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I have no clue what they meant when they made thous steps, is it understanding nothingness , or is it embodying nothingness , which would be still just state, experience , as you cant become nothingness .

I'm not offering help but asking for it. This video flew a bit over my head. Being 4 hours long, I'd imagine it's a very important concept and yet when working with it (admittedly quite briefly), it doesn't really seem to have any impact on me. Unlike the other videos, which often leave me feeling a lot more wise and seeing reality differently. Just one example, the video on perception... I noticed a huge shift just listening and considering all experience as external. And this counter-intuitive video has me inspired af. But with sameness vs difference... what's the big deal (cue the "IT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT CONCEPT THERE IS!!! REALITY IS MADE OF DISTINCTIONS!!!" freak out)... I mean, I can look at two pens, maybe one red and one blue and yeah... they have differences and similarities. I know/understand/believe that ultimately everything is relative, and in a way I am generating these differences. I've even in a way experienced this before, all distinctions collapsing. But in that moment... it's just two pens with some similarities and some differences. What's been more beneficial for me is to just let go and appreciate the raw existence and experience and presence of a pen. Or maybe getting out of my head and being the pen. So what's the big deal with this? I mean, everything is the same in that everything is different from everything else. And for something to be the exact same as something else, it has to literally be that thing itself. And reality is made up of all possible (and impossible?) differences that can be perceived of from an infinite singularity of nothingness. So that's kinda cool.... What can I do to grok this more and have some direct experience? Any hints as to a path to go down in contemplating "What is sameness and what is difference"? (Tbf I've spent maybe 10 minutes total on this). Maybe I should rephrase it as "what is a distinction"? Is this just me and everyone else was like wow this changes everything when watching this video, or what?

*note, not a native English speaker. It's consciousness. I'am this thing called god. I'am the one. I'am conscious of myself. I always was myself, but believed to be someone else. Rolling back to yesterday. Sat around the house, ordered pizza to eat with my wife, the evening was kind of a mini celebration that she got a new job. Also we vaped weed as well, we kinda randomly stumble on some serious mystical experiences while we're high and my wife loves them. Anyway we talked something deep about our relationship, we kinda opened our hearts out to tell the deepest of truths that we hold on to each other. Then a bit later on we kinda changed topics and went spiritual, started asking questions. I can't remember how it actually happened, but somehow randomly I just stumbled on the question like "How am I, I?" "How is my wife, herself?" And then I was like "wait a minute, can it be true that I'am my wife, hmmm, how can I be myself? Why? Maybe I'am just consciousness perceiving everything from this body who is able observe and thinking that I'am something else?" And then it clicked. I consciously understood that I'am everything. I'am me, I'am my wife, I'am also my mom" and I'am also you who is reading this post! Then I said that to my wife! And her jaw dropped when she heard about it. In her mind it also clicked. We were so excited of this insight. Then I like looked at her and felt like I'm looking at myself looking at myself. Then we thought about everything that could pop in our heads. And the boundaries and our projection of good and bad were melted away in an instant, everything seemed good. I thought that we need to test this out. Then the theme of rape rose up. I asked her how do you see rape now, and my wife actually thought that you could seriously enjoy some rape. Nothing bad about it. Like our notion of BAD has vanished, everything that we considered good, bad or we saw fear on something just POOF, as it never even existed. Everything seemed perfect! It's just the way it's supposed to be. Also death is good. You cannot die. You will always be. Interesting thing I felt in myself particularly that moment of the conscious understanding was that I felt a separation inside of me. It was as if a fake me and the real me was split in half and I could feel them inside of me. Inside I felt two sides, on the left the "god, consciousness, everything" me and on the right the "ego, self creation" me. And the ego felt like it was gone. He was never even there. I was shocked to found out that my whole life I wasn't who I always thought to be. I clearly found out my true self! I'am consciousness. There was no me in the first place. I'am everything. I'am everyone of you reading this post right now, but the ego separates us, you see yourself as a separate being which is false and therefore an illusion. Also I thought about how people are worshiping god praying to it, seeing it as a higher being than himself. The understanding can't happen if you see yourself as something else than god itself. You will never find it from the ego mind, you create it and fall into the trap believing that you are lower than "him". The notion of an external entity is false. I still can't answer the question why there is something rather than nothing, I tried, but the answer was that this is nothing, just total nothingness, but I think that this didn't answer my question really. I couldn't understand the answer so I thought I need more time to found it out. But the one thing that is clear for me right now is that I found my TRUE self as everything. I feel compassion to everyone, seeing everyone as myself, just behind this ego smog. And I think I will never try to convince people the truth, because they won't understand it. I will just enjoy this state as much as I can. I still think I will go back to my old ego self (hope not, or not so fast). I kinda feel it creeping a bit on me. I had dreams that I was fighting with with my wife. So the ego is resisting as usual. Hopping for the best.

