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Actually no, You are assuming what I'm doing is imagining theoretical constructs, when in reality I am honing my observational skills and capabilities with years of dedicated training that allows me to have a deeper and more nuanced direct experience. The observations science have made are a supplement to my direct experience, not a replacement. It's a corroborator just like my direct observation of nature and how it mirrors the movements inside me is a corroborator and reference. People are so dunning kruger with direct experience and too ignorant to realize how much more our bodily processes need to develop and evolve. In essence what I am telling you people is you THINK/BELIEVE these things about absolute nothingness because you are jumping to conclusions about the direct experience of reality before properly developing the multitude of capabilities humanity depends on for interacting and communicating with life via direct experience. "How can you discover a potential change if you're not aware of it or sensitive to it? How far can potential take you if you can't trust it? How well can you internalize a group of sensitivities if they're not coherent and able to create a story to build upon? What good is the story if it's rapport's are off, if it's chemistry is adversarial and in conflict? How far can you take a story if it can't flow and dance? How can you share it if you can't simplify it? What good is simplification if it get's so simple it becomes one-dimensional and it's connections collapse? How can you even build any story, or create any change of length, if you are not resilient enough to handle the pressures of it's development? If you haven't given yourself the authority to choose to do so?" Each of the above points to a specific capability we employ during direct experience. If they are not developed, not connected and synergized our experience of direct reality will be limited and flawed. We will fall prey to delusion, over-certainty, superiority, tunnel-vision, and derail our growth. We have to train them physically via life and it's resistance, much like weight training. Not just from sitting in some safe little space on a cushion for an hour and asking ourselves a couple of questions. Life demands way more then that for evolution.

@MochaSlap Only nothingness can be infinite; somethingness is bound to be finite. Only out of nothingness is an infinite expanse of life, existence, possible - not out of somethingness. It is not empty, it is overfull. Things have disappeared... and what has remained is inexpressible. We try to express it as blissfulness, as ecstasy, as eternal joy, but these are just faraway echoes of the real thing. God is not somebody: He is nobody or, more correctly, nobodiness. God is not something: he is nothing or, even more correctly, no-thingness. Never for a single moment think that nothingness is a negative state, an absence, no. Nothingness is simply no-thingness. Things disappear, only the ultimate substance remains. Forms disappear, only the formless remains. Consciousness is a quality of your mind, but it is not your total mind. Your mind can be both conscious and unconscious, but when you transcend your mind, there is no unconsciousness and no corresponding consciousness. There is awareness. Awareness means that the total mind has become aware. Now the old mind is not there, but there is the quality of being conscious. Awareness has become the totality; the mind itself is now part of the awareness. We cannot say that the mind is aware; we can only meaningfully say that the mind is conscious. Awareness means transcendence of the mind, so it is not the mind that is aware. It is only through transcendence of the mind, through going beyond mind, that awareness becomes possible. Consciousness is a quality of the mind, awareness is the transcendence; it is going beyond the mind. Mind, as such, is the medium of duality, so consciousness can never transcend duality. It is always conscious of something, and there is always someone who is conscious.

Can you find fault in this logic? I know logic is not the experience but it can be helpful I think on the path to it. If the I is not located anywhere, then it is either is nothing or everything(infinity). Since the I feels like something, then it is not nothing, so the only possibility is that I am the no-thing that is God/infinity and not Death(absolute nothing). But since infinity is made out of nothing, I essentially am nothingness, but the nothingness is aware of itself, which makes it infinity/God. Where is nothing located? Everywhere

