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There is free will. Right & wrong are opinions. You are depressed because you're choosing to think depressing thoughts. Thought, then feeling. Listen to something happy and you'll feel happy. Allow the momentum to build. Your problems as you describe them here stem from choosing to believe that you don't have free will. The fact that you chose to believe it should be your proof that you are doing the choosing. Often, people who trip balls until they are practically unconscious misinterpret their pending unconsciousness as a nothingness and derive that there is no free will because there is no 'them'. You typed that, so clearly there is a you. Clearly you chose to type it. If someone claims they experienced nothing, obviously they were still there to experience it, so it's not nothing. Relax. Do something you enjoy.

Do you really know that it doesn't? Where does this certainty of yours come from? Maybe you haven't uncovered enough of the world and yourself yet to see the conflict? We all have limitation and ignorance and then even more ignorance that we are blind to. Every person carries some degree of being blind to their own blindness and that also includes me of course. It's a reality and a responsibility I actively address and keep in consideration when making conclusions and feeling certainty about a thing. I've spent days tracking the chemical build-up of certainty in my body at times, noting down how it changes my experience of reality as it crosses thresholds and how to balance it out and lower it with other actions and energies. Maybe to you enlightenment is not an idea, maybe it's something more. I don't know what your definition of enlightenment is or what you've maybe experienced it to be. People have many different ideas about it, many of them flawed and overly extreme in my experience. To me it's a word, some people use to symbolize an idea of what they think might occur after some kind of change or realization. Now from what I can tell from your first post in this thread, you consider that change to include the realization that the "I" is a delusion. I do not agree that the "I" is a delusion along with other variations of oneness and nothingness and singularities. I see them carrying the flaw of corruption through reduction via over-simplicity and conflicting with multi-dimensionality. Personally, I am both "I" and "We" at the same time, superimposed, without rejecting or discarding that initial "I". With permeable boundaries between the "I" and "We" that limit the amount of communication and transposition to adhere to specific contexts within a moment. Those contexts being the balance and interaction of pattern and motion or matter and energy or chaos and order... there are many names for it, all with pros and cons. You may not agree and that's okay. I have no skin in the game, when it comes to how you choose to view reality within the self-contained world of yourself. Just like you have none for my world. I mean yea, there is in-congruence and a little conflict when those worlds communicate and compare perspectives, but there are worse things in the larger world to deal with.

Day 5: I just had two profoundly different experiences with the University I used to attend. The first experience was with a program called career connect. Woke up early no traffic heading to the Valley and finding parking easily then being driven to the place we were going to have the orientation. My favorite part of the whole thing wasn't exactly the orientation but, it was the ride there. Being in the shuttle going down the freeway and while others were talking to people I mostly sat there silent staring out the window and looking up at the clouds. It reminded me of simpler times when my parents would drive me places and I'd sit in the car just not saying anything and just staring out the window. Those were some of the fondest memories I'd had of my youth. The best of the best was looking out a planes window and just admiring a birds eye view. So as I sat there we arrived at our destination got to say hi to all the people working there and got to know the inner workings of the cruise line they worked for. I also had a really friendly chat with a person who worked there and we kind of got to know each other. I had no problem speaking and socializing. I shared with him stories about my travels and it related to the industry to since it was cruise ships and that's about hospitality. Then on the shuttle ride back I felt the same way just looking out the window and enjoying that view. Today on the other hand the experience wasn't exactly that great. I went to an alumni reunion and actually the first person I talked to was a really nice lady who I had a class with and I enjoyed that class because I got to express myself. The problem was though is that I dislike these socially awkward situations. That's how the whole thing felt like though one big socially awkward situation. In situations like that I kind of retreat into my own thoughts especially when there are people there that I hardly know. It had some good moments but, not exactly that many. I had expectations for the event but, all and all I came out of it disappointed. It was a story of other people although I wanted people to know my story and my story was that I didn't exactly have a kinship with academia or my University to begin with. So many people feel as though they have some kind of relationship with the place they graduated from. As for me I just felt kind of a sense of nothingness. I wasn't raised in the typical growing up way I just wanted to get out of anything that had to do with school ASAP and find some work. Unfortunately for me my upbringing didn't make me the most social person or the most successful because of how turbulent it was. This experience really fell flat because I figured I went through this horrendous traffic to get there, paid for the parking, and looked forward to it. At last when I finally got there just to feel socially awkward and weird in front of people who I kind of barely knew. I think to myself sometimes that I was so responsible as a young person. I may have not had the best social skills, I didn't exactly make that many friend, and I may have not gone the extra mile that many times in my life ON THE OTHER HAND I was responsible. I did what I was told when I was younger. I finished my assignments, I came early and on time to classes, I got my work finished on time and sometimes even ahead of schedule. I was also well behaved and didn't start any trouble. That's why I have such a personal struggle and a very deep vomit inducing disgust with the adult world or as some people like to call it the "real" world. This world consists of things called jobs and this is when it gets real ugly. Most of these "jobs" that you will be accepted in when you're old enough to have one will be things that don't feed your passion and make you feel like an automaton. The other thing is nothing is more subjective than "getting a job" you're just a piece of paper either an "application" a "resume" or a "resume with a cover letter". I think it's so impersonal and dehumanizing. No where on those papers does it show your personality, the struggles you went through, the kind of life you had, and the passion and potential you poses. Nope your life is reduced to a piece of paper that is no longer than a page. The human element is completely missing from the equation as well when all the jobs need to be applied to online and you can't just walk in and talk to someone. Anyway I used to write stuff like this in a private journal. I think though that hopefully the majority of people on this website are cognitively complex enough to appreciate my musing and philosophies on life. Although I on the other hand need to understand one thing and it was actually good that I took that UCLA trail for the Peers program about making friends. I remember when I told the counselor that I had a long winded conversation with someone about philosophy and life but, then she told me that gets boring and it's unsustainable. She told me that friends are made by talking about common interests and my interests are video games, science, technology, chemistry, politics, geography, and travelling. That's a good piece of advice when I go too far down the rabbit hole with these philosophical excursions with others and in my writing. I'm more than happy for the entire world to be exposed to my writings and philosophies and to contemplate them once in a while. I think that's what the world needs more of what do you think @Anna Konstantaki?

