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@Angelite When I first read the Qur'an I had a great dilemma because it tore into the main beliefs of Christianity, and well. Jesus is a man here (held in honour) and he was not crucified, those two claims bump into Paul (specifically regarding the crucifixion, as far as I can tell it isn't obvious that Paul is trinitarian, that seems to me to be a misreading by the church. Paul always seems to me to distinguish between God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.) It was when I came to the Qur'an in my journey that my orthodox Christianity came crashing down. It is verse after verse of plain sense and threat of fire. A Furqān as you say. Here is a sample of how he damages Christianity: "That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";-but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not." Sura 4:117 "O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: Nor say of Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) a messenger of Allah, and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary, and a spirit proceeding from Him: so believe in Allah and His messengers. Say not "Trinity": desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is one Allah: Glory be to Him: far exalted is He above having a son. To Him belong all things in the heavens and on earth." Sura 4:171 "In blasphemy indeed are those that say that Allah is Christ the son of Mary." Sura 5:17 "They do blaspheme who say: "Allah is Christ the son of Mary." But said Christ: "O Children of Israel! worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord." Whoever joins other gods with Allah,- Allah will forbid him the garden, and the Fire will be his abode." Sura 5:72 "For it is not consonant with the majesty of Allah, Most Gracious, that He should beget a son." Sura 19:92 I found it easy to come to monotheism or let's say unitarianism from trinitarianism, but I struggled so long with what is said about the cross and what it is meant to mean seeing that, at face value, the Qur'an and New Testament are at odds. It's easy to think that Paul was not a trinitarian; he was a devout jew and they would never accept that God is three in one, for them God is just one and this is absolutely fundamental. But as for the cross, this is his whole teaching! "Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,..." That verse in Qur'an saying Jesus wasn't even crucified is the only verse dealing with the crucifixion; in about 50 words Muhammad rejects Paul's entire ministry. If he wasn't even crucified then what is Paul going on about? And all of Christianity since? As is my habit I tried to reconcile them; I am an idealist in that I believe that the people who have guided mankind spiritually should surely, surely all be saying the same thing but in different ways according to time and culture. My attempt to reconcile them led me to gnosticism, which also says Jesus wasn't really crucified (certain sides of gnosticism that is), and gnosticism took me to Plato and the neoplatonists, and they took me to a knowledge of the One, which is equivalent in essence to nonduality. The gnostics say that the true teachings of Christianity were always taught in secret, and communicated in veiled form from the time of Jesus, so that only the wise and discerning could understand it. This saying from Paul they use to show how he had a hidden message that wasn't expressed publicly in his letters: "...However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." So in some sense Islam initiated me into the esoteric and mystical, which sent me upward to the high Unity, the One and Only, and I'm grateful to the prophet of Islam (even though he intimidates me.) Even with Islam though I needed Sufism or else I would've had to run from him, and I did until I found Sufism. With Sufism I can extrapolate the same spiritual sense without being frightened by Muhammad's dominant personality into keeping Sharia, which I think is time-bound and cultural. He is a warrior and his text is a fiery law.

