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This picture kind of reminds me of the Ego. It thinks it's this big, strong, gracious bull but it's actually just a string of thoughts in nothingness. I have this as a desktop background to remind my ego

Monday, 16/08/01 - 4h Meditation Retreat Day 1 Yesterday I spontaneously decided that I will make this week a 4h Meditation Retreat. This means that I will meditate from Monday to Friday each day at least 4 hours. Meditation: I meditated in the morning 1h and right before lunch another hour. This way really relaxing like yesterday. I once got into a state where I looked at the light switch and just saw the visual sensation of it, nothing else. Then I meditated right after lunch for almost two hours. First I did 35 minutes, switched positions and started the guided Neti Neti meditation by Leo. This took about 50 minutes and at the end I got a little little sense of my true nature, of nothingness. I wanted to stop the mp3 on my handy, so I had to move and open my eyes. I lost the sense of nothingness and meditated for another 20 minutes. Life Purpose Work: I started writing a little bit about happiness. I felt a lot of resistance and stopped after one hour. I am asking myself whether this is really my life purpose, writing blog post like stuff about some philosophical/spiritual topic. It probably is something like this. The problem though at the moment is that I do not have a lot of wisdom. I need to investigate a lot of time in research and personal spiritual growth before I am able to share something. Who would want to read something by a 17 year old inexperienced one? Maybe I should first do a lot of research, study and spiritual development first. This means a lot of meditation, reading books, hearing spiritual teachings on YouTube and going out of my comfort zone like hard intense exercise. I consider becoming a none after finishing school. Personal Development Work: Nothing really. I could have read a little bit, but I rather wanted to think about my meditation experiences and life. Things I am grateful for: the time to meditate a lot nothingness music Ways I could have made today better: longer meditations to feel and surrender with the pain in my legs

Well what do you think will happen when you're dead? You think love, gratitude, humor will exist? They will be gone forever. Just like when you go sleep each night, the entire world disappears. And it's not depressing at all. It's peaceful. Absolute peace. It's only depressing when seeing through the filter of ego. The problem is you've been avoiding contemplating death. You're distracting yourself. You're not facing it. And the truth is that it's coming. It will happen before you know it. So you might as well face up to it. But also, whatever genuine gratitude or love is currently in you, is not of the ego. It is of the Nothingness that you really are. Ego only limits it. Notice how you killed off the love and gratitude you were feeling at the breakfast table by activating ego. The ego got lost in thought stories and so the love was replaced with fear, confusion, and depression. When ego is seen-through, gratitude and love are the default states until the body dies. The real question is: How can unenlightened people laugh, love and be grateful? And the answer is: They can't! Not really. Because they have to spend every waking minute of their life worrying about protecting the ego from death.

I appreciate that you have that view, but we see things differently it seems. Vibing in my experience is communication and the inter-play of natural forces. Sharing your orientation and substance in the world as presence and authentic self-expression, which inter-relates and influences the world around you as the world in turn influences you. Vibration, frequency, presence, these are all general terms for the sum of all we exude and share as an experience. Anyways, Truth is way more nuanced and multi-dynamic than most people realize and is often times just a misused word for belief. In my view Truth requires differentiation for greater understanding. There are structural truths, contextual truths, and then belief and interpretation, which depends upon what a person has internalized and the chemistry of previously stored internalizations as they interact with new potential beliefs. So with that said, I imagine that this Truth you are speaking off relates to beliefs of one-ness and no-identity and enlightenment stuff. I don't ascribe to those beliefs and interpretations of reality. In my view, people who do accept and internalize such beliefs lack capability with Connective Tension or the ability to modulate the degree of attachment and consequent fusion with natural energies like "the void" or nothingness for instance. They react to the stresses of life by seeking to swing the pendulum towards detachment and nothingness, rather than calming down and not being seduced by it's influence and realizing that we can actually gain capability with the pendulum itself (in my view Buddha was a victim of this). I'm not trying persuade you or anything, just share a different experience, arrived at through many years of careful cultivation of perceptional abilities. I guess if I had to simply state the difference in view, it would be that where some people want to be completely one with nothingness and have no identity and everything as the same, I see the universe as being connected, but distinct and nuanced. Everything is different from me, but there are connective forces with different chemistries that connect me with everything and the contrast of those connections determine the shape/structure, orientation, solidity, permeability, and confluence of influence within my world. Such a view has brought me incredible success in life and is both internally and externally validated in every facet of the universe. So... really to me oneness is moving backwards and a limitation for further growth. It's a corruption of principles via the pressure to conform to the influence of unbalanced simplicity. Or in other words, tunnel vision and being one-dimensional.