@Salaam What is connective tension in relation to consciousness? I am not following why the skills you are describing and enlightenment are mutually exclusive. I understand you think it's an idea, and a primitive one, but enlightenment is not an idea. It seems you enjoy parsing things out with precision and these ideas about oneness and nothingness seemingly take that away from you, but...it doesn't.

Enlightenment to me is a flawed and limited idealization created by people who are hurt and ignorant while being pushed by the pressure of their pain and their desire to escape it. I recognize those flaws in it's foundation and instead focus on my own conceptualizations. I focus on goldilocks zones, tension, harmony, synergy, balance, accessible potentiality, humanity, spirit, and multi-dimensionality that brings about real, physical change and is mirrored throughout the rest of the universe as a nested pattern of motion. For over 10 years now I've been working to expand my senses, slow down my perception of time, increase my tensile resiliency and map out by feel the movements, patterns, shifts, and transitions going on in my different layers of consciousness. This gives me an incredible amount of experience and information to compare against these people chasing enlightenment or describing whatever they attain or experience as enlightenment. None of them come close to the nuance, multi-dimensionality, and synergy of what I've experienced and see everyday in the world around me. Nor do they employ as rigorous and nuanced a system of guidance, grounding, and accountability. Oneness, nothingness, non-attachment are all limited and primitive in comparison at best and delusional or extreme with their iterations of "everything is an illusion" nonsense at worst. Why should I limit myself to oneness when I can choose superimposed multi-dimensionality? Why should I choose nothingness when it's a limited and extreme concept crafted by people who jump to conclusions about observations within their own mind before even developing the tools needed for nuanced observation in the first place? What they think is an experience of nothingness is in reality filled with so much shit going on at various speeds and scopes and they're completely blind to it. Why should I choose non-attachment, when I have freedom and harmony with connective tension which lets me consciously modulate the degrees and flavors of both attachment and non-attachment. That skill in and of itself makes Buddha look like a beginner jumping to false conclusions to me. Enlightenment is like checkers, as far as nuance, when I'm instead working on a chess level framework of reality. Which probably sounds arrogant, but the difference in complexity and potentiality bares true. Anyways, this Ralston guy is talking about honesty or authenticity in your clip. Authenticity in my experience is actually a fidelity of connection with your own inner chemistries. Protecting it from distortion which increases the level of synergy and automated reactivity between your intent and your output. My work within myself has reached such a particular synergy as to release certain limiters our body puts in place, which amplifies my feelings and their intensity. Long story short, lying makes me sick because I'm so sensitive and aware of my subconscious layers and have to protect them even more from my conscious decisions than the normal person. It's not a moral thing per se, or not just a moral thing, but a matter of health and protection of my connection with my spirit for me. Not just my health, but the health of all, because the only action I can ever truly categorize as evil is the corruption of trust. And when I talk about spirit, I'm talking about my tangible connection to the feeling of my spirit, which is modulated by the amount of meaning being derived from my actions and expressions. I can actually feel my spirit or soul, whenever I want, no matter how scarce a situation as long as I can overcome the resistance to initiating that action. Ah, so you're in prove it mode. You distrust me and see me as a threat or a danger to others, hiding behind anonymity? Even though you, yourself are posting anonymously as well. You think maybe, someone who makes these claims should be famous or exalted or already established right? He shouldn't be some normal dude writing on a forum just like anybody else? I'm not special and I'm my own kind of normal, which in contrast to other people's normal maybe sounds extraordinary. But, whatever. Lol, I can feel your prejudice, but I get it. I'm a challenge to beliefs you've already internalized and are currently defending. My Wife and I have a radio show and I've posted the link a couple times when people asked about it. You can see my name on there. I've got nothing to hide.

@Annetta THe one infinite creator (the ultimate nothingness/void, not the nothingness most refer to, that which cannot be experienced for it is beyond consciousness and experience) gave birth to infinite love/awareness, which was divided into "clumps" of light, which created the universe, galaxies, planets, and smaller and smaller units, allways dividing into smaller portions of consciousness/love/light/awareness. You are right now experiencing 3D expression of consciousness, which is purposefully imposed by limitations. Enlightenment = you merge with higher portion of yourself, you have always been that, only now it is allowed in your experience, so limitations such as time/suffering vanish, for you have outgrown them. But that is not the end. You as a consciousness have always more infinity to merge with, and to allow the one infinite to know itself on a completely unique new level. To explore more of the mystery that it is. With less limitations and more freedom every step of the way (all limitations being self-imposed, ulimately all is the Self, only you experience it in chunks) The chunks that you experience is what you would call soul/spirit/higher-self experiences "at a time". Ultimately you are the higher self, which has already merged with the whole universe, but right now its experiencing itself in time. In its childhood. This is projected into whatever experience it chooses, to explore a certain theme, and that is your life. Once you die veil of forgetfulness will be lifted. Once you die, unless you have completed the lessons you wished to experience and learn from, you will go "omfg I love it gotta go again" and you incarnate.

