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@egoless There IS a base building block element of reality. And it is nothing. Imagine Lego blocks made out of pure nothingness. It's like that. Except anything you imagine is wrong. The world is made out of differences, and behind these differences there is nothing.

The absolute truth is that all things would either fall into the category of something or the category of no-thing ad infinitum. There’s no two ways about it. No-thing means absence. But an absence of any or all units under consideration is not equivalent to nothingness of any or all units under consideration. Therefore, absence is not about nothingness but instead it is about no-thing-ness. No thing means no becoming or no changing. No changing means no suffering. No suffering means no mind. Mind is the forerunner of all states. No mind means a completely neutralised state of affairs - that is nibbāna as per Buddhism.

this question cannot be answered with words. go look by yourself if you have enough courage to experience true Nothingness. hypothesizing is almost useless for it can only expand your curiosity for true (un)knowing.

i personal think it most likely become like it was before we where born (nothingness)

There are many techniques that can bring you all the way. The question you need to ask yourself is which one has the best results for me at this stage of my development. A technique that works great now might not be so suitable in a couple of months from now an visa versa. So I'd suggest, dedicate to a technique for a week and see how much you progress. Are you seeing changes in your daily life? If so, continue until you feel the need to try something else or you stagnate. From my experience Vipassana is a good technique to burn through layers of your emotional wounds. Contemplation & inquiry is good to have a breakthrough, which results in a direct of experience of what you focussed on. If you focus on nothingness long enough, you will experience it directly eventually. If you would be able to sit down and focus intensely on nothingness for 20 hours a day, you would get there in no time. A breakthrough experience will shed layers of your ego and emotional wounds. Letting go of your ego and emotional wounds will make it easier to have breakthroughs. Start somewhere but start and practiced diligently and persistently, diligently and persistently.

Jokes aside, you can see it from a hindu perspective. The universe is nothing but the interplay of Shiva (male) and Shakti(female). Shiva is the ultimate nothingness/stillness/awareness itself. Absolutely still. Shakti is the energy counterpart of Shiva. Shakti lures Shiva into a cosmic dance and that's how universe and consciousness comes out of utter nothingness. So its Shakti's nature to disturb the stillness of Shiva in order to immerse into the game of cosmic creation. Like so, women test and excite the energy in male to higher and higher levels so that both can be joined in that heightened rapture. Either in bed or outside..you know.....

In the eyes of God everything is right, there is no wrong. You thinking that something is wrong, is also right. So you can not try to ban wrongness from your life, since wrongness is also right. The path of self-actualization is actually going through the uncertainty of right and wrong, and learn from it. Not by running away from it by trying to contain it into a concept. A lot of spiritual and personal seeking is just a way of running away from the "realness" of life. It's very comforting to try to run from life in concepts like "nothingness", "spirituality", "God" etc. But if you still do not truly embody this in your day-to-day life. It is just that, concepts.

You have no free will. But there also is no you! Believing you exist combined with believing you haven't free will = emotional disaster ofc. Realizing you don't exist combined with seeing that it doesn't even make sense to talk about free will or no free-will = enlightenment. It's true; from a scientific perspective, of course you cannot have free will. Everything is determined by casual links and quantum randomness; the univerise is a physical machine! In any case, 'you' dont have a free will, cos 'you' dont exist. But You - the real you - decides how to interpret everything in life. So in that sense, you DO have full control; it's just a matter of being aware of it or not. When you play a game, like a board game, that's really interesting and really takes you in, you could also forget that you're playing and believing that the it actually REALLY matters who win the ludo-game. That's what makes it fun. In the same way, the real you is having so much fun right now, pretending it's a poor little sepearte self, Pristinemn, who's sad because it doesn't believe it has free will... haha, what a story!:D with 'real you' i mean God, Awareness, Absolute Infinity, Consciousness, Nothingness, etc etc, in other words: the REAL YOU!=)

@Serotoninluv but exactly that thought ( I am not in control, infinity/god/nothingness is acting through me and creating a false sense of self in my mind ) is making me feel really calm and peaceful. like I can lay back and that one day everything is going to click. but it's still very abstract and heavily based on intellectual concept. nothing I have really felt I probably need a real kick in the ass, come right face to face with a reality which erases my 'I'. like the experience you described with 4-aco. I guess that would really take my understanding to another level. and make me feel all the fear and panic

Man, the first few years of personal development I was so driven, excited, grateful, calm, peaceful, joyful. I would regularly cry about how amazing I felt. I did the work as prescribed by Leo and from all the other sources. Then I had my first God experience. It opened my curiosity up a lot, and made the world that much more beautiful. Then the second,far more powerful God experience, which rattled me to the core, staring at the nothingness that I was. After several months it has me feeling like i'm stuck in limbo, and have no clue what is real and what is not. I am literally always in a state of unknowing and confusion. I am stuck in this Nihilism. I feel the only way to get out of this is to see the full picture. And of course despite feeling terrified of the existential, I can't help but continue, because I have no where else to go, nothing else I can do. I feel like that rain drop on Leo's InSights that has bounced twice off the ocean and still has another 4 bounces before it merges back with its source. Leo seems to deliver his weekly Video's and looks pretty damn happy every week, considering how long his Hey's are and how Smiley he's getting! Am I missing something here? Are you all also facing these Dark Nights for extended periods? How do I stay motivated when I am nihilistic, sane when I am insane, and joyful when I am in purgatory? <3

it is true, I am the devil what I condemn in others, what I judge in others, I have in myself as well. I am just not aware of it most of the time. as soon as I become aware of my own devilish nature, all condemnation and judgment towards others starts to dissolve into thin air. I am selfish as fuck, I want so many things. it doesn't help to act all nice and spiritual here, I have to be honest. at least to myself. I want everything: appreciation, validation, love, success, money, health, purpose, value, admiration, friendship, shelter, security, adventure, freedom, peace, beauty, comfort, luxury, honor, results... I want enlightenment. I want awakening moments, glimpses of infinity. I want to feel this big love that is all one. I can see the irony and paradox in this. the ego wants to see that it is part of god. but as long as there is ego, no such thing is gonna happen. I can see the conflict there, from an intellectual standpoint. but I can't help it. I can't deny my desires. I want all those things. frustration arises. but as I don't resist it, something else awakens too: amusement. it truly is paradoxical. it's so deceptive, it's a piece of art. who is the genius who invented this stuff? it's an ingenious method to keep an illusion alive. incredible why do I want all that? I think it's a self worth issue. I sometimes feel worthless and meaningless. in order to feel worthy, I need all those things (love, validation, success...the whole package really) I feel like I am nothing without those things. I feel empty and small. insignificant. maybe it's time to ponder in that emptiness, meaninglessness, worthlessness, insignificance. maybe it's time to face this hole in me, which I constantly need to fill. it's time to dive into the nothingness I've always tried to run away from or cover with achieving my wants. what resists, persists. how do I face all that?