My pleasure. Stay with it and enjoy the work. There is nothing more meaningful you could be doing. If you've been asking the question: Who am I? You might now want to move onto the question: What am I? If you now know Who you are, what is that who? Look deeply into the matter. Nothing you see, hear, feel, or think is What you are. Become the Nothingness & infinity that you are.

@Joe Schmoe Imagine for a moment that you are the number Zero. Zero is ground-zero reality: undifferentiated, untethered, just itself, not even an "it". Just the fabric of reality, eternal and unchanging. Synonyms for Zero: the void, Self, Brahman, Infinity, Truth, Pure awareness, nothingness, no-thing. Zero is sad because it can't be aware of itself. It is totally void of sentience and objects. So what does it do? It creates the finite illusions of One and Two. Zero inhabits One, the human I-perspective. This is where things get tricky. Zero wants to spice things up, so it inhabits many "One's" and tricks itself into believing in the illusion of Two. Another common word for Two is Maya. Two is the illusion of duality, particularly that there is a "perceiver" and there is the "perceived," as opposed to the One perspective which is just "perceiving." In that way, Zero can ride along in the One perspective and dream as Two: that it is a separate entity called a "self" or "ego." Two inevitably obstructs Zero due to identification. So enlightenment is like hide-and-seek. It's the realization and cultivation of your Zero nature. By creating the illusion of finiteness with One and Two, Zero can then use finiteness as a reference point to become aware of itself. Have you ever heard the teachers say that enlightenment is "Awareness being aware of itself?" Without One and Two, Zero can't be aware of anything (e.g. deep sleep). With One and Two, Zero can be aware of One and Two and itself. The path to enlightenment mainly consists of seeing through the illusion of Two. Seeing through your illusions is synonymous with disidentification, and it's often quite painful. But that's another topic. Many people see enlightenment as a good thing, some see it as a bad thing. Fundamentally, it's neutral. If it happens, it happens. Hope that clears things up a bit. If you're more confused, that may be a good thing. Cheers!

As Jed Mckenna said truth realization is a booby prize. Do you really want to lose yourself and find out that you do not exist, and that no one have ever existed? Is there a possibility that you will not want to interact with people once you become enlightened? Maybe you will want to completely isolate yourself from other people? Do you really want to experience void and nothingness? Will you still be able to enjoy the activities you once enjoyed? Didn´t Jed Mckenna say that many people that become enlightened isolate themselves and keep their mouth shut about the whole thing? That they become lazy because there is no desire to become anything at all or to improve yourself. "I think the bubble is a magnificent amusement park, and leaving it is a damn silly thing to do, unless you absolutely must" - Jed Mckenna Steven Norquist said that if you have a good life in the "dream stat" with wife and kids etc, then it is stupid to become enlightened because you might become completely detached from them. What´s your guys thoughts on this? Have any other teachers talked about this? I´m still a novice on the topic

