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I also believe using both is best and most efficient. At the final stages of meditation, one can dissolve these last and very subtle lenses. When taking for example the Mahamudra-system, which I consider as the most sophisticated system on the planet (together with Dzogchen), the Yoga of One Taste (advanced practice, 3rd stage in Mahamudra system) makes the visual field boundless, infinite and mere appearance/lucid. Basically the effect that many psychedelics have. And no, that is not yet Enlightenment. https://www.actualized.org/forum/search/?&q=yoga of one taste&author=Water by the River The final lenses of deception/illusion are not yet dissolved at stage 3. But here we are already on very trippy terrain, visual field nondual, boundless and infinite and mere appearance. And now comes the kicker: stage 4, Nonmeditation Yoga automizes the techniques done at stage 3 in such a way that even the meditator can be dissolved. There is no longer a separate-anything doing anything, the meditation does itself. Awakening, or Awakened Awareness (nondual, boundless, infinite, groundless, and impersonal, or not only personal), does the meditation. As long as someone does the meditation, the illusion with the dream-character is still well and alive, even if its nondual and what not. A nondual dream. https://www.actualized.org/forum/search/?&q=Nonmeditation Yoga&author=Water by the River What happens at stage 4 Nonmeditation Yoga can no longer be fully described. But it can be understood what happens or happened once it happens. And it takes a loooong time at stage 4 Nonmeditation Yoga, at least for most, until crossing over to Enlightenment happens. No other. No you. Just Infinite Consciousness/Reality, an Infinite Ocean of Awareness, its essence forever unchanged. Eternal. Always having been the case. The former separate-self just an illusion. And until one gets the hundreds or thousands of hours (if one is not a prodigy) in these states to make it to the big bang, if one tries to do that with psychedelics, one has ones brain fried long before. And a God-complex on top if one doesn't start on the humble side from the beginning (which few do), since the ego projects itself already busily on the nondual infinite field, see stage 3. And if one has bad luck, ET comes along and gives a seductive smile... But that is another topic. And the limitations/problems of meditation practice: Getting to Nonduality, stage 3. Takes a looong time, and many things can be implemented incorrectly. Then, meditation practice NEVER leads to Nonduality,boundlessness-infnite and mere appearance. That happens to 98%+ of meditators, because the meditation techniques used are so inefficient that multiple thousand of hours of hardcore head-against-the-wall meditation would be needed... Few are made for that. Mahamudra on the other side can be used efficiently in daily life if done correctly. Without Mahamudra Pointing out the Great Way style I would have gotten nowhere, and even with that I read the book 15 times over 10 years to get it. To get a nondual state take enough shrooms et voila. To experience Infinity take some 5-MeO et voila. It prooves that its real. Most meditators without psychedelics give up before that. One knows if one does something correct with meditation if these psychedelic-induced awakenings happen from meditation. Hope I have answered all your questions. Selling Water by the River

I wasn't asked, but since that didn't prevent me from commenting ever since, please allow me my musings... So, here is the Ultimate Crocodile. Or Trap. Since it is pretty close to Ultimate Truth: The problem (or rather near impossibility) in realizing Ultimate Truth/Full Enlightenment (not even to talk about realizing & keeping that on a stable basis in daily life) with mainly/only psychedelics (vs. a combined meditation and psychedelics-approach) is that the separate-self/ego is never fully seen through, and happily hijacks all insights gained and projects itself onto them. Like nondual merging with the visual field, aka non-dual-Unity-states of a still separate-self merging with the visual field. that the visual field is mere empty appearance hovering in Nothingness that this Nothingness is "IT", is Infinity, in all possible dimensions, is boundless limitless nondual Consciousness/Suchness "God-Realization" (aka that pretty much everything which appears is imagined to fool oneself into a false-body-mind-identity. That includes past&future imagination. Which is true, but still there is a subtle separate-self-something left and not seen through having all these insights, and proclaiming "I am God". It is not truly impersonal yet, and Absolute Reality is impersonal. Yes, True You is totally impersonal. Shocking, but true. But only shocking from before the Gateless Gate. After the Gateless Gate, it was just one more trap on the path/maze to Infinite love&liberation&freedom). That is pretty much the development Leo has taken, from nondual, to Infinity, to "God-Realization". And then some ETs (which is of course just more appearance/mind-stuff/content consciousness) since the God-Realization didn't went any further from there. And then after some psychedelic-substance-fallout-crocodiles ET said not permanently in this life darling, but maybe permanently in the next life in the 7th heaven, and the message was heard, and the phone was (increasingly) hung up (for now). Ultimate Truth is beyond all of that. Contains all of that. Unchanging. And eternal. All the rest mentioned above rolls "before" and "in" your true formless Infinite Being like a show. Waking/dreaming/deep sleep/normal life/nondual/infinite/God-Realization/ET/crocodiles: All these states roll before your True Being like a show, never changing anything real even for a moment. All just appearance. What is watching all of that? What can never not be here, even in Deep Sleep? And btw., the essence of the frog is completely understood by throwing it into a mixer and looking what it is made of (Suchness). That is how the frog gets truly impersonal. And the essence is all that stays, eternally. The rest is just changing appearance, an illusion, a show. Including any "understanding", which can be dead&gone&forgotten. The essence never can go anywhere, ever. That is what each being truly is. And realizing & embodying that is true freedom and liberation. And why is this kind of psychedelic "God-Realization" not stable? Psychedelics: The filters/lenses of the last subtle separate-self illusions don't get disassemled/transcended/cut-off in real time (aka impersonal, or "not-only-personal-awareness,"). Because of lacking strength&speed of Awareness in cutting all of that off in real-time. And that is why Infinite Nonduality/mere appearance/Awakening states break down after the trip: Unearned wisdom/states. Not impersonal, but still personal/separate-self/ego. In "God-Realization" there are still remnants (although subtle ones) of an ego/separate-self too much left alive & hijacking the insight/state. Meditation: Transcending separate-self/ego-elements (speed and strength/knowing each and any separate-self-arising illusion/I-feeling/I-thoughts/...) leads to nondual/infinite/mere appearance states: stable & personal transcended (aka impersonal), "earned". Psychedelics: psychedelics lead to nondual/infinite/mere appearance states without transcending all (subtle) separte-self/ego-buildings-blocks: unstable &"unearned" & can hijack the states: "I am God/-realized, whatever". The True Being of every being (Infinite Consciousness/Reality, impersonal or universal Awareness) is always right here, eternal. Can never change. It can only appear to be clouded. Looking out for less-than-impersonal-crocodiles by the non-personal River

