Search the Community

Notice that as Roger Castillo has pointed out, the statement "you are not your body" is useful but it's only a certain level of spiritual teaching, and that there needs to be a step beyond that into full nonduality. That's easy to explain in relation absolute Truth being everything. So to say not about anything is a duality teaching. The truth is that we are the body, but not ONLY the body. We are everything. That's what absolute Truth means.

The absolute Truth Leo explained is very useful for spirituality. Because the ego only experiences dualistic truth including relative and subjective truths. And we can start with the concept of absolute Truth as everything. That's just a thought, a concept, yet it points to the absolute Truth and that is useful for spiritual realization of absolute Truth as nonduality. And what I will experiment with is if ego tensions can be dissolved along with a realization of absolute Truth. The ego's limitation of only experiencing dualistic truth is a false perspective and leads to inner and outer conflicts and keeps the ego tensions including the body armor and the pain body in place. Realization and actualization of absolute Truth will I predict dissolve the ego tensions.

One important consequence of the Wolfram model is that if it's true, then we don't have free will. I have noticed how in philosophy there is a lot of discussion about the need for free will related to moral responsibility. But I think it's very simple. Nonduality teacher Roger Castillo used an example of someone having been caught committing a crime, and the person claims that it was done without free will, and then the Judge replies: I understand that, and me sentencing you to prison is also done without free will. Haha, so that completely eliminates the question about moral responsibility in my opinion. And no free will in Wolfram's sense is still a form of free will in the sense that we actually have to perform our actions including personal choices and willpower as a part of the whole universe. Computational irreducibility means that we cannot "cheat" and jump ahead into the future. Regarding math, I have heard Stephen Wolfram mentioning that the math used today is very much a result of history and culture. It's just a slice out of all possible math. The example of "2 + 2 = 4" I gave was meant as a platonic form, something that timelessly exists. For example the notion "2" is just a label. In binary form the same expression is 10 + 10 = 100. So what I mean is that even without math, the truth of 2+2 = 4 still exists according to how I see it.

I have never heard of It's not upsetting. offensive and wrong is more apropos. Love is a feeling. It is not an idea where you can take the human out. That is dehumanization. Love is something a living being feels not an intellectual concept. You are giving me a relative scenario, picking a beautiful forest as an example and not a back alley of dog shit, garbage, medical waste and flies. We are talking about beauty here not love. It's relative. This same scene to someone born in that environment might be commonplace to them and a skyscraper or desert oasis might seem beautiful to them. As soon as you speak a word you are speaking relatively. So what is "unconditional love" ? Does that mean we love the smell of week old urine and rotten eggs? Do we love to watching children being tortured ? Do we love seeing a pile emaciated corpses that have begun to stink? Another way, the more common way this term "unconditional love" is applied is not love alone. It's a decision to be committed to the well being of another person no matter what. For instance a mother might say this of her children. Does this mean the mother is feeling love for her child 24 hours a day? No she does and thinks about other things as well. Does this unconditional love means she loves everything? No. Other children that are not hers she will not have the same level of commitment to. Unconditional love is not constant love nor is it loving everything. What about loving everything all day land all night long? That might sound like a nice idea but it's not humanly possible and it's not a good thing to love things like harming people. What about if we like the idea of oneness (nonduality) means we we pick some word that we like to be the oneness and everything is made out of it? That is cute but nonsensical. Is nuclear waste, vomit and piss love ? Or is it just the plants , trees and decaying branches that are love? Love is a tree or is it that you love trees? There's a difference. Again "infinite love" "Absolute love" "unconditional love" "purity" "perfection" These are all idyllic mental constructs. Some to say love is endless but loves ends, It takes time to realize this And then ones are born

For women’s perspective on nonduality, are you familiar with Lisa Cairns and Ananta Kranti? They are my two favorite female speakers.

So basically everything, life purpose, all your dreams, all hopes, all your aspirations, all your goals, all your different passions etc. should all be dropped when you want to become awakened? Because when you reach nonduality/infinity every duality will collapse eventually and you are giving up yourself, everything of yourself. So is life purpose then for example not just a big distraction that keeps you in the dream? Or all your passions. These things are just moving you farther and farther away from awakening because they are all coming from ego in the end, which you have to give up. I mean I try my best to give them up, but sometimes its really hard. Then why is Leo encouraging us to find our life purpose if its just a distraction?