I just watched your live enlightenment video, and I'm getting everything you say. I'm having the same thoughts. I made a post yesterday, and it's like I've shifted into this enlightened state without warning. Everything in my reality has shattered to pieces from one day to the next. I'm aware of the total oneness, that this post and me writing it in itself is part of it. I'm just not happy about it. I'm feeling lost and betrayed by the simplicity of our reality. That everything is nothing. That I'm you and your me. That everything and everyone I ever cared about is just a part of this infinite nature. That nothing really matters and it's all an illusion which stems from the nature and laws of nothingness. How can this realisation be good? How is it not more enjoyable living in ignorance? I'm lost.

I would say there is an immature understanding and a more mature, truer understanding of emptiness. This is one reason meditation is so important - if the mind quiets down, you can get glimpses of this truer emptiness - which is nothingness, stillness, peace. Most people first notice it as small gaps between thoughts. The gaps get longer and deeper. Once you can drop below thoughts / feelings into that stillness, you will start to see attachments / identification with thoughts and feelings. Yet, this can be uncomfortable to the ego.

The verses are taken from https://terebess.hu/english/oxherding.html The reason is there was too much words I didn't understand to write them down 1) Searching For The Ox Stumbling around in life , suffering, scratching your head, hear people heard people talk about enlightenment, basically lost and clueless You must begin with an intense desire for the truth, renunctiation of the desire is on an another stage When you first affirm the vow to attain enlightenment, at that very moment there is already a splendid enlightement" = important step The Ox = Enlightenment 2) Seeing The Footprints When you have tiny glimpses, for few seconds Stage when you conceptualize enlightenment so much taht you think you understand it. It's a trap because it's just a story in your head, it isn't the real experiential thing. You will delude yourself if you don't study non-duality 100% chance of awakening if you are serious and comitted. 3) Seeing The Ox First Mystical experiences When you understand for real what all this stuff is about, you are SURE that the Ox is real now. So beautiful and awesome that you can't looks at it in the eyes for long, you need to develop yourself just to look at it. Hard to talk about something that includes everything (the Ox) by trying to explain it with only a tiny part of it (language). 4) Catching the Ox This is when you go beyond the first glimpses and embody them in your own life, and realize how difficult that is. Can't have the full Ox if you're still full of desires and attachments. The Ox would make all those desires and attachments feel stupid and childish, irrelevant. You need to cleanse all your concepts about the Ox (emptying your cup) to let it approach you. 5) Taming The Ox This is the stage when you get really serious about taming the Ox, about letting it purified you. There is a will to let go of all the egotism. What is really hard is having a mind with no thoughts, that is the mark of a master. 6) Riding the Ox Home The stage where you seriously embodied enlightenment. Not even a need to talk about it anymore, since it's your natural way to live life. You bring back the mystical into the mondains. At this stage many enlightened people gives the advices that there is nothing to do. This is only true at this stage. 7) Ox Transcended The stage when you have transcended the seeking of awakening and enlightenment. You realize that everything that ever was has always been the Ox, that there was not a single moment of not being it in the first place. There will be no distinction between anything. Also the stage when unconditional happiness is realized. The reason is because you realized you've never been born, you're already dead, the worst thing that could have happened to you, already happened, so everything now is a bonus. 8) Ox and self transcendance You transcend everything, you let go of everything. True emptiness -> Infinity You realize that everything that has happened never really happened, it's all pure emptiness/nothingness. All distinction collapse, all boundaries or objects, everything. You can't even distinguish existence from non-existence anymore (life from death) You realize the source of the universe, where it come from and where it goes, namely that it never really happened. = Fana Al-Fana At this point you've never been born. 9) Return to the source This map is a general guideline, it's not rigid, especially if you've used psychedelics/unorthodox practices or are spiritually gifted for example. There are different depth to realize the oneness of the same thing. Some dualities still stays untill stage 10 is "achieved" Wherever you go or do you're already going one step too far from the present moment. If you do nothing you're gonna be carry away by society and will forget everything about this. If you take the path you're also wrong. It's a paradox you're stuck. By taking the path you'll backtrack to the source, to the step zero. 10) Re-Entering The Marketplace You're so ordinary and humble that you blend in "normal life" fully, there is nothing special about you anymore, not even an once of selfishness or ego left in you. You don't even talk to non-duality to people. Humility is the most genuine signal of a spiritual master.