@Shin I'm finding that it's the little things we can do throughout our day that often get us closer to our core and further away from our monkey mind. So thanks for the tips on the everyday methods that move us along the path, or even keep us on it. Sure, the longer sits, meditations, contemplations & concentrations can reveal deep insight and larger-picture thinking, but I find to go past intellectual to experiential can also be achieved, to different degrees, in all those moments we remember to remember during our day. Once we understand 'what', it's pretty awesome to start understanding and practicing the 'how'. @Dodoster I'm often contemplating and working on just this. I seem to progress a little on the intellectual side, and a little on the empirical evidence side, whenever I remember to remember. Fun huh? How much simplicity can we use to unpack and become aware of what we are (and ALL that we are and are not)? How much wisdom can we pack into one sentence. Okay, maybe not wisdom, but for sure the careful and wondrous contemplations we post begin and fuel the processes that leads to wisdom. Thanks, cool. I tend to think (think.. *sigh*) that there might not need to be an 'either' in your first sentence. I'm imagining that we are everything AND nothing. By always having been nothing (no-THING), I am actually everything that appears in the no-THINGness and... well, no 'and'... I'm just everything! ...and I made it all. Just by 'BEing' and intent. And there's only me. I made me and I made you, in order to begin to 'know' the I that I AM. I knew nothing, only myself. I 'knew', or was aware of, no-THING. But was aware that I was aware. That makes 'me' awareness itself. Nothing. Nothingness. I don't seem to remember if I, Infinity, created all of everything and everyone in order to become less than infinite in order to know myself by a conscious attempt, or if I inadvertently sprang all of the YOUniverse and Nature into creation just by fluke because I am so awesome just by default? Oh, hang on, that may be ego creeping in there now. Sooo... to make a nice short response into a convoluted mess, & then back into a of well-thought out ponderence on the essential nature of our life in a few sentences like you did; I think we may be NO-THING, and by virtue of that, EVERYTHING. I guess when that realization makes it harder and harder to be pissed off at our asshole neighbour, or the dummy standing on your foot on the bus, or some sleeping dipstick that thought being President might be fun... we're on our way. I'll shut up for a bit, lol... didn't mean to hijack your cool thoughtful thread...

Meditation is the way to find yourself, but you shouldn't be opposed to noise or other opinions. Everyone loves a circlejerk, but if you have the truth of silence / stillness/ your true self, nobody can say anything that will bother you. SO those characters in your life, the haters, the noise makers, the doubters- they offer you the opportunity to see meditation, your true self in the midst of experience. No, you cannot control others and they will never 100% do as your Ego wants so it can be happy and at peace. They are showing you there is deeper to go. If you can only find peace when doing a formal meditation, you have not found the silence behind the noise, or the nothingness behind and within everything! Also, haters gonna hate and fate is gonna fate

Mind doesnt need to know anything, what You need to do is sense the presence of nothingness with Your (Nothingness') Awareness, which is the same as awareness becoming aware of itself. That's tricky, at least for me, but my practise is clearer now with this understanding (ok maybe its good for the mind to know something hehe :D). So Nothingness becomes aware of nothingness, but this is the realm of nonduality, so to answer your question awareness, nothingness, God, presence all are one no-thing that is you, consciousness, absolute infinity. It's tricky (impossible for the mind to become aware of true nothingness) so thats why disidentification with mind/Ego is needed, so you can increase the faculty needed to sense that nothingness - that faculty is awareness! Only awareness can sense awareness (nothigness); only infinity is big enough to hold within its sight infinity; Only nothingness is small enough to see nothingness; Only you can discover your true self! I am not enlightened, but this is my understanding so far.

So just to confirm one more time. The theory here is that every single micro thing that happens in the universe is on Automatic? It sounds logical for my ego and to contemplate it, I'm guessing it's a matter of experiencing whatever 'nothingness' is to see for oneself. But isn't that 'I' that I think is willing myself into things and choosing what to pay attention to just an illusion and there's no real 'I' controlling it, even though it feels real? Or am I real, and I am the thing controlling it?

"Wisdom is knowing I am nothing" ~ nisargadatta maharaj ~ If you haven't had the nothingness of your true nature come to the forefront of experience yet that's okay. Finding out what your not is a good Place to start. And that's were Leo's self enquiry video will come in handy. Because he literally Goes through all aspects of the phenomenal world and shows you that you can't be any of these. They all come & go. Thoughts can be tricky because when there is belief in them they feel like you. Especially the conceptual image of you, when turning your head, talking ect. But I can tell you from direct experience, when your mind is still & empty and there are no thoughts or images of you, you don't disappear! ( or do you? Wink wink ) Meaning without thoughts you still are. Emotions can be very powerful and overwhelming at times and you can get real caught up in identifying with your emotions. Anger, sadness, hopelessness ect. But again all emotions fluctuate within awareness. The one thing you can't separate yourself from is awareness. Try not to be aware right now! See you can't awareness is stick to you like glue. I will leave you with a great quote. "Love says I am everything Wisdom says I am nothing Between the two my life flows"

