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You've totally missed the point of self inquiry. The whole point of self inquiry is to keep you looking/observing until you break free from delusion. What you call 'me', 'reality' are layers of stories glued together. They can only sustain if they are unexamined/unobserved. The moment you look, shit start disappearing like empty air. Doesn't that ring some bell? maybe you and your whole life stories and constructs are just a house of cards. What is the purpose of Self-inquiry? Its to deconstruct yourself, your beliefs about being a human/alien/nothingness and your world. Observation is the only direct spiritual practice and self inquiry is just a technique to keep you oriented and focused. There are other techniques like spiritual autolysis, mindfulness with labeling, Guided Neti Neti, staying with the I AM etc which basically facilitates the same observation with slightly different spin. Until?? Until all that can be deconstructed is deconstructed. And what is left? That which is Real. The unreal never existed and the real can't be destroyed.

I’m not surprised, in the beginning spiritual work is all exciting fun and games, everyone thinks they gaining something by doing it, no matter how much you tell them it’s not about gaining anything but breaking the illusion of the self they still think they gaining something that’s why 99% even pursue it, if I was to sell you a bag of air you wouldn't be interested would you, there is nothing for the "you" who is even comprehending this statement. Some people get stuck at this stage, they do their yoga, exercise, mental masturbation exercises, meditation etc. they feel a little relaxed and good about themselves and go on with their days, no spiritual progression at all here, just a boost to the ego and a self-pat on the back for doing the exercises, feels good don't it to make an illusory progression, just like it feels to do it in a video game where you know for 100% that it's illusory progression. Some people start to get heavily into spirituality, utter confusion, utter bullshit of guru's who honestly are just trolling you and pointing you at different directions to nothingness, they know the joke, the seeker doesn't, it’s like their whole purpose is to contradict everything and play devil’s advocate and see how long they can make you chase your own tail. At this stage thing get very difficult. Nihilism creeps in, you theorize everything it seems everything is pointless and you start to turn into this black hole that’s creating chaos within yourself, or having the dark night of the soul. You basically having insanity as you shift through both worlds of logic and mysticism, so I can see how it can create negative side effects. Then there is the positively enlightened, the surrender and being, these people experience life as it is without the illusion, this is a difficult stage because you must be able to feel the illusion and stillness at all times. For example, having glimpses of Samadhi and utter peace and realization of nothingness is quite simple but when you come back into Maya and people are pissing in your soup you will find it difficult to stay in the stillness. I honestly think when your truly enlightened you will appreciate the body and everything but you won't care about dropping all of it, it would be no different than getting your video game character killed and starting a new character.

Love Hoffman's take on reality. Brief summary: We have evolved to see reality in such a way that we survive, not in such a way to see truth. (As we all know, if we saw reality as it really is, it would kill us / Mu). We have representations for external objects that are not what they intrinsically look like, but instead the way we've evolved to perceive them in order to survive. Just like a recycle bin on your desktop isn't really a trash can, a car doesn't really look like how we perceive it to (really it's pure Nothingness I mean Mu). Yet still, if you get run over by a car or drag an important file to the recycle bin... you're gonna have a bad time (but not really). Reality is made up solely of "conscious agents". The way they interact determines our shared perceptions of reality, and indeed all of our physical laws. Theory is still a work in progress but I think there's a lot of truth to it.

Oh hehe Well I was attempting to communicate free of perspective which is difficult because thought “communication” is a movement of perspective. I do not mean to express myself in a sarcastic way or reprimand although I feel this seems the case sometimes in my communication. I’m fairly new to communication so I can see my writing coming acrossed as so. I’m working on it. By yes I am no a beat around the bush type. what I wrote above on love-beauty-truth-nothingness.... does that resonate with you?

I have read a lot of posts of spiritual seekers and allegedly enlightened people who did not like this eternal now, oneness with everything, enlightenment, but could not go back. If somebody experiences non-duality, oneness, emptiness, nothingness, beyond time and space, but not bliss, on the contrary, agony, why is not it called enlightenment?