Well, you can disagree all you want. You can project how you think I feel all you want, and you can come to inaccurate conclusions about the meaning behind what I've said all you want. You can even mistake passion and intensity for anger all you want. That's all fine with me. I like swearing when I'm passionate about things. I even swear during sex Anger is what we feel when we want things to change. It's actually a pretty awesome feeling when it's harmonized to be honest. I'm deeply thankful and appreciative of it's place in my over-all mixture of feelings. Everything has a place, everything matters, and can be harmonized. Even anger. But anyways, enjoy yourself and just ignore me. I mean, you are a god whose already perfect and decides what's real right? And there is no difference and everything is an illusion and doesn't matter right? Until it does, but then that's just the ego fooling you, the ego that somehow exists even though everything is absolute nothingness and nothing matters right? Lol, it's all good man. You don't have to answer that or defend your beliefs to me. Even if it does look like a children's merry-go-round of cherry picking and logical inconsistencies. Just take my feelings as a challenge to re-dedicate yourself to whatever you feel is right. If you go far enough, you'll see what's the more successful and harmonized strategy eventually.

With enlightenment there is much to personal experience and that is subjectively attained understanding. Too often people think that because they had a personal enlightenment experience of understanding that matches what their teacher, if they have one, or others have had it makes it more credible. Even if a million "enlightened" seekers agree with what I have found in my own enlightenment revelation it doesn't make it any more "universally true" than if not one other agrees. When someone says "it is all one", that's personal revelation, when someone says "it is all nothingness" it's personal revelation, when it's said "there is no self" this is more personal revelation. When they say, "this is the way it is for everyone" so assenting a universal truth for all from their own personal revelation it is exercising a paradigm of limiting belief.

Consciousness came into existence out of nothing (and as far as enlightened people tell us, literally nothing) and goes into nothingness each time you are in deep sleep. If consciousness can come into existence once, it can do it as many times as it wants, can't it? In other words, if you were born once, there is no reason for you not to be born twice, or infinitely. I think the belief of eternal death is more of coming from the egoic possessing. "My consciousness! If I am dead, consciousness is dead!" From what it seems to me it's more like consciousness is the TV, and the life that is happening within it simply runs on it. Once it's over, another movie will take the place. Why wouldn't it? Ask yourself. Why are you you, why is "your" consciousness living that specific life, and not one of the trillions of others that exist or have existed? Would it make sense for consciousness to let one life appear within it, and then never again? How then, does it decide which life to choose? It's quite ironic if you think about. People who are alive seem to be convinced that if they die, consciousness dies. But then, people who are dead (ego-death) seem to be absolutely certain that consciousness is eternal. Maybe it requires death to see that.

@Dodoster i think pure consciousness is ethereal nothingness with intelligence. You are NOW spirit in the form of body/mind. However you are basically still pure consciousness as the true self. You can do whatever you want and be whatever you want to be. You don't have to struggle and suffer like others because you've awoken to your true nature. You don't have to worry about death, because that's a gateway to new things, new existences, new manifestations of spirit, similar to your human manifestation. You are in form as spirit because You got sick and tired of being formless and wanted to mix it up a little. Let's have fun in this Form and not take everything so damn seriously, folks!

My current understanding is that the Mind is not real, but the illusion of it is needed in order for life to be. Mind made by awareness just like the tail of the comet is made by the comet, but the comet is not actively creating the tail, it is just happening, and then the comet takes itself to be the the tail, because it doesn't see itself, but it sees what is behind it. Just what @zazed was talking about: The witness cannot see itself as an object, but here is where we differ since I've read and seen too much non-duality teachings of many masters who say the same story - awareness can sense it's own presence. It is not an object to be seen, it is the eternal subject, and the eternal subject is the only 'thing' that can be aware of the eternal subject - the mind cannot know infinity or nothingness, although it can talk about them. It can point to them.

What you are illustrating is the trap of the dualism mindset. To be able to create identity the ego constructs poles in the mind to orient itself. Which is why I laugh with an infinite laughter when people refer to nothingness, that's a mindset still trapped in dualism. I find that the same dualism mindset is revealed from the belief in the concept of true and false. Enlightenment is the process of illuminating, it begins in when we consciously make the effort to do so and can continue infinitely.

@Dodoster Let's clear some things up, the true nature of yourself and everything else is nothingness. It is that which doesn't die. It is silent. Without quality. Immortal. Because it is the only thing that exist it has nothing to limit it. So it is infinitely intelligent, and creative. So if your nothing what do you do you create a "experience" or being something its genuis. So you have your avatar that you currently inhabit. You need to be a player in order to play in the game. Your so hooked on negative & positive. And pecieve & relate everything to your survival and self. In till you have a deep enough enlightenment yourself may have many confusions and questions. They are all distractions from being. because the answers you seek come from a deeper reality that won't be found here.

Stop differentiating between mind and ego. It's the same. It's you (because you do very much identify yourself as a person(ego) inside a bag of skin). Mind. Ego. Person. Self. All words pointing to the same: the false self. It's false because it truly doesn't exist. It's just a phony sensation that you exist as such a self that makes it seem real. When people say Ronaldo has a big ego, the word is used in another context than in non-dualism. So you want your self killed. You don't have an ego. You are the fucking ego. "it seems like the ego within me wants me to die, or at least to be very unhealthy and unhappy. " "Why is it that my ego is programmed so to speak to want to hurt me?" Questions for you: 1. The ego within who exactly? You? Who are you? 2. Want to hurt who? Can you really be hurt? Only an ego can be hurt. You are that ego - or well, truth is you aren't, what you are is consciousness/nothingness/God pretending it's an ego - it's a fun game, everyone (consciousness in many forms) are playing it, some egos are aware they don't exist (i.e. that it's a game) and some (most egos, 99,99%+) are not aware and instead believe they were born as an ego and will die as an ego (ego= person/body/mind w/e).