That’s not an understanding, nor a realization, that’s why you’re intuiting it as “not good” aka (not Truth). It’s a ‘right thought’, but nonetheless, let it go completely. When nothingness is no longer a thought, but experience, everything literally flips. You will have the exact opposite perspective / experience, and it is ineffably wonderful, but you must begin the (possibly counter intuitive to you) letting go of every thought about ‘it’, to be ‘it’. Just to hold a single thought, just to blink, is already too much. Hopefully you see what I’m saying by that. It’s more like the light suddenly came on, and the room’s a little messy. Use the light to clean up the room. Try to be glad the light came on, it’s lucky, though I hear you, it doesn’t feel that way...yet. http://www.buddhanet.net/oxherd1.htm

that is amazing, thanks for sharing I've not seen my true self yet, but I did see the nothingness, it's not nothing but it's not something either, it is nothing but within the nothing is the potential for everything...at the time it was perfectly clear but idk now if that's even right...

Dig deeper about yourself, chip away the not authentic to you, find your core, core and True Self is in other spectrum.. i'm speaking from, i just got back from Vipassana , i have so many insights back there and i experience "Everything" i just woke up, not deep like Leo but deep enough that either i will accept all my life i will just here forever until i die and try to go deeper in here, or try enjoy Life in a meaningful way.. after all you exist and you wake up from here and have your life... path of enlightenment for us is too heavy for us to go just beeee right now, i can just like give me one year just in the vipassana meditation retreat i will become fully enlighten just give me 1 year myself is ready to surrender but i see that i miss a lot in my life, i am wake here in earth not just only to see GOD but life here, the core in myself, I don't want to spend my life now to facebook all day, or doing porn, i feel the sensation of porn but, what for? If i just give in it will generate sankara, and it cannot satisfy my existence here, it is not enough to spend time to enjoy your existence here as you who have life doing nothing and not meaningful things, it is better that we experience what you take in the path of enlightenment and it is important to express high self... i understand Leo why he cannot just go full buddha easy, he can but he is destructed by actualized.org... everyday if he full surrender his self he can fully liberate himself easily, but he has actualized.org this is his life, if he wants to go fully buddha he needs to be dead... so yea i want to process my enlightenment not just doing it fast, i want to enjoy other facets of life first.. i want to enjoy the life here in earth, i want to be happy and live everyday with my highest self, meaningful life.. meaningful activities... life purpose, selfactualization, i want to settle my self actualization in my life time, i want to actualized first , taste richness of life, then maybe one day i will go to himalayas sit until i liberate fully, or wait for the time it's just hit me and boom! Because if you experience nothingness, it's nothing in there, pure, let the light from within burst.. love "YOU"

How do you know there isn't something "more" outside of nothingness? For example: Nintendo's Mario might start to question himself and discover he doesn't really exist. That there's essentially no difference between himself and the rest of the computer code. That this computer code is really fundamentally nothing as well and that everything is an illusion (in this world). However, there is still an external/higher reality outside of the computer that runs on very different rules and what may have felt very complete to Mario's realization doesn't take into account this inconceivable reality. I guess what I'm ultimately asking is if there's the chance of an even higher/deeper/more fundamental truth existing beyond what is considered enlightenment?