True self doesn’t need development. only the ego/self seeks that. Only the ego/self seeks wellbeing psychologically. Seeking security Psychologically, there can not be love. Beauty is love, and love is nothingness “true self” as some people like to call it. Love/beauty are not perspectives at all. Success and meaning are movements of the the ego. Manifestations of measure. Love and beauty are immeasurable. Love/beauty are when measure ceases. Love is truth Yeah you can’t touch truth as truth is only when the little self/ego you is not? It has no opposite. Opposites only exist in mind. Truth is the underlying substance of all things. Love is when “want” is not? Thought can never touch LOVE love is truth and truth is not when thought is in movement. Nice topics @MarkusSweden?

Yup. Thats the very function on Maya. Creating an infinite chain of meaning, name and form out of absolute nothingness. It's very function is to turn the impossible into possible (creating something out of nothing)

to add: I can usually enter samadhi/no self through regular meditation and thats the end of the road for me, theres no going beyond that state. I'm just trying understand how to incorperate those experiences in other facets of life and functioning as a human doing everyday stuff. But i think it's doing something to my brain in terms of neuroplasticity. It's weird but its like you can sense/feel rewiring. I'd never call myself enlightened tho, seems like a sham to say that, if my true self is the no self, and everything in my experience is forever changing, what is that is that is enlightened? it's nothingness, I cannot center it or pinpoint it. I don't listen to any guru's or people who claim directly to be enlightened, indirectly to explain something is fine though. (The same way I don't put rotten food into my mouth, don't want to catch diseases and have mental diarrhea). There are a lot of scammers out there and they won't hesistate to touch the spiritual world, and theres also a lot delusional mentally handicapped people, not all brains work equally, but consciousness does, consciousness doesn't speak, it is the what it is in it's own entirety. And the lastest samahdi movie made a lot of sense to me when it said "strictly speaking, there is no enligthened people, only enlightened activity".

Correct. To try and understand non duality “teaching” has no meaning. This is why I don’t recommend any accumulation of of nondual teachings. To accumulate such knowledge is a movement of the center which inevitably seeks permanence and is always a movement of self sustainment and fragmentation. When thought ceases to attribute to itself it’s mechanical movement “conditioning/effort” then that is an ending of the movement of time/self/ and the content/responses of ones consciousness So we are not trying to gain/add a nondul understanding but rather end the dualistic/thought/center which is the self. I never accumulated any non dual teachings nor was there a movement of effort/time. In this time dissolved and what remained was the timeless “nothing” Non experiencing is “what is” You can’t do anything to achieve truth/nothingness. All you can do is deal with things ‘res’ , the dualistic mind. To empty/end that the other is uncovered and becomes realized. A total perception “Unbound by conditioning and therefore whole” distilles the essence of every movement the center takes. Therfore all movements of self which includes fragmentation/psychological time/thought/efforts end. All that remains is nothingness/what is. It’s always there, it is just covered up by the conditioned mind. You “the center created by thought” is the barrier. Don’t add “accumulate” to the barrier deconstruct the barrier. Consciousness empty of its conditioned movement sees with clarity.

If you, like me, were like wth is Leo going on about with this MU talk... What tf is he s̶m̶o̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ butt-plugging, (I want some!!!), well I recently came across some talk of MU in Gödel, Escher, Bach (see section "Mumon on MU")... So clearly MU is shorthand (or is it longhand?) for this ineffable truth of Nothingness we're always going on about here. And perhaps the "drinking a hot iron ball which you can neither swallow nor spit out" is what he was going through in Hawaii, and what happens when you surrender your life to Truth. Apparently the method for realizing it is to stop all thoughts, forget all teachings, and focus only on MU. Anyways, thought I'd share this sick excerpt on Enlightenment. Remember to always do what's right and have a good time.

Noticing the nothingness where my face is supposed to be.

Without the experiential seeing ‘as’ nothingness there is no creative observation, joy, beauty, and compassion. And without that ??‍♂️

