more difficult to describe. Let’s say we take as the basic supposition–which is the thing that one sees in the experience of satori or awakening, or whatever you want to call it–that this now moment in which I’m talking and you’re listening, is eternity. That although we have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary, and that we may not feel very well, we’re sort of vaguely frustrated and worried and so on, and that it ought to be changed. This is IT! So you don’t need to do anything at all. But the difficulty about explaining that is that you mustn’t try and not do anything, because that’s doing something. It’s just the way it is. In other words, what’s required is a sort of act of super relaxation; it’s not ordinary relaxation. It’s not just letting go, as when you lie down on the floor and imagine that you’re heavy so you get into a state of muscular relaxation. It’s not like that. It’s being with yourself as you are without altering anything. And how to explain that? Because there’s nothing to explain. It is the way it is now. See? And if you understand that, it will automatically wake you up!” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Life is not a problem to solve, but an experience to be had. However, sure - you can imagine all kinds of problems that "should" be solved (in order for you & the world ? to be at peace ?️), but that is just it: imagination, fantasy, a dramatic good movie, a theater play, a book, a game... play ???. Life is what you choose to experience. The ultimate meaning of life is very simple: it's life itself! Of course! But this is so obvious that almost no one seems to buy into it, and everyone runs around in great panic and try desperately to achieve something beyond themselves. There isn't anything wrong with trying to achieve something beyond oneself, as long as one remembers it's just a cute game. But of course: We should all strive to make it a good game, a good dream, a good book, a good play, a good film... with total redemption for all the dream-characters in the end ??❤️?. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://youtu.be/wU0PYcCsL6o There’s aren’t enough words to describe how powerful this video is for me. It’s in my iPod and every single morning before I lift I listen to this speech. It’s absolutely stunning. Inspirational. Motivating. It’s everything to me. I would like for you to watch it and tell me what you think. We all should dream big. Without going after our dream, we cannot possibly live our best life. It is there for a reason. It’s necessary that we follow it…not just an option: "If you awaken from this illusion and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death (or shall I say death implies life?), you can feel yourself – not as a stranger in the world, not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke - but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. I am not trying to sell you on this idea in the sense of converting you to it, I want you to play with it. I want you to think of its possibilities, I am not trying to prove it. I am just putting it forward as a possibility of life to think about. So then, let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each you would say “Well that was pretty great. But now let’s have a surprise, let’s have a dream which isn’t under control, where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it's gonna be." And you would dig that and would come out of that and you would say “Wow that was a close shave, wasn’t it?”. Then you would get more and more adventurous and you would make further- and further-out gambles what you would dream. And finally, you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today. That would be within the infinite multiplicity of choices you would have. Of playing that you weren't God, because the whole nature of the godhead, according to this idea, is to play that he is not. So in this idea then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality, not God in a politically kingly sense, but god in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is. And you are all that, only you are pretending you are not." - Watts up, Alan? Love ya all <3
  25. Hi , I'm getting to be 35 years soon and I'm well down into this stuff for my whole adult life Looking to network with people that are legitimately higher-order consciousness / awakened / tier 2 / MetaCognitive -- whatever you wanna call it. I'm also neurodivergent so I click with people of the same breed Lemme know if you wanna connect , finding advanced / sophisticated people is quite difficult from my experience as its like roughly 0.1%-2% of people it seems