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@How to be wise You can do it right now- Everything will become the magic happening. Do you have a quiet place in nature somewhere around you? Go there sometime and sit with a quiet mind. Dissolve into everything by letting go. The sounds. The smells. The visual field of perception. See if all that doesn't heighten after the mind quiets down. Try closing your eyes and meditate on absolute nothingness. Than slowly open them again and allow existence to pour into you. If you allow it, some really amazing things can happen. This is no philosophy here. But don't take my word for it. Find out for yourself.

Because it's not about just asking the same question over and over again. It's about interrogating the answers that come. When an answer comes, "I am this, I am that, I am here...", whatever it is, you need to examine that answer. Find the truth in it - or the lack of truth in it. It's no use going 'no I'm not that because someone else said I'm nothingness'; you have to strip away the layers of 'you' that 'you' think 'you' are. And most of these are invisible to you. To be honest, it seems to me that an awful lot of people misunderstand self-inquiry. It's an ongoing, difficult, oftentimes frustrating process, and in the end you're not actually looking for an answer. No answer is going to come. You're looking to remove the assumptions/beliefs (both created by you and inherited from society/parents/school/peers/etc.) which sit in your mind and pose as answers. And most of them you aren't even aware of at the moment. So, yeah, I suppose it is but that's going to take years of ongoing, daily inquiry. Still, it comes away piece by piece; sort of a series of little disillusionments. I'm not 'there' yet, but my perspective and understanding of everything have significantly changed through a simple application of critical thinking to the situation I find myself in. Which is really cool. Just remember to not let your mind cheat you by stating answers from other people (such as "I am nothing"). If it helps, you can reframe the question slightly: "What is I?" "What is true?" etc.

You have to see that every realm of reality like our normal "waking state", "dreaming state", "sleeping state" comes with certain dynamics that shape what can exist in these realms. It's like every of these realms is like a frame through which certain pictures are possible because of the nature of the frame. Now, realize that your normal waking state is just one of these frames. It can see, hear, feel, touch etc. and that's it. There could be an infinite collection infinitely combined of these way's to perceive that would shape infinite worlds out of nothingness that would include literally everything you can ever think of. The vampire sits right in front of you right now. You just don't have the frame to see it. And if you had, it could be as real as a tree. Contemplate that. I'd strongly suggest that you don't have a body that can die. If you realize that and go through that experience a couple of times with psychedelics (you'll be totally shocked if you do) you'll see that merely your current frame ends. Your perceptions will go away and you'll begin to realize who you really are. Because something will still remain because it was never birthed in life nor will it ever die out of life. What happens then? I don't know. Probably a lot of different stuff for a lot of different individual frames that come to an end. Maybe these frames are connected and undergo development. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they just die of and nothing happens, until another one comes on. Maybe. You'll see. But whatever happens will be fine because you cannot die. Because you are God. G - o motherfuckin' d. You'll live your life how you're supposed to live it. It's different for every one. Don't worry, you'll find your way. But as soon as you try to mark out an general case for every one, you'll fail. That one doesn't exist. Because if it did, all the subjective ones couldn't exist - although they do. Dude, if you don't wanna do it, don't. There's no problem. Nobody's pointing fingers here and laughing. But don't expect to ever know what it feels like to be in space when you don't actually want to fly in space with a rocket. Is it scary? Of course it is. It's outer space. Will you ever be able to get even a glimpse of it when you don't go. No. Simply no. Because to experience absolute infinity you have to go through a membrane that we call death. Now in front of this membrane (personally for you) there are all kinds of fears, daemons, stories, all the good stuff. And all of them will rush your way if you are on the way to cross the membrane. And they'll try to hold you down. And only the one who goes through that will be able to pass the membrane and experience absolute infinity. For one it might be easier, for another one it will never be achievable by "conscious will". The point is, to even get there you need the power of something as strong as 5-MeO-DMT. And even then it's not an easy ride. You can meditate for the next 40 years (which is great and you should do that because it helps on so many levels). But even then I seriously doubt that you get a glimpse of this experience because it's so different. It's so alien. There is no tool in your intellectual tool box to make sense of it. Maybe you do, there certainly are people who did it that way. It's your choice.

