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So I was meditating the other day, and I kept falling in and out of consciousness, I began contemplating on the nature of reality and how the world operated and this thing called God realization, it was difficult because there was a deep sense of disturbance and discomfort that I wasn't able to work through, some shadow aspects lashing out at me. At one point, I had a beautiful glimpse into infinity, and then it switched to once again the same shadow aspects of human judgement, morality yada yada, and then a voice downloaded itself and told me that nothing matters, just absolutely nothing matters, and everything is perfect as it is and suddenly it said that self compassion is the highest most beautiful goal, it didn't matter if love didn't exist, love had to be created, everything comes from nothing and nothingness is what everything leads to, some of my anxiety was alleviated and there it was..... In a cloud of smoke an entity standing there and saying "self compassion."

We can also regard it as a blissfully disturbing episode in the useless repose of nothingness. The grass is always greener on the other side...

@Hojo Okay. The experience itself is the exact thing that exists. The word experience unfortunately implies that there is a subject ("subject"ive experience = subject + object). So it's misleading to say that. What we call an "experience", the very subjective quality itself, is the literal exact thing that is. There's nothing to it BUT that. There isn't anything mixed into it, merged with it, behind it, in front of it, seeing it. There is ONLY the exact thing itself. You aren't there seeing it as a void or as nothingness, you aren't there as the pillow. You aren't at one with the pillow or merged with the pillow. The apparently seen quality of the pillow is the exact and only thing there... It's like if you had a paint can filled with qualia, and that is the very thing put down onto canvas. There isn't a canvas but it might be a useful metaphor... Or imagine Lego blocks made of qualia. So a paint can filled with the qualia itself like the redness of red, or the guitarness sound of a guitar. And your brush places that down on the canvas. Or imagine Lego blocks made of qualia just the same, and those are the very things which construct reality. Perhaps useful metaphors. Or literally right now do this because it triggered it in me initially a few weeks ago or w.e.: take a cushion, put it in front of you, and try to recreate a surround sound effect but with the vision of the cushion. Make it so the cushion seems equally as behind you as it is in front of you. Don't just BS yourself with thoughts either. The thing has to literally lose spatial relation so it isn't any more in front than it is behind... See if that does anything.

Let's see, if i dissapear and only the void remains, but the void is aware of itself, I'm the void. I'm always there since an experience is happening. If you say there is not experience happening, what is this? An illusion? It's still an experience. Everything is, except the non existence. But the existence is, so i am. How to denying that? Explain. The revelation is the nothingness that realizes that is limitless, in this moment, the absolute is revealed

No, not nothingness. Not infinity. Not a void. I wasn't there. At all. Not as anything OR as nothing. I didn't exist anymore. You are genuinely afraid of not existing, as you said it is horrifying. "Be open to the possibility" you're actively trying to hold onto a delusion due to fear... You are logic-ing the idea that I had to have been present, because the alternative is impossible. It is logically impossible appearance was there without me. But it was. I can explain your drug trip revelations if you want. I'm super familiar with DMT trips and the effects.

What if, God is actually Other, and not Self? Appearence can appear without a self because you are not the generator of appearences either, existence IS. Creation is continous, from moment to moment. But to actually notice and be hyper concious of God's presence is totally possible, God is Existence as such, and it is deeply personal as well. You need to sustain your existence, you need to eat, shit, etc, but existence as such, does not need anything, since it is the generator of contingent beings. God is not some man in the clouds, God is the foundation for the idea to even appear in the first place. Non existence is not real for God, but for a contingent being like us, who stands between nothingness and infinite Being, it is possible.