I know, I said this to Razard also. When we talk about paradoxical subject with words, we are bound to contradict ourselves. Youve probably heard spiritual teachings that contradict themselves. This is not a conversation for minds, you agree that male and female are different? You want to be both? Separation and diversity is natural part for Life. All united under consciousness. Duality is the creation of nonduality, opposition, play of form. The creation is not the creator. If there is no creation, there is no creator. If the creation is the creator, then was anything really created?

Just to understand my point, I equated mind to male and heart/being to female, because mind is duality and the other is nonduality, the exact polar opposites. Mind Is Duality, you can't have nonduality in the Mind. Mind is a tool designed to divide. It is useful to divide, I am not saying to scrap the mind, im saying its not the Absolute.

You realise every time you separate duality from nonduality you are creating more duality? Its you, the enlightened who know the truth vs them, the egoic newbies who don't know what is going on. Ah, they are soo ignorant right? So much for nonduality being Absolute Truth then, if it has an opposite in the face of duality. You need to work on being inclusive

Perception never changes. İt is nonduality = love. There is no such thing as world. You are in heaven.

Hey Leo, and others Have you looked in IFS, which is the latest, most formalized version of Shadow Work? I feel a lot of people involved here can benefit from this framework. It's as close as psychotherapy can come to nonduality and still be practically useful. It'd be great to get your perspective on it.

Consciousness, Nonduality, Singularity, Oneness, God, Love... it all became a very real and direct thing to me. There's nothing woo woo or mystical about it anymore. Nothing spiritual about it, either. It's right in my face, so to speak. It's directly accessible - if you will. It's so simple and obvious. But the language I used to use in order to describe it and do the work, is kinda funny. There's a lot of nonsense and distortion in this 'spiritual jargon', and I just adopted it as I was going. It was useful at some point, to make sense of some things and cope with them. But now I kinda see the limitations of it. It's kinda annoying too - to be honest. It sounds like some hippy dippy garbage. It simply does not hit the nail on the head. It does not sound real and grounded enough. How would you speak of all this stuff, that can be heard as quite 'out there', in a simple and down-to-earth way?

@Leo Gura And others solipsism is the absolute truth I realized but it's not the Wikipedia definition of solipsism. A person who believes In the wikepidia definition of solipsism is not enlightened because they still make a distinction between self and others hence they are derealized. The awakened person knows he or she is the entire universe and there is only one consiousness hence the duality collapses which means that's the non wikepidia definition of solipsism they believe and that person is enlightened. I realized I am the only one but by that I mean the universal me not the avatar me which distinguishes itself from other people. The awakening was so profound that I can't explain it using the human language it has to be experienced.

That's true... you are right. Nonduality, sad, and funny at the same time hehe...