Hello my furry friends, I'm soon to be moving in a new direction with my life and leaving my old career behind to start a new journey in health / life coaching. I kept thinking to myself it's okay to get experience and build this new identity as a coach, because I can always move into the realm of spiritual coaching which would be rewarding to help raise people's consciousness. ...But this thought/feeling keeps visiting me. Am i just delaying the inevitable and fucking around? Playing into the illusion and avoiding the REAL work? Building a new self identity, new beliefs and new paradigm, and adding to, instead of dissolving self? It sure seems like the slow lane, or perhaps the sidewalk. I mean...there's no, "oh i'll just keep that little part of my self that I like, the coach part". I'll never stop this journey now, i'm balls deep, but my gut tells me if I REALLY, REALLY want the Truth, permanently, i'd should consider going ALL IN. It's only Fear that's stopping me after all... But then there are BILLS TO PAY, oh yes those oh so important bills. The message I'm getting is that life can't start until you dissolve self, so isn't the best tactical plan to make enlightenment the first priority, get that out of the way, no longer be a self, then see what is in store for me then? For those who have traveled this path for many years whilst building careers & life purpose, having families, being social and all that, do you feel like you are TRULY effectively dissolving your identity ? Will "life" pass me in the end without Liberation because I took the sidewalk instead of the fast lane? I FEEL SO CONFUSED. - General Nothingness <3

@123456789 Here is the explanation of 7th bhumika given in yoga vashista: Rishis say that the seventh janaana bhoomikaa is the last frontier of the realm of Jnaana. It is pure peace and cannot be explained by the power of speech. Words cannot describe that state of sublime quiescence. That is the ultimate stage – there is nothing more beyond that. After experiencing that state, some call it Siva, some people say it is Para Brahma, some people say it is Vishnu; and yet some say it is Soonya – Nothingness. Some people say it is Pure Energy, some say it is unconditioned Time; and some say it is Prakruti and Purusha. The Ultimate Reality cannot be explained by words, but still people call It by different names. After having this realisation, some start thinking about it in different manners, according to their capacities. Although it cannot be explained by anybody at any time, still they would be trying to explain it somehow. ......................................................... Here is the explanation of the stages 4, 5,6,7 given by Sri Abhinava Vidyatirtha MahaswaminaH, the 35th Jagadguru of Sringeri Peetham, (mutt established by Shankara): A jñànin involved in worldly activities is referred to as a brahmavid. If a jñànin has the practice of going into nirvikalpa-samàdhi and coming out of it on his own, he is a brahmavidvara. If he can be awakened from nirvikalpasamàdhi only by the efforts of others, he is a brahmavidvaräyàn. A brahmavidvariShTha is one who never emerges from nirvikalpa-samàdhi. His body perishes while he is in samàdhi. As a brahmavidvariShTha has the best pràrabdha, he is deemed the greatest jñànin.

Hi Waterfall. You seem far too deep in spirituality for depression to have a soil to grow in. Don't worry. Watch it play its course, in the meantime go deeper into who you are. There's infinite depth to nothingness. It is everything. You are everything.