I just found one of the coolest web-apps ever. Cube.gif is an experiment visualizing gifs as 3D cubes by encoding animation time as another spatial dimension. We can then slice the gif cube using a plane, projecting the data back into two dimensions and producing images that capture multiple frames of the original animation. Using the app kind of helps me visualize higher levels of reality. Mainly, it helps me see reality as one frozen block of absolutely infinite conscious potential. So take this 3d gif block and then add sounds, tastes, touches, thoughts, emotions. Then instead of imagining a 2d gif getting played back, make it 3d. This by the way, is how Einstein thought up general relativity. For, the way a line is an infinite series of 0 dimensional points smoothed together, the way a square is an infinite series of 1 dimensional lines smoothed together, the way a cube is an infinite series of 2 dimensional squares smoothed together, the 4d is an infinite series of cubes smoothed together. Notice how by moving the plane in a certain direction, 'movement' appears in the block. Anyway, our soul is itself that which penetrates the block using a form of existence known as the now - a made up plane to help us see things "moving" frame by frame. We make up and are time as a way to experience and manipulate the world. Depending on the angle that you penetrate the block you would have a totally different experience - one of Me, one of you, one of George W. Bush, etc. That would literally be the only difference - the perceived angle of the space-time penetration. Apart from that, it is exactly the same being penetrating the universe. To anchor in a certain plane of perspective, a brain or other nervous system might be used. In this way the brain would not be a generator of the block, just an anchor for a plane to cut through the block. Now make shit a little crazier. Instead of having a frozen block with everything determined already, instead take the block and add different timelines of potential. Infinite choices at any point, where the block can split off. Imagine so many choices that every possibility gets exhausted. So much so, that the terms predetermined vs at random are useless because literally every possibility gets realized at least once. Then imagine the aforementioned plane of existence going through one angle, then another, realizing every single possibility. Each time the plane goes through, the block "disappears" - its back to nothingness before going through another go around to figure out the block. The plane would forget entirely about the previous experience before returning again. That is, every time the plane passes through, it would have no recollection of its previous go around. No plane penetration, no block. This is our infinite soul. It's the perceiver (the plane), the perception (the slicing), and all the infinite configurations of the perceived. The plane would pass over everything you see. The thing that you are encompasses everything and everyone you see. The plane would not be able to exist without the block either, by the way. For without penetration of the block, it would have nothing to perceive, including itself. I hope you can now begin to have a small little window into the craziness of the meaning behind total non distinction. An absolutely infinite block of every possible percept pasted together - its useless to describe unless you come up with some type of little window to describe it. And that's what we are, a little window to describe it.

Spirit guide meditation: I am not sure what really came spontaneously and what I only made up (maybe it's all just the same?) (maybe everything comes spontaneously from nothingness and we just think we made it up ourselves?) however, the spirit guide gave me money. I don't really know what that means. Do I feel lack? do I feel financially insecure? I don't think so. I feel financially dependent. for sure Maybe I am still attached to materialism far too much for a spiritual and minimalist life style. for sure. But I am working on both problems. maybe my spirit guide just wanted to remind me. I had a lucid dream, my second so far. It again, just happened without forcing it. In the middle of my dream (it was an intimate dream about my ex..) I realized I was dreaming. I stayed relaxed, cool and just surrendered to the sensations. A man came with the intuition to kill me (for some reason, I just knew that, but I was not afraid, I stayed cool). there was another man, a bodyguard who shocked him with a teaser. later during my dream, I remembered, that all characters of the dreams are actually me. this is a great opportunity to get to know myself, to talk actively to my subconscious mind. so I went talking to the man who had wanted to kill me and asked him why. fuck, I don't remember his answer. then I went talking to the bodyguard. I don't remember that conversation either. what a shame. but a good experience nonetheless.

Hey Guys, So if God is infinite, literally infinite, that means that every single scenario, even the most absurd and illogical, exist somewhere? Like for example the Pokemon world exist somewhere in "another" dimension from this one? And the Christian hell too? So reality is literally like Rick e Morty depicture it? with infinite dimensions like one where I'm writing here, another where I'm not, one where a meteor falls on me where I'm writing this and one where without a proper reason the ananas near to me explode and kill me? one where I'm literally simultaneously in hell and in heaven? All this LITERALLY exist? Personally my answer would be more yes than no: our premises and criteria for judging something absurd and weird comes from the only things we know, what we think it's normal etc... but if you for example look closely at your hands aren't they the weirdest thing ever? they are like a super mega precise incorporate tools that our weird body have and that we can control even the slightest millimetre movement of our finger; and generally speaking are super weird looking: we can kinda say that they are like a earth star fish with some kind of shells that and are filled with millions of little tubes that carries red stuff that contains micro part of a banana to make the hand work. And this literally applies to everything: just to the same thing I did with your body, with a chair, with trees, cats, hairs, mountains, planets, emotions, amusement, sex, laughter, you're face, bread, floor, sky, shoes, language etc... and for fuck sake think about bananas or whales, you can't argue with those. Immagine what would be like to see a human for the first time. Wouldn't that be weird as fuck? (if you still don't have watched this movie do it, a part from the fact that it's really a beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful ridiculously fucking amazing movie, his way of -literally- thinking about enlightenment it's genius; personally I think it's one of the most far sighting movie that we have). So yeah, my answer would be a yes. However I know this maybe would be considered the worst thing actualized.org could have said because it's not directly related to personal development and spirituality but more related to how literally the universe is, aka it would mean a scientific statement with not really enough proof other that: God is infinite therefore everything literally exist. (I mean there many be other arguments like: if we could think about the concept of infinite and found in nature some phenomena that are infinite like fractals; why therefore infinite would not be a characteristic of the universe?). So yeah, again my answer for now tend to be more a "yes" (not a radical yes, because you don't know until you know, ya know ?) and I would like to have the point of view of a truly enlightened guy and/or Leo's point of view on that question so that it would be easier to me to move with my big picture understanding of the universe. Anyway if this new rational prospective to see the universe could help us to open ourself up to the "sensation" and "existence" of absolute infinite showing us how "physical matter" is paradoxically really near to characteristic like infinite and nothingness, it it doesn't really help our spiritual work. It's an "upgrade" on our web of belief, of theory; our beliefs would be more aligned with reality, but of course they are not reality, the map is not the territory, so yeah, again a big meditation retreat or psychedelics would be more "meaningful" because it would lead you to actually "feel" having a natural insight of this by experiencing it. So yeah, just a little reminder. Thanks _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Here are some other "literally" infinte stuff fractals: this shit can go on to the end of time. In the end it's just one. But a literally a one.