Thanks, I appreciate it. I looked up Samadhi and this definition most resonates with my view and abilities (from wiki) "Shankman: an abiding in which mind becomes very still but does not merge with the object of attention, and is thus able to observe and gain insight into the changing flow of experience." I call this "thinking (or moving) in parallel" and I'm pretty much in that state all the time, gradually changing to hold more and more contrasts in parallel. Choosing which thoughts I fuse/merge with and the degree of immersion. This parallelity is also referred to as capacitance with electromagnetic fields. So it is externally in nature, so to is it internally within us humans. If you notice there is a space/void/nothingness in between the two plates held in parallel and that is what people on here refer to as the void (in my view and experience). A lot of times people on here meditate and attach/fuse to that void and then pedestalize it as "true awareness" but for me, it's not "really" empty, it's the space where I feel fields of energy or tension that arise from two or more things. For me, the void is dangerous to fully fuse with, because it will shroud out human emotions, but I've long learned how to keep both balanced and running in parallel synergy at the same time. That synergy held in parallel is what affords me the ability to bridge and combine and counter-balance things like pride and humility or pleasure and pain. If you want to experience what I mean viscerally, get a magnet and a piece of metal and hold them close together, but not so close that they're touching and feel the pull and tension of the attractive forces struggling within your hold to "snap together" (I feel a similar pull and restraint at all times in conjunction with my "electric cloud" void feeling and of course normal thoughts and emotions). This is analogous to what happens within a fraction of a second with things that come into our focus and have an attractive or repulsive charge. We come in range, it pings our awareness , and if the charge is intense enough it shifts our attention towards it, and if that charge reaches past a certain threshold we immerse within it and start creating narrative chains of thought around it. If you ever notice how some thoughts arise and then flow past and some you latch onto and delve into, you'll have at least a starting point for differentiating the degrees of fusion and immersion. But when you have worked with things like me, you can restrain the momentum of that attractive/repulsive movement, shifting the degree of fusion and degree of immersion, holding that space, allowing you to see deeper and wider and calmer while still connected. This allows you to catch the subtle details of interaction and grow and learn, rather than fall into circular behaviors, because the emotional charge is too strong and it creates the same reaction over and over again (like people who always get caught up in heated political debates about the same stuff. It's the emotional charge, attaching and shifting them over and over again. Which is also why things like "click-bait" get people time and time again). Anyways, how I've trained myself to do such things is a long explanation that I'm writing a book about, but if you still have interest I'll try and write something for you to think about and try.

That's exactly right. For those who are serious, it can happen much sooner. But for most people, it will take a LONG time. Who the hell is going to concentrate for 60 minutes a daily for a year? 0.0000001% of people. There are various kinds of Samadhi possible. You can even have a Samadhi without any object. A Samadhi of awareness or nothingness.

You guys are totally underestimating enlightenment! You should be more interested in becoming of aware of the fact that "right side of the brain" is a thought inside nothingness. When you say "brain", you say it as thought it really exists. Might want to question that assumption. Where was the brain before you were born? Did it exist? No? Then what possible significance could it have to you or to truth? All this brain-talk is shallow, shallow, shallow. You need to look 1000 miles under the surface.

Nothingness

Really with the bruce lee quote? You're not pointing at the moon, you are pulling things out of imagination land that isn't grounded in reality whatsoever and choosing to believe them. You have heard or read second-hand that consciousness is this magical nothingness, rather than working with reality and burdening your limitations of awareness, and devoting yourself to expanding them. You're big picture is built off the interpretations of un-grounded experience by people who have spent little to no time at all developing their actual senses and is doing very little in the way of changing your physical reality. Why would I entertain that, when I have so much experience and understanding backed up by the real world that shows me differently? People make up magical stories about attachment and non-attachment filled with pedestalization and aggrandizement. I work with the actual physical forces in real life that propel attraction/attachment and repulsion/non-attachment, and gain a whole new set of feelings and sensations that I've carried with me everyday for years now. People question subjectivity and objectivity, but I see and work with the foundation that bridges them both together in real time, via a staggering number of combinations of patterned motion. People talk about how we are limited by our mind, but I have uncovered and work with structures deeper than my mind, which contrast with it and affect my reality. People talk about having a limitless awareness, yet they are completely unaware of nuance and detail and all the staggering amount of inter-related movements that make up just a single second of change within the limited scope of the human body. And that's not even counting potentiality. How many potentialities can you hold in your head? I've been able to see and act on 8 within a fraction of a second. Are you fast enough to feel a thought attach to you and in that fraction of a second before immersion, choose 8 different potentialities in relation to it? I doubt you have even the foggiest idea of what I'm talking about, because neither you or anyone else on here has spent the years training to pick up on the all the things going on within such a small window of time. How can you hope to properly describe consciousness if you're too slow and dull to see even a thimble full of all the different patterns going on with your very own perceptional system? God you people are arrogant in your delusions. Thinking some two-bit, shallow ass belief about consciousness magically solves everything. Not even realizing or addressing the motivations pushing you to assume such beliefs. The patterns and principles I talk about are inherent all over the world and have been here before humans and any programming of oneness. The same principles I use to balance effect and affect are the same ones found with electrical capacitance and the shifting tides on both the sun and in the ocean. But hey, if you want to believe un-grounded stuff, that's cool. But, don't push it like it's the one ultimate truth, when it's just another iteration of religiosity, requiring blind faith. You talk about capability, but If it was this amazing thing, people who have it, should be able to tell you about the foundational elements of learning. They should be able to learn anything they choose, slow down their perception of time as they choose, they should understand how actual physical reality works, seduction, music, biology, emotional realities, etc. None of these people who believe in this stuff are any more capable for it. But, the stuff I talk about changes me everyday. It evolves me. For me, enlightenment, non-duality, and nothingness, is a pale substitute for actually developing all of who I am. But that's me, everybody has their own journey of evolution to undertake. My road bears fruit with every step.