If you could realize that you are simply peace in everyday life, then aloneness is just another passing emotion, just like a train passing by. Then, you could work on whatever it is that you're working on. The "ideas" are all coming from "you" aka nothingness, aka peace. We all have these talents coming from nothingness waiting for us to unravel them in some way, to contribute in some way. Maybe it's been there since childhood but you weren't fully aware of them till now.

Shaivism (Origin: India – Started: At least 2000 years BCE) Shaivism theology ranges from Shiva being the creator, preserver, destroyer to being the same as the Atman (self, soul) within oneself and every living being […] It is the Hindu tradition that most accepts ascetic life and emphasizes yoga, and like other Hindu traditions encourages an individual to discover and be one with Shiva within. God (Shiva) is within man, God is within every being, God is present everywhere in the world including all non-living beings, and there is no spiritual difference between life, matter, man and God. Zoroastrianism (Origin: India/Iran – Started : 2000 years BCE) There is only one God, the singularly creative and sustaining force of the Universe. In Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda is the beginning and the end, the creator of everything that can and cannot be seen, the Eternal, the Pure and the only Truth. Zoroastrianism's divinity covers both being and mind as immanent entities, it is better described as a belief in an immanent self-creating universe with consciousness as its special attribute. In Zoroastrianism, the purpose in life is to "be among those who renew the world...to make the world progress towards perfection". Its basic maxims include: Humata, Hukhta, Huvarshta, which mean: Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds. There is only one path and that is the path of Truth. Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, and then all beneficial rewards will come to you also. Jainism (Origin: India – Started: At least to the 6th century BCE) Jain texts reject the idea of a creator or destroyer God and postulate an eternal universe. Jainism has been described as a transtheistic religion, as it does not teach the dependency on any supreme being for enlightenment. The tirthankara is a guide and teacher who points the way to enlightenment, but the struggle for enlightenment is one's own. Jain texts propound that the universe was never created, nor will it ever cease to exist. It is independent and self-sufficient, and does not require any superior power to govern it. According to Jain belief, souls, intrinsically pure, possess the qualities of infinite knowledge, infinite perception, infinite bliss, and infinite energy in their ideal state. In reality, however, these qualities are found to be obstructed due to the soul's association with karmic matter. The ultimate goal in Jainism is the realization of reality For Jains, non-absolutism means maintaining open-mindedness. This includes the recognition of all perspectives and a humble respect for differences in beliefs. Jainism encourages its adherents to consider the views and beliefs of their rivals and opposing parties, including other religions. Buddhism (Origin : India – Started : Between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE) Early Buddhist canonical texts and early biographies of Buddha state that Gautama studied under Vedic teachers [...] learning meditation and ancient philosophies, particularly the concept of "nothingness, emptiness" from the former, and "what is neither seen nor unseen" from the latter. According to Buddhism there ultimately is no such thing as a self in any being or any essence in any thing. The nirvana state has been described in Buddhist texts partly in a manner similar to other Indian religions, as the state of complete liberation, enlightenment, highest happiness, bliss, fearlessness, freedom, permanence, non-dependent origination, unfathomable, indescribable. It has also been described in part differently, as a state of spiritual release marked by "emptiness" and realization of non-Self. This insight in the Mahayana tradition, states Shōhei Ichimura, has been the "insight of non-duality or the absence of reality in all things". Nirvana In the Buddhist context, nirvana refers to realization of non-self and emptiness, marking the end of rebirth by stilling the fires that keep the process of rebirth going. Bodhi (Enlightenment) It is the mind's natural and pure state, where no distinction is being made between a perceiving subject and perceived objects. Taoism (Origin : Chinese – Started: At least to the 4th century BCE) The Tao is a fundamental idea in most Chinese philosophical schools; in Taoism, however, it denotes the principle that is both the source, pattern and substance of everything that exists. Tao literally means [...] "the One, which is natural, spontaneous, eternal, nameless, and indescribable. It is at once the beginning of all things and the way in which all things pursue their course." It has variously been denoted as the "flow of the universe" […] The Tao also is something that individuals can find immanent in themselves. Human beings are seen as a microcosm of the universe […] As a consequence, it is believed that deeper understanding of the universe can be achieved by understanding oneself. Taoism rejects the Confucianist emphasis on rituals, hierarchical social order, and conventional morality, and favors naturalness, spontaneity, and individualism instead. Taoist ethics vary depending on the particular school, but in general tend to emphasize wu wei (effortless action), "naturalness", simplicity, spontaneity, and the Three Treasures: 慈 "compassion", 儉 "frugality", and 不敢為天下先 "humility" Neoplatonism (Origin: Athens – Started : 3rd century BCE) The work of Neoplatonic philosophy involved describing the derivation of the whole of reality from a single principle, "the One." Source, Absolute, or One is what all things spring from According to Plotinus, The One is not a conscious god with intent nor a godhead nor a conditioned existing entity of any kind, rather a requisite principle of totality which is also the source of ultimate wisdom. One must become "God" (henosis). This is reached through contemplation of the primeval Being, the One — in other words, through an ecstatic approach to it. Thought cannot attain to this, for thought reaches only to the nous, and it itself is a kind of motion. It is only in a state of perfect passivity and repose that the soul can recognise and touch the primaeval Being. Beginning with the contemplation of corporeal things in their multiplicity and harmony, it then retires upon itself and withdraws into the depths of its own being, rising thence to the nous, the world of ideas. But, even there, it does not find the Highest, the One; it still hears a voice saying, "not we have made ourselves". The last stage is reached when, in the highest tension and concentration, beholding in silence and utter forgetfulness of all things, it is able, as it were, to lose itself. Then it sees God, the foundation of life, the source of being, the origin of all good, the root of the soul. In that moment, it enjoys the highest indescribable bliss; it is, as it were, swallowed up by divinity, bathed in the light of eternity. Gnosticism (Origin : Jewish – Started : 1st century CE) In many Gnostic systems (and heresiologies), God is known as the Monad, the One. The Sethian hidden transcendent God is, by contrast, defined through negative theology: he is immovable, invisible, intangible, ineffable; commonly, "he" is seen as being hermaphroditic, a potent symbol for being, as it were, "all-containing". Christian Mysticism (Origin : Jewish – Started : 2nd century CE) Bernard McGinn defines Christian mysticism as: [T]hat part, or element, of Christian belief and practice that concerns the preparation for, the