Quick Questions. Is enlightenment the Absolute purpose of Life? Does Enlightenment make you happy forever? Does Enlightenment Completely Remove your Suffering? Some People Say by becoming god you will be happy forever. what does being Happy Forever mean? Is living in this reality with materialism a sin? does infinity punish me with suffering when I live in this Reality without Raising my Consciousness? What is suffering means in the Absolute sense? Is it Different from the Suffering we Experienced in this Materialistic world like having Issues and stuff? What will you be doing after Becoming God, what do Gods perceive as being happy forever, what do they mean when they say Happy Forever? Is Simply Staring at Eternal Void and Being nothingness what happiness is? I think being a rock is Eternal Happiness. Am I wrong? what if you Don't Purse Enlightenment? and die as all the dumb People do? What's wrong with being in a low Conscious state as long as I can survive? I mean Cave men died without Enlightenment? What is the Significance of enlightenment? Some people say if you don't do Enlightenment you will have Eternal Suffering, that sounds like A religion to me. I'm Confused. Should I really Pursue enlightenment, I mean material suffering is fine for me, so what else do I need to chase? don't say to me you need to Experience it first before judging, please don't put this statement. I just want to know Is enlightenment is the absolute truth? Issues and Suffering is Fine for me, I Respect Suffering because it gives me the strength to tackle it. Don't try to frighten me with the statement "You are not awake, so you don't know what suffering is" what do Gods(Enlightened Gurus like Leo) mean when they say Suffering... In an Absolute sense? or Materialistic view? What's Wrong in Dying without Enlightenment? What's Great about having Enlightenment? some people say enlightenment makes you have success in life. that success in life is still materialistic. i Guess. I don't care about life's success. I'm in Great Confusion, please clear my questions, thank you

Anything is remembered when you are there. It's not true self. is that you are the absolute void, the nothingness. but the nothingness is, there you remember it. and nothingness is limitless, it is infinity. since it has no limits, you, that is, nothingness, encompass infinity. this is the explosion and what you call the consciousness of god. infinity is everything, and you are it just as you are nothing. think about one thing: maybe you are missing something to see. Why not be open to that possibility? It is also quite obvious that you exist. Just go outside for a walk. to be nothing it seems something right? where is the trick?