Easy. You already are it. You just forgot. You got lost in the forms of nothingness. Listen to it. The space between breaths, the empty silence that pervades all phenomena. Don't try, just put your attention there. Where attention goes, energy flows. Spend time with the aliveness that is the nothingness, and spend less time attending to the manifest forms of nothingness. Just do it, and one day it will happen.

Here is another pointer (just a slightly different way of looking at it)... Pay attention to the room. You notice there are things in the room. Most of us pay attention to the "things"... What about the space?? Did you ever stop to consider the space? The nothingness that allows all things (including you) to BE... Ever tried to become one with that space?

Now that @Galyna mentions it, on a second read @Salaam you are saying that: "There are 118 elements on the periodic table and they all have different reactions and chemistry with each other. How would the world work if there was only one element? What would it combine with to form blood, bone, organ, and muscle tissue?" You are talking there about physical world, and the "idea" that everything is one, is beyond physics. Imagine the "nothingness" that is consciousness or awareness, and can create matter of 118 elements, or anything from nothing. Because it is nothing and everything. I know what I am saying is a concept too, but it is not ONE "physically" that Buddhism and other philosophies refer to.

@Lorenzo Engel Check out the clip below...at 34:45 Leo started to discover the Zen term, the Ox's tail. What does this mean? Now...hold on...Ox's tail...are they really talking about an animal or something else? Check out Shinzen Young's clips on The Ox Herding Pics: https://youtu.be/x8aN9O73lg https://youtu.be/0PQonSiGkVE https://youtu.be/Ozca_5ifwQ0 The question is, why do they tell the story this way? Very ancient story. And, what is Riding the Ox Backwards really mean in the end according to an enlightenment experience? It's an interesting but discreet story. Anyone who has had an enlightenment experience will tell you that the experience is an outer body experience without the human mind & without the fictional ego, literally. The ego doesn't exist in an enlightenment experience. All you "feel" is peace (nothingness/everythingness = one with the universe) Whereas in the human mind, the ego is there because of "choice," or unawareness. But, if you would like to talk about it with someone, like a master or guru or whoever, there has to be an understanding between the two-no judging. How do we make use of the understanding of enlightenment and/or enlightenment experiences? Below is a clip of Leo talking about creating world peace. How do we discover our talents/gifts in order to contribute to this? Below are some more clips: (Note: I just want to make a little note here. All that I've said has nothing to do with religion. It's the meaning I'm trying to communicate. Riding the Ox Backwards is an extraordinary experience of time & space where one is facing backwards. )

Learning about the ego through enlightenment experiences & simple understanding of enlightenment... Negative voice and emotion = fictional ego...the thought that helps you to solve problems, go for your life purpose, go for transendence morality, seek for enlightenment that is coming from the "everythingness" and "nothingness" is your true self. This is what "you" call being enlightened. In the end, "you" want to contribute to peace in this world. Having enlightenment experiences is different from being enlightened. Enlightenment experiences are outer body experiences or any wisdom that you get that gives out of the ordinary/meaningful info in life. It helps you understand your fictional ego.