The defining characteristic of a sage is his ability to get at the core of nature and reality. They do this by contemplation. The most important question that a sage can ask is “What is it?”. You replace the “it” with the object you want to inquire about. So, what is contemplation? From the dictionary, it is defined by “a state of mystical awareness”, “an act of considering with attention” or “the act of thinking deeply about something”. It is openly pondering a question that you are interested in with focus and without bias with the goal of inquiring into the nature of that thing. How do you contemplate” Sit down, set aside some time and select one question you are really curious about, define what that question is and sit there, openly pondering it from ground zero. Maintain that question steadily for at least 5 or 10 minutes straight. Be careful about your monkey mind. What could you contemplate about: 1. What is society? 2. What is life? 3. What is color? 4. What is sound? 5. What is love? 6. What is happiness? 7. What is anger? 8. What is desire? 9. What is suffering? 10. What is hatred? 11. What are emotions? 12. What is ignorance? 13. What is fear? 14. What is death? 15. What is meditation? 16. What is mind? 17. What is disagreement? 18. What is pain? 19. What is success? 20. What is failure? 21. What is a thought? 22. What is experience? 23. What is the number 0? 24. What am I? 25. What is duality? 26. What is non-duality? 27. What is Truth? 28. What is non-existence? 29. What is consciousness? 30. What is awareness? 31. What is God? 32. What is reality? 33. What is knowledge? 34. What is logic? 35. What is language? 36. What is science? 37. What is maths? 38. What is culture? 39. What is the devil? 40. What is government? 41. What is art? 42. What is free will? 43. What is selfishness? 44. What is karma? 45. What is creativity? 46. What is evolution? 47. What is relationship? 48. What is leadership? 49. What is power? 50. What is goodness? 51. What is evil? 52. What is philosophy? 53. What is spirituality? 54. What is personal development? 55. What is business? 56. What is the subconscious mind? 57. What is a guru? 58. What is masculinity? 59. What is fame? 60. What is sex? 61. What is birth? 62. What is the ego? 63. What is honesty? 64. What is communication? 65. What is objectivity? 66. What is wisdom? 67. What is rationality? 68. What is religion? 69. What are beliefs? 70. What is humor? 71. What is attraction? 72. What is purpose? 73. What is meaning? 74. What is life purpose? 75. What is understanding? 76. What is space? 77. What is time? 78. What is the past? 79. What is the future? 80. What is matter? 81. What is energy? 82. What is motivation? 83. What is writing/architecture/entertainment? 84. What is technology? 85. What is a computer? 86. What is economics? 87. What is pickup? 88. What is education? 89. What is good cuisine? 90. What is fun in a video game? 91. What is a good story telling? 92. What is drama? 93. What is intimacy? 94. What is neurosis? 95. What is health? 96. What is disease? 97. What is materialism? 98. What is another? 99. What is history? 100. What is a distinction? 101. What is learning? 102. What is dogma? 103. What is organization? 104. What is systems thinking? 105. What is design? 106. What is management? 107. What is lying? 108. What is a symbol? 109. What is psychology? 110. What is insight? 111. What is depression? 112. What is mysticism? 113. What is an object? 114. What is strategy? 115. What is enlightenment? 116. What is compassion? 117. What is a model? 118. What is value? 119. What is money? 120. What is stress? 121. What is mastery? 122. What is illusion? 123. What is a Zen devil? 124. What is a problem? 125. What is hurt? 126. What is nothingness? 127. What is infinity? 128. What is paradox? 129. What is work? 130. What is discipline? 131. What is freedom? 132. What is courage? 133. What is passion? 134. What is skepticism? 135. What is atheism? 136. What is prayer? 137. What is open-mindedness? 138. What is terrorism? 139. What is intuition? 140. What is beauty? 141. What is surprise? 142. What is information? In every domain of life, at every level, you can keep asking what all of it is. You can contemplate question about your life purpose and career, your particular medium, the wordings of your life purpose, your area of mastery. If you want to be successful in any domain, you need to understand the essence of what you are doing, the tools and distinctions you are using. There are different questions that you can ask that will make you see the subject in slightly different angles. - What is it? - And what is that? - What is its true nature? - You are going to come up with examples and you will need to discover the commonalities between them - How did it come into being? (probably need to read some history) - Why did it come into being? - What elements does it have? - What is its purpose? - What is its substance? - What is its significance and why it is important? - Examples are good to get into the essence of the matter - Keep asking and asking and going deeper into the nature There are some nuances: · Contemplation vs Meditation: When you meditate, you don’t have any goal or objective, you are just freeing your mind. Contemplation is an intellectual activity. When you become good, your contemplation is going to become a sort of meditation because your focus is really strong. · Contemplation vs Self Inquiry: Self inquiry is a very specific form of contemplation about the nature of who you are. · Contemplation vs Concentration: When you concentrate, you do it on something that doesn’t have an intellectual question behind it. · Notice that contemplation can be between a personal and an existential spectrum. o What do I want out of my life? o What do I want out of my relationship? o What is my deepest passion in life? o What is my life purpose? · You can have insights at the level of thought and the level of being: Some answers will go past the intellect and mind. You can breakthrough on the being level with: o What another is? o What love is? o What God is? o Etc. Most of existential questions are going to start with the intellectual level but with time you will get into the existential level. · Don’t confuse contemplation with thinking. You can go beyond thinking · Don’t confuse contemplation with speculating and theorizing about stuff. In contemplation, it is key to be open-minded, aware and honest with yourself. Be careful with your ego because it will distort your train of thought. · There are many levels of understanding of different subjects, so don’t get too hung up with your current answers. The answers that will come up in the first hundred hours of contemplation will be probably wrong or incomplete at best. Ignorance is the source of every problem! If you think you know what you will find, you are a fool. You cannot know the answer of something that you are going to research. That is the point of research! Your quality of your life is directly proportional to how clear you are in what the truth is in a particular situation and how aligned you are with it. You are not going to contemplate effectively if you are addicted to porn, or play videogames, and you eat garbage food and work 60 hours a week. You need to create a contemplative life.