Jesus Christ on a bicycle! That's real nonduality/duality right there bicycle, Jesus Christ/nonduality on a bicycle, with two wheels, get it? I'm sorry, but I wanted to say that all day and you gave me an excuse. But I mean really, there are jet skis now, so walking on water just isn't a real big deal, ya know? Pretty cheap of you not to just fork out the money for a jet ski. Changing hundreds, thousands of people lives and teaching a higher truth is really what Jesus was noted for, really. A few miracles thrown in there just for funsies, sure.

@Nak Khid When you immerse yourself in something and you feel good as a result, that IS what you define as love. I think your main problem isn't that you don't understand what love is: it's that you don't understand what nonduality is. When you follow relative love to its ultimate conclusion, to the point where you see through the distinction between self and other, you break through to Absolute Love. You realize that the love that you only extended to a limited amount of reality is actually an intrinsic part of all of reality, even the parts that you used to hate (death, suffering, injustice).

From my opening post You left these other things out form what I said in my opening post Love like all feelings comes and goes like the tide. People who are deeply in love and devoted adn commuted to each other but they are not feeling that love 24 hours a day and to attempt to do so, though impossible would be excessive and smothering. They encounter other people and situations they are not feeling love constantly. There are other emotions in this world. And let us not pretend that love is all there is to try to make it fit into this idea we may have of nonduality. Streams are not infinite. The have a time when they are formed and a time when they dry up. Any feeling is part of duality, fear, anger, love, sadness, joy, tranquility, excitement They don't have to be paired as duos of opposites. Every word and thought spoken here is separation. That we need to survive and communicate with each other right here and now. yes, it is an action, these variations yes, and one can even love ice cream. but is a hand grenade love? Is an electron love, is a shoe love? Is a cute puppy love? No, things aren't love. Love is a feeling and energy if you like from one being to another. It rises and falls, like the ocean. Things die. Others new born.

In a rational, relative context of love you are correct. In this context, no one here is advocating to accept or cause harm to oneself or others. You are perceiving what you consider to be “nonduality” through a relative, rational filter. This creates distortion. A dead-giveaway of the attempt to maintain a relative, rational filter is that you continuously default to rape and murder as not being love. Of course, rape and murder are not love in a relative, rational context. You write: ”This is the danger I am talking about that occurs when nonduality is divorced from it's traditional and then when further confusion is added by attempting altering to change the meaning of the word love”. You are creating that divorce. No one here is advocating for the divorce of what you call “nonduality” and a relative form of love. A transcendent awakening reveals both and how they are connected as one. If you haven’t had a sufficient awakening, you will not be able to see this and absolute and relative will get conflated. The divorce, confusion and conflation is your creation by trying to figure this out through a limited rational, relative lens. As well, there is no objective, universal meaning of love in relative, rational constructs. You can easily explore this yourself by examining grey areas of what qualifies as “love” and how meaning is relative. For example, my parents don’t consider homosexual couples as being “love”. They see it as unnatural, deviant behavior. Yet to the homosexual couple the meaning is love. As well, you obviously don’t consider rape as love, yet I’ve known rapists that clearly considered it love. . . Yet again, these are relative explorations to breakdown the illusory construct of an objective, universal love within relative constructs. There are much much bigger fish to fry. What is being pointed to here cannot be figured out rationally, because the rational filter itself is causing distortion. You would need to awaken beyond this limitation. In doing so, you will not have to reject any of your relative constructs of love, yet you will become aware that they exist within a higher transcendent love. Some body-minds may realize this in a “Big Bang” type of awakening. Yet from what I’ve observed, most body-minds need to continually expand their capacity to love in a relative sense. The further out the boundaries are pushed, the higher likelihood of a big awakening. For you, rape and murder are too far outside your current edge. Focusing on rape and murder is just re-enforcing your relative, rational construct. I would consider working at your edge. For example, consider someone/something that is right on the edge of being worthy of your love. Who/what is in that grey area in which they sorta deserve your love, but don’t quite qualify for your love. Work in that range and expand your capacity for relative love. Ime, this will provide grounding for higher awakenings. You could also take a fast track through psychedelics, yet it would be much harder to integrate the higher awakenings on the small ground you currently stand. If and when you have a full awakening, you will realize “It’s Love”. There is no other word for it. It will be the word that appears.