Recently, I've been pondering what death will be like. Such a fun way to go about the day I guess I've never truly tackled this topic head-on, though I've always thought I had an opinion on the matter. While I never really gave it much thought, because I assumed there was an afterlife or something, I was confronted by my own experience, when I fainted in a nightclub (true story). It was probably a combination of the strobe lights and the RedBull, both of which I hadn't encountered before. That's neither here nor there. When I fainted, I suppose I lost consciousness for a brief moment. But the insight that struck me today, was what happened *during* the fainting episode. I was trying to remember what it was like while I was on the floor, unconscious: and it was nothing. I panicked as I thought, what if that is what death is like? One moment, I was dancing with my friends, and the next, I was being yanked off the ground and carried away. In between, was nothing. No darkness, because even darkness would be something; no experience whatsoever. Just total oblivion. It was different from a dreamless nap, because after a nap, you have some sense that time has passed. But from fainting to re-awakening, I had absolutely no sense of anything happening in between. There was just before and after, no during. Nothingness. And so, that brings me to my point: death is oblivion, *unless* consciousness is unrelated to an immaterial soul, which lives on eternally. So long as we don't believe in some sort of untethered soul, some aspect of ourselves that is unaffected by consciousness or a lack thereof, then we can only ascertain that oblivion is what follows death. And if we do believe in an immaterial soul, that cracks open the massive can of religion, and will require much more research... for the opinions on life after death between religions are as vast as infinity! Thoughts?

Yesterday, I was excited. And I was so excited that I wanted it to stop. I bought the book The Mind Illimuninated and I found that yesterday, I was in stage 8 of the 10 Stages for much of the day. Maybe stage 7 or even stage 9. I remember going into this state before from time to time. I'd feel my body exploding with joy, a rush of sensations everywhere. And I have to stop the meditation because I can't help but get distracted by how extraordinary this is. Sometimes I'd get a taste of it outside meditation. I remember programming once and I was suddenly enthralled by an intense joy. It was like being a volcano, but instead of anger, I erupted with joy. I got myself some really celebratory music and thought of how amazing life was. But when I chased after it, the farther it left me. I became attached to it. I kept a story of myself in my mind about how I was "the success story". Managed to get myself from the depths of depression into now. But the thing about it is that I kept my sense of self. As Peter Ralston said, it's like associating yourself as a hard worker. It might be true most of the time. But often they'd associate the hard worker image even when they're tired and need to rest. And because of this challenge to their image, they get upset. They might associate with certain music, certain people, certain activities and more that they lose themselves farther and farther in a false identity. The thing is even if I'm generally "A success story" by that means, that doesn't mean the unconscious associations of perfection, the end of it all and similar ideas are true. When people say Buddhism teaches to let go of desire, that's rather misleading. As if we're taught to become wide eyed happy people accomplishing nothing in life. But the deeper I go, the more I realize that what's really being taught is to remove rigid desire. And to achieve a desire of flowing in something, effortless, yet still powerful. It's like realizing that desire isn't a rigid metal bar no one can break, but like a clay you can form into whatever you want to. When I let go of that image, I fell into what happened yesterday. It was tiring at the end, but it was still pretty amazing. Phabhaker told me to try Osho Kundalini Meditation for my problems with excess energy. And in the beggining, I was told to shake as my body wanted it. When I thought I'd use up enough energy, it still kept going later on. The next stage was to dance and while I imagined a kind of elegant fluid dance, my body found its way to do something pretty whacky in kicking and flailing arms randomly while throwing in some hip hop moving dance. I heard a joke before about breakdancing monks. I never thought there's a chance it could be real. Heh. I felt like natural geographic is making a nature documentary on the ceremonial human being's dance into nothingness complete with classical music. And here you see is the natural homosapien of meditative tendencies dancing the way of Kundalini. But I just told myself to keep focusing. Then I was told to sit down or stand still but I was so tired, I just lied down. But when I lied down, I felt my arms needed to move. So I punched the air. And so did my legs. Kick. Kick. WATASHI KARATE MASTER. HARDCORE XXX! Motherfucker in the face! or whatever my bad Japanese is in a horribly done accent. But the deeper I went, the more I felt myself being absorbed. By what? I don't know. It was as if I was wrapped by nothingness. Like water in a glass. But without the glass. What do you imagine when you hear the word nothing? Do you see an empty box? Pitch black? No, it's just nothing. And that can't be imagined, thought or felt. Just experienced. I read that before stage 8 are like horses going in different directions. Obviously, it's hard to move well and the direction they move will come from the strongest horses. Stage 8 is when the horses move into the same direction, but at different speeds. Some horses rush forward wanting more and the other horses resist to want a slower pace. If I want my focus to be more matured, I had to allow these horses to move as one. One practice for stage 8 was focusing on nimitta. It was a picture of a luminous round object in someone's mind, appearing naturally. I was told to let it grow naturally and was told how to. As I practiced, I noticed the nimitta changing colors. Green. Yellow. Red. They never mentioned something about that. And I moved it around a bit back and forth. But I found I can only move it subtly. I felt a strange calmness. As if sitting inside an enormous temple, seeing the majesty of its heights and absorbing it all. This lasted for about 10 minutes. They described "popping" when we got out of this Jhana state. When I got out, I felt like I heard all the sounds and saw all the sights. Nothing in particular. Just everything at once. With an expansion of awareness yet with a penetrating depth of detail. And in my mind, it was all nothing. Take a book and you'll often have ideas of it in your mind. Cultural ideas. Spiritual ideas. Memories. Likes. Dislikes. Facts. Details. History. But if I saw a book in that state, I won't see that. I'd just see the colors, the lines and the shapes. And it's like that image of it in your mind but go farther to remove what certain colors and shapes and lines mean to you. And remove how these all come together to connect into something you see as an object because even that is an idea. And when everything is removed, there is only nothing. I tried a practiced that involving noticing stillness. It told me to imagine the universe around me first and contrasting that with my breath to gain a stillness. But I already felt it. I focused on this stillness, as if hearing the silence between sounds. As I type this, I feel pretty calm and tranquil. But I can be satisfied with it because I'm not chasing after that intense joy. Maybe to get nearer enlightenment, I have to be even satisfied without something luxurious as intense joy. Or maybe I'm losing focus and just getting bored. Eh, who knows? Not that I need enlightenment right now, do I?