Let’s start from a quote from Leo’s talk with Curt: “time is overlay or projection that universal mind is imagining on top of the now”. Similarly it can be said that “matter is overlay or projection that universal mind is imagining on top of the given conscious experience”. However, these projections are also equally part of the given “this”, of the flow of qualia of the given conscious experience happening now. Why then these projections are considered any less “true” or in any way inferior compared to the presence of the given raw conscious experience at the instance of now which we consider to be the “Absolute”? Since there is no hierarchy in the Absolute, then any overlaid projections must be equally the Absolute and must be as true and real as any other experiences, qualia or ideas. Why then ideas and projections, be them true of false, are considered inferior to the given raw conscious experience if any ideas are always inseparable from the given conscious experience? Any ideas or projections are equally qualia of our conscious experience and are in fact as “raw” as any other kinds of the qualia of conscious experience. If we experience our hands as the “reality here and now”, then the overlaid idea that “these hands are material objects existing beyond my consciousness”, if it happens to appear in our stream of conscious phenomena, is also equally consciously experienced as qualia, as the reality here and now, and there is no way to distinguish and prioritize the raw sensual experience of the hands over any overlaid idea about the hands no matter how wild this idea can be. For example, Leo says that “the shape of a castle is a concept of a second order”, but that implies the existence of a preference and hierarchy in the reality: the Being is the fundamental preferred zero-order, the raw sensual qualia are the first-order phenomena, and the imaginations and concepts are the second-order phenomena that are somehow inferior in “truthfulness” or “reality” compared to the phenomena of the more fundamental orders. But such prioritization is already an idea that belongs to the second order, and there can equally be other alternative ways of prioritization where, for example, the concepts can be claimed to be more fundamental with respect to qualia of the raw experience and to the Being itself. If fact, there is a Plationic version of idealism claiming that the Absolute Idea is the ontic fundamental, and the being, awareness and qualia of conscious experience are only secondary forms and aspects of it. So, the view that the Being-Awareness is fundamental and is prior to any concepts is only a belief and an implicit idea which lies in the blind spot of the subjective idealism paradigms (such as Leo’s, Rupert Spira’s and like). I’m well aware that we all can directly realize and experience the “indivisible Beingness-Awareness”, as I did it myself, and that’s fine, but then we construct a belief that somehow this “Beingness-Awareness” must be more “true”, more “real” and more “fundamental” as compared to all other fleeting phenomena and qualia of our direct experience, including any concepts and ideas. But that is just another abstract idea, there is actually no sound reason to believe that it is true (there are logical arguments for that, but that’s all logic and reasoning which is just another set of ideas). In order to distinguish truth from non-truth, there needs to be a criterion of truth belonging to a category of meta-truths. But there can be many criteria of truth, why prefer one over the other? In order to have a criterion of truth that is selected from all other alternative criteria, we need a meta-criterion of truth to assess the truthfulness of the criteria of truth, and by repeating the same argument we run into an endless process that never arrives to a definite criterion of truth at any meta-order. And even if we would somehow arrive at a criterion of truth at any meta-level, it would still be only an idea, a mental form among any other possible ideas or forms of consciousness with no possibility to choose and prioritize between them. Leo: “Meanings are illusions, meanings are what we construct, Being is what actually is”. The belief that the Absolute-Being exists as something of its own and as a fundamental Reality is simply one of our abstract ideas. If we carefully examine the given facts of our direct experience, we find that what we actually directly experience is only a finite flow of phenomenal qualia in our field of direct conscious experience at the instance of now, where any phenomenon (be it a meaning, idea, sensation, emotion, imagination etc) is equally present and equally real by the very fact of their presence in our conscious experience. We usually construct many ideas about this flow and about the phenomena and their origins and causal relations, but all those ideas, once they arise, immediately become equally real and equally present as qualia and as inseparable part of our field of experience. In other words, the ideas, thoughts and meanings are also simply phenomena of our direct conscious experience. This is all we can know and directly experience as facts. The unsolvable epistemological puzzle is that there is no inherent “right” way to prioritize and sort these phenomenal qualia according to their degree of truthfulness or a degree or reality, or a degree of relativity or absoluteness, because any such way of sorting and prioritizing would be just another constructed idea, another phenomenon. That includes any ideas about the primacy of the Absolute, God, Being, Awareness or whatever you want to call it. The unchangeable presence of awareness-beingness is definitely a fact of our direct experience, no question about that, but to assume that the awareness-beingness is somehow more “fundamental” or more “absolute” with respect to other phenomena is only an abstract and constructed idea. The well-observed fact that the awareness-suchness is omnipresent in our experience and never changes is not a sufficient justification to declare them to be “ontologically more fundamental”, more “true” or “more inherent” to reality as compared to any other phenomena, ideas or aspects of reality. Similarly, there is no ground to declare any of our meanings, ideas, imaginations or thoughts as “false” or “unreal” or “secondary” since they are all equally real and equally present in our direct conscious experience together with all other qualia and with their suchness-awareness. For example, what if there exists a beyond-consciousness Meta-Reality? It would be something like a Kantian “thing in itself” for us that we can never possibly know, imagine or experience, so we have all practical grounds to deny its existence based on the principle of parsimony (as Bernardo Kastrup usually argues). But such Meta-Reality would not care about our ability to experience it and about our principles, it would still exist by itself regardless of what we believe, think or perceive. We may still choose to ignore it and believe that “Consciousness is all there is”, and we indeed have all practical reasons to do that, because conscious experience is the only thing we can actually ever know and experience, and because the existence of such Meta-Reality would be absolutely irrelevant to our practical life and existence anyway. But still, this would only be a belief if we take it in a religious way, or an assumption if we take it in a philosophical way. In other words, “Consciousness is all there is” is still a limited paradigm, a belief, a choice among other possible beliefs or assumptions, and possible versions of Reality. But any belief system, no matter how practically useful it may be at a certain stage of our development, becomes a limitation at some further stage. By adopting a belief that “Consciousness is all there is” we still corner ourselves into a very specific and limited worldview, no matter how practical, comfortable or nirvanic it may be. Would not the ultimate liberation be letting go of any beliefs, including the belief that “Consciousness is all there is”? So, what if this “oneness” or “the truth of non-duality” is as much a constructed trickery of the mind as the “world of duality”? What if the “nondual Self” is as much an abstraction and projection as the “individual self”? What if we simply fool ourselves by flipping from one kind of mind-constructed view of reality into another equally mind-constructed one: from naïve realism of believing in the reality of separate subjects and separate material objects outside our individual minds and in the absolute truth of our mind constructed meanings to a naïve nondualism of interpreting the reality as a fundamental nondual “Absolute-God-Consciousness-Self-Awareness-Beingness is all there is”? The latter might arguably be more practically meaningful, functional and productive, at least for some people, but that does not necessarily mean that it is ultimately true. And what if there are other levels of realization beyond both of these mind-constructed beliefs-views of reality, and beyond any other possible mind-constructed beliefs-views of reality for that matter? Just like Leo said that any meaning is mind-constructed, but he still believes that the “Being” is prior to meaning, it would be a simple realization that there is nothing prior to anything else, and all our beliefs in the primacy of something with respect to something else is also nothing else then a constructed meaning. And then what’s left would be a real freedom from deceiving ourselves into any beliefs in the absoluteness or absolute truthfulness of anything and simply abiding in the given reality of the direct conscious experience just as it is present here and now. This is not agnosticism, not a denial of any possibility of knowledge, but a simple realization that any knowledge can only be mind-constructed, pragmatic and relative, including any realization of “Being” or “one's ABSOLUTE nature” or any other kind of “spaghetti monster” that we would want to believe to be “prior to” any knowledge. But from that perspective, we can still acquire and exercise knowledge, including non-dual realization. However, any knowledge we have will always be contingent. The difference is in the fitness of the knowledge. The fitness can be assessed from practical and consistency perspectives: any knowledge has higher fitness if it is more useful for our functioning and more consistent in correspondence with the body of facts. In that respect the nondual knowledge arguably has the highest fitness as compared to any other currently available to us.