A while back I created this thread, asking about your tips for Darkness Retreat Strategy: Some of you warned me against using psychedelics in there. Well, me being a crazy person ended up taking 100mcg of LSD in there "just in case I feel confident". Darkness Retreat Basically I went into a completely light-proof room (almost completely sound-proof) and stayed there for 7 straight days. The room was well prepared for this. It had a bed, a mediation cushion, a shelf for some stuff, space for exercise and a bathroom. The retreat staff came in once a day bringing food and some herbal tea. It was VERY dark. Most of the time I had no idea if my eyes are closed or open. The First Days I decided I would like to try out fasting while in the dark. The lights went off and I went to sleep. I slept for a long time and I slept well. After I caught up on all the sleep I ever needed, I started meditating and hanging around. Time is very tricky in the dark, there is nothing really to orient yourself according to except for the once a day visit by the food-bringers. That was one of the factors that started bringing up a lot of anxiety, another one was the hunger pangs from the fasting. Soon I was going in and out of intense fear, survival mode and deep helplessness. As if my first chakra decided it was time to clear all that has ever been clogged up in there. Fear of the dark, fear for my body and health, fear of nothingness, fear for my life. Fear, fear, fear. It usually came in waves. It came in, I panicked for a bit, I let go. Repeat. It was tough and I decided to end my fast on day 2, which helped me a lot. Befriending the Darkness With something to fill up my belly life became much more bearable. The fear was getting milder, and although other emotions started coming up, I seemed to develop strong mindfulness, which helped me overcome them with more ease. I started working out, using EFT, and mediating more deeply. Most of the time I sit in Strong Determination Sits with awareness in my body, which helped tremendously with the constant floods of emotions coming up. I had a lot of time to contemplate what an emotion is and found out that it is basically a feeling in the body + a though saying "this feeling is terrible, I can't stand it". With my attention in the body and looking at the feelings as they were, it was hard for me to be fooled into an emotional crisis again. The LSD Experience By the time day 5 came I felt very confident with myself handling the darkness (and by that I mean the emotions the darkness brings). After my food arrived and I ate a little I decided to give the LSD a shot. With the LSD up and running I got into a very deep meditation. All the emotional hustle from before was gone. I was gone. I was transparent. Experience was flowing very smoothly and soon I decided to lay down with open arms and legs and give myself away fully.I was lying in blissful emptiness and with every moment I was surrendering deeper. And just like that terror came. A thought came telling me I was under attack, I was in danger and it was believed in. At that moment I understood how seriously I underestimated the depths I was getting into with darkness and LSD combined. It was as if the mind let me relax sooo much, just to be able to hurt me at my deepest core. And I was hurt. I was hurt deeply. I will not be explaining exactly what happened, it should be enough to say that never have I realized such terror, fear and anxiety could be experienced. I was helpless, there seemed to be nothing I could do. I was thrown into hell and I was burning. There seemed to be no hope, until I remembered the words of an amazing teacher - "Whatever arises, love that". And there seemed to be nothing else I could do. I put my hands as into prayer and started whispering "I love you". Over and over again. These words made a change. Where there was nothing but darkness and horror just a moment ago, a spark of light lit up. And with every repetition of this phrase, the spark was getting brighter and brighter. And it did not come from out there, it came from inside of me. The next couple of hours were one of the most horrifying once in my life. As if all the suffering of the world came into the dark room to be lit by the light of my love. And I got overwhelmed, I got hurt again and again I found the light inside me and loved the horrors. Over and over again. I could try to explain the horror , but I really don't have the words for it. But one thing became clear. Love is what matters. Love is what is. Love is what all of us crave, what every part of us craves. There seems to be nothing else. Love is my gift to the world. It is not a thing I have to develop. It is my nature and it is here to be given to everyone and everything. After these horrors, I realized one thing. I was loving. I was loving the good and the bad. The beautiful and the ugly. The pleasant and the unpleasant. It made no difference at all. My heart burst open. And in the darkness, it shone. Obviously not illuminating the physical world, but it shone nonetheless basically blinding me. The Final Days I was hurt. I was scared very deeply. But from an infinitely deeper place still I was loving. And I am. The days after were a mix of my person being traumatized and my Self loving it in every moment. And the last day I finally got that the mystics are right. It IS one. There is one experience. There is no more. And finally even the person was in peace. Out In The Light The light hit me hard. And it revealed infinity. It revealed beauty. In every place, in every moment there is an infinite happenings going on. And it is all beautiful. And it is all one. What a mind fuck, right?