consciousness of, and the effect of [...] a direct and transformative presence of God. ...new ways of knowing and loving based on states of awareness in which God becomes present in our inner acts. Religion is based on a feeling of the infinite. Mysticism thus becomes seen as a personal matter of cultivating inner states of tranquility and equanimity "one of the immortal spirits waiting to introduce the reader to his own unique and intense experience of reality" The path of illumination, has to do with the activity of the Holy Spirit enlightening the mind, giving insights into truths not only explicit in scripture and the rest of the Christian tradition, but also those implicit in nature, not in the scientific sense, but rather in terms of an illumination of the "depth" aspects of reality and natural happenings, such that the working of God is perceived in all that one experiences. The awakening, the stage in which one begins to have some consciousness of absolute or divine reality. Dzogchen (Origin: Tibetan – Started: 8th century CE) Rigpa is a central concept in Dzogchen. It is "reflexively self-aware primordial wisdom,"which is self-reflexively aware of itself as unbounded wholeness. "In Gelug, the conscious experience is some level of blissful awareness of voidness." The Dzogchen meditation practices also include a series of exercises known as Semdzin (sems dzin), which literally means "to hold the mind" or "to fix mind." The practice of Trekchö […] In this practice one first identifies, and then sustains recognition of, one's own innately pure, empty awareness. Insight leads to nyamshag, "being present in the state of clarity and emptiness". Sufism (Origin : Islam – Started : 9th century CE) Haqiqa (which means « ultimate truth ») In Universal Sufism, Haqiqat is the "phase" in which the central ongoing question/concern of the seeker is subsistent (as opposed to transient) reality. The life of the seeker becomes a fathoming device in which what is timeless, formless, weightless etc, is recognized and valued above all. Entering into marifat in Universal Sufism, the seeker no longer asserts or defines anything […] Or better said, all conversation topics are of equal interest. The seeker's life is then, itself, revelation. Fakir In mystical usage, the word fakir refers to man's spiritual need for God, who alone is self-sufficient. "Faqir attains eternity by dissolving himself in oneness of Allah. He, when, eliminates his-self from other than Allah, his soul reaches to divinity." They were known as performers 'mad' in a worshiping trance of joy - transcending above both good and bad. [...] They believe the soul that lives in all human bodies is God. Kabbalah (Origin : Jewish – Started: 12th century CE) Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between an unchanging, eternal, and mysterious Ein Sof (infinity) and the mortal and finite universe (God's creation). The nature of the divine prompted kabbalists to envision two aspects to God: (a) God in essence, absolutely transcendent, unknowable, limitless Divine simplicity, and (b) God in manifestation, the revealed persona of God through which he creates and sustains and relates to mankind. Kabbalists speak of the first as Ein/Ayn Sof (אין סוף "the infinite/endless", literally "that which has no limits"). God's existence is higher than anything that this world can express, yet he includes all things of this world within his Divine reality in perfect unity, so that the Creation effected no change in him at all. Compassionate actions are often impossible without faith (Emunah), meaning to trust that God always supports compassionate actions even when God seems hidden. Ultimately, it is necessary to show compassion toward oneself too in order to share compassion toward others. Sikhism (Origin : India – Started : 15th century CE) Sikhism rejects claims that any particular religious tradition has a monopoly on Absolute Truth. Guru Nanak taught that living an "active, creative, and practical life" of "truthfulness, fidelity, self-control and purity" is above the metaphysical truth In Sikhism, the concept of "God" is Vāhigurū—is shapeless, timeless, and invisible "God" is omnipresent and infinite with power over everything "There is but one all-pervading spirit, and truth is its name! It exists in all creation; it does not fear; it does not hate; it is timeless and universal and self-existent, You will come to know it through seeking knowledge and learning! (meditation and self-inquiry)" Once truth starts to shine in a person's heart, the essence of current and past holy books of all religions is understood by the person. The goal of man, taught the Sikh Gurus, is to end all dualities of "self and other, I and not-I", attain the "attendant balance of separation-fusion, self-other, action-inaction, attachment-detachment, in the course of daily life". Transcendantalism (Origin: USA – Started: Early 19th century CE) Transcendentalists also believe that all people possess a piece of the "Over-soul" (God). Because the Over-soul is one, this unites all people as one being. Neo-Advaita (Origin : USA – Started : Mid 20th century CE) The basic practice of neo-Advaita is self-inquiry, via the question "Who am I?", or simply the direct recognition of the non-existence of the "I" or "ego." This recognition is taken to be equal to the Advaita Vedanta recognition of the identity of Atman and Brahman, or the recognition of the "Formless Self." Christian Science (Origin: England – Started: 19th century CE) In particular, adherents subscribe to a radical form of philosophical idealism, believing that reality is purely spiritual and the material world an illusion. Eddy saw humanity as an "idea of Mind" that is "perfect, eternal, unlimited, and reflects the divine," according to Bryan Wilson; what she called "mortal man" is simply humanity's distorted view of itself. Eddy viewed God not as a person, but as "All-in-all." "for God is one, Time is one, Individuality is one, and may be one of a series, one of many, as an individual man, individual horse; whereas God is one, not one of a series, but one alone and without an equal." The Infinite Way (Origin : US – Started : 20th century) The Infinite Way reveals the nature of God to be one infinite power, intelligence, and love; the nature of the individual being to be one with God's qualities and character, expressed in infinite forms and variety; and the nature of the discords of this world to be a misconception of God's expression of Himself in His universe." "'The Infinite Way' is not a religion... but an experience in spiritual living. New Age (Origin: Western countries – Started: Late 20th century) This intentional vagueness as to the nature of divinity also reflects the New Age idea that divinity cannot be comprehended by the human mind or language. There are nevertheless a number of traits that are repeatedly associated with divinity in New Age literature, the first of which is the idea that it is holistic, thus frequently being described with such terms as an "Ocean of Oneness", "Infinite Spirit", "Primal Stream", "One Essence", and "Universal Principle".A second common trait is the characterisation of divinity as "Mind", "Consciousness", and "Intelligence", while a third is the description of divinity as a form of "energy". A fourth trait is the characterisation of divinity as a "life force", the essence of which is creativity, while a fifth is the concept that divinity consists of love. The New Age worldview emphasises holism and the idea that everything in existence is intricately connected as part of a single whole, in doing so rejecting both the dualism of Judeo-Christian thought and the reductionism of Cartesian science. "Higher Self" which is a part of the human but which connects with the divine essence of the universe, and which can advise the human mind through intuition. Actualized.org (Origin: But Leo ... - Started: HEYYYYYYYYYYY)