I'm thinking about what the things are made of, and the best answer that I can find is consciousness, or nothing. In my opinion, consciousness and nothing are the same thing, and things, in my experience, if I'm gonna be honest about it, seem to be created in the moment. It's like I'm all the information and things in the world, and also like, I'm the only consciousness that exists, that reality is a dream and what I am is the nothingness that morphs myself into objects and ideas and structures and all the other minds, in the moment. But it also is like, as my title says, it is all about happiness, for happiness tells me whether I'm creating a dream that I like or not. Because if I'm imagining and creating in "every" moment, by my nature as the creator, then happiness works like a compass telling me what I'm creating. The better I feel the better I'm creating in the "direction" that I want, and if thoughts, and "me myself" also are my creations, then the better I feel the better I'm creating as, in a sense, "the void" that is morphing into itself. My emotion in the moment is telling me what I'm in the mode of creating and becoming in the mode of thought and "reality", and my perception of the moment, therefore, is being reflected by my level of happiness, in a sense, in the now. I'm feeling like I'm the infinitely intelligent, in all ways, "void" that is itself, and that thought, perhaps, in a sense, is the self building principle that moves itself towards itself like walking on a ladder, and that, in that sense, is the mode. I'm feeling like "I" within itself is the eternal mystery that cannot help but refer to itself for it is that which is existence, and it morphs itself into thoughts, or into, perhaps, "thinkingness", that builds it as that which is existence. When "I" make this mode of being the mode of being that is "me", then the experience is the experience of being, and the experience of being becomes, like what is happening here, words and sentences and meanings, and so on. Then consciousness, in the modality that it is, perceives what it "has been" as what it is, and the experience of time and relativity comes into being, and at that point, I feel the need to postulate something which I may call God, or Logos, that, in a sense, "orchestrates" being. That might be a runaway solution to run away from absolute solipsism, perhaps, but I, to be honest, am so frickin afraid of absolute solipsism, so I, out of my fear, infer the existence of other minds, even though they are "myself". That then creates infinite complexities, yeah, but if we assume a mystical substance of being, a substance that is itself, like void or emptiness or nothingness, then being "experientially" refers to it, and "be's" that which is itself. That, perhaps, in a sense, is what solipsism, in its truest meaning, is anyways, because being even becomes "solipsistic", in a sense, about "itself", and understanding, in its beingness, becomes that which is itself. Because even if existence is perception, and perception is being, or that which is referring to itself, how will you explain the experience of experience? I mean, how will you find the beingness of being as that which is itself? I mean, if being is that which is being itself, then what is it that makes it itself other than that which is not itself? I mean, what is the mode of existence, in that sense, that makes it what it is, as it is that which is existence as the mode that we call "existence"? I mean, how do we find the mode of being that is being, and what is it that we compare it to when we do that, and what is the existence of the very "comparability" itself? What is it that makes it that which is the being that it is, when being is that which it is as "existence"? What is it that makes "x", for instance, meaningful and building itself in the mode of being that it is that it "introduces", in that sense, to itself? What is it that finds itself, for instance, in the form of a memory, and the "extension", in a sense, of the memory? What is it that is self that "knows" itself, and, in a sense, the limits of itself that makes it itself instead of making it that which is not itself? What is the limit, and the "beingness" of the limit that perceives itself as time and space, and also as that which is not time and space, to limit itself as itself? That's a weird thing for it is the limitation of being that makes itself, and, in that way, it perceives in itself the "merging", in a sense, of free will and that which is not free will, as the categories and concepts, in a sense, of being. That's, then, perhaps, the analysis that "dissolves" itself as that which is to give birth, in a sense, to that which it is that "not yet" is that which is, and that, perhaps, is the analysis of analysis that puts language, and structure, itself into question. Yet, the paradox, then, is, it is that which is itself that puts itself into question by being that which is. And language when it "turns" to itself, discovers itself as that which is in the mode of being that which is not. I mean, it becomes the reference of itself where the reference is about the reference to itself, and it becomes, oozes, in a sense, into that which is, that is that which it is referring to, and it, again, "dissolves" within itself by being itself. I mean, by being that which it is, it begins to find that it actually is that which it is not, and by being that which it is, it, also, becomes the becoming of that which it is not, and it again, as we talked about it in the beginning, becomes the mode of being the "ladder". I mean, that probably is the union of the modality of being as that which is, the perception of that which is, and the interchangeability that is that which is. And, then, when that which is that which is finds itself as that which is that which is, then that which is becomes the modality. This is the crucial point for it is the being of "not" being, and it is the knowledge that we refer to when we refer to being as that which is "being" that which is, and science, in that sense, becomes the limits that defines the modality of being as that which "becomes" the modality.

Yes exactly. Not seeing/seen anymore at all. Just appearance. Like the quick image of a sunset I chopped together. Only appearance remains shining pristine. To nobody and nothing. Importantly, there is no point of view there anymore. The image is, impossibly, no longer in front of you or behind you or anywhere at all. It's by itself. Without any you anywhere at all. Nowhere in relation to it. Not even merged with it, or swirling around "at one" with it like DMT breakthrough trips, it's not there anymore. Not somewhere in relation to it, not merged with it: gone... NOT only the thoughts or ideas of self gone leaving behind some kind of hidden entity, not a true Self, not a self made of nothingness, just 100% non-existent. The "true Self" or "I" is another appearance like a sunset or like anything else.

Realization, knowing that you are God, Infinity, Nothingness, or whatever you want, is one great oxymoron. Realization and cognition mean something finite, and a limited mind functions in these terms. AND YOU ARE. ALWAYS. THERE IS NO SUCH POSSIBILITY FOR YOU TO STOP BEING. You can experience whatever you want there - everything, nothingness, and what is in between and argue with others - with yourself, whose experience is more. It has no consequences for your ever being. That's it, Gods

because you are attached to your life, your body, your family, to everything that is in your mind, and you feel terror to let go of all that and became absolute nothingness. But you already are and all that things in your mind are just imagination, so better let everything go and realize the reality