I've thought about that as well. The consistency of the "waking dream" is what makes it feel so real and gives you the impression that you're "awake" and "actually there" in reality. Night time dreams don't have this consistency and therefore, we like to draw the distinction between them and attribute different values and meanings to them, for the "waking dream" is certainly the "more important" or real and relevant dream for many people. As for identity, what would you then suggest to be a reliable basis for identity ? I think that memories are indeed a valid basis for identity, even though it is surely just conceptual. But at the end of the day you simply have to identify as something, right? Running around and merely saying that you identify as consciousness/nothingness/awareness isn't that practical I think.

@Mikael89 The thing is to not worry about nothingness “direct experience” as that can not be invited. If one is still in the the position of being bound by the conditioned mind “time” one can not touch upon nothingness “direct experience” without that conditioned mind ceasing all together. Being the cessation of psychological time “fragmentation and the dualisitic compulsion to choose between the opposites.” This is a consistency that takes place as a movement of self/thought. This consist of not adding anything but constantly removing/dissolving “ the knower/the know”.. or the conditioned content of your current consciousness. Not being influenced by all the contradictory desires, pleasures, escaping of fear, seeking psychological security, and so on....all that is fueled by the known/knower. All that is preventing direct experience “nothingness” or “what is” or preventing the now from being seen without all that blocking the direct view. Be aware of your current content of conciousness. You can’t do anything about the other, “Direct experience or nothingness/truth” until the current conditioned content has ended Also one can not apply that conditioned movement to end itself. It’s to give diligent awareness without the imposition of the self/thought that leads to the cessation of thought/the knower. So the key is to learn the nature/structure/processes/substance of thought/self and to maintain scrupulous attention without thought/self trying to change it in any way. The subtle thing is that by being aware of that movement, yet not moving in any particular direction to change or alter it. To engage in any such movement is applying the very mechanism that prevents direct perception of “what is” form being seen. I would start by exploring/understanding psychological time/thought. For now. This is what I am constantly aware of now. After a while it becomes very simple. Mainly I am aware of the movement of reaction to seek security in the illusion of psychological time. But after a while those movements just fade away. It becomes effortless and I don’t even notice. Anyway just wanted to share how I do things. May seem difficult but it is actually very simple in action. To simple. It’s simple yet difficult. It’s difficult because it’s so simple Anyway I feel we gotta read the manual to the self/thought if you want the mechanism of thought to work for you instead of against you. After all it has been said somewhere that the mind is a great servant but a bad master. This is true. Mind is a tool. If that tool takes over and you identify your self with it, ultimately you will suffer and live a confused, contradicting, and conflictual life. I understand if you this is not for you? Maybe someone else will either way right

@How to be wise Very apropos for this moment within my direct experience. The G-F and I were getting into a bit of a tiff just now. Things are a bit "distant" at the moment. I applied what you said here to that situation. What a wake up call! I wonder if I could get her to see this and we could laugh it all off at the nothingness of it.