I see, hear, smell, taste, sense. but I am not a sight, sound, smell, taste or touch. that's quite clear to me. I think and I feel. That's what I usually identify with: my thoughts, especially my inner voice and my feelings/emotions. for the most part in daily life I'm completely immersed. sometimes I get more aware and realize that I am not any of them. I get those small moments of -wtf, wait. I can hear my inner voice talking and talking. I can see my mind firing thought after thought. I can feel my emotional body sending sensations all over me. I perceive all of that, I am not it.- those moments are gradually becoming more frequent. when I meditate or do consciousness work, I can see my thoughts, hear my inner voice and feel my emotions. I am not them. I am the one perceiving them. But I can't grasp where/who this perceiver is. I know that's the point. I know there is no one to grasp. I know it on an intellectual/rational level. I still have to feel it. But I want to, I want to feel that nothingness in my bones...

I wrote a poem regarding my current perceptions. Does anyone else here write poetry, that they would like to share? Well, here is mine : Sound selective surrender Slipping through smiles and hellos 5 lifetimes of interactions, moments, openings, closings, death by betrayal And then what follows.. Old, Ancient eyes watching.. lingering apathetic acceptance swallowing eagerness of new welcomings, of new reachings , swallowing notions of unique endings, swallowing … So predictable , the patterns of the ego and it’s grasping So inertia sets in… And so soon does death come, that entering into the nothingness that is the only constant, that place behind silent and black Here, where no one matters where no thing exists. The incomprehensibility that no mind comprehends The unlimited potential before birthing before deaths And arising, Maya the veil behind which Truth exists, the veil behind which those who Know Be, Behind the projected perceptions thrown like nets over the clear opening to the void. When terrifying surrender is the only way forward to complete obliteration, Of Separation, Of Self. The only authenticity. But, resistance appears, because warriors barely exist anymore And a battlefield arises Weapons and methods, tactics and strategies War. But, there are spiraling galaxies spinning through emptiness still, There are stars exploding And babies being born There is union And Absolute Infinity. Despite it all. What greater joy is there than potential? Bliss. B.Clear

Day 55 Days in a row: 9 Start time: 7:35 p.m. Finish time: 7:55 p.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Leo's Guided Meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: Today when I woke up I didn't feel like doing yoga and meditation, as I usually do, but I didn't want not to do it, so I just stayed lying on my bed for a long time, reading tweets. It got really late, and then I already had things to do instead of doing yoga and meditating, so I just skipped it. When my house finally calmed down (some workers were here repairing the floor) I decided to meditate already. I went out to the balcony, and closed my eyes. During the guided meditation the mosquitos (of which we have PLENTY in here) ate me alive. I could feel them biting me deeply, but I didn't move, I managed to just accept it as part of reality. It was funny how more or less at the end my arm suddenly moved the way the muscles of some animals move unconsciously, precisely to avoid insects biting them. Well the same happened to my left arm when I felt a mosquito starting to bite me again, I felt like a horse. At a short moment I forgot exactly where I had sat down, so I felt as if I was floating in nothingness. I may start looking for meditation spots that I don't identify very well to recreate that feeling of the world outside disappearing.

What is with people here? One of the key guidelines to advising is knowing what it's like to not know what you know. Imagine not knowing anything about personal development. Nothing about meditation. Nothing about mindset. Nothing about discipline. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Then you get odd ideas like, "You are the universe." "In a deeper level, you know everything." "Your ego is just making you think you are superior or inferior when actually everyone is equal." You'd think, "The fuck. What is this mambo jumbo bullshit?" Even if you knew some background into this and was open — new information you find isn't going to help you much. This is the kind of stuff that makes people so skeptical of ideas like spirituality. It's too vague. Dig up some examples. Sprinkle some analogies. Throw in some methods to realize this. Chop up their worldviews with arguments. Splash in some quotes from someone who explains it with more quality. Muse on a damn story. Draw a line around the boundaries with a definition. Anything other than a sentence with barely enough explanation. The ideal is to have people know something both in an abstract level as well as a concrete level. I'm not telling you that you have to do this. Everyone has a different style of advising and you're free to do what you want — I'm just suggesting another perspective. If you have any objections or criticisms, feel free to tell me. Which means : Abstract level." It allows an understanding of the theory. 1. Plan English. "Enlightenment is oneness without being similar." It provides a direct to the point statement when needed. Useful for clearing up misunderstandings. But many people overuse this to the point of being too vague. 2. Analogies allow some deeper understanding of the theory. "Enlightenment is like a carpet. It has different shapes and colors inside it but they are all part of the same carpet." 3. Definitions. "Enlightenment is nothingness. Not the nothingness of pure black. Or something empty. It's not the word or the idea of nothingness. It's just nothingness." It allows a more precise understanding of what we're talking about here. Some people talk about the same words but not the same ideas. Concrete level It allows understanding of the practical side of this. 1. Examples allow you to see the idea in everyday life. "Look at a book. When you remove the ideas around it — its history, your memories, what the use of a book is, its cultural ideas and your ideas of what to do with it in the future. Remove that. Just see the book with pure seeing." 2. Methods. Needed for obvious reasons. Something like Leo's Practical Guide to Enlightenment on the Meditation forum. If I remember correctly, it goes like this, "Who are you?" "Who are you?" "No — who the fuck are you?!" The different questions are the methods. He also provides some tips arnd warnings. 3. Stories. This provides some emotional influence with the reader. What's more inspiring and motivating? A scientific study on growth mindset? Or a story about a man struck in poverty and finding the hope to make a living for his family? Objective information allows for the right decisions, but feelings are what motivates to go towards these decisions. ----- I based it from this. https://betterexplained.com/articles/adept-method/ Yes, it's for math. ADEPT technique. Analogies. Diagram. Example. Plain English. Technical. Somewhere sooner or later as a STEM student, I realized this could also be used for science concepts that didn't use math. Then I realized it could be used for ideas like history or politics. One day I thought it could be used to understand and teach personal development. Just change the technical to not the mathematical definiton or equation to a definiton about the life concept. And change the diagram of it to a life advice context picture. And boom. Eureka!