Heres the mindfuck. The observer ONLY observes, it doesn't think, it has no opinions and it doesn't care. In a sense there is only "attention". When you think about a tomato, usually that thought comes and than 1 second later it gone. Unless you pay more attention to it. You could literally mentally masturbate days about a tomato (all your past experiences, how they taste, look, where they comes from, the farmer growing them etc). Most people don't do this with tomato's, but they do it with other thoughts. You don't really have control over everything that comes up in your mind when you think about tomato's, BUT you are/can fully in control the amount of attention you give it. Thoughts are thoughts, there is no difference between a tomato and a horrible memory in this sense. Ego is not something bad. You need ego and in a sense are ego. Everything you want is ego based. Without ego there is no point. You probably have heard the glasses example. You either believe you are the glasses or are aware that you are wearing them and seeing true them. My point is, yes its all the ego speaking, and that's fine. But it has no power nor control. Its a tool you use to live. At the moment you probably don't fully see this jet, and you see the ego coming, attach to it, and say, this is me and this is reality. The silence, emptiness, nothingness that remains when you are not having thoughts is the observer that cant be observed. Who you think you are remains nothing more then just a thought, a fantasy.

"Don't you think that forcing the mind to obey your desire is more ego fighting and in the long run it will produce an unwanted result (more monkey mind)" Well, the mind/ego = desiring being addicted to thoughts because they are oh-so-important (cos you think they define the essence of you). Enforcing your awareness on the most natural thing in this world: breathing, is in itself something the mind also desire. However it prioritize thoughts higher, so that it's not that focusing on breath in itself is not-desire (it is a desire), it's about focusing on breath INSTEAD of thoughts that's : NOT a desire (=pain) for the mind FOR SURE. But yet you have the ability to do it anyway. It's paradoxical , because 'forcing the mind to obey your desire' is pretty much equal to the sentence 'forcing the mind to obey the mind's desire', and at the same time it's not... just like at some point the ship turns, and the mind wants to prioritize awareness on things like breathing more than thoughts in itself, and it's now effortless to have a still mind. what's most in alignment with our true nature (nothingness, pure being, consciousness): a still mind or a monkey-mind? When I say still mind I just mean mind without thoughts.

The reaction is like this when you awake after experiencing this: You went from nothingness to "Riding the Ox Backwards" from space through blackhole to your embodied self that appeared out of nowhere. Well, different ppl react differently. Remember who reacted like this: "Oh my god! It's absolutely infinite! It's absolutely infinite! You don't understand! There's no wayyyyyyyyy you'll understand! It's absolutely infinite!" Guess who said this?