My friend is fascinating. He does not follow any self help, or enlightened gurus... Yet, after I told him about consciousness work and consistently conceptually mindfucked him with No Self, Enlightenment, Non-Duality, Absolute Infinity he slowly started to shift his paradigm and move to a more Non Dual way of thinking/conceptualizing. He is at the point, where he BELIEVES that enlightenment is true and a non-dual perspective is the right perspective, yet the thing is, he doesn't care to do any of the hard work to become enlightened. He does not meditate, or read any books to advance his overall intellectual knowledge on the subject. He simply lives life like everyone else does. He has a girlfriend, who he is very happy with, and he has a passion, which is music, he smokes weed, drinks, eats junk etc. I just had a deep conversation about this with him and I curiously asked WHY it is that he cannot put in the work to become more conscious. He told me that the truth was, that he simply doesn't feel that he needs to know the Truth. He said he is completely content with the suffering that he has to go through while living in a conceptual reality. Now he also admitted, that he has never had any direct experience with the true nature of anything, other than on LSD (maybe.) He said he ultimately trusts life. He believes that whatever is true and meant to be, will come to him, and if he is meant to do enlightenment work, it will eventually come to him. For now though, he finds no need in inquiring rigorously about the Truth. He likes his conceptual reality. Still, he talks and understands many of the concepts of enlightenment on an intellectual level and agrees on pretty much everything that I communicate to him about this work. I want to know, is there anything wrong with this approach to life? I'm asking this simply because I feel that I am largely stuck in this same stage of development. I conceptually understand and believe a whole lot of what is being discussed here, but I sure as hell don't live it through my bones. I still go out every now and then and drink/smoke/put on roles filling my void. I'm still clinging onto myself, not wanting to accept the nothingness that I am. I guess the only difference between us is, that I put in the work to make this stuff a reality, not just more beliefs and concepts. What does it mean when he says, that he is fine with all the suffering that comes with living in a concept based reality? is there something wrong with this attitude? Does my friend have potential with this work?