@Shin I read in a book (probably "Neti-Neti Meditation") 3 stages: 1. Duality 2. Non-Duality 3. Nothingness

I for one am not entirely sure if I have seen the Ox or not. Took ayahuasca and it took me into a surreal journey into the realms of the abstract, great love, a mystical experience through and through. Took mushrooms and it showed me dream-like visions similar to ayahuasca, I felt immense love and respect, and overwhelming divinity inside me. Took LSD and it showed me how reality, time and perception can bend and stretch into unfathomable proportions. Then took 5-Meo-DMT... and my experience was black nothingness, as if I ceased to exist for some minutes and I was reduced to blank awareness. No emotions tho, I did not panicked nor did I felt any joy, it just happened. I came out of it feeling underwhelmed to be honest, but it was nonetheless a very interesting experience.

Shinzen Young explains: The first 5 pictures are the enlighment journey. Picture 7 , arriving home , is the final stage. However, the last three come after. Substance, Form , Purpose are pictures 8,9, 10. Substance : nothingness. Form : everything. Purpose: spreading the consciousness through act of love and giving from bottom of society. That's only my interpretation and limited understanding. Correction.

Happyness and enlightenment are not necessarily connected. Happyness is just an emotion. An experience. Enlightenment is not an emotion or experience. It's just a boundless freedom or nothingness where there's no suffering. There're ways to generate happyness very fast. Like kundalini, kriya or some tao techneques can get you into brain orgasms very much but it's not enlightenment. It's not freedom. It's just an emotion. It depends what kind of practices you do. Being happy is not a big achievement actually. It's the most basic thing.

A total disidentification is hard to achieve in pratice. Most people who have some kind of awakening will not fully realize the extent of the Nothingness. A realization of no-self is not the end of the game. There is yet deeper. I have no idea about Teal Swan speficially, I'm just speaking more broadly. I think many paranormally inclined folks have a hard time fully transcending the subtle paranornal realm. But in the end, it is all still form. Just a subtle version of the gross material realm. There is the gross material realm, the subtle realm, and then finally what is called casual nondual. At the very end all identification of any kind is erased. But how many people will actaulize that? Not many. It is definitely possible to realize that you were never even born. By that point, what is there to identify with? Your ultimate nature is pure emptiness. But of course it's still great to do stuff like introspection a out your personality, or to integrate shadow aspects, etc. Psychological work is still very useful for everyday life even though it is not your true ultimate nature.

I don't know. I feel I understand this logcally very easy, without any awakenings. 1 is something. It exists. It's tangable, it's physcial. You can hold it your hands. 0 also exists. But you can't hold it in your hands. It's nothingness. But it exists. It's a thing but not a physical thing. Like space. Space is also non physical but without space nothing would be possible.

The something that you are seeing right now, which is the world we're living in, isn't permanent. For example, no one stays in this world forever. So, we pass away one day and become "nothingness." But then, during our lifetime, some of us have this "awakening." That's when we see ourselves as "nothingness" becoming "somethingness" when we embody back into our ego (body) via singularity. And, we gain wisdom from that.

@non_nothing why? in case if i'd be scared when facing the Truth? But there will be no fears left when you had surrendered yourself completely to the Truth. Whatever that may be, It's a journey into the unknown btw, might as well give yourself completely to the infinite intelligence, than to be attached to impermanent/groundless 'thing'. Because whenever i had this mindset, it's more effortless, the answers will comes at me through everything else without me having to work hard to find it. From my experience, it will be effortless. What is the possible danger that you talk about? Do you mean the 'attachment' aspect of it? Or the God = Everything part of it? Or the nothingness?