a formless quality is a formless quality not love If I imagined loving something, loving something is a feeling. Therefore doing so would not lead to the idea that it is not a feeling. Also if I loved something I would not always allow it to be exactly as it is. If it was going to harm itself or others I might try to stop it . Love is not accepting everything. That is apathy pretending to be love Again you are talking about a behavior "accepting" and what you are saying here about accepting rape and murder is very wrong. Accepting raping and murder is not loving. This is the danger I am talking about that occurs when nonduality is divorced from it's traditional and then when further confusion is added by attempting altering to change the meaning of the word love. Love is a simple thing available to us all in it's higher and lower forms. It is not an obscure intellectual concept only available to a few in some kind of rare solitary altered state that only certain people can understand .

This is an interesting essay and I recommend everybody read it at the above link because it brings up many points of view. Traditional oneness traditions (nondualism) or monism do not say love is all that exists. It seems the thinking is this, there is no separation all is one and since this is the case we get to choose what we want it to be so we choose "love". And then we see in the essay once this is done other thinkers come in and may then start redefining love as they want it do be and the Course in Miracles version is described in another essay on love: https://circleofa.org/library/what-is-the-meaning-of-love/ The Course in Miracles does not use the term nondualism but some say it has an aspect, a Christianized one, resembling nondualist concept. ___________________________________________________________________________ "love" is not the oneness described in Advaita Vedanta or Buddhist nonduality THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH (Buddhism) 1. Right understanding (Samma ditthi) 2. Right thought (Samma sankappa) 3. Right speech (Samma vaca) 4. Right action (Samma kammanta) 5. Right livelihood (Samma ajiva) 6. Right effort (Samma vayama) 7. Right mindfulness (Samma sati) 8. Right concentration (Samma samadhi) Although Buddhists advocate right action which is moral, honorable, and peaceful conduct, they prefer not to advocate love and instead compassion because love can include love of power, food, money, sex, etc, attachments and desires they believe lead to suffering (although some might not deny or advocate certain forms of love) However they don't say that this feeling compassion is all that exists. Bhakti yoga is more focused on love. Bhakti yoga is focused on loving devotion towards a personal god. The Sanskrit word bhakti is derived from the root bhaj, which means "divide, share, partake, participate, to belong to". The word also means "attachment, devotion to, fondness for, homage, faith or love, worship, piety to something as a spiritual, religious principle or means of salvation". According to Samrat Kumar, bhakti yoga is an Indian tradition of "divine love mysticism", a spiritual path "synonymous for an intimate understanding of oneness and harmony of the eternal individual with the Divine (the universal Being) and all creatures, a constant delight" Neither the Course in Miracles with it's LOVE IS A LAW WITHOUT AN OPPOSITE not Bhakti yoga teach that rape and murder are love. from the essay at top People who say everything is love often will say rape and murder are love, everything is included. some will articulate this a neutrality. I think rape and murder are not love. Love is a feeling. You can love to murder people but that doesn't mean love is murder. Love is an affection, preference or devotion to something. It is not the object itself. And if you claim to love everything, you love eating shit, you love torturing animals. That still does not mean love are those things. And there is a word for neutrality, it's neutrality. Neutrality is not love, love is not everything and love comes and goes it is not infinite. You can maintain a belief in oneness of all things (and I prefer this to nonduality which is a negative term) but that does not mean the oneness is love. What you have done is decided the oneness have a particular character love. So what's wrong with advocating love? Why knock that? Isn't it a wonderful thing? No, it can be hideous if love evil things. And it's worse if the word stripped of it's natural meaning by saying everything is love, evil is love, hate is love, police brutality is love, racks are love, puke is love etc. That to me is spiritual violence. It takes a word which in it's highest form is caring and helping each other and living things and then say it includes everything including evil and harming people and then tries to hide behind being pro-love in saying everything is love. It is not being pro-love. It is a false empty love, a facade The traditions that nondualism comes from have ethical codes and these ethical codes are part of how their version of nondualism is realized. If you take that away it can potentially become very dangerous, where everything is accepted and some things should not be accepted.