Don't know about God, but my version of God which is no thing aka Nothingness - exists, but that's paradoxical in itself. Also knowing it intellectually doesnt help me I am the proof tho, cause im nothing and seem to exist too in my own experience lol.

one thing i find hard to understand is, teachers will tell you, you are emptiness nothingness, the perceiver that cant be perceived. but if it cant be perceived, how are they aware of it, and how are they able to tell you about it.

@Echoes I agree. It's like killing a bear maybe. It doesn't seem as formidable after, and a lot of dudes feel the need to hang it's head on the wall and make a rug so they can retell the story. The everything though. I don't think there are words or even thoughts for it. @Salaam all pretty easy to gree with. It's more fun though, if you would make some outrageous claims or something. Thank you. There's no nothingness. Simply be definition alone.

@Salaam Why imaginative? It is the direct opposite. You are the one imagining various theoretical constructs and conditions. Where do thoughts arise in your actual experience? Out of what? But what is the "place" in which heat, bone, sinew, brain and every other thing can exist/arise? Can it be another thing? And in which does this thing then exist? Nothingness is the absolute ground for every-thing.

Salaam. This is great! Thanks for sharing! How do you personally maximize your potential? "Nothingness" is just a concept, a symbol. We can say things arise from nothingness but it's just a simplification of what really is. What is really going on is beyond words. We can only approximate that with more investigation. Maybe we could do that in this thread? So... One one hand, thoughts arise from shifts in contrast between our interconnections and the shifting is the primary property of empty space (see: void fluctuation effects). On the other hand, when we say thoughts arise from empytiness/nothingness we may actually mean the same thing - void fluctuation effects. Any thoughts? (or fluctuations?)