Naturally, we do know things and happenings exist because it can be known and felt by our senses. And our minds interpret event or happening as a condition that one has to go through, to persevere with, to soldier on with, to carry on with or to undertake with, inevitably. In other words, what exists is defined as that which can be known. If it cannot be known by the mind consciousness, then it does not exist and things can exist as in fallacy or in reality. Since things and happenings existed long before we have a slightest opportunity to recognise and understand it well, we are bound to suffer (bear with) ignorantly. However, as human beings, we have the wisdom to make recognition on the entire cycle of events or happenings in Mother Nature. In the realm of subject-object duality, our mind consciousness could observe the fluctuating vibrational frequencies arising because everything in the material Universe is made up of energy. Atoms and molecules are made up of energy. Our bodies, our clothes, our cars, our houses are all made up of energy but what makes them different is their vibration. Energy is always vibrating at a different frequency under the influence of conditional phenomena. In other words, energy is the underlying element that exists everywhere within Mother Nature because every single thing or happening would involve with it, without exception. In fact, energy is an expression that emptiness exists. When one sees into energy, one sees into emptiness; when one sees into emptiness, one sees into energy. This is the rationale for the saying, ‘Form is Emptiness.’ The principle in effect: seeing into form is seeing into matter, seeing into matter is seeing into energy and seeing into energy is seeing into emptiness. At the same time, emptiness is a necessary prerequisite for any objects to exist; without it, the object would be impossible and this hypothesis attributes to the saying, ‘Emptiness is Form.’ When we examine into Mother Nature, its intricacy is negated, what is left is emptiness that is portrayed as in a uniformed translational motion i.e. a bare becoming process. When the two opposing translational forces clash against one another, vibrational forces arise concurrently. The arised vibrational forces would appear in a regular pattern of waves i.e. standing and traveling and this in turn would give rise to deflective forces. The traveling waves would involve with higher vibrational frequencies and the standing waves would involve with lower vibrational frequencies. Subsequently, the conditions of duality and multiplicity would arise out of the combination of deflective, translational, vibrational and rotational forces as the becoming processes moved into an advanced level of complexity. And only when there is a balanced circumstance, there is a chance for the integrating process i.e. under a balanced phenomenon, one could witness shapes or forms arising; under an imbalanced phenomenon, one could witness no shapes or forms arising - and the cycle of conditional phenomena continues endlessly. This scenario can be portrayed in the cycle of dependent origination shown as below: - Balance leads to stability. Stability leads to aggregation. Aggregation leads to agitation. Agitation leads to information. Information leads to knowledge. Knowledge leads to representation. Representation leads to memory. Memory leads to compulsion. Compulsion leads to ignorance. Ignorance leads to blindness. Blindness leads to disorientation. Disorientation leads to confusion. Confusion leads to irrationality. Irrationality leads to impulse. Impulse leads to sparkling. Sparkling leads to inkling. Inkling leads to volition. Volition leads to awareness. Awareness leads to consciousness. Consciousness leads to mind and body. Mind and body lead to sensation. Sensation leads to six sense bases. Six sense bases lead to conductivity. Conductivity leads to contact. Contact leads to stimulation. Stimulation leads to feeling. Feeling leads to experience. Experience leads to craving. Craving leads to grasping. Grasping leads to clinging. Clinging leads to unsettling. Unsettling leads to becoming. Becoming leads to creation. Creation leads to birth. Birth leads to energising. Energising leads to mobility. Mobility leads to hauling. Hauling leads to aging. Aging leads to draining. Draining leads to death. Death leads to fragility. Fragility leads to segregation. Segregation leads to diffusion. Diffusion leads to imbalance. Imbalance leads to adjustment. Adjustment leads to alignment. Alignment leads to new balance. As depicted above, the elements of awareness would begin to discern some simple varying frequencies that consecutively give rise to consciousness - that basically arises out of awareness. This is the soul thing that we talk about all the time. Consciousness would then progress and expand into a manipulative typecast i.e. mind or also known as consciousness in individuality. Therefore, soul is referring to a blueprint of endless evolving mind consciousnesses. Such a blueprint would serve as a steering wheel and is often mistakenly deemed as a permanent entity. In fact, soul is dependent arising and anything that is dependent arising would involve change and therefore, it cannot inherently exist in Mother Nature. In summary, we could mention that firstly there is the arising of preliminary awareness, and then there is the arising of consciousness-cum-intermediary awareness, thereafter the arising of consciousness-cum-advanced awareness, and lastly the arising of ultimate or full awareness. This means every existence would contain with the elements of awareness that is known as the seeds of emptiness. And when we talk about seeing into emptiness, we talk about the progressive realisation of the mind on the reality of things. Therefore, emptiness can be realised into stages as below: - Stages of Enlightenment Stage 1 Elementary Realisation · All things and phenomena are lack of core essence. · Nothing is unchanging and permanent. · Everything is inter-related. Stage 2 Intermediary Realisation · Ability to differentiate the way things are perceived to exist and the way things really exist. · Only seeing without believing. Stage 3 Advanced Realisation · No dualism of the subject and object, and no appearance of multiplicity. · All things and phenomena rise and fall within a singular condition. · Only uniformity exists. Stage 4 Ultimate Realisation · All dependent arising are completely blown off or extinguished. · No string attached, and nothing is left remaining. · Infinite, unchanging, permanent, and unconditional. · Exists beyond all conventional phenomena. The ultimate realisation of emptiness would mean a phase of perfect intermediation being accomplished by the mind consciousness (a.k.a. full enlightenment). A perfect intermediation would mean a comprehensive absence of any or all units under consideration. It is also known as a complete neutralisation of conditional phenomena. But an absence of any or all units under consideration is not equivalent to nothingness of any or all units under consideration. Therefore, absence is not about nothingness but instead it is about no-thing-ness. No thing means no becoming or no changing. No changing means no suffering. No suffering means no mind. Mind is the forerunner of all states. No mind means a completely neutralised state of affairs - that is nibbāna. The state of nibbāna is inexplicable in conventional terms but still, it can be tasted by the enlightened ones during deep meditation. At the end of the day, the cyclic processes of so-called seed and fruit would continue ad infinitum until upon uprooting ignorance from the mind consciousness. This is the ceasing moment of rebirth i.e. the evolving consciousness or stream of consciousness of a person in Mother Nature.