I think Leo should be the first one who wants science to understand psychedelics and be able to induce the psychedelic experience without actually taking them. Regarding awakening.. I agree with fred (the nonduality teacher they talked about in the other thread) that we are already awake. There's nothing to Awaken to. This is reality.. This is as real as it gets..hello, Can you see it?

You are creating duality. I don't see any duality. Don't even come to me with that bullshit about duality or nonduality, I have no interest in that unless you have a question. You can't help me.

If you have become conscious of nonduality, i.e. Reality is Not-Two, then you haven't thought this through yet. Fear is the sense of separation. "You" fear that which isn't "you". But that is delusion, there aren't two. There isn't separation. Love is inclusion. And because there aren't two, everything is included. Therefore, Love is Truth and fear is only delusion.

I will make this quick and swift. Mirrors Since there is no physical reality, when I look at a mirror and see my “reflection”, from the point of nonduality, what is the mirror? A rectangular void on which consciousness projects an image of the avatar it is inhabiting? Computer / Phone Screens When I interact with my phone, since there is no physical existence... what is that appearing inside the screen? Does this mean that we are creating more stories and events by using our phones, because they are the ULTIMATE research and communication tools? In summary: Am I God using an iPhone it itself dreamt up, and when using it I invent more realities. All that I see in my phone I imagined and is not real. What are the implications for life? Lets say I meet someone on a dating app. I dreamt up the app, and then dreamt up the conversation... what if we meet in real “life”. What are the implications of that?

One of the things I find interesting with the Wolfram Physics Project (WPP) is that it describes all of reality as a single graph. And it's not just confirmation bias because I also use a graph in my model. It means that physical matter and space are the same "no-thing". Or to put it in another way, physical matter is structured space, which is the same as what alternative researcher Nassim Haramein has been saying. The WPP model is directly consistent with nonduality. Everything, including our physical bodies, are a result of the graph and nothing else! And there is no actual separation other than the points in the graph being connected to each other into a unified whole. So our physical bodies are literally avatars, made of structured space which in turn is a result of the single graph of reality. Here is a short presentation of the WPP model:

@meow_meow When my mind and body felt ungrounded and anxious, I found it helpful to relax the mind with grounding practices like yoga. Some forms of yoga like kriya and yin yoga are centered on relaxation of mind and body. As well, I found nonduality speakers that spoke of both the person and nonduality - for example Adyashanti and Lisa Cairns.

I talked about this misconception in the post. As long as you stay strict on the idea that Consciousness must be conscious of something in order to be consciousness in the first place, you'll never get any closer to solve this Consciousness puzzle after a while. The Truth/Absolute is not restricted by consciousness/unconsciousness categories. That is nonduality. But as long as you see duality of things, you can reduce them into Consciousness. Just like a religious folk reduces the world as a creation of breaded old man; scientists reduce it into atoms and so on. And when you keep doing that, you make a discontinuous jump about which nothing can be said accurately. Awakening shows that whether you're aware of something or not, You as Consciousness remains as it is. And truly speaking, I AM is all you ever know. You think you're person called so and so, experiencing such and such; but when you question that, you come to possibility of discovering that you never knew anything but I AM.