I already did. He told me that from now on I don't ever have to worry about being late again, and that I can just relax and stay home tomorrow, and the day after that, and also the day after that. Nonduality ftw!

Nice. This is exactly what many of our fellow Duality-denying spiritual bypassers on here are missing. Untiy expresses itself through (the appearance of) non-unity. Without the appearance of form/division/contrast/multilicity, the unity of the whole could not be experienced and recognized. Duality and nonduality are simply two sides of the same coin. And they are both perfect, beautiful and divine.

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahamudra "literally means "great seal" or "great imprint" and refers to the fact that "all phenomena inevitably are stamped by the fact of wisdom and emptiness inseparable". Aka mere empty "imagined" appearances, not existing "out there" but within the Infinite vastness of True Being/Universal Consciousness as mere appearance in this nondual field, not as external objects "out there", aka duality. There is a lot of cultural lingo in Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism, that I didn't understand in the beginning, like why they called it Great Seal. Or Emptiness. Or dependend origination. Or Middle Way. Or No Self. Proto-Mahamudra was imported from India around the 10 century, so the term comes probably from India and is used there also. Daniel Brown once said Mahamudra (for example in his book Pointing out the Great Way) is best for Awakening, and then adding Dzogchen-Methods (the books he translated later, kind of a collection of best of Tibetan Buddhism selected by 33rd Menri Trizin. Mahamudra as explained in Pointing out the Great Way = a nearly mathematical step by step method towards Awakening (Nondual Infinite Field at least temporarily seen by impersonal Awareness itself, but some very subtle processes/filters/lenses still clouding full realization). Before that comes Nonduality (or One Taste), or a separate-self (or ET) merging in Unity with the Infinite Field (of earthly or alien form). Dzogchen = Great Perfection, or the path that completes path to Enlightenment. Or fully ripened Awakened Awareness/Awakening, no clusters of separate-self arisings not transcended/seen through/still clouding Impersonal Infinite Being/Awareness. In my perspective the by far most sophisticated and fastest meditation methods (Mahamudra+Dzogchen) on the planet. Nearly all other methods/systems/techniques/traditions are found within these methods one way or the other, but not the other way round. Selling the Great Seal by the River

Feels like coming home, doesn't it? Or like drowning in the River, killing "me" softly... Forgive me some comments, but here are some practices that helped me a lot at that stage to make that Nondual Awakening nice&stable: The only missing ingridients are letting these states of Infinite Nondual Awakend Awareness ripen (they ripen by themself since the illusion has become instable. The path starts showing itself to itself now). Yet, one can put a blow-torch (Nonmeditation-Yoga in Mahamudra for example, see below) on the remnants of the illusion, to evaporate them faster... At some point, the only illusion still arising is the "one" of the one realizing all of that ("realizing" Nonduality and mere imagined appearance and so on). Then, the Impersonal Infinite Totality can wake up to itself, exactly when the "one/personal individuality/being separate/former separate-self" is seen through as mere concept/persistant illusion, a bundle of ideas/concepts/I-thoughts/I-feelings, and never having been anything more than that - and then the illusion drops away, being replaced by the Infinite Vastness of True Being/Reality, realizing itself as it truly is. That happens when every thought/feeling/and appearance of the "outer" world is realized as mere appearance hovering in Infinite Nondual Vastness/Being/Nothingnes/Emptiness. Then IT can be realized. And realizing that despite the illusion of separation has been appearing (as illusion), THIS Infinite Being/Reality/Universal Mind has always been the case, despite being temporarily been covered by coulds of separation-illusion/ignorance. There are teachings for speeding up that process (ripening from Nonduality (Yoga of One Taste in Mahamudra) with remnants of a separate-self to true impersonal Infinite Being/Reality (Nonmeditation Yoga in Mahamudra). I found these very helpful. https://www.actualized.org/forum/search/?&q=Nonmeditation yoga&author=Water by the River Pretty sold out by the River