Hello there! This is kind of a long post, but I thought it could serve as an inspiration and maybe a clarification of certain nondual aspects to others on the path. Feel free to disagree with and/or correct me. Sorry if it's lengthy at times or a bit repetitive, I wrote a lot of it for myself and some things came up as I was writing and I was curious to see where they were going. It helped me to clarify some things for myself. It gets a bit preachy at times, but again, that is just me reminding myself of what I need to be aware of. Anyway, here it is! A couple of weeks ago I was at an Enlightenment Intensive 3 day Retreat. And I had enlightenment experiences every day for three days!!! Were they the deepest most profound enlightenments possible? Definitely not. Am I enlightened now? Not even close. But my spiritual game has gotten seriously transformed and is now much more on a heart level, in a lot of ways my seeking has ended. Before my spiritual practice was to attain something, to explore and try to figure things out, I was seeking out of curiosity to discover what the hell this god-thing was all about. What I now feel is that my spiritual goal is that I want to serve the Truth. I want to be a vehicle for Truth. I want to allow myself to be the expression of Truth. To live in the presence of the Lord, as close as I possibly can, from moment to moment. Not out of curiosity or a sense of wanting to be superior, but out of love, out of the recognition that Truth is what is real and that Truth is the only thing that truly matters. I want to describe my experience as well as I can but I will leave certain things out to make it more anonymous. First off, if you don't know what an Enlightenment Intensive is, it's an adapted Zen practice turned into a retreat where you sit in so called Dyad-contemplations with other participants. Two and two you give each other a question (Tell me who you are) to contemplate, and the contemplation takes place in a certain specific way that they teach you there, and every five minutes you take turns to switch who gets to contemplate. This goes on NONSTOP (more or less) for 3 days (or more, on longer retreats) and allows for very intense concentration and emotional releases and insights. The first experience, Day 1 So anyway, at the end of day 1, I was in a Dyad, and at this point of the day I was pretty bored and exhausted. I had been going on the entire day without much happening, just an uncomfortable feeling in my legs and in my back from all the sitting, and a tired feeling in my brain from the constant having to focus. I knew that all I could was to continue doing the technique. A thing I need to mention about the technique here is that at the end of it you just open and allow for anything to arise in the present moment. After you've done this for a while, you communicate to your partner as accurately as possible what your experience is, no matter how mundane, uncomfortable, embarassing etc it might be to say it. So this is what I'm doing. I'm opening, nothing's happening, and I feel that I just need to keep it up. So I communicate that to my partner in the following way: "I can only be here and now." (Said in a tired manner, as in: "nothing's happening, just gotta keep it up I guess, just gotta keep doing this boring thing") But as I hear myself saying the words "I can only be here and now" something happens, and an addition that I didn't expect comes right along. The voice saying it sounds very triumphant: "Where else would I be?" And then I just start laughing. A lot. I know I am here. I know I am. There's nowhere else to be and this is TRUTH, its obviousness is unquestionable and therefore it doesn't even seem like a breakthrough, it's just fucking obvious. Where else would I be? Am I an idiot? Of course I'm right here! At the time, I felt something was definitely happening, but I didn't think I was having a direct experience. Soon after it had happened, the bell rang and the dyad was over. I had to go out for a walking contemplation for a while and I felt it messed with my flow. "If only the bell hadn't rung, I was so close!" Is what I thought. I was walking in a field and heard myself laugh. Not my usual laugh, it was much more lighthearted, much more liberated. I've only heard myself laugh like that on mushrooms. Everything was beautiful; the moon, the sky and the trees, but it soon faded, and I was back. Sigh. The second time, Day 2 The next day during the mid-day break, I spoke to the master of the retreat about my experience. S/he asked me exactly what I had thought and felt at the time it was happening, and as I communicated it to him/her, it happened again! It hit me with full force and I started laughing a lot once more. So silly of me to come all this way to the retreat (I'd travelled from another country), to do all this meditation, to read all these books, just because I didn't get that I'm RIGHT HERE. I was surprised and unsure about this. It was nothing like I had imagined it to be. I had all these ideas and words I was measuring my experience against floating around in my head, but it wasn't like any of those. The best way that I can describe my direct experience is that it was completely transparent. NOTHING changed. I just saw everything for exactly what it was. And I saw that it was REAL. I didn't know what to make of it. S/he asked me if I was disappointed. I said that I didn't know, that I was unsure, that I thought there was more. S/he said that there was a lot more, but that the way that I was beaming and the way I described it made him/her pretty sure that it was a direct experience. This happened during the resting period of the day so I had about an hour to think about what had happened. I couldn't possibly go to sleep, I had to make sense of this. I had been expecting TRANSCENDENCE, NOTHINGNESS, EMPTINESS. EGODEATH! Something scary and mystical. But what I experienced was the opposite. IMMERSION. MERGING WITH REALITY. FULLY EXPERIENCING LIFE. BEING! It hit me right in the face. I'd been so obsessed with finding something beyond the senses, something beyond reality, that I'd totally ignored the present moment! Always! Ignoring it to the extent that I have a fucking enlightenment experience and I don't even acknowledge it! I saw how I'm always doing this. As soon as I get something, it's somehow not good enough anymore, anything within my reach is not what I want. Anything real is not what I want. What suffering! What a way to doom oneself into eternal misery! Such incredible ignorance, such foolishness, absurdity beyond comprehension! I started crying. How could I have been so cruel to myself? My entire life! I had always denied what was real. But now I had found out that I MYSELF WAS the essence of reality! I couldn't do anything but cry. You have to be grateful for what is. I have to be grateful for what is. Why? Because that's all there is! Because there can't be more than what is! Stop looking for anything more than what is. I repeat, please understand, it is a LAW that there can't be more than what is! If there could be more than what is then THAT would be part of what is, and there would still be nothing to look for outside what is. What is = What is What is ≠ What isn't This is just silly. It's so obvious. But that's enlightenment for ya. We're so unconscious that we don't know the difference between what is and what isn't, and how we suffer for it. Realizing that made me weep so much. And laugh. Weeping and laughing took turns, sometimes with pauses of beautiful tranquility in between. After a while a thought occured. "I'm so happy that I've realized this." But see, even this was suffering, as I saw immediately. How silly of me, to be happy because of something. These were the words that came to me: "Why be happy because of anything?" And I laughed a lot again. It wasn't a depressive thought, not at all. It was beautiful truth. How silly, even moronic, to take a moment in life and turn it into a trophy, to value it and cling to it and make something out of it that it is not and that it doesn't need to be. A memory, a medal, a prize. You don't need to hold on to anything to be happy, you need to let go! All conditional happiness is suffering! OBVIOUSLY, yet again, and STILL we make the same old mistakes. You don't need to perceive yourself as "somebody who got the necessary insight" in order to BE the wisdom. You ARE THE WISDOM. Always. Day 2, second experience of the day I was in a Dyad later in the afternoon and a lot of embarassing uncomfortable feelings, fears, desires and fantasies were coming up for me. It made me very anxious to communicate them to my partner but we'd just been given a talk about not holding back no matter what the content was and I was totally dedicated to surrender into Truth. After all I had experienced, I just wanted to prove myself worthy to Truth so I could experience it again. It wasn't easy though. I communicated things I've hardly admitted to myself. Things I've never said, and would never say, to any of my closest friends, to my wife, to ANYONE. Things I feel tremendous guilt about. Things that