I’ve also been involved with partners that cheated and know the mental and emotional entanglement. What I’ve found helpful is to first get some distance and space from the immediate source. That source is like gravity pulling a mind and body back in. It can take a lot of effort to break free of that suction. This means recognizing and letting go of entanglement such as obsessive “what if” thoughts, checking their social media, rehashing with friends etc. All of this re-enforces mental dynamics and keeps the mind engaged. While in this space, it’s really hard to do deep introspection, have realizations and grow. It’s just too noisy and distractive. What I found helpful is to re-orient myself toward what feels good and what I genuinely want. This can be counter to prior conditioning and patterns. For example, I was conditioned by hyper-critical parents, bosses and partners. I had a pattern of attraction with that, even though it didn’t feel good or like my true nature. Entering non-self-critical spaces felt odd in the beginning since it was counter to my conditioning and patterns of engaging with the world. Yet with time, it began to feel more natural and I started to resonate with people and activities that were not hyper-critical. And my hyper self criticism began to decrease. This opens up space to become friends with myself. And this was one of the biggest keys in leaving my immersion into that other world. This involved activities such as cooking myself healthy meals, self massage, listening to heart-centered nonduality speakers, yoga, spending time in nature and writing. For a while, it felt uncomfortable as my mind was trying to engage in old conditioning and patterns. Yet with time, I started to feel complete with myself. I began to like myself. I began to get curious and felt desires to try new things. I began to be attracted to people and things that were very different than my old patterns. There was a leaving of that world. At times, I found experiencing absorbed negative energy, release and introspection of this conditioning to be helpful. Yet the key was not to engage within it such that I’m re-enforcing and maintaining previous identities. For example, I would talk with a psychologist about it and we would engage in all sorts of thought stories about it. Looking back, we were re-enforcing old stories and identity. I was just trying to replace an old identity I didn’t like (such as being a victim) to a new better identity (like being a survivor). Yet deep down, what I wanted was to release it and be free of it. Free of it. . . I found things like holotropic breathing, EMDR therapy and psychedelics to be helpful since they don’t engage with storytelling and identification. They are focused on release, letting go, unblocking and becoming free. At times, I found contemplation and writing can be helpful, yet not immersed into self re-enforcing and self perpetuating ways. Rather, in self transcendent ways. Yet to do so, I first needed to get distance and space from immersion into conditioned thought stories and patterns.

I mean really if you keep going with this line of reasoning you will arrive at solipsism. These other minds all have one essence so it's like an imaginary separation. It's like a bunch of separate cameras but they all display at the end in one giant screen. What you are saying means even if there is other minds they are still you. The same thing in a slightly different perspective. Both lead to "there is only you". However you define that "you ". I can't see the difference between nonduality and solipsism.

Linguistic / symbolic pointers can be very helpful to those that have had a glimpse and for those that are clarifying, integrating and embodying. Analytical minds tend to focus on the words, rather than that which is pointed to. A rational path can be very laborious and time consuming. Similar to neti neti. One approach to take a back door into the fortress of an analytical mind is zen koans. Yet the problem here is that most intellectual minds don’t have the focus, discipline, perseverance or patience for this. . . . Another approach is a psychedelic. This will dissolve the analytical fortress and gives a good chance for a good look. Yet quite often, the mind will later contextualize as an ‘experience’ at its baseline conscious level dominated by rational thinking. Yet for most minds, there will now be cracks in the fortress which may allow pointers to enter. There are also nonduality speakers that are skilled with intellectual minds. Rupert Spira is very good at disarming the intellect and Roger Castillo is good at clearly communicating through the intellect.

@Seraphim cool to see someone with similar insights.. ive been around these ppl for a LONG time and it was always just so fake, all the "love" business and so forth, whilst doing all the same things as the other "sinners" out there.. sex, drugs etc Nonduality is a slippery slope and theres very few who actually "get it" and the ones who do, are very simple ppl, nothing flashy about them.. you couldnt even tell they are "enlightened". And certainly most of them dont even "teach" lol

This book is simply written, but really law of attraction based and aimed at women who are stuck in over work, martyrdom. It helps me rethink my attitude towards not being able to receive a gift. You can't be defensive, fearful, and receive at the same time. (Nonduality) It gets at a feeling of unworthiness. https://www.amazon.com/Things-Will-Get-Good-Stand-ebook/dp/B000FC1EOY/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=as+good+as+you+can+stand+it&qid=1590603708&sr=8-2 My husband and I had a really good conversation after I said some things I didn't mean. I have a really hard time opening up with him because I am defensive, fearful and acting like a martyr. I actually made him a video so I could help explain the bigger picture without fear or temptation of getting reactive and letting his responses send me off into a reactive direction. Obviously this is not ideal for all the time, but I think it's a good tool. Writing letters or notes works the same way.

The Holy trinity is a delusional concept created by the Church that was meant to make ppl believe that it's something profound when in reality it is just a story that's meant to baffle the masses. It literally means nothing - trust me - when I was a Christian EVEN CHRISTIANS THESMSELVES had no fucking clue what it meant - because you can't know. Same with the Godhead. Also, what does it mean to explain something "from a nondual perspective". The whole is point of nonduality is to stop babbling religious nonsense and realize that all "explanation" is a useless pursuit