Actually, wisdom is associated with age,...wisdom an accumulation of knowledge through sensory experience (acquired through sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, and thought),...wisdom is the highest and most lofty ideas of that ego experience. Wisdom literally means knowledge accumulated through philosophic or scientific learning. In other words, wisdom points to the highest and most lofty ideas of ego consciousness, whose sole purpose is to sustain itself. Wisdom is to make the best use of knowledge,...yet to realize enlightenment means to let go of all knowledge. Knowledge is acquired through thinking/the Head-mind,...mental inertia,...the truth arises from gnowledge/the Heart-Mind. An Awakened being has no use of wisdom. Gnowledge or prajna is not tied to age or human experience. LfcCharlie4 says he posts from Direct Experience,...however I'm not reading that in your posts,...all I'm getting is lots Conditioned Experience that pivots from hope or anticipation for future status. "In terms of experience of reality" - LfcCharlie4. YES!!! Let's discuss that. "The senses do not grasp reality in any way" Socrates There is no denying that LfcCharlie4 has had "multiple awakenings, as I am personally sick of seeing teachers who aren’t finished seeking, the world is full of enough of them." Fortunately I'm not a teacher for you to seek your disgust upon. To me, teaching would be among the most dishonest of positions. "The purest teachings usually come from teachers who are not surrounded and supported by followers or an organization. Books of a pure teacher never had a wide audience." Dr. Stanley Sobottka If your (LfcCharlie4 )Letting Go is contingent on your definition of absolutely everything, then your definition of absolutely everything must not include very much. I've not once said as you argue that I have a "superiority complex" or saying I'm a "tier two thinker ." Nevertheless, seems I've tweaked your mental inertia more than just a bit. Of course your fall-back position is that you "have a life to live,:...an excellent Tell that your awakenings are all within the lower 6 substance levels,...and that's great,...I'm not belittling your shifts from SD 4 to SD 5. I simply don't relate with that stuff,...like when your meet a couple with young children and all they resonate with is their children's activities and dreams. And that's great you want to "build a business and become a teacher who gives transmissions,"...I recall the day when I realized that nearly all "transmissions" from Lineage Holders since the 13th century were BS. Nine months after my first awakening (of which I'm not referring to SD 9), I retired,...the Universe was not here for me (to build a business and become a teacher of transmissions) but I was here for the Universe. That's what Absolute Letting Go is about. Something more akin to Somerset Maugham's Razor's Edge or Gurdjeiff's All and Everything. Twenty years old is a great time of life,...at 19 I read an awesome (IMO) quote that fully altered my then perspective about things,...."Soon we all will die; our hopes and fears will be irrelevant” - Padmasambhava I didn't want to wait until death to potentially be relevant. So at 19, began focusing on the nature of hope and fear. "In order to obliterate the mind that grasps appearances as real, and to realize the true way of things, without hope and fear, shall give rise to bodhicitta." Jigme Lingpa, The Dakini's Laughter Ego loves to focus on not having fear,....but what sustains fear is hope,...and ego adores hope. True spirituality focuses on the liberation from hope. hope n. from ME. hopa, an expectation. 1. expectation of something desired; anticipation of some future event. 2. a guess or belief. 3. that which gives hope; a substance or object hoped for; an expected payoff. Is there a more dishonest, perniciousness word than hope? No matter what level we wish to view it from, hope is false. Hope is an anticipation of the future; thus it must arise from a predisposition, a belief, and attachment to the past. Hope implies lack,...how else could we possibly define it? Hope is for something we think we don't possess. How could hope ever be expressed through an Open-Mind or Open-Heart ? The belief of hope is a barrier that obscures the present. If our attention is on seeking hope, how are we to ever experience the immediacy required to be in the Present? “the highest goal is being devoid of hope and fear…. And when all hopes and fears have died, the Goal is reached.” Tilopa Ego likes to believe that "consciousness" is individual, separate from all other "consciousnesses." The relative reality is that the body (which is NOT part of the Whole) has levels of Conscious Awareness. As Easterners say, we are not in our bodies, our bodies are inside us. I agree that Ramana and Nisgardatta are interesting reading,....I consumed such interesting fellows in my youth,...not for seeking,...but as how they explained their experiences. Many, many have unfortunately adopted the paradigms of Advaita or Nonduality,...belief systems that will keep one in the 3rd density - 6th density Loop. I don't know what SD Stage Friedrich Nietzsche was at,...perhaps a high functioning Yellow (SD 7),...however, this quote of his is a gateway is Turquoise (SD 8).... "Whoever has the blood of theism in his veins, stands from the start in a false and dishonest position to all things."