@Scholar Insight defined by pathway, differences or contrasts between form and nothingness. However, this is not the original definition provided by Leo Gura, going by the actualized blog of what is insight. So, even if you assume Leo actually defines insight as the pathways/differences/contrasts between form and nothingness, and not based on the blogpost of insight by google, the question still becomes, what defines pathways, differences, contrasts, between, forms, and nothingness? Also, going forward, which definitions of those do and are you going to use for this discussion, because, how do you know which meaning am I or you or others use when talking about pathways, differences and contrasts that make up insights? What kinds of insights you will have, are based upon what stage of developmental values you hold, cognitive and moral development you are at, what major/minor personality traits and personas, or the 'you's in your mind are, the states of consciousness and beings you can be, the life experiences you have so far with places and people, and other lines of development, plus ideas/concepts/beliefs from your upbringing and family values and cultural and societal values from where you came from imprinted into your mind. All holistically coming together, to create and generate the kind of insights you have, from the insight that you can draw a circle, to the insight that you exist only, and others/the world is not real. The insights that make you go 'oh! I left my car keys and coffee on the table' to Eureka moments of world destruction. Those types of insights are dependent on your entire worldview and sense making apparatuses in your mind, and how it generalizes, distorts and deletes information that fits with its survival agendas and biases. The differences between form and nothingness, and dissolving the form = nothingness, is a simplification and assumption of what actual could happen if you dissolved form, because dissolution has stages that are observable, to stages that are not observable to one's perception, so when a form is dissolving, it doesn't go from form to formlessness, which is actually the correct binary opposite rather than this form/nothingness, the dissolving form becomes another form, another something, and not go to nothingness or formlessness directly quickly. Addressing each example, first off that's an assumption that because you dissolve a form, that that causes truth as an effect of a form's destruction, for all 6 examples. Secondly: Form is duality. Duality is dissolved. The Truth is non-duality. (Or that the truth is unity and not non-duality) Form is selfish. Selfishness is dissolved. The Truth is Selflessness. (Or that the truth is non-selfishness. Another is that selfishness=bias, so destruction of bias causes a truth, that of un-bias.) Form is fear. Fear is dissolved. The Truth is Love. (Or that the truth is fearlessness, and not love, as love is not the true binary opposite of fear, fearlessness is.) Form is limitation. Limitation is dissolved. Truth is Infinity. (Or that the truth, after dissolution of limitation, is unlimitation, not infinity, because it's true opposite is finitude and not limitation.) Form is dream. Dream is dissolved. Truth is Awakening. (Or that the truth, is a change in one's state of consciousness, one that was being inside a dream state after going sleepiness state, becoming slumber state, then deep sleep, then dream state, then transit into wakeful consciousness) Form is ignorance. Ignorance is dissolved. Truth is Intelligence. (Or that dissolving of ignorance, leads to the truth of non-ignorance, or unbiased thing. and not intelligence. Why? Because ignorance is part of a surviving sentient being's mind, due to limited intelligence and physical/mental/emotional resources, must be selective in what and where it places attention into, as attention spent is calories spent maintaining focus and awareness into one limited are. This causes a large portion of your field of awareness to only show what's being placed attention into, so that your sense of self isn't overrun by the various objects and people around. Ignorance, then, is a function of the mind to safegaurd you from getting lost in the reeds, lost in the music or crowds and so forth.) After reading and re-reading your entire post, it seems to me you have a love and hate relationship with @Leo Gura. Your talking points are very similar to Buddhism or traditional Advaita Vedanta, and Leo may have said something you simply can't nor won't agree with, due to his different method/approach to practicing spirituality. This entire post is, therefore, you vent your disagreement to Leo, which is fine, but you are being sneaking with how you complain about Leo, and not consider steelmanning his point of view, but rather attack him in an underhanded way with all this.

At the beginning of my journey I meditated pretty much every day for some years and got pretty solid insights of no self, even of Absolute and "nothing ever happened" but still all of this was unconsciously with the vibe of scepticism, materialism and nihilism. It was only after my first trips with mushrooms that my mind was cracked open to how magical reality is, how air is made of Loving Nothingness, not just Empty Dull Nothigness that I got from meditating only. Speaking relatively I think it is silly to assume that something our mind produces is as good as the best chemicals out there out of thousands. It like saying that training your legs to jump as high as possible is as good as a jetpack. There is this kind of "Naturalness Fallacy" that if some widom or state is aquired by something external like psychedelic then it is somehow less valid. But external is artificial distinction. All reality is the mind of God and if I were God i would hide the Holy Grail in some fun place (like mushrooms or toad) and not just in my Avatar's mind which would be too easy and boring. Not acknowledging that psychedelics are extremely helpful and are beyond what meditation is capable of is like saying that you do not need telescopes to explore the night sky because you can just train your eye.