With all due respect, Leo and anyone who is ascribing to his assertion in that post is the one taking the purely imaginative or delusional approach. If your "actual" nothingness has heat in it, it is not absolute nothingness, if it is still permeated by fields of potentiality like the universe is at all levels that is not absolute nothingness. If your absolute nothingness is being contained by matter in the form of bone, sinew, and brain matter it is not "absolute" nothingness. How about you move your mind out of the binary paradigm of beginning and endings and rise into quantum cognition? With superposition you are both 1 and 0 at the same time and can "birth" one or the other and from that one or the other "birth" another superimposed status. Humans all too often make the mistake of projecting their own limitations on the universe, but the universe doesn't give a shit and keeps on being dynamic with access to potentiality preserved. There aren't beginning or endings, there is instead recombination with different layers of complexity and synergy while still maintaining access to both poles of simplicity beyond our current evolution of cognition and levels of complexity that humans have not yet developed the cognition to contain. Every time a person falls into the paradigm of beginning or endings, they are taking an isolative view of reality which does not consider it's preceding combination. And that holds doubly true for absolute beginnings or endings which are a violation of the uncertainty principle. I'd like an evolving dialogue where people put the time and effort into expanding themselves in ways that are in harmony and synergy with real life with practical application. Where people critically think and explore rather than blindly follow the establishment of a given place. I'd like to see people work with tension and differentiating between how a change feels and how it shifts us. Gaining traction with those shifts, slowing and stabilizing them so their awareness can gain perspective and clarity around the nuance that occurs within it. I'd like to see people gain a greater ability with depth, to understand how things balance and counter-balance and how that motion affects the formation of a person's reality at the time. I'd like to see a lot of things actually. What do you want? Do you want to maximize your potential or do you want to remain in your comfort zone? Maybe try and feel the tension there, note down whether your initial reaction to that question was attractive or repulsive and then play the experience back in your mind slowly, including in your investigation the type of narratives playing in your mind. Investigating the other options you might have chosen had you not immediately snapped to either of those charges. Notice how much choice and potential we leave on the table and miss with our snap judgements and reflexive conclusions about a thing.

@Salaam I followed that thread, but as Leo already said, you confuse the scientific idea of nothingness with "actual" nothingness. You take a symbolic, indirect approach to something that is beyond all this. Whatever causes your thoughts may previously had, they are all born in nothing. Where else?

@Nahm I think the Ego doesn't like nothingness at all. It's rather afraid of it

Everything is everything. We're all where we are. I think the ego likes the 'nothingness' because it holds it as an achievement relative to others. At the same time it is a marker in a somewhat typical order of growth & inquiry revelations. The everything is everything.

Ultimately thoughts arise from nothingness. As this whole universe arose from nothingness. If you want to connect thoughts to a kind of causality between energetical and bodily shifts or events, you have to point to the beginning of the causal "event". But every beginning point of the causality chain is arbitrary and can be retraced back to the big bang which arose from nothingness. (If we belief that this big bang theory is true). Ultimately every moment arises and disappears in nothingness