So you're on a spiritual path, gradually awakening, resolving trauma, purifying yourself, self-inquirying, releasing contracted energy, burning karma, practicing mindfulness, integrating shadows, disidentifying with thoughts, contemplating, doing psychedelics, watching spiritual videos, meditating, doing all kinds of yoga and so on and so on... Welcome to the spiritual rat race! Congragulations, you have still achieved nothing! This may be triggering for some if not most here, I may be accused to promote spiritual bypassing but if you are truly interested in “Truth“ and open-minded enough, just stick with me. Fleeting Absolute? You actually don't seek a fleeting state of consciosness, something temporary that comes and goes, you seek the Absolute, don't you? If it is truly absolute, it must also be right here & now. But you orient yourself on these fleeting appearances to claim you still haven't arrived there, this can't be it, this is not the full blown god awakening you once had, there is still ego and identification and blablabla. And all those teachers including Leo perpetuate these claims, reinforce your belief in a process within time that isn't fully over, you're still not done with and you need to keep on working, doing shit or to zenizize it: do nothing, walk through the gateless gate or knock from the outside to open from within. These subtle claims about your imperfection might be sugarcoatet in spiritual paradoxes to confuse you even more, so you suspect there must be something wrong with ME, so you try to get rid of yourself in quite strange ways if you think about it. Thought is a thought - there are no thoughts The spiritual search is somehow fueled by a burning desire, an avoidance/rejection of “what is“ , the feeling of “this is not it (yet), this/I am not good enough, there must be something else/better, I still feel incomplete, something is missing“. You don't go to a doctor when you feel completely healthy and you won't seek a therapist if you're absolutely happy. So you wouldn't (spiritually) seek for anything if there wasn't something that bothers you and that you want to get rid of. But seeking sucks. You want to stop seeking and finally feel home, be ok/fine with everything, be at ease/peace. So you search for the end of the search. Good look! You can go on forever, and if you resolved your own trauma, go transgenerational and then universal! If you let go of body identification, let go of conscouiousness/god identification and so on. This is fucking infinite, you'll NEVER reach an end point, look at Leo for example. If reality is infinite, there's no position to know it from. If there is ANY kind of positioning, clinging to words like Consciousness or God or Absolute Solipsism or Nothing even, if there is any definition of “Truth“ vs “truth/falsehood“ whatever, absolute relative etc., then the illusion of seperation, time, distance apparently kicks back in. You wanna let even that go? Who does it, and why? Who wants to go till the end, dissolving, reach enlightenment or full-blown god awakening? Why do you believe this fantasy of peaceful future is preferable to THIS, which is everything there is ALREADY? Why do you wanna get rid of the veils of seperation, who wants that? If (in the imagined “end“) there truly is no seperation, it must be boundless ALREADY. You're apparently mudding the water by desperately whirling around in order to settle the dust. You're hitting the waves with the paddle in order to get a still and silent sea. You're chasing your own tail. Apparently, of course. Because it's all a scripted story in a book with blank pages, written by magic ink that dissapears the moment it solidifies. This avoidance of NOW, this present moment, overloaded with fantasies offered by the spiritual marketplace, a buffett of empty temptations for a hungry ghost, where does it come from? Is it trauma, is it a psychosomatic misunderstanding, is it ignorance? It doesn't matter, it's not even real!!! It's the next story of your infinite imagination to keep you on track, looking for the root cause, the source of the misery, keeping things real, maintaining the story of the very important trauma-resolver, the open-minded psychonaut, the serious seeker and so on. You create the next identity to keep the story real that “this is not it (yet)“, to avoid the fact that this is as it is already and it may feel shitty/incomplete/whatever at the moment, but This Is It, despite of all your stories, WITH all these stories, which aren't even stories but The Unimaginable appearing as empty words loaded with a web of codependent meanings, made of illusive thoughts, reliant on other thoughts until the very “I am“, which is a thought as well as synonymous thoughts like contracted energy, ego, consciosness, self, Self, god and so on. These thoughts serve as the compass of your spiritual search, contrasted by each other and devided into (more) real/unreal representations of THIS, boxing life into a narrative of a series of serious To Dos (time) with the grandiose ability to contrast THIS with an imagined and twisted version of THIS projected into the skull of “another“ (space) like Leo or Buddha. It's a fucking joke!!! There is no self, no contracted energy, no karma, no ego, no seperation, no illusion, no awakening, no whatever - These are ALL thoughts, and even “thought“ is a thought, there are not even thoughts! There is ONLY THIS, appearing as whatever, call it whatevery, devide it into whatever, it's unimaginable, undiscoverable, unrealizable, undevidable, undescribable, it's so uncontrastable so there is no one left witnessing to even claim it is existing, YET - it is all there ever was and will be, including the Illusion of the appearance of an illusive thought about time. So what can you do about it? Who's there to do something about it? Don't you perpeatuate the story of “I am: not good enough/not there yet/not enlightened“ when you act from the very same resonance frequency of “not enough“ to overcome “not enough“, when you search for the end of the search (or the beginning)? Reminds me of “I will win this war But never the peace I am my own free spirit Hence I will not rest“ (The Invaluable Darkness by Dimnu Borgir) “Nothing holy about it“ - Seeking is (spiritual) bypassing “That's Cassical spiritual bypassing/Neo-Advaita/Non-Duality/not God-Realization“ - EVERYTHING could be seen as spiritual bypassing if you pull that card, and from this framework everything is kind of the attempt to spiritually bypass (there is no spiritual bypassing really, you can't avoid THIS, you can't run away from yourself, it's absolutely hopeless, utterly futile, this is unescapable freedom). Every approach motivation can be reframed/recontextualized as an avoidance mechanism, even mindfulness can be called out as a trauma response like Scott Kiloby points out. Untangling the web of illusions can always be like trying to step out of quicksand. So who is really spiritually bypassing? Isn't the whole spiritual path the illusive idea to find a bypass for THIS very moment? Find a final solution for your suffering? Reach a point where you have finally overcome the ego/illusions/desire/karma/etc? You think by whipping yourself you become worthy for enlightenment and can finally leave this unbearable realm of constant struggle? By accepting/letting go/mindful observing/embracing/integrating you will finally arrive at all-OK-ness? Wouldn't that include the solid idea and a lived feeling of “it's not OK yet“? So where do you think will you arrive? Would you then finally be OK with getting looped right back into the beginning of another spiritual search? See, apparently you're actually in resistance to THIS, you truly believe THIS can't be it, it must feel more enlightened/god-like, you dismiss this god-like human nature and wish for alien insanity or to finally become a cartoon wolf or whatever. And when someone says straight in your face “THIS IS IT“ you instantaniously reject it. Unconsciously you yourself actually hope for a cheat code, magic pill, shortcut by taking the position that something like spiritual bypassing is even possible and someone else is guilty of it. That you're on the right path and face your dark side. Think about it! If you were beyond it, you wouldn't get triggered about apparent others delaying their awakening, since it was clear that all of that is nothing but your own trap. Like Jesus said: “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?“ Notice that “This is it“ does not mean I am there and you're not little brother, you still have to realize blablabla... It means you're here already, bypassing is impossible, this is the unavoidable void, devoid of anything other/apart/seperate. “This is it“ is an honest reaction to bottomless claims of “this is not it“, it's the end of gatekeeping, it's the declaration of bankruptcy for the rich man who tried to enter the kingdom of heaven. There is no one who could accept it all, (s)he is not even necessary, it is already completely accepted just by BEING, emptiness/spaciousness invited it to appear so to speak, no need for an “OK!“ by you. Every “Not OK“ by “you“ is OK too, already. Nobody can practice unconditional love, This is unconditional love already. No gatekeeping by a guru claiming he's ok with everything but not accepting that you little seeker are still in resistance, trying to bypass. It's a fucking joke! These clowns are your projected insecurity about yourself, God! If there was such a thing... haha^^ Don't let anyone fool you, THIS is it, including all the suffering, drama and struggle your mind can project into a dreamed past and an imagined future. But THIS also means: All the stories melt away here, no one is left suffering from the illusion that he could have done different and life would be better, the madness of the idea that the avoidance and ignorance of pain and suffering would erease them, leaving the Full-On-Aliveness of What-Is, an unimaginable easyness and simplicity that passes all understanding. So This is it, already! You can stop self-inquirying your way around instead of telling your loved ones the truth, you can stop meditating until you are ok with being rejected by people, you can stop tripping until you feel smarter than the scientist, you can stop all these spiritual practices to avoid simply being a completely authentic human being, not better or worse than anyone or anything. Or you can go on doing them, nothing wrong with it, of course! If you enjoy it, go on! Actually, there is nobody who had a choice in the first place. There never were stories to melt aways, because that's just another story. No one suffered from the story of someone suffering from blablabla... You get it. This here, these words you read, are nothing but blablabla, birds chirping, dogs barking. They don't add into a spiritual library or steal your nuggets of wisdom. It's just a pointer that there actually is NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL between these words and a cat meaowing. Because all of it is This! It's YOU, not as an identity, just limitless being, Isness itself. Isn't it beautiful? No prescriptions - just an apparent personal wake up call So what next? Well, there's no prescription for What-Is/YOU of course, boundless freedom is just appearing the way it is. But what about the realization that you probably somehow seek something in the forum - maybe just distraction from uncomfortable feelings or body sensations, maybe approval, attention or answers to questions, whatever. Maybe you hope to find a message out there to seriously tell you: “STOP it! Enough internet for today, enough distraction, enough seeking for a better state of consciousness, enough is enough! You won't find satisfying answers to your questions when they are just based on thoughts that come and go and will soon be forgotten.