Easy. Because there is nothing, and the nothingness is unfathomable depth. As it has no limits, it's everything it's possible to be. Absolute freedom. That's what we are. We never began, we won't end, we are absolutely nothing, and because that, absolutely everything, for the single reason that we can. We can everything. We are god and it's not a joke. Nothing could be better than that, even god couldn't imagine nothing better.

If you think of existence as that which is itself, as that which creates itself by being itself, then there can be a universe that destroys all universes including ours, but, again, when you think of it as that which is itself, then it, again, can reform itself, for it is "nothing" from which it is made. I mean, maybe that destruction of all universes already happened two minutes ago, but nothingness, out of nothing that it is, reformed itself as this universe and the sense of an unbroken continuity where it is just another normal day where I'm writing this to you.

I don't consider it a state of consciousness. I've not awakened, but purely as a thought exercise I can come to the realization that there's nothing outside of the room that I'm in at will. All you have to do is get into the present moment and look around at your room with a new set of eyes, and not take anything for granted. Close any doors, as looking out into a hallway partially kind of ruins the illusion. Close your blinds and ideally do it at night. Likewise, sunlight gives too much of an impression that there's something outside. If there's just blackness outside it's easier for your brain to interpret as nothingness. Ideally you don't have any sounds outside, although if you live downtown or something that might be hard. Then you just kinda look around and realize, holy shit, this is it. I can't perceive with any of my senses or verify that anything outside this room exists. If my parents aren't in this room, then they don't exist. There's a specific sensation to it, like you know there's nothing on the other side of the walls. Then once you reach that point, you can come to the realization that even the part of the room you're in that's outside of your field of view behind you doesn't exist

The Nature of All Insights, inculding all Concepts and Ideas you have heard from Leo is the following: Insight is defined by the pathway, or difference, or contrast between Form and Nothingness. This means that what kind of Insights about Reality you will have will depend on what kind of Form you are. There is a difference between the Form and Nothingness. Once you dissolve the Form, it will seem like the opposite of it's Nature is Truth. For example: Form is duality. Duality is dissolved. The Truth is Non-duaity. Form is selfish. Selfishness is dissolved. The Truth is Selflessness. Form is fear. Fear is dissolved. The Truth is Love. Form is limitation. Limitation is dissolved. Truth is Infinity. Form is dream. Dream is dissolved. Truth is Awakening. Form is ignorance. Ignorance is dissolved. Truth is Intelligence. All of these concept can only be arrived at through the journey, the distance between Form into Source. Something cannot be Limitless without Limitation. Something cannot be non-dual without duality. Something cannot be selfless without selfishness. Something cannot be awake if there is no dream. Something cannot be intelligent if there is no ignorance. So insight is the moving towards the source. And that motion and it's nature will depend on the nature of the form. See, Existence is not merely one thing, one Absolute. It is Impossibility. It is what it deems to be. And this is why Leo is chasing his own tail, blindly stumbling through the light. All of his teachings, are exploring his Form and it's motions. This is why he is so certain he has reached the "Absolute Truth", when that very sensation of having reached an end, having reached the Absolute, is merely one more form, one more limitation he is putting upon himself. Once that Limitation is lifted, Impossibility will be recognized. And then, there is no longer any teaching of the Truth, there is only the exploration and transmutation of Existence. All of Human Spirituality is merely the Afterglow of the Dissolution of Humanity.