Your writings seem to indicate that you on a deep level believe that there actually exist a person/ego/mind ...? "even if it feels real to the one that is not real." Feels real to the real that is not real? ... Personality / ego / -being a seperated self capable of gettin hurt- feels real to that which IS real (= Awareness, you, me, everything, nothing), while truly the ego is not real: It's no-where to be found, it's a concept. Even the body is a concept, it doesn't exist either. That which doesn't exist can't be you. You do exist, but not as anything your mind can imagine or logically comprehend. You exist as self-aware nothingness, and even THAT is a concept. "nothingness" is a concept. "self-aware" is a concept. Everything we speak of on this forum is concept, concept, concept. It's ALL relative. It's not absolute/eternal. "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao". !! "Indulge me in the following: How can one that is not the body/mind take a pill designed for the body/mind and be affected in any way." No one took any pill. None took the LSD. You assume something that is not the body/mind is actually capable of taking a pill? If we say that "someone" is taking "a pill" then we are speaking relatively. There is no pill. There is no human being to take the pill. There is no body/mind to be affected. There is only you to perceive the game of life. In this game of life interesting experiences can happens when a body takes LSD. The body or mind is not affected by it though. The only one that is affected by it is YOU! And at the same time you are not affected by it at all. Reality is a paradox. You are both deeply affected by all experience you experience and at the same time not affected at all by any experience. "The one typing is the Ego that feels it was enhanced because of the experience of no Ego - this is paradoxical." There is no ego typing anywhere. There is no ego that could be enchanced or not enchanced. Relatively speaking, yes, the good guy jjer94 here wrote a post here about his LSD-experience. You can say it is the ego typing, sure, but it's just relatively speaking, there is really no ego if we speak in terms of absolute truth. "Does the Ego's pain or unhappiness even matter? It matters only to the Ego itself" There is no owner of any pain or unhappiness or happiness. There is experience of pain, there is experience of unhappiness, there is expierence of anxiety, there is experience of love. That which experiences all these things is 'The Absolute Self'/Nothingness/Awareness/blabla , it's not the ego, because there is no ego! Therefore it can't matter to any ego! It can only matter to the Absolute Self. In truth it doesn't matter at all to the Absolute Self, and yet at the same time it matters a lot to the Absolute Self, because who/what else could it possibly matter to? When you feel pain and unhappiness it surely doesn't feel nice, so of course it matters (and yet it doesn't). It's all a dream. Within the dream everything matters, at least as long as you're not aware of the fact that it's a dream. When you realize it's a dream you see that nothing matters inside the dream... However, to follow along with the dream analogy, if all you did was dreaming (you never woke up), and there was nothing else besides the dream, then the dream must matter in itself. Cos there is nothing else that could possibly matter. So the dream both matter and doesn't matter. Life/reality is a dream that you can't wake up from, except for short periods of time ("no-self experiences/ego death experiences/"enlightenment experiences). However, you can become conscious of the fact that it is a dream (through these no-self experiences), or you can live your whole your life not ever becoming conscious of it. The dream remains in either case, you can never wake up from it. The dream is all there is.

@Echoes Thats right! You should check out headless.org. Inspired by Douglas Harding who wrote The Man with No Head. The site has experiments, such as The Pointing Experiment where you point to a distant object and then point to where you think your head is. Sorry! No head, and no face. You are nothingness, (Source), experiencing itself. You are Nothing and Everything simultaneously. Namaste.