“ So you may hope to find a messiah, a savior, a liberation in words, thoughts, ideas and concepts. Someone or something that will present to you the ultimate method for awakening, a spiritual insight, a good entertainment, an inspiration or aha-moment, whatever. But God is not a mistake. If god needed anything to awake itself, it wouldn't be God. You are fully liberated already, there is no need for anyone or anything, that's just a story. No next ultimate awakening video from Leo, no next word here in this thread, no next moment! These are all thoughts again, externalizing/projecting and fracturing your infinite power/sovereignity into the multiplicity within the endless hall of mirrors since there is nothing but the eternal self-referencing of the selfsame echoe(s) of nothing. Which is another thought. See, it's not IN the thoughts, it's appearing as everything, the screen, the words, the feelings, your whole bubbleless bubble of consciousness. So you (!) will never find it anywhere since it hides in plain sight - as everything. And no guru, gura or messiah would ever be able to fully point it out to you, for you - since there is literally no point(ing out) in THIS, and there's no you or any guru. Your waiting for a realization is utterly hopeless and futile, and even “so relax and let it go“ is too many words for nothing. In the appearance, you may become conscious of the potential fact that this seeking algorithm has become quite wild and dysfunctional, like an autonomous parasite eating time, energy and attention, draining the apparent ressources. And now personally from me, the guy behind “Exystem“: I oftentimes wished for someone out there, seeing my suffering, holding my hand, seeing the madness of it all and how much I got lost inside my own mind, how I meditated, contemplated, self-inquyired and tripped to finally get it (again and again) while having a fucking messy room, eating quickly and without love while consuming the next spiritual video, smoking weed “for spiritual purposes“, sleeping not enough, barely expressing my love for my loved ones, unconsciously repressing emotions the whole time while knowing that but not being able to stop because of (unconscious) belief systems like “I need to once hit rock bottom before I(t) will go up forever from then on“ or “I am not worth it, I deserved that suffering“ or “It doesn't even make a difference, that's just life, it's suffering“. I wished for someone telling me: Come on, put away your phone, clean up your room, you will soon be fine, just face your shit, I'll be with you, you are worth it! I longed for that figure, oftentimes renewing Leos blog or the forum for a message like this. Enough for today, now just face the next struggle, step by step and it will soon be over. Forget the idea of “awakening someday“ for a moment and cook yourself a healthy meal, go sleep for a good recovery. Leo said it too in other words, don't prematurely start this journey, get your ducks in a row, build up a good life and then you can still seek for the absolute. But I always wished to be adressed really direct and personally, it was never enough! And here is my very personal message to you: “FORGET IT! It won't be clearer than this. You're it already. What you seek is you, so you will not find it, there's no need for that, not even the need to realize that or to drop seeking. You just can be, you are already, it's done, it's over. It won't get more personal than this: You are your own messiah, your own saviour. When you reject/ignore that INSIGHT, a messiah will never be reflected OUTSIDE, as above so below, as within so without. You are God, your own creator, nothing and nobody knows you better than you do, not even the idea of your “unconsciousness“. You PRECISELY know what is good for you, stop kidding yourself. Be true to yourself, act authentic with your needs and weaknesses. You are unconditional love, let yourself flow. You don't need more love, love yourself, you're fucking beautiful, unimaginable wonderful, you are paradise itself! You can fuck yourself so crazily, distorted and twisted and then untwist yourself in such fantastic and infinitely genious ways again, WOW!!! Let your love for that wonder you really are overflow, give from the heart, don't fear any loss, this is empty FULLNESS, limitless free energy everywhere. You seek for that which observes you seeking for that which observes you. How could anything really go wrong?! This is a play, sometimes a tough one. But play it, that's what it's made for! When you consciously play it, you'll enjoy it, it's for your entertainment. Don't run away from the demons in this Dream, face them and see them melt back into the ocean of unconditional love. Don't try to act like a god and face the endboss at the beginning. Start with the immediate little things that are on your way. Tidy up your room, eat a healthy meal, do some sports, write those you love you love them, take babysteps. It's ok, it's good so. You're god already, no need to jump world record, take just one little step right now, that's all. You don't have to be mindful 24/7, that's fucking exhausting. You are here and now aware already, just be it, only this moment. How do you feel right now? Which needs do come up? Which way is the right way? Only now, act authentic, in allignment with yourself. What do you really want? You don't have to focus on the huge pile of shit, just focus on the present shovel and it's over the next moment. It's ok, you're good. No need to be harsh to yourself. See what a beautiful loving being receives this warm treatment from itself. You deserve paradise! Which form would you as god sculp yourself into that represents and deserves paradise? Act like it! Easily, of course. Lightheartedly You are Love yourself, beauty! Love what you love. Look at your pains and aches and see that they are just contracted forms of love. Observe them like an exotic fruit, maybe hot and spicy, bitter or sour, but worth a bite. Look at it like you became aware of it the first time in your life, ask what it wants to show you, without clinging to a way it should reveal itself. This is a magic mystery, it will unfold in strange, counterintuitive and unconventional ways never expected. Look like a child in awe and wonder how this infinitely intelligent soup cooks itself to enjoy its precious flavours. This is the unconditional WOW, and you're it! Be gentle to yourself. You created others to love them. Their purpose is to be loved by you, that's what will make them grow, sprout and love too. So be gentle to them too. Don't act upon them like NPC's/philosophical zombies the same way you don't treat your phone like a black piece of metal/plastic. Discover their full infinite potential by awakening them with (your) LOVE. No words, no acts, no experiences can awaken anyone, only LOVE can, disguised as whatever. Mindfulness is practiced love if truly understood. All of the de- and also the prescriptions above are empty words, they don't mean anything really, still birds chirping. They may seem to contradict each other, and that's ok. In the appearance, they carry a certain energy with them, a wave that can flatten or heighten or equalize other waves. These personal words were an expression of love from the wave “Exystem“ as well as the other wordwaves, apparently of course. Don't get hung up on words, stuck in thoughts, let the birds chirp and enjoy the melody, or not. Personally, I just wish the best for you, I am a mirror of your own love towards yourself. And I wish I could be there for you even more (personal), but this is just a forum, and I am just a random online guy with a full calender. But check it out yourself, send waves of love out there, spread the gospel wherever you can, so to say! See which beautiful miracles will return when you stop seeking for instant gratification and realize the bottomless fountain of Love within yourself. Express yourself, be brave! No need to hide the light. So do yourself a favour and do whatever god needs to do right now, eat a bit or take a shit or whatever. In a way, that's the most important task in the whole universe right now, easy, isn't it?“ Solipsism Lots and loads of words, but the essence is this: YOU are the only “source“ of Love, don't seek it anywhere else, give and thou will be given. If you ask about solipsism: On one hand there is no one and nothing out there that could ever possibly convince you otherwise. Think about it, what “proof“ could ever be valid? On the other hand: This infinite intelligence imagines the 100% smooth, coherent, understandable and real seeming appearance of “another“, which is mirroring your body, behavior and reported inner landscape in a perfect way. How do you think this becomes possible? Through a lifeless, mechanic, reductionistic and simple process, devoid of any feelings? Well, maybe, who could know except for you? But how would you feel if people really started flickering and lagging? See on what a sharp edge of knife you were dancing if you stick with your love to your limited sense of self and believe in a philosophy like that without really knowing. What if ALL your emotions are nothing but the language your inner parts are communicating with each other, no center of emotions, but an 360° orchestra of vivid silence. The same way you can zoom into a sensation, focusing your attention towards it, and just become aware of the potentially infinite capacity it has to reveal, morph and develop itself, while still remaining “your“ sensation, the same way your mirrored selves are an extended bodypart, never seperate from YOU, with instant effect on everything you may ever identify with. As your inverted unconscious, they may not have “a life of their own“, but who thinks it has such a thing? You? You don't HAVE a life, you're it! But you can only experience and call it that way in codependency to “other(s)“. Be grateful for everyone out there - I know, sometimes “hell is other people“, but what's lucrative about being the only one in paradise? For how long could you enjoy that? A billion years? Be careful what you wish for, don't call demons before knowing how to get rid of them again. And don't get rid of angels before knowing how to call them again. This is a masterpiece of an illusion! The same way you can become mindful with your body, get a more intimite and loving experience, get a more detailed resolution in space and time and start to simply enjoy its presence, the same way you can extend that towards others. Develop a deeper sense of compassion, and even sacrificing yourself for someone else will become a natural response to lifes' challenges. Imagine this was a dream and your apparent decisions form the neural pathway for the preferences of your next dream - when you don't love your right arm for example, you try to not feel into it because it hurts, avoid looking at it because it's ugly, you may not even get one next time. So ask yourself - what do you love most? Can you love it with all its apparent consequences? Nurture it! In my case, I really love people in general, they are not a bug but a feature to me, they may be the last thing I could give up in this illusion called life, these strange but most clear and beautiful mirrors of infinity. Clarity - by far the most clear speaker on THIS So here I have a gift for you - I was excessively bingewatching all kinds of spiritual teachings additional to my practices, with the hope to find more gems like Leo for example and the subtle fear to miss out on something important. Then I found the radical/contemporary nonduality niche, some of you are familiar with - Tony Parsons, Jim Newman, Kenneth Madden, Andreas Müller, Richard Sylvester and so on. But they all become very repititious and hung up on words like boundless or contracted energy for example. And finally, a year ago, I found emerson nonduality He's a genious in my eyes! Always fresh and new, his easyflowing poetry is music to my ears. Always eradicates the sandcastles he built up before, pointing to the rise and fall of the empire of words. You're gonna be left with nothing in the end, realizing there never was anything in the first place. He had experiences with psychedelics like ayahuasca/DMT, a background as a spiritual teacher before, knows about actualized, solipsism and is always funny and spreading good vibes while being completely authentic, no gatekeeping, as sharp as a laser knife. His one-on-ones are just BOOM!!! FULL STOP. I speak from experience. Enjoy him I'd love to see Leo talking to him but I guess that's a pipe dream. Here's his last video - a one on one: And here is one of his older videos where he talks about stuff related to solpsism. This format is an online meeting you can regularly attend (starts at minute 3):