Why the binary paradigm? No offense, but there is a direction beyond this binary that is much more meaningful and all-encompassing. Plus it doesn't carry the contradictions and corruption of principle via reductive simplicity present in the above view. There are three not two facets to interaction. Not just service to self and service to others, but also shared service. And you do all 3 at the same time. Superposition over binary or oneness or nothingness. The most satisfying, abundant, and meaningful relationships are when you keep harmony and create synergy between all 3 worlds. My World - You have individual pursuits, desires, and standards. You nurture those and spend time on those without isolating yourself. Her/His World - You care and are considerate of the individual pursuits, desires and standards of other people. You support and nurture those feelings of others because you genuinely want them to succeed and you have an abundance of generosity to give. However, you do so in concert with your own individual wants so they balance each other out and one is not being deprived or over shadowed by the other. The Shared World - You have a shared sense of family or community with people where you both are coming together and contributing to the shared pursuits and desires of something greater than the individual wants and needs of everyone in this shared space. However, again you do so in concert with the collective individual desires, so none are neglected or exploited/taken advantage of. It's a three-legged stand and when one weakens through neglect or exploitation the whole thing falters. In a very simple way this is basically the cause for strife in the entire world. People unable to come together in a harmonious manner, so that everyone's individual and shared worlds are nurtured and allowed to grow without neglect and exploitation. No offense, but your missing the point of the hero's journey with this extremism you've attached to. It's not about leaving society, it's about leaving your comfort zone. Going beyond the edges of where and who a person currently is. You are only focusing on the beginning of the hero's journey and not including the reintegration with others, and the expanding of the heroes edges as he or she returns with greater capability and abundance to contribute to the shared space. It's not about the society, it's much larger than that and about the mechanisms of nature society and everyone is dealing with, that the hero goes on his journey to face both within and without as he expands beyond his edges. So when he returns from his travels he can bring with him value that moves all of society forward from it's previous zone of comfort and normality. That's also why your very last sentence is so flawed and out of touch with nature. Even if all of society conspired to help you attain harmonious expansion the hero's journey would still be necessary, because you would still have to expand and go beyond your zones of comfort and face the mechanisms of nature that create stress and resistance as we do so. Growing pains, challenge, and resistance are a part of life and are tied into meaning and beauty. However, the flavor of challenge, growing pains, and resistance would be much more healthy and less twisted and ignorant and extreme if we had a shared world where everyone was dedicated towards such a harmonious expansion. This is feels like such a naive and sheltered view from my experience. Have you ever protected anyone before? Have you ever stood up to someone trying to seriously hurt or rape or kill another? Have you been there every hard step as those people healed? You ever see someone's head get smashed in or know anyone whose been tortured or seen children blown to bits by an rpg and have to pick up the pieces afterwards? I have first hand experience of all but the torture and war and someone very close to me has had to experience those horrible things while fleeing his country overseas. This is NOT a game. This is life, the brutal, horrible side of it that is a contrast to the beautiful, fragile side of it. Go through those things, or tell someone to their face whose experienced it, that it's a game. I bet you'll feel differently afterwards. The impact of that side of life will change you and wake you up from that disconnect. I don't say that in anger. I mean it sincerely and with compassion as someone who carries those scars of understanding. Yes, you are right in that the aim is to approach every interaction with love and understanding, but that alone isn't enough for the brutality of life. It takes resistance as well as acceptance and is also why you shouldn't tunnel vision on what it means to fight and resist. Fighting is about way more than just violence and it always starts within yourself first. It's the ones who fail first within themselves, who leak that failure out onto others and the world they share with everyone else. This world relies on inter-connection and cooperation for it's health and trust is required for that cooperation to happen. So to fight is to resist the corruption of trust both within ourselves and outside in the world. It's not self-service that is evil, evil is the corruption of trust. And again, resistance or fighting is WAY more than violence. A person learns that when they step deep into the brutal fires of the dark side of life and bring healing beauty back from it.

@Staples Right, because the true Self is omnipresent. There is no gap between Nothingness and perception. They are infinitely close. Which is why it's so challenging to discriminate the Nothingness from perception.

Hmmm, a mini aha moment maybe. Watching a Rupert Spira video, sitting in my comfy chair, winding up for the day, slowly. As I become absorbed in the message of the words and the images moving on the screen, pretty much everything outside of that small visual field of immersed focus begins to dissolve in no time. Like a special visual effect in a movie (only natural, organic and completely underived). I get spots and fuzzy splotches and flashy undulating star-fields and constantly morphing clouds of nothingness roiling around as an undefined mess of random pastel explosive arrays of fireworks within watercolour fringe-fields. Closed eye visuals occuring with open eyes, everywhere that my intent, or immersed focus is not. You've all seen it once you focus intently on an object, especially a lit, animated display screen. You notice for an instant or two as you slightly de-focus on the content of the screen that the rest of your visual field had dissolved into a staticy, undefined, mass of unformed light and colour - scrambled, changing, much like a colour version of screen static before you hooked the signal into your T.V. The further away from your narrowed field of attention, the more frissonic and ethereal, a phosphene of the unmanifested. It's not a visual effect is it? I've often wondered lately what it would look like if I could move the body-mind just slightly faster than the speed of light, and whirl around quickly enough while walking down the street to observe the world manifest from nothingness behind me. I had assumed that that sort of immediate, obvious reality busting was beyond my capabilities, but we just may witness the unmanifested turn into our reality every time we focus in on an object closely and intently, to the exclusion of most everything else, and then zoom out a bit, remembering to notice, and not discount the dissolution and resolution of 'matter', as a visual quirk. Waddya tink?

@Bebop the skull comes with this poem from Bukowski: "My dear, Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover."