almost makes me hate myself. I felt I was interacting with Truth, showing it I was ready to give up all my barriers for it, all of my defences, all of my dignity. Suddenly the whole process changed and I saw it in another light. I thought: "must I go on like this, forever? Must I rabble my entire list of uncomfortable awkward confessions before I'm allowed some sort of experience?" Then I realized that "of course not! I'm saying what I'm saying because I WANT to say it! The resistance I feel towards saying it is actually a fear of having the desire to tell the truth, but it is NOT not wanting to tell the truth." I'd never seen this before, what an insight! Resistance is not true, it's just me lying to myself about not wanting something that I secretly do want! I had to communicate it to my partner. This is what I said: "It's like I have to prove myself worthy to Truth by revealing all my secrets. But then I realize that I WANT to say these things... And then it's like truth said to me:..." And as I finished my sentence, I BECAME Truth. (But actually, I didn't become Truth, because then and there I had ALWAYS been it) The following words that I spoke, the reply that I got from Truth, was: (In an almost bored tone, like it was nothing) "Well if you want to you can just BE IT." And in that moment I was Truth. In the state of Truth, everything is obvious and self evident and lacks beginning or end. It made me realize something about the interconnectedness between our free will, Truth, and God. We ALWAYS have the power to choose. We just choose something that isn't in alignment with Truth most of the time. Almost all of the time. Because of our ignorance. Martin Ball talks about this. Bashar talks about this. Fundamentally, I, Truth, and God, are the same thing. It made me understand holism on an entirely new level. A meditation technique isn't just some intellectual thing, or something in the mind. Every moment, ALL of our faculties are interacting, and nothing is more important than the ALIGNMENT between our emotions, our thoughts, our expression, our truth, our reality, our words, our energy. It is all energy, it can all work together and open the gate to Truth. Alignment, wow, such a huge thing. Maybe the thing. It is not the words you say in themselves, it is how they align with everything else. This is how magic works, this is how reality works. I find it hard to put into words. Maybe something like this: To be truth, you need to open your energy. Opening your energy is achieved by honesty and openness on all levels of being. We're talking inner attitude, body posture, letting go of rigid beliefs, self acceptance, relaxing muscles, not getting distracted, not manipulating your words or anything in your experience. Not holding back on any negative emotions. Not holding back on any positive emotions, any sexual sensations or desires, or whatever. Not holding back at all, which is true surrender. It could be called holding forth, perhaps, the opposite of holding back. To hold forth is to serve your entire self on a silver platter for the universe to do whatever it wants with. And you don't need to worry AT ALL, because NOTHING WILL BE DONE TO YOU. Because what's there is just there! All the bad stuff that is done towards what is already there, is only done by YOU! You are the one who is hurting yourself by denying yourself, as soon as any aspect of you is accepted to be true, TRULY ACCEPTED, nothing else could ever harm it. So anyway, I was Truth, there was nothing else, and it was all completely obvious. I laughed a lot, the same whole hearted mushroom laugh, laughing to the beauty of the simple but powerful implications of the words: "well if you want to you can just be it". When I told the master about this experience later that day I said that: "Truth is always there. But it is up to my free will if I want to live in accordance with it or not". It really felt like even though I was Truth, Truth was also something external that I could communicate with. It was me and yet it was other, a beautiful paradox. It functioned according to laws, you could join it or struggle against it, because that is how reality is, and I saw that there was intelligence in truth, it was very lively, and willing to interact with you if you so wanted. This made me cry, how emotionally moving and magical to see that Truth is intelligent, vibrant and alive! I've found it to be really helpful to treat entheogens as teachers and guides, to ask the mushrooms questions and relate to them as entities. But now I'd done it with Truth itself, and completely sober at that! I had to weep a lot again. Day 3, last experience The last direct experience was very brief, but in some ways its message was the most beautiful. It happened during the most emotionally intense Dyad of the retreat for me, and even though I'd gotten a direct experience during it, I felt awful afterwards. I wanted to sink through the ground and disappear, I was so ashamed. I can't go into detail about why exactly, out of respect to the others on that Intensive and the person I was in the Dyad with, but it had to do with memories of how I had always been having a really easy time in school. I just got things quicker than most others and I've had to struggle much less in my life than my autistic brother, and there's this intense guilt I feel about that. Also, I always maintain an image of false humility, but deep down I think I'm absolutely superior, and I look down on everybody else. This humility-pretention that I always want to maintain was completely shattered in this Dyad and it made me sooo ashamed of myself. So anyway, there I am, totally ashamed, and I communicate the shame, and just like in the previous experiences on the Intensive, AS I'm communicating, I tap into Truth. I could sense my shame in my body. Exactly where it was. It had a golden, purplish, shimmering quality to if. And what I saw and communicated will be revealed soon, but first I must mention the quality and the delivery of the words, as they themselves, in written form, do not come close to the magnificence of the moment. The words came out in an extremely calm way, with a voice in complete, still ecstacy, like it was an ocean that was roaring with laughter just below its mirror-like surface, almost about to tremble the whole time, but never doing so. Discovering and slowly and carefully tasting one word at a time, not making any haste, and speaking the end of every sentence with impeccable certainty. The voice said: "I have shame. But that is okay. Because it is real. ... And nothing that is real need to be struggled against. ... And ... (What delight, as I knew what words would manifest!) EVERYTHING IS REAL." Thinking about this still makes me emotional. Nothing needs to be struggled against. Everything is, and what isn't, isn't. And that in itself is DIVINE, totally sublime. The eternal heavenly peace of God. After thoughts I was really puzzled by the fact that my experiences weren't at all like I was expecting them to be. But I had some insights regarding that shortly thereafter. Here is what I came up with: The experience of Truth is Truth. It is OBVIOUS. So obvious and self evident that it becomes transparent. You can't measure it against anything else, it's just there. It is not an experience of "ahaa, this is false, and this is false, and also this, and I can compare this state to this, and a little bit to that." NO! It is not like any one thing in particular. Or all the things. It just is what it is. When you are Truth, that realization doesn't come with a list of adjectives and descriptions that you need to think about or read through in order to understand what you already ARE. NO, that's what you do when you're asleep. When you're AWAKE, you just are what you are! The intellectualizing and rationalizing and descriptions and metaphors occurs when you COME BACK from your experience and try to make sense of it and communicate it to others. And the only way I can describe the Absolute, when I think about it, is the same way that all the books and masters already do, even though I think those descriptions led me astray quite a bit. It's not the absolute because it's big and grand, which is what I always thought. If you go looking for something huge and awesome you won't find it. Size is relative, even the biggest object in the universe is relative, it is not Absolute. The Absolute TRANSCENDS sizes. Absolutely. So it IS actually transcendent, in that sense. But that doesn't mean it's OUTSIDE of reality. It IS reality! Also: Truth doesn't change ANYTHING. I was doing some simple yoga and stretching on the third day and it was still really challenging and uncomfortable. Even shortly after a direct experience. Of course! Because that is what's true, that's where I am in my practice! Change is change, truth is what already is. If you want stuff to change, if you want to improve in a certain field, you have to work on THAT. Specifically. If you want to see stars and galaxies and beautiful mandalas and patterns, go look at them in a book or in a telescope, or take psychedelics. You can experience