Not two. Oneness (or a Unity experience of being one with the visual field and all arisings) easily leads to the "I am God", a merging/Unity experience. Oneness basically is Nonduality, which can be had as Unity experience with a subtle identity still well and alive, hijacking the nondual state. Which is then not true Nonduality with the center/identity fully transcended/seen through/gone, but a nonduality/unity experience hijacked and misinterpreted by a remaining subtle separate-self, which basically leads to continued suffering/resistance because its not fully seen through/transcended/cut off in real time. Oneness is still one too many... Not understanding this (but thinking one understands it) is basically to a large part the Leitmotiv of this lovely place here... And since this can only be understood once it fully happens, ones soul either intuits that truth and goes for it, or doesn't and goes happily exploring ET & company, and yours truly has to be happy with Selling Water by the River ... which he luckily is absolutely content with. PS: The nondual/oneness trap:

You sound completely human, babe. Don't play into the fantasy youre not human. Yeah, I called you babe. What a chad. When you absorb yourself in a lot of nonduality content you start speaking like that. I was like that years ago on my journey, just spitting the facts for others. You are the one who is trying to understand with the mind, and you have even believed you did understand thats why you're explaining to me. Whats so hard to understand about the notion that you do have a choice whether to stop a rape or not. Im not even talking about the nature of reality, but about my own self. Do Not Tell Me that I cant know my own experience, thats everything I know. You are explaining away something that cannot be explained and teling me that I'm doing that. I want you to know that Ive read and watched probably most and even more of the content that you have, so you cannot blow my mind with anything you say. I will not think you are deep, because I am not hearing anything original from you. You have a very single coloured understanding at best of the truth of not twoness. If its One doesnt mean its just one color. And here in the nonspiritual section, we are completely talking within the frame of duality and relationships, but you are trying to seep in nonduality into it, normalising rape in the process. You also keep flipping. First everything is unconditional love, now everything is included in unconditional love. Refer to my canvas and painting comment from earlier. We are here talking completely about the painting on the canvas, we are not exploring the canvas. Thats for the other section of the forums. So I dont get why you are arguing.