This is all just conceptualization, yes. It's nothing worth compared to direct experience with an ego-death experience. When the mind/ego is gone, what is left is only _you_, the real you, the essence of your being, and only then can you truly see who/what you really are. As long as the mind is running, you will not see yourself. You will only see what the mind is giving you. And it gives you bombardments of thoughts and emotions all day long. Even feelings you're not consciously aware of, such as the feeling of being an individual self. This feeling you take for granted as reality, i.e. you can't possibly imagine how reality would be like if you didn't feel as a separated self, and thus, because you're not able to imagine this, you're naturally not able to be aware of the fact that in EXACTLY the same way as the mind is giving you thoughts like "I gotta do x and y to be happy" and giving you emotions like anxiety, joy, etc, the mind is ALSO currently 24/7 giving you an underlying feeling of being a separated self. And this feeling of being a separated self is directed towards the body. The mind convinces you that you are this separated mind and thus the body. Currently, you're not seeing your true self. You are still 'it'/the true self (always have been, always will be), but you're currently not conscious of it. You have played a trick on yourself where you have identified yourself with the mind (and thus also the body). And naturally you have completely forgotten that you made this trick in the first place. I say "played a trick on yourself" because ultimately that's what you've done. Sure, it is relatively speaking the mind that is misleading you, but the mind is ultimately not only perceived by you, but naturally also created by you and also contained within you (you=consciousness=nothingness=pure being). Because what/who else could possibly have created the mind, except for you? And can you locate the mind anywhere? Can you locate your feelings anywhere? Can you locate your thoughts anywhere? No, you can't. It's because these "things", which are experiences, are located within nothingness (which is ultimately what true reality is; it's litteraly NOTHING, nothing, nothing, nothing =)). You are this nothingness. This nothingness is self-aware. This is why we could also call it infinte consciousness, awareness, being, etc.. It's you! The funny thing is while most people will agree they can't locate their thoughts and feelings anywhere (except some will maybe say "in my head/brain" but that's just retarded (:D), cos if I open up your skull I surely can't find any thoughts:D), they still believe they can locate other experiences that are not thoughts or feelings. For example the experience of seeing an object. For example your feet. "My feet are right there!" No, to be honest, they are not anywhere to be found, except within you: consciousness. Everything you experience: thoughts, feeling of being a self, emotions, sight, sounds, its only true location is within you, it's only true origin is from you, and it's all seen by you. Does the waves in the Pacific Sea make any sound if there's none nearby to have a listen? No. Sure, they may -- relatively speaking -- make soundwaves in the air. But if there isn't any special physical system (a human body for example) nearby to process these soundwaves, surely they don't make any sound. Sound is a mystical experience, how does energy-waves through the air get transformed into the experience of 'hearing sound' which we are all very familiar with? No minds know it, i.e. no one know it. But no-one/nothingness, hey, who's that? That is you. And surely you know very well how energy-waves through the air gets transformed into the experience of hering sound. Just clap your hand, and see what happens. But you cannot intellectualize it, the mind doesn't know how it's done through logic. That's why we also tend to say reality is illogical. Well, isn't it funny, science tells you that the "brain tells you what you are hearing". Science also tells you that you are a physical brain. How funny. If we combine the two science-statements, we got: "The brain tells the brain what the brain is hearing" or "the brain tells itself what it's hearing". And that's a paradox. And it's bullshit. A brain can't hear anything. Only you can. Because hearing is an experience, and a brain can't experience anything, just like a stone can't experience anything. But the statement "the brain tells you what you are hearing" in itself is pretty accurate, actually. The big question still remains though: What/who is/are you? Anyway. Questions: "So to see who I am, I just have to turn off the mind - well does that mean, that I just need to go to sleep?" Well, no. When the body is in deep sleep the mind is still functioning as normal, because it's normal to sleep, that's what the brain is programmed to do every now and then (to sleep). You could also say that the mind/ego is gone in deep-sleep, and what's left is really only you (nothingness/infinite empty consciousness), which is arguably true. However, when you wake up, you have no memory of 'knowing' your true self.. See, there is a difference between BEING your true self and KNOWING your true self. Being your true self, well you are ALWAYS your true self, you just don't it, and instead you believe your true self is equal to the mind/body, so there is no difference between being awake or being in deep sleep, you are still 'it'. 'Knowing' your true self is an entirely different thing, which isn't easy. And after all it is not the mind per se that has to be shut down, but it's just the 'feeling of being a self' that has to go away. And since this feeling is what is the foundation for all the other workings of the mind, it's easiest to just say that you have to kill the mind to see yourself. How do you kill the mind? Psychedelics are good. Meditation is good. Deep contemplation and paradoxes are good to make the mind go crazy and shut down. What you have to do is to let go of attachments, let go of investments in life. As long as you are attached to things in life, investing in things in life, it will be nearly impossible without psychedelics to achieve ego-death, even if you meditate for decades. Because the mind's function is to attach to things and to invest in things (looks, carrer, family, friends, sex, money, success, materialism). And as long as you continue to do that, no matter how hard you meditate, the mind will probably stay. Because it's still being used (although less if you actually meditate for +30 min a day, which will naturally increase your awareness on the long-term, because awareness = you = nothing, and the more "you do nothing" (=meditate) the more you will become you (in a sense), i.e. the more awareness 'you' will "get".) EDIT: Note also, that I'm NOT talking about being "free" of ego/mind "forever". An ego-death experience IS imo a momentarily experience. The ego (= the mind) will always come back and stay with you until the body dies. The mind/the ego/a person is an ever-changing idea/concept though, and some of the biggest changes to a mind/person will come if the mind/person is ever witnessed being killed (and thus combined with a realization that one is not a body/mind/person). A single ego-death-like-experience ("an enlightenment experience"/"satori") will in itself most of the time be enough to have big, big impact on your life. After such experiences more work has to be done though. "Enlightenment" is not a state to achieve, rather it's an ever-ongoing proces of becoming more and more aligned with the truth in your life. And being aligned with truth (your true self) doesn't mean you have to sit in a cave 24/7, no, no. Sitting in a cafe 24/7 is something you can do to get those ego-death experiences. When you have got them, you stop sitting in a cave 24/7. You can do anything in life and be aligned with truth (almost, you probably wouldn't do things that create suffering for other beings). You can be a doctor, a guru, an artist, a cleaning lady, whatever. The difference is how you relate to life on an inner level. Do you see that it's all a game and that you are playing a role in this beautiful game of life, or do you not? If you believe you are a body, of course you won't see life as a beautifil game, since when the body dies this will then mean you will die as well, and then that's serious business man, that's not a game ;). I also believe there are varying degrees/depths of ego-death-experiences. Obviously the deeper the experience = the closer to being completely one (= conscious) with truth/your true self = the deeper the impact on your life. I believe there are semi-ego-death-experience which only give you glimpses of truth, but not the "full-blown package" so to speak. I think most reported ego-death experiences are semi-ego-death experiences. The real full-blown ego-death experiences probably requires a combination of contemplation/meditation for decades + 5-MeO maybe. What do I know=)