all kinds of things, they're there. But pursuing THOSE experiences or visions in PARTICULAR is very different from pursuing Truth. Truth isn't some other realm that is somehow better than the ordinary realm. Truth is what is, and a psychedelic experience may be a part of what is, but everything else is also a part of what is. You have to make the distinction between the two desires, the pursuit of some wild and sparkling hallucination and the pursuit of Truth. Do you want the room to collapse into pure space with galaxies and entities and sparkles and fairydust? That can be a genuine desire, I know it was for me. But the Truth is there regardless of what experiences you might have. Think about WHY you want the stars and sparkles. To prove something? To whom? And WHO is it that wants the stars and sparkles? Kind of a strange wish, really (Preaching to myself here...) I also realized that my sense of being here and now that I got in my direct experience WAS actually a sort of ego death, although it wasn't anywhere near as violent as that word implies. It was ego death in the sense that I was here and now REGARDLESS of Kazman(which is not my real name obviously). Regardless of where he is or what he's thinking or doing, I AM. That isn't some weird or mystical special I AMness, it's the very same one you're feeling right now. It just comes prior to all the things you do and think you are. Ken Wilber calls it Pure I Amness. Ego death doesn't mean that "okay, I'm not the mind or the body... I'm actually THAT piece of grass over THERE." No! That's ridiculous. You are nothing in particular, you just ARE. You may not be able to know it right now, because as you are now, your experience of having a body and an ego is completely intertwined with your sense of I am here. But one is not dependent on the other. It is not I Am because you are, it's just I Am. Period. God this sounds stupid. Also, it is HERE, regardless of location. Regardless of where Kazman is. Which is omnipresence. But when you get to experience Truth it doesn't feel like omnipresence, since it is here, and you are also here. But the thing is, it is here regardless of where you are, regardless of where it is, it's always here. Prior to location, it is Here. And I love it. I'm totally in love with it. One night by the end of the intensive I was standing in a field looking at the sky and the words that reflected what was in my heart the most, that I spoke out loud, were: "Father. I want to live serving you." It's my new life purpose! I don't know how to best embody it but I'll do my best. This is what I want to dedicate my life to. Surrendering into Truth. Because I see that things will just be more and more beautiful the fuller I am able to surrender. But how the fuck do I do that? I'm a 100% back now. Just as far away from it as always. But now I've seen that it's always there at least, regardless of whether I acknowledge it or not. But I want to keep acknowledging it, as good as I can! I want to become a powerful mystic! Now comes the process of building habits and infrastructure to support a more authentic spiritual life. A life of purification, devotion, service, work on myself, a life of love. It all has to be done out of love. And I have that love now. Although, which saddens me deeply, the normal state of l, the ego, has a tendency to make all of this stagnate veeery quickly. As I've been writing this, I've been painfully aware that the words are becoming more and more just that: words. I find myself thinking more about how to represent a concept in the way I'd like to see myself presenting it and less and less about communicating Truth. I've done my best not to write in a romantic language, but when i read through it, it all seems to be totally inaccurate and misrepresenting. It's scary and heartbreaking to see the ego fall right back into place. But regardless of whether I succeed with my life purpose or not, I know that a life of heartfelt dedication to surrender as fully into truth as I possibly can will be the best one, it is my life and I love it. Smaller Insights or Phrases There really isn't any difference between being open and allowing in the present moment and having an enlightenment experience. Because that is as close to your true nature you're ever gonna get. I have a lot of problems with relating authentically towards other, most of my energy goes into easing tension, making myself be liked, people pleasing, withholding negative emotions and stuff like that. I make things so goddamn complicated. The Truth is simple. REALLY fucking simple. I had a beautiful experience, by the very end of the intensive I was in a Dyad and witnessed another person have an enlightenment experience. It was so beautiful and we both cried a lot. It was almost nicer than getting one myself somehow. I feel truly priviledged to have been a part of that. I can't tell anything more specific about it to respect the other person but wow. I got overwhelmed at times during the intensive with all the flaws I found in my personality. "i'll never finish my personal development process" I thought. But then I realized that self perfection as a goal in itself is not the point. It's not like there's some ideal state you get to where you are the perfect human and you have to take all the steps to it before you can live the good real life. It's just a simple matter of not doing what isn't serving you. If you notice you're hurting yourself through your behaviour, you stop. Of course you have to be ridiculously conscious to see all the ways you hurt yourself but there you go. I use food to feel in control. Sometimes by eating exactly what I want when I want it and sometimes by setting up rules and avoiding eating those things. But both allowing and disallowing myself to eat certain things is control. Those mechanisms are sooo sneaky and hard to miss. You can say Namaste. And you can BE NAMASTE. I want to be as present as possible in my family life. Relating to other humans and all that comes with it is the most important part of life. I love humanness. There is no dark secret or impure desire of anybody that I can't sympathize with as long as it is being communicated honestly and authentically. It is misrepresentation and upholding a nice picture of oneself that I have a problem with. I want to be truth's BITCH. Entheogens = truth medicine. And the truth always SETS YOU STRAIGHT I'm very scared of the dark but I noticed that after the intensive, that was completely gone. It's back now, however. A nice part of going on a retreat instead of a psychedelic trip is that even though mushrooms may get you somewhere MUUUUCH quicker, it ends just as quickly. What I find good with the Intensive is that while it takes a lot longer to go deep, you don't fall right back afterwards. This gives you a golden opportunity to notice things in your everyday life to correct that you just wouldn't pickup otherwise. I still love entheogens though, but I've seen that it's kind of an instrumental love, and what I REALLY love is Truth (should be clear at this point) I want to be a vehicle for truth. A light in the dark. I don't wanna be talking the talk, I HAVE to be walking the walk! I don't want to be a voice in the dark telling the others that there are lamps somewhere. I NEED to BE the lamp, lighting shit up! Helping people see! No doubt about it! A little Poem: I thought I wanted something I thought I wanted everything Then I thought I wanted nothing Now I only want the absolute And it is neither of those (To clarify: It is not NOT one of those either. It is just no thing in particular) A certain pain is associated with being Kazman. It comes often with doing something from duty. Feeling obligated. Not being authentic Final words Of course my understanding and embodiment will just deepen as my life goes on, and I'm sure I'll change my mind and find errors in my descriptions that I've just given. Maybe I'll have completely opposite experiences in the future. I'll do my best to be open for anything. About a week after the intensive I got the chance to speak with a person I look up to a lot who is around 35 years ahead of me on the path. He was quite upset when he heard that there was something called an Enlightenment Intensive. He said all of these modern spiritual approaches, all the Eckhart Tolles and Moojis, can never produce enlightened beings, they just won't. And that one must not get hung up on experiences. And he is right in many ways, I totally agree with him. However, in my view, a few experiences can really help you sort things out so that your determination and faith on the path can be much stronger and grounded in something real instead of grounded in illusions and fantasies. I really recommend these kind of retreats, but make sure you do a lot more as well. 99,999% of the work has to be done in your ordinary state of consciousness, in your ordinary life, because that is where you always are and that is what is keeping you from truth. And that's kind of a big obstacle. Life. Is there anything larger? Yes. I see now that Truth is larger than life itself. Thanks for reading!