LOL. Mal jumps off the soap box, drops the megaphone and walks off into nothingness

*Mal drops non existent mic and walks off into nothingness*

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1612680208/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467541336&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=Guide+to+Investing+by+Robert+Kiyosaki&dpPl=1&dpID=41UqvEnLtYL&ref=plSrch Yes, true, but I prefer one on one especially with enlightenment experiences, or I like watching informative clips, like Leo's clips, and then researching. Once you find someone that could tell you a lot more, and it's actually informative and not just make-believe, there are a lot of discoveries. I know one can see more than just the no-self (everythingness/nothingness). Even Leo mentioned Ox's tail (Zen terminology) in one of his enlightenment clips. In other words, what I'm trying to say here is...you want to talk to someone who will not shed the wrong light. Both trust and knowledge has to be there. Leo did say in one of his clips-I don't remember which one-maybe it's his Graves model clip-not to get caught up in debates. I do agree with him. We need a lot of time for our life purpose. Yes, of course, it can be the same. Mine happen to be the same. I'm a bilingual teacher (career at a school). I'm also working online, have my own website, and wrote my own book (my startup). I wish you the best on your journey. Much success and peace.

Yea we've been over this. You have yet to show any depth of understanding to match your level of self-aggrandizement. Last time we talked, you were still working on "combating" your thoughts. Unlike anyone else here, my thoughts are completely my own. I'm choosing and mixing multiple potential realities on the fly, while people are still stuck on nothingness, and other beginner shit. Also, don't think I haven't noticed you've recently started talking about your "core". I wonder where you got that from?

Consciousness doesn't really exist. It only appears to exist in the Absolute nothingness. I am nothing, you are nothing and awareness is also nothing. There is indeed no perceiver to be found. But we are not a perception, because if we are a perception there has to be a perceiver. What 'we' are is the same consciousness/nothingness as the Absolute. Our minds don't really 'know' anything for there isn't anything to be known, the mind can throw some vague concepts around trying to define this consciousness but it cannot. And how could it? These seeming thoughts appear in the thing that it's trying to define. It's like a single cell in your big toe trying to define what the human body is, it can't be done because it can never see past the toe.

Meh, that's kind of dogmatic. You might want to ease that stance a little, so you don't miss out on nuance. I'm assuming that was just an off-the-cuff response? Yes, when it comes to sharing information there are limits, in a lot of ways we can only be a reference for each other in that respect. Definitions without self-referential experience to connect to, won't have much practical application as it is, but in this case the definition, in and of itself isn't the problem. The issue lies in what action people choose in response. There is a difference between using another as a reference or answer that replaces or substitutes the transfer of understanding that comes with involvement and experience, versus using another as a reference for gaining perspective on how to enhance and enrich the developmental process in concert with an actual practice. It's helpful to have some one point out structures behind the mind, that over time they can work to sensitize themselves to. And just as precious, is sharing structures of accountability and self-balancing that protects the integrity of continued development. I assume that's what you attempt with your videos in a way? Anyways, speaking of limitations or barriers, Bruno, it is also very important to work on becoming aware of limitation and learning from it. Gaining nuance with your own personal, dynamic, context-sensitive, "ceiling and floor". Some people feel limitation and respond with frustration, despair, anger, but it can also be precious, and enlightening (I don't mean no-self enlightenment here, I mean clarity). For instance my internal awareness is so deep and sensitive, that I can pick up on very fragile things going on inside my body. However, placing my awareness directly on those things, causes damage, making me sick. Why? It's because awareness in and of itself has a weight to it, like how you can feel the weight of a person's eyes/gaze on you even with your eyes closed. That weight can disrupt or distort the integrity of those fragile things structures and patterns of movement. So, with that experience we learn that even awareness has limitations, but those limitations don't necessarily mean loss, but instead an opportunity for trust and synergy with another part of who we are. Instead of trying to be directly aware in isolation, I mediate the weight of my awareness, through multi-dimensionality and contrast. Connecting with the larger structure they're a part of and gaining deeper understanding indirectly, from the inter-relations going on within that structure. Actually here is a video that better describes the patterns and structures inherent to seemingly invisible things, that are made visible via contrast. Contrast in this case, being the use of salt or sand to create a chain of inter-relation with the vibrational frequencies to make visible, what we could not directly perceive in isolation. Much like dusting for prints, it is the synergy and contrast of the dust and skin-oil that affords us the opportunity to be more aware. In a similar way, this is how I learned and gained capability with 12/? of the invisible structures I balance at all times that work behind and in concert with "thinking". Relating with how they all work and depend on each other, provides me an inexhaustible supply of growth experiences that changes and develops as I change and develop, creating momentum of synergy. See, it is experiencing these kinds of realities first-hand which make me shake my head at people who dismiss difference and contrast. People who say that all there is, is nothingness or everything is an illusion. That's a fucking ignorant and irresponsible stance. Even the void has a purpose and creates contrast when it inter-relates with everything else. It's a dielectric material. The universe is filled with different patterns of motion and shape and they all interact and have different chemistries with each other. For instance, notice how in the video the higher the frequency the greater the complexity of shape, but also how that complexity impacts uniformity. Notice where the the thickest lines are, how the rising and falling of motion affects the activity of the salt and the porousness of shape. Which area's have the highest zones of activity and which don't. There are principles of reality and nature and working with ourselves right there for people to understand, if we take the time to feel out how these interactions work together and inter-relate. Everything has a shape or pattern, even thoughts. Each thought also has a patterned chemical cascade, which plays a part in supporting it's integrity of shape and fidelity of expression. Why lose out on all that beautiful nuance and detail with an extreme or ignorant stance? I hope this helps.