Infinite Love I have found in my life that whenever started a challenge to, for example, say "I love you" 24/7 I fail after a few days. It is the conflict between our subconscious beliefs and our radicle action that creates a big emotional resistance in ourselves. That is why it is hard to maintain a swift change at times, as your core fundamental deeply ingrained childhood beliefs that make up the identity of a you need to removed. And the only way to remove these beliefs is to go through all of the ignored emotions in our cells that continue to manifest in the people we see, which in turn strengthens the beliefs that made us avoid those emotions in the first place. For example, if I've ignored all of the sadness in my life, I will see it in everyone I met, and everything I see, as I have a belief that it's not OK to feel sadness. Reality responds to this by giving you more and more sadness so that the belief that sadness must be avoided can remain. And to go even further, if from this belief, which counter intuitively created the sad emotions and thoughts I wanted to avoid, I started to honor my heart with unconditional love and decided to face the sadness (like I would listen to my 5 year old self in need) this would create "resistance" beyond imagination to face, which in truth is all of the emotions being finally seen, and heard and felt. This feeling of the heart instead of the thinking from the mind, this shift in your default state of awareness that is the destiny of all human beings on this planet thus gives your heart so much more attention that your body will struggle to handle it. The pain of emotions transmuting faster than your body can keep up will at the start also create feelings of heavy sleepiness, and could manifest physical illness as the emotional energy cannot leave fast enough. This is why changing habits can be quite challenging for you can feel against your limiting subconscious thoughts of "I don't like this change", the pain of emotions being felt, and finally your beliefs which is the source of this all. So lets deal with the source then? What is the best way to change beliefs? There are two I know, and use. The first is to ask whenever an emotion arises in your body: What do I have to believe about myself in order to feel this way? So lets say you are jealous that a friend gets all of the attention from people, and you don't. The belief is then, "I am not worthy of attention from people". Now, is that really true? Just feel that in your body for a moment, I am not worthy of attention from other people. Why did you choose out of all the beliefs in existence to have this one? Would you want to tell that to your friends if they asked: "Hey, so what do you believe about yourself?" and you say: "That I'm unworthy of love" would you be proud? If you could live this life again would you choose that belief or would you swap it for "I am God almighty, and I deserve to be heard, felt , and adored to no end. Because my body is made of love, and my soul is love itself, love is my birthright." What a different life that would create. Once you find that limiting belief, reverse it as I have done above, and then live as if it is true. That is all that is necessary. The second is what I use the most often. That is to be inside of your heart, live from that center point. Your heart is love, your heart is life, your heart is the everything you have ever dreamed of that has been right under your nose the whole time. By loving whatever emotion arises in your heart you clear all of your karma, free all of your beliefs, until all that is left is a space of nothingness for bliss to fill. This practice includes loving whatever catches your attention by sending it a blessing, compliment, a smile, an affirmation, or simply an "I love you" so that you are BEING the love. This means any beliefs that are out of alignment with love will be forced to vanish at the rate that you choose love in each moment. The importance of this cannot be written in words, for from your level of awareness the true gifts are completely unfathomable and will seem to most, "too good to be true". These practices should be integrated slowly until a 24/7 level is reached after a few weeks, or months; as the pain of the 3 ego defenders (emotions, thoughts and beliefs) may overwhelm you as it did in my experience. Even the 3 ego defenders are just here to help you see for yourself that nothing in reality can fulfill you other than the attention and care you give to yourself. This just shows how absolutely everything that arises in your awareness is here to support your highest evolution, so see it as the gift that it is, and love the fuck out of it.

I would say a truly void stage implies the other, or that wasn’t really a void ? If that was really a void stage then that is truth/nothingness In truth/nothingness implies freedom, joy, beauty, creativity, compassion and love ??

Great question! I do not know. But would also like to hear some thoughts. But why do you think that enlightenment equals happiness? Enlightenment is the end of suffering - not eternal happiness Happiness is a state and Nothingness is the stateless-state

Measure leads to further measure. Measure and then action implies a static/measurable/finite/and limited action. ? Nothingness/truth being void of measure sees the whole of measure... Action free of measure impies dynamic/infinite/complete action. Not a movement and then action which implies division, but just action. Theres the movement of thought, then insight/perception, then action which would imply a limited partial/fragmented action. And then there is insight/action. This is an undivided whole action as it does not become divided by the movement of time. This makes for harmony of time/timeless. Compete action.

Out of truth the whole of thought is perceived This is really similar to my non experiencing?

Action born of nothingness/truth. Insight/perception Once there is division ‘time’ that truth nothingness is not. Division inevitably expresses itself in communication so time has to operate there. But in order for nothingness/action to act directly the division of Time must cease. Embodiment is the absense of division in the action. This action is whole “holy” It’s beautiful?

@tsuki Measure leads to further measure. Measure and then action implies a static/measurable/finite/and limited action. ? Nothingness/truth being void of measure sees the whole of measure... Action free of measure impies dynamic/infinite/complete action. Not a movement and then action which implies division, but just action. Theres the movement of thought, then insight/perception, then action which would imply a limited partial/fragmented action. And then there is insight/action. This is an undivided whole action as it does not become divided by the movement of time. This makes for harmony of time/timeless. Compete action. ⭕️ Very interesting huh

@Mikael89 @Ether Oh man, you guys have no idea. Enlightenment is seeing stillness in ceaseless movement. To let go of 'I' is to get rid of the barrier that prevents the movement. It simply moves. By itself. Precisely because there is nobody to benefit from it. Infinite meaning in pure nothingness.

Thats the point.. There is no point of view in what is. Truth/Intelligence is the absnsce of any particular point of of view, “movement of thought” Point of view is a part of the manifestation of the underlying substance, truth/nothingness. This perception is complete/infinite action without point of view all together, and void of time. Point of view is never truth. ?