Exactly what I thought man! This was just a surface level experience. It did not feel like infinity. I did not expand into nothingness itself so to speak. Good to hear it's in the right direction, tho, thanks

@Nahm first, there is a difference between believing you are a soul and actually being a soul. Yes you can believe in a soul, spirit and all that, but it doesn't change anything, it only changes something when you are being it. You can't identify the soul in any perceivable way, and you can't identify awarness, being, or nothingness. So that is the True reality, because you can only be that. After you "identify" as a soul (being) ), it's the same as being enlightened because you can't identify the soul in any imaginable way, it's impossible, so that doesn't conflict with enlightenment at all. It's a lot better to come to a realization that you are a soul than to a realization that you don't exist at all, because if you then start believing that nobody exists you can become apathetic, which lowers the vibration of your being by a lot.

I might agree with you. It looks like I probably do. I'm talking about what Being and nothingness reference. But even that is a duality. Language is a duality. Rather than your "nothingness" -- I prefer "no-thing-ness." Nothingness sounds too much like a belief. No-thing-ness gets at the non-dual aspect of Being better than nothingness does. This is my preference of course, not the absolute truth. Belief is not reducible to thought or to duality. Even saying "Being is One" is a duality. Oneness implies a duality, it implies a not-oneness. Once the Mind-Matrix takes a slice with duality, even if it carves with the finesse of Bobby Flay, augmentation of Being is necessarily effected; fantasies are born.

Nothingness is beyond Being, my friend. And even beyond non-Being.

I have no memory of what I was before I was born. I never liked those pointings. I can only speculate that I was nothingness, since I have no memory, but where's the evidence