@Schahin It’s a thought, an idea, “imagining”. It’s an idea of a “how”. Like all words, it means, & ‘it’ doesn’t mean...whatever you think and believe, or don’t. ”How” is dualistic. “How X... Y’s” Nonduality - “not two”. God’s not imagining anything. Just forgetting. “Here I kind of try to wrap my head around these paradoxes, sure with a rational mind these paradoxes aren't too be answered but I hope to hear at least one satisfying answer which could explain it to some point.” This is how the falsity of a “you” is kept going. You can also let it go. ♥️ And the feelings, when you let go. Let them go too. ♥️♥️ “Wash yourself of yourself” ♥️♥️♥️

Be careful. The mind wants to quantasize and measure. Only loosely use your mind concerning concepts about meditation and nonduality and god. Be much better to smoke some high quality DMT. I realised something very cool one time...truth is like a very strong detergent, and your mind is like clothing. You will wash the strong detergent In and out of your clothes to clean them. You wont let the detergent stay in your clothes or it will eventually dissolve the fabric. Truth should wash into and out of your mind. As truth comes into your mind passively and back out...what is the most pure will remain. Creating concepts about truth will eventually dissolve your progress.

@Ero What do you mean by "spiritual practices" I research and read about spirituality and meditation and nonduality daily throughout my days as well.

Hmm... the term nonduality just does the best job of communicating the idea of oneness, unity, etc. but no its not that I'm sad if something is " not nonduality"; let's put the term aside and come to the meaning, the meaning is that all is one, that everything is united, that there is unity at bottom in all the diversity. If it is not this way then... If man and woman are not human... Without the unifying quality things move away, separate, are divisive by nature. Without unity it is also impossible to know anything or love anyone. I mean if unity was not a principle. If oneness was not definitive of things. And if it is, but not in the case of God, then all the problems which would arise if it wasn't in any other case would arise with God. Again, if man and woman are not also at once human, the differences would be all, and we would be separate, even opposite. If God is separate from anything at all that would mean that howsoever you define God you must give the opposite quality to the other thing. If God is good, and is separate, all else is evil. If God is good and is one with everything, goodness then is the quality of everything. So I personally prefer to share in the qualities of the highest good and would love it if everything else was of that same quality. It is sad to me if it is not this way. The alternative is the upward effort to becoming good, but how is that possible if I'm already evil? If God is not me, and he is good, and there is duality but not nonduality at bottom, then I am evil and so is anything else that is not God. How then can the evil be good? By becoming God seems the only way. These are the results of God being something other than me myself. All systems which I've studied seem to speak of this, except Paul's. His lamb sacrifice to me does seem to answer the disparity and close the gap, by putting a mediator between God and man, as he says: "there is one God, and one meditator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus." He says we give up our nature which is evil, because it is seperate from God's, which is good, and we accept Christ's nature as a gift which then reconciles us to God.

Thanks for your post. I'm very new to the Bible. Me considering myself Christian is a new thing for me. I've just finished my first book of the bible from start to finish (Gospel of John). The rest of the Bible I only know through various versus I've collected along the way. In a few months time I would probably have been better placed to contribute to this. I'll be interested in what others say. I was just curious as to the above quote from you. Why would someone be sad if something "is not nonduality?", genuine question. Not a trolling comment. I'm really interested if you don't saying?

@Highest you don't seem to have fully grasped nonduality yet. That's ok, keep being Your post could also be an egoic reaction to the implications of 100% responsibility of your life, so you created an imaginary division between yourself and God to skirt around it.

”Is it wise to divide Spirituality from other aspects of life?” Collapse all. Nonduality, “not two”. Spirituality is an idea. Other aspects of life is an idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1YqgPAtzho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ztlIAYTCU “Grasp” those, and then let that idea go too. These are the fingers. What is the moon?

It’s so interesting to observe an intellectual approach vs direct experience. During and soon after my first psychedelic trip, there was no “me” or “you”. Not in an intellectual way, in a direct experience way. I was left dumbfounded. I remember trying to write a trip report and using terms like “me” and “I” seemed misleading, it didn’t feel right. I remember trying to interact with others on the forum and was confused why those that seemed to know nonduality through direct experience were using personal pronouns. It was one of my initial questions to Leo. To approach nondual pronoun usage from an intellectual mindset is so strange to me. I’m not saying it’s bad or wrong, it’s just weird to me because the direct experience realization is so beyond intellect.

@Javfly33 This is a common appearance along the spiritual path. At first, it