@Greatnestwithin Good, when you do not find yourself while inquiry remember that you are not failing. Remember, who You are is pure infinite nothingness, and this is quite impossible for the mind to grasp as it can only grasp somethingness, it cannot grasp nothingness, it wasn't made to. Leo explains this very beautifully in his Enlightenment Guided Inquiry @ 55:00. I definitely recommend you to watch it if you haven't https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq4NDMNDzSs A self realized person would see life and death as an illusion because he would realize that "he" was never alive to begin with, ever. The body and mind was active, sure, however, there was really no one that operated it, and ever will. A self realized person when coming to "his" demise would not flinch an ounce of fear when death arrives of the mind and body, for he has already realized the very nature of one's self and reality. That you are the Infinite, Divine, that the body/mind experiences from. There is no more identification with the body/mind, only to the divine nothingness, so then what is death of the body/mind mean to the self realized person? Yeah, it means nothing! Aha!

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone can help understand how the subconscious relates to the authentic, true self. For a long time I have been in the process of tweaking and refining both my lists of top values and strengths as well as my life purpose statement. Every time I feel something click on the "inside", I feel like I'm making progress. In my head I'm conceptualising this as trying out different thoughts and theories and "checking" them against my subconscious, looking for the "gut reaction" or intuitive understanding I'm on the right track. However, I've also read a lot about how your subconscious seems to be largely constructed from your own life experience and can be re-programmed, through various mind techniques (which I've also been practicing), which makes me wonder, am I "checking" for a gut reaction or intuition against some sort of arbitrary state of thoughts / currently buried in my subconscious? I guess my questions are: 1. Is the subconscious where intuition or that "gut feeling" comes from, or does that come from somewhere deeper, like your "true self" or "highest self"? If the subconscious is constructed on the fly and prone to change, then it does not seem to me like a source of truth. The subconscious also seems likely to harbour as many negative thoughts as positive, if not more so. 2. Does the feeling of knowing your life purpose and your top values ultimately come from being in tune with your subconscious, which just happens to be configured to be a certain way, at a certain point in time? Or, are your values and purpose resonating with you on a more spiritual level, stemming from your authentic self - the true self that is essentially nothingness? Is there a distinction to be made between what's "true" for the body / mind and then a higher level of truth which does not care about life purpose or values? 3. What is the relationship between the subconscious and the true, authentic self? Does anyone have any insight into what kind of role the subconscious mind would play in the life of an enlightened person, or how it might operate? Would it operate in the same manner as it does for an unenlightened person, or would it simply be reduced to purely managing the workings of the body; digestion, heartbeat, breathing etc.? I've been struggling for a while to reconcile these questions, any help would be greatly appreciated!