Can be, I don't know. I went for enlightenment because it felt right. I am very intrigued by nature and contemplated since I can think. So when I heard about it from Leo I was like: "Whuuuuut? This shit is possible?" So there was never a need to push myself or something. It was how things went. So it's right for me. However, I'd say it's not for everybody at all. A lot of people need to experience other things on the "table of experiences" and they will have their "enlightenments" through that. One thing you'll realize after enlightenment (stream entry), is that you have just been introduced to a new "table of experiences". To a new show. So there are at least a few other fields in consciousness you can get enlightened about and they'll probably be even harder to get into. For example understanding how relativity works, what an object is, what emotions are, what thoughts are, how this dream works, how nothingness works... etc. So yeah, let's see where it takes us.

I was watching Zeena and Nikolas Shreck vs Bob Larson part two yesterday..and they spoke of this topic. Nikolas said all of the information gathered and stored and imprinted in your DNA will be returned to your higher self after your death, although it is a popular belief in the LHP that if you follow Abrahamism, everything that is you; your psyche, personality, being, whatever you want to call yourself will cease to be and you will become nothing due to your submission to the universe and the Abrahamic egregore on the astral plane using the information you've gathered here as it's own energy source. This popular LHP belief also proposes that the white light is actually a trap that lures RHP followers into the battery, and that those who have followed the occult and evolved themselves spiritually will be prepared to traverse the after life realm with their astral body (through programming their chakras and mastering astral projection) and return this sacred information and stored data to their higher self, and potentially ending the process of reincarnation, and existing eternally. Speaking of Alan Watts, I'm reading his book The Book on the taboo....and he mentionsthis idea of black nothingness after you die, and says that people create afterlife ideas simply because they cannot fathom and wrap their heads around the idea of non existence I also think it's important to note that while some ideas of death and the afterlife sound more plausible and may fit ones paradigm more than others, and regardless of what a god/deity tells you, what you read or hear from some spiritual master, or what revelations or epiphanies you have about death, no one knows for sure what the fuck is going to happen, or if anything is. The expectation that a "something" is going to happen is based on faith, and we should all make the most of this eternal moment now, and this one life never to be repeated in history again (that I'm sure of) the fact you or I or Leo even exist is such a miracle and is beautiful for no reason but that it exists, and if you've read this, you are lucky beyond most people's understanding

@Dodo You gotta love Adyashanti. What I said about whether nothingness is conscious awareness or not has a lot to do with how I feel theses days and I'm questioning what is true reality. I could throw out knowing all together. It's ran it's silly course.

@cetus56 I just watched this video with Adyashanti and this reminded me of our conversation about whether nothingness can be aware. Starting 11:11 (lol synchronicity), it's interesting to contemplate.

Adyashanti talks about nothingness and who we are.

I don't know either about this. But seems more plausible based on my current experience. By the way don't get me wrong, the hallucination bit is awesome. Here's my problem. If the brain is hallucinating everything and brain exist, who is hallucinating the brain in the first place? We will go back to nothingness every time no? This is the same as finding a God out there or the beginning of the universe.

I don't know. Does nothingness have consciousness? What would nothingness be conscious of? Maybe consciousness is a aspect of existence only. Could it be that the absolute has no awareness of existence or of itself? If existence is Maya. And all existence is created by consciousness, Wouldn't that mean that consciousness is also an illusion? I know that's thinking outside the box here.

Yes, if there is such a thing in the first place. Maybe it proves the use of conscious nothingness.

Dodoster's guess is that Dodoster is probably a figment of nothingness' imagination.

Then why is it, that we feel out of sorts when we are sad, negative, angry, disappointed? Why do we pull ourselves back to happiness? Even unconscious people know it's not right when they are stressed, anxious, unhappy etc. This is the entire point of life, to be happy, why do we have this bias between equanimity, happiness, calm, peace etc? Why are enlightened people so happy, so calm, so soothing, funny, all of these traits we know are good, if reality is nothingness?