@Leo Gura I'm not quite there, but getting there. My ego/mind has been very disgruntled with all of the shifts I have taken lately, and that has left me with a mindset that has been pretty bleak overall. The rest is very liberating. I continue to struggle with letting go when I know I will be left with nothing. I get a further glimpse of the true nature of things, and then I find a way to trick myself back into identification with that which I know I am not. It's like my mind does not want me to be free of the idea that I am the ego, and now I face a scary wall of nothingness that offers no reason to surpass it. I am told it is worth pursuing, but I have yet to fully understand why.

@winterknight I've been reading this giant thread for a couple of days now and I have 2 questions for you, I apologize in advance if they have already been answered, since I didn't read the entire thread. 1) I've been practicing self-inquiry after my Kriya Yoga practice and I just wanted some support to know if I'm getting a glimpse of the Truth yet or not, if I'm doing it right or not. I haven't done self-inquiry as you suggest yet - I'll be trying it in the following days. What I have been mostly doing is perceiving thoughts, emotions, sensations and etc, and asking myself "who's aware of this thought/emotion/sensation?", my mind usually answers "me" and I just go meta and stay aware that something is aware of the answer "me" or of the thought/emotion/sensation. What normally happens is that I try to abide in this place - and I notice that I am aware that I'm trying to abide in this place - there's always something prior to what I'm perceiving. I think I have experienced nothingness for very short periods of time, that which cannot be described, even though it's completely paradoxical to write this haha. But what always happens is that I'm quickly back being aware of another object - my breath for instance. And then I ask myself again "who's aware of this breath?"(intuitevely sometimes or in the form of a thought) and the process begins again. As is mentoned, I feel like "I" get to this point where my awareness is in this nothingness, but just for a few seconds or so. Am I delusional here or maybe I'm touching the right thing? Does this seems to be a good way of doing self-inquiry and that I should just keep on going in this path, and with time I'll be able to stay more and more in this "place" or would you suggest me to take a different route? 2)This one is just a question that poped in my mind: can you know with 100% certainty if another human being has realized the Truth by being in their presence? Hehe just out of curiosity! Thanks for your time! =]

Evil doesn't exist existentially. So, all morality is inherently relativistic on the existential level. Reality, on the absolute level, is empty of both good and evil. All things are perfect, as they are manifestations of an all-loving and perfect creator, regardless of how natural the tendency of human beings to label something evil is. So, good and evil come down to human interpretations and labels of events and realities that are beyond the human concept of good and evil or the human mind's ability to conceptualize in general. An example would be that a murderer is someone that people would label evil because they cause pain and suffering for their own reason without regard for the pain and suffering they cause. So, on the relative level of practical human functioning, they cause a lot of problems for people. But the murderer, on the absolute level, is empty of evil as it is part of the grand play that God creates from itself and for itself. So, the murderer is just another indistinguishable aspect of the field of consciousness which is divine and perfect as it is God. Just as in a painting of a murderer murdering someone, on the existential level all it is paint on a canvas. There is nothing evil about the paint that is used to paint the murderer in the painting relative to the paint used to create the victim or the background. It is only the human ability to conceptualize of an interpretation of the painting that makes us supply a meaning for it. It's an illusion painted by its creator and all of the creation is inseparable from the rest of the creation. And like the painting, on the existential level, all is an illusion. However, on the level of duality, there is such a thing as healthy and unhealthy. There is also such a thing as functional and dysfunctional. There is also such a thing as building up and breaking down. And there is such a thing as something that's constructive versus being destructive. There at also actions that produce pain and suffering and actions that don't produce pain and suffering. And human beings will often categorize this dichotomy by labeling it good and evil.... and may think there is even an existential reality to those labels, when they really only exist as practical labels. So, these dichotomies are all relative truths within the field of duality. But on the level of the non-dual, there is no dichotomies including the dichotomy of good and evil... there is only one which is also nothingness. For example, there is nothing inherently and existentially invalid about eating a diet consisting of only donuts. But objectively speaking, if your goal is health, then an all-donut diet is not conducive to the goal of health. But there is nothing existentially more valid about being healthy relative to being unhealthy. God loves both the healthy and unhealthy unconditionally and abhors nothing and no one. That said, on the human practical level, it is a mostly universal human preference to desire health and not desire illness. But God has no such prejudice. It loves all regardless of how beneficial or detrimental it is to human beings or other sentient beings in general. So, if we label something practically "evil" as being influenced by the destructive drive, then the practical term has the most efficacy in describing a situation that is unhealthy, dysfunctional, and focus toward creating suffering and breaking down. Evil is something that goes against harmonious human functioning. And on the practical human level we recognize that these practically "evil" situations cause us or others suffering, then it makes sense to avoid participating in and perpetuating these patterns. This is especially true if we realize the inherent oneness of reality and how others' pain is our own pain. But within the field of duality, there is a destructive drive and a constructive drive that can be noticed as phenomenological realities. They are there, and they can be observed as the fodder of the internal landscape. And they influence human thought and action. But there is nothing inherently good or evil about those two drives, as they too are just part of God's perfect creation and God loves them both. God doesn't abhor the destructive drive... it created it. And so, counterintuitively, the drives of both good and evil are empty of good and evil on the existential level just like everything else is.