When you see that you're the canvas, the only possibility is to continue painting, consciously. Paint the Ego the way you, the transparent infinite Self want. Choose the colours of your Ego consciously. <3 Make the colours and thoughts that you dont want transparent by bearhugging ? them to death. Nothingness is transparency is God is the motherboard. Nothingness is this moment. Nothingness is untying the knot of the Ego. Transparency is Nothingness, nothing added, from the mind, so what is can be seen through a clean window, without fog. Close your eyes and try to imagine transparency iin your inner eye. But try doing it with open eyes too, ha, you see, you've always be doing it, just maybe not conscious of it. Ego pretends to be everything, enlightenment is transparent nothing, breath, water, lightness, 0. 0 allows me to be.

Nothingness is transparency; Nothingness is silence; Nothingness is stillness; Nothingness is no thing to do, other than what you're doing; Nothingness is nowhere to be, other than where you are. Nothingness is the screen of awareness; Nothingness is no Ego. Nothingness is enlightened and my Ego is the dance of that light. Transparent Ego is enlightened Ego. Any image at 0% transparency disappears, no matter what was on the canvas. When you make something transparent, you see what was hiding underneath the entire time. You, the empty canvas of awareness. Transparent consciousness, ever present, eternal and infinite.

@Kloof I've had some experiences in the last year that I'm still sorting out. It is very strange to have other massive 'realizations' as well, along the way here. Even stranger to have thought you'd figured something out after some big epiphany, only to learn months later that - no, I was wrong, that thing can't be right now that I know THIS thing. The 'one original source' thing is my way of saying God, or Source, or the Unity Field or whatever. My limited understanding at this point all points to 'God' or Infinity being all there really is (as nothingness, empty, non-dimensional, non-localized, self-aware, nothingness, that subsequently contains everything).. and it seems to me that that everyTHING, all the content of awareness, is only occuring within awareness, as perception manifested by our finite minds. Infinity cannot know anything finite, but it is self aware. In order for there to be a 'world' (universe), it must be perceived, and only a finite entity can know finite 'objects'... sooo.. infinity must sort of fall asleep and forget itself as boundless infinite self-aware loving nothingness, and dream up our finite minds in order to know anything but itself. So none of it is what you thought it was, ...Aaand, you're not what you thought you were. It's scary and silly-fucked when you start to put it all together. 'You' don't exist. We're dream-states, doing our own evoking of reality, through all our "individuated" consciousnesses... so that the ONE original Source, or God, can have a chance to begin to 'know' something other than itself. When we, as individuated, finite minds start to wake up to that fact (become lucid, within this very convincing dream), it is "God" (empty self-aware no-THINGness), somehow beginning to become more and more lucid that it has created a 'reality' of diverse and separate object within the original dream. I'm surmising that consensus reality, the whole 'self-consistency' thang Leo speaks of is self-consistent only because the original Source is ONE. Utimately there is only ONE. We are all ONE. WTF eh? (I'm pretty new, so please forgive me if this is a horribly messed up, misrepresentation of 'reality', or existence.)