I am having a continuous spiritual experience after practising Mooji's clear seeing technique. Everything that is, will always be surrounded and grounded in Nothingness. It's a simple fact. You can always zoom out. Nobody has seen the nothingness, because it is outside of existence, it contains existence. Existence is a bubble in Nothingness. I am grounded in Nothingness and shine within nothingness as nothingness. Everything that is will always be ungrounded. It's not form that is holding this together. It's absolute nothingness and it's who I am, that's why I speak with such conviction! Actually there is a self, it's just no self. But truth is that the self is! Always, no matter what!

This point is something that has really been on my mind lately. I feel like I have established pretty clearly that reality is all there is. Reality basically is composed of sensory perceptions, thoughts, and nothingness. It is strange to me however, that there are other human beings in my direct experience that seem to be having their own version of reality. If there is only one reality, then how does one explain the seemly billions of different realities that exist (and even more if you include all sentient life)? It seems that their realities are just as valid as what I am experiencing. So if it seems like other humans are experiencing something similar to what I am experiencing, is there more to reality than what just I can perceive? Does that make sense? If not I can try to clarify a little better.

How could it not disappear? If it didn't literally disappear, you couldn't go to work, because your consciousness would be populated by "your house". The reason you can't be both at your house and at work is because your consciousness needs to empty itself first. Like an LCD screen, it has a hard time displaying two images at the same time. This is not a matter for speculation or philosophy. You need to look at your direct experience. Blink your eyes right now and notice that your room disappears. That's what's literally true. Everything else is concept. Your mind fudges literal truth so that you can live in a cushy conceptual matrix. This work is all about stripping down the conceptual matrix to what is literally true. Don't conflate this with silly expectations of burglars not being able to enter your house. When you're switching paradigms, you have to recontextualize all your old facts about reality. Instead of thinking of reality as a solid physical thing, think of it as a collections of dreams or hallucinations. In a dream, a tiger can eat you, even though both the tiger and your body are imaginary. Reality is literally no different than a dream. It's just a bit more consistent, clear, and vibrant. There is no "substance" behind the dream. The dream is not taking place anywhere, like in your brain. There is no brain! There is no world. It's just pure dream afloat in nothingness. That's idealism for ya.

@Leo Gura But Leooo, so are you saying there could be non-physical organisms? I've actually never thought about that. I think my core assumption was if something is not in our perception, then it is literally nothingness. But not-perception is still a thing right? So it's not nothingness. And if reality is absolute then it can contain individual souls that had past lives, human egos and pizza galaxies where everything is made out of pizza. Damn, that actually makes sense in a very weird way. But eighter way one part of the dream wouldn't be more spiritual than living as a human ego or an ant. They should be equally ignorant from the nondual perspective.

Vedanta "It is this Akshara (the Imperishable), O Gargi, so the knowers of Brahman say. It is neither gross nor subtle, neither short nor long, not red, not viscid, not shadowy, not dark, not the air, not the ether, not adhesive, tasteless, odourless, without the sense of sight, without the sense of hearing, without the vital principle, mouthless, without measure, neither interior nor exterior,. It eats nothing, nobody eats it." - Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3-8-8. ............................................................................. Buddhism “There is that dimension, monks, where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; neither dimension of the infinitude of space, nor dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, nor dimension of nothingness, nor dimension of neither perception nor non-perception; neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor staying; neither passing away nor arising: unestablished, unevolving, without support [mental object]. This, just this, is the end of stress.” - Buddha (in Nibbāna Sutta: Unbinding (1))

@Leo Gura I have experienced a complete ego-death, which showed me all that is arises from nothingness. However, I have difficulity putting this knowledge into actual practical use in the ego game. I think trying to explain/understand what it is on a intellectual level will only make me walk in circles and will do the opposite of becoming enlightened. Isn't the purpose of self-enquiry ultimately to understand that one should stop seeking? Like going full circle to realize one already is and that all external theory will bring you further from the truth? Or is there no such thing as truth at all?