So every now and then I think about what I know about enlightenment, and my rational mind comes to the conclusion that it is entirely explainable with simple rational means. Of course, this will not keep me from investigating myself, but from time to time it creates confusion within me. So, when we look at the mind, or at my mind in particular, I can say that everything that exists and that I exist. But ironically, everything that I believe to exist, everything that from me is everything, solely exists within my mind. It cannot exist anywhere else. But of course, the mind creates a dualism within itself. It differentiates certain aspects of the expirience from others. For example, there is a very particular feeling when someone "else" is in the room. That other entity is a very specific expirience within the mind. Entity itself is an expirience. Now as far as I know, the path towards enlightenment is disassambling that very specific expirience, so the entity disappears and all that is left is the direct input of expirience meaning color, sound etc. But if I look at it from a rationalists perspective, all of it makes complete sense. The mind is a simulation of the brain. All of the mind, which is all of the expirience, happens nowhere else than in the brain. The irony here is that the mind itself thinks that the "outside world" exists, even though the outside world is simply part of the simulation. Everything the mind thinks exists is part of the simulation. So, one way to look at enlightenment would be simply disassembling the expirience of "I" and "something else", so that everything becomes I. In the moment that happens, the mind will believe that it is everything in existance. Because previously it wasn't aware of the fact that everything the mind thinks exists is part of the mind. That includes everything, the simulation of time and space, the simulation of object and subject, the simulation of nothingness and everything. All the mind is left to recognize is that infact, even the simulation of the mind itself is part of the simulation. So, of course the mind will first think believe it is god. God is everything, and because what the mind thought everything was, was now revealed as part of the mind, the mind is in the disbelief that it is infact everything. It is not just what previously was defined as "me", it is what previously was defined as anything whatsoever. But here comes the trap. The mind, from this perspective, is an isolated expirience. The fact that this is the case is that noone can be part of someone elses expirience. If that was truly possible, that we would have easily provided proof for that. But yet, there is noone on this entire planet that can access someone elses expirience. But here comes the confusion. Me, and I am kind of talking to myself here, is still operating within that simulation. So, I have no clue wether or not anything at all exists or not. The mind cannot be aware of anything outside of the mind. The illusion here though is that "revealing" the truth is nothing more than revealing another illusion. If I look at it from a rationalists perspective, someone saying that "He is god" or he is "Infinity" is completely explainable. Yes of course he is infinity, of course he is god. He is literally everything within his expirience. But, if the expirience of that person ends, that infinity is gone. God is gone. Everything that person thought or believed, or even expirience as "absolutely everything" is no gone, because inherently it was nothing more than his mind playing another trick on himself. The mind recognized that it was an simulation after all, and that it was able to alter itself. Infact, the mind is inherently nothing at all, it simply is what it is, the expirience itself. And as far as I can tell, I cannot explain even the most simply thing. I cannot explain the color red, or the sound of my fingers tapping on the keyboard. There is no explanation for that, because explanation is concept. But what I do know is that the mind is capable of anything. It can simulate absolutely everything. It can even simulate the expirience of absolutely everything. Infact, it is simulating that expirience at all times, because from the perspective of the mind, whatever is within the mind is absotutely everything. So, when Buddah sat down and discovered the true nature of the self, didn't his brain literally just discover that it was a simulation? That, the "me" is no different from what the mind thinks the "everything else" is. That infact, the "me" is nothing at all, because it is a simulation? That infact, everything in existance (within the mind) is nothing at all? Now, the confusion within me is mainly that I am trapped within the simulation, so everything I think is part of the simulation, even the rational explanation I just gave for the phenomena of enlightenment. And here comes the explanation for why people stop trusting rationality. Because once you realize that everything you believe is rational, there is no reason to trust rationality. Infact, how can you trust rationality if it is part of the mind. How can the mind possibly explain itself? But yet, every expirience that I have heard of so far is explainable with rational means. Unconditional love for example is the obvious choice of the mind for recognizing that all of the simulation is the mind. And of course, the mind likes to take care of itself, so it will love everything within it's simulation. But what if the mind lacks one step. What if the mind is not recognizing it's own limits? What if the mind is capable of simulating whatever we might belief to be "infinity", an expirience so incredibly that it completely transforms the mind, but yet the mind is uncapable of recognizing that even everything, or nothingness, is simply the mind. That, yes, whatever the mind thought was the "outside world" was infact part of the mind, but that what truly is the "outside world", will for the mind always be a mystery, because it inherenitely cannot access any of it. Yes, everything that enlightenment is still is true from the perspective of enlightenment. You are "everything" and yet "nothing at all". Infact, the "you" does not exist because it's simply the expirience. But what I fail to understand is why one takes the step further and says that "expirience" is everything that exists. I mean, what if it isn't? Yes, from the expirience perspective, everything is expirience, so obviously it will assume that everything is expirience, but what if the expirience is simply limited. What if whatever one beliefs to be everything is simply a very limited part of the true nature of reality, which the mind might not be able to access even on the most basic level. Yes, if I sit down and do enlightenment work, I will have the expirience of god and being everything and being nothing. But why do I assume that this expirience actually is everything and nothing? Yes, it might be a direct expirience of everything and nothing, but what if that direct expirience is an illusion? We cannot forget that the mind is capable of simulating EVERYTHING that we think exists. It is literally the simulation all of your entire reality, even the part that you think is not part of your reality. Literally everything that exists within or "outside" of you is your mind. But that doesn't change the fact that it might just be the mind, whatever we call the mind. We can call the mind god, of infinity, but what if it's not what the mind beliefs it is? What if the expirience does not correlate with actual reality, whatever that might be? I hope someone can understand my doubts. I know thinking is not the way to expirience truth, but what if thinking is the only thing that will keep me from "thinking" that infact expiriencing the "truth" is nothing more that expiriencing the truth of the mind, which is obviously that it is nothing at all, and that it is everything within the mind... If one has an expirience of infinity, isn't it simply the expirience of what the mind would think "infinity" is, or even what within the mind infinity is? I'm so confused.

ego is a threat to society! ego drives society! ego doesn't exist! ego is society exactly! ego is nothingness! ego is everything! ego is a powerful tool! ego is just some symbol that means nothing! ego is hell itself! ego is heavenly! ego is definitely different than consciousness! ego is consciousness exactly in essence - they are one and the same! you are ego but I am not! I am ego but you are not! you don't exist (but I definitely do - trust me you are just a figment of my imagination) ego will systematically dismantle all existence from the world!