@Leo Gura What about meditation experiences that are more psychcedelic in nature? I have issues maintaining health, yet when I am fully healthy and can workout I can have crazy energetic experiences that are similar to the one NN-DMT experience I have the NN-DMT experience feels more alien, yet it often feels like heavy ego / dark knight stuff that needs to be proccessed for example dark room retreats. Similar with LSD I get tiny tastes of love, emptiness, nothingness and a lot of internal relative insight and I feel I become more whole/open and clean overall in terms of how I conduct my life after some integration approx. What can I make out meditative experiences that surpass psychdelic experiences? Would you for example in the same situation continue to pursue meditation seriously? When it has such a dramatic affect that it can be more intense than any psychdelic you can take. It's like my brain is made for meditation and psychdelics are the deepst layer you can enter, that is why I have so much respect, I did not meet many people who have the same kind of experiences, they are similar, yet never as intense. I have a big/huge ego, so I know I consistently implore what is consciouness and choose deliberately teachers/gurus who go and see beyond the edge of a plate. The main issue I have is physical health mostly, not even that much mental. Why for example the comment you made about merging, I can get tastes of merging while meditating like I become the orange/juice/rock/bird/object in 3D space, yet with psychcedelics transforming into something else becomes way way more real, I once posted a report saying I basically merged with a part of nature I became literally the bird outside chirping. While meditating on LSD for hours. You wrote to me I am paraprhrasing: "Nice work tasting the tail of the ox " in a bit more cheeky manner, is that what is meant with consciouness? The pure fabric so to speak that gives rise to everything? Ground zero? Or am I completely of here, as I tasted so many different flavours it's not easy to make distinctions and continue the work when there are so many silos, instead of wholes. I am just sometimes to afraid to go off into the deep end and never comeback lol.

I think when “nothing” becomes another mental construct/concept it’s a problem (of ego??), but direct experience is just pure being/stillness, where everything is subtly recognised as energy when it moves as in thought/sensations/emotions but these are also recognised as things that come out of stillness/nothing. Not had direct experience with this for a while, need to meditate for hours to get there, at least in my experience. still locked in ego most of the time but I remember once I felt a deep sense of nothingness, was an amazing realisation at the time which of course fuelled the mind into more thinking and awe … it’s mad tho because obviously we are energy in motion and can’t deny that, and all of life around us, but I think problems always arise when ego labels everything as something rather than just letting it be. I think just shouting about “nothing” bla bla can be problematic to people who aren’t on this path but people who have some awareness of it could greatly benefit from constant reminders guiding them back to presence/no mind. Because as soon as you make things into ‘something’, you automatically deny what actually is, right? ?? I.e no presence/mind/ego

I am not talking about observer. Experience does not require an observer, it is more like a process of experiencing. When I say experience I mean the same thing when you say appearance, I thought we already went through this word-game earlier in some other thread. Then we meant the same thing, this is what I was talking about too. I was reading the PDF that you sent and found the 8th jhana to describe the state I was trying to describe most adequately: The Mind-Base of Neither-Perception-Nor-Non-Perception. Within the perception of nothingness lies the perception of not even nothing! If the mind is subtle enough to see this feature, then the perception of nothingness disappears and is replaced by the perception of neither perception nor no perception. All that one can say about this fourth immaterial attainment is that it is, in fact, a perception. This is what I meant.

There is a place of mind, that cannot be spoke about, or communicated, as it is a non experience, think about when you go into deep sleep at night. Think about where every previous state of conciousness goes This is different form Nothingness, this is a complete cessation of Mind

The Shadow, also known as the The Empty, is a mysterious cosmic being/entity who lives in and controls the Empty, a place of nothingness predating God, Death and the Darkness.

Disclaimer - This journal is not about anyone on this forum. The journal is about my toxic exes. Stop reading my content. If I had to write about you I would have mentioned you. Just stop starting unnecessary drama with me. And this is an old journal im trying to copy again. I have zero interest in discussing anyone who exists on this forum. The Shadow, also known as the The Empty, is a mysterious cosmic being/entity who lives in and controls the Empty, a place of nothingness predating God, Death and the Darkness.

GREAT MOVIE with amazing cinematography If you love Leo's work then this movie is a great representing of the relationship between nothingness and love Crazy good! Insane to see a lot of pop culture now leaning towards love and its flavors