It builds up on this concept. But in the new episode Morty's mind is divided into all Humans on earth and Rick tries to help him understand that. Jeeeeeeez.

ahh shit is it just semantics, or do you think there is something different between solipsism and nonduality? when I think of solipsism, I guess what I’m thinking of is my own ego being everything. so that’s what, I believe, alien consciousness would disprove.

Brad warner talked about this. “nonduality” wasn’t really a thing 2500 years ago. the thing the Buddha was saying doesn’t exist is what we would call ego. Zen and Advaita began the true self doctrine about a thousand years after the Buddha died

Unfortunately not on youtube, but on audible: Shift into Freedom by Loch Kelly One of my favourite practical books on nonduality so far

Thank you, I appreciate. I also appreciate the time you took to have a more detailed answer in my journal where I go into more depth of why I feel hesitant with Turquoise. I agree, I always felt like Turquoise felt more vague compared to the other spiral stages since there isn't as many examples of Turquoise and because most of the examples that are there if I remember correctly had to do with nonduality, meditation, spirituality etc. while the other stages had examples in spirituality, economics, media, pop culture, etc. And that's understandable because the world has yet to evolve that much. I guess that's another thing that I'm coming up against where I feel like *let's not fix something that isn't broken* in reaction to growing from yellow and green because humans grow with their environment and influence their environment to grow and vice versa so it feels like I'm trying to adapt to something that doesn't really exist yet on a wider scale. I was using the spiral much more so to track my growth over the last few years and I also find myself hitting against a wall to where even though I resonate with green and yellow, I have worked through my own kinks and limitting beliefs to where I don't really resonate with the excesses and unhealthy manifestations associated with the stages, hence why to peg myself more accurately, I have been focussing on lines of development instead and taking that information loosely. As for the hardcore spiritual work, I guess for me it would be good to figure out what degree of spirituality works for me and that I find fulfillment in which can change as I move into different stages of my life. And if that's not what I'm authentically into, that's perfectly fine but I am seeing myself getting back into my own sense of spirituality and spiritual practices lately. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking of Leo's video on The Ultimate Guide To Happiness - How Happiness Works and how he goes into different things you should think about regarding your preferences on having a happy life. If I remember correctly, there was a part of the video where he mentioned that for most people, meditating in a cave for days and not using your mind isn't the path to happiness and that while this works for hardcore monks, for him specifically he needs more intellectual engagement and creativity than just meditating because or else it feels like he's just sitting there like a vegetable. I agree. I don't think that I'm trying to "win by developing as much as possible." I can see the value in all of the stages and if I stagnate at yellow, that's perfectly fine by me. Moving up the spiral isn't inherently good. Hell, I think you can even stagnate in the lower stages and so long as it's healthy manifestation of that stage, it's all good. But while I don't think there is anything wrong with staying at a stage and enjoying where you're at, I just wanted to check in and make sure that it's not coming from a place of complacency or demonization of a higher stage because of biases I might have of it.

If it's close to nonduality then it is no longer a religion. Buddhism can be a religion or it can be advanced sprituality, depending on how it is done. For many folks in Asia Buddhism is just a religion, not nonduality.

That is always a possibility, but contradiction is a feature of nonduality.