@Shin Pain kicks in at about 30-45 mins for me until it is quite annoying at around 55-60 mins. I usually stop at 60 min as the pain becomes unbearable around the knees. However, if I am sitting on a chair, then the SDS goes more smoothly (can easily go over 60 mins), but there are less 'mystical' insights in a way when I am not sitting cross-legged on the floor. By 'mystical' insights I mean feelings of nothingness, being without a location or simply kundalini type of energy flows, sorry for the sloppy use of the term 'mystical'. I have no idea whether it is a causation, a correlation, a coincidence or whatever - just sharing my experience.

@Jack River If you want to go to the absolute level, then there is nothing / everything. Simply One. That’s great. Yet from that Nothingness is also a relative existence. That One consciousness is expressing itself relatively. And that relativity is evolving. Everything is absolutely perfect as it is in the Eternal Now and is evolving relatively. Some beings in that relative workd want to help increase the relative consciousness of that One absolute consciousness.

From where you stand that might be so, but you were not the one to ask the question so how are you to be the judge of that? The unchallenged master is no master at all. I merely asked some questions to he who claims to see all paths up the mountain. I did not expect some answer that would blow my mind, just what would seem like an honest inquiry into a very fundamental challenge of preaching the way he does. Sure it might be a distraction for those who might learn something from him, but blindly following self-proclaimed gurus and believing in apparent truths (those that make sense to the mind but not the heart) is perhaps the biggest trap there is. From where you are, he makes a lot of sense. Of course, you are a moderator of a self-inquiry forum centered around the teachings of Leo. But to tell those who are not just blindly following the advice of some enlightenment-idol on their screen, but challenging who may as well be causing more confusion rather than undoing it (not much separates truth from illusion), makes me question whether this forum is a sort of cult rather than a place of genuine exploration of Self. Of course you could argue that it is all just one big movement and it happens when it happens regardless of what is said and done, but this is a misconception about non-duality. It is like if all 'realized' no-self and the lack of free will or whatever we may call it and just were like 'oh well, nothing really matters so I have no responsibility for anything, I can do whatever I want!', the world would quickly fall apart. Just because all is one it is still two, and these two are in a sort of eternal game of hide and seek. If all these ideas are feeding the part of the one that is illusion, then in his attempt to provide guidance he is actually causing more confusion and prolonging the way back to center, stillness, nothingness.

@Emanyalpsid Have seen him before, just watching the Part 3 right now. Quite incoherent and self-contradicting description of things, mingled with a lot of assumptions which are not explained further - especially the ones about substance dualism. Also, he takes a few Ramana Maharshi quotes out of context in order to strengthen his argument, where what Ramana was trying to point out was the transcending of the I AM to nothingness Comparing Leo and this guy, the latter rings a lot more of my bullshit radars and contradicts more of what my direct experience is Since this is the only thing I have, I will probably stick with my direct experience rather than this guy's concepts. Thanks for sharing though, it is always good to have ideas challenged. The guy is not too bad, he has a point about people being lost in concepts and mentions a few good thoughts about free will. As with everything, take it with a pinch of salt - he even mentions this with his eat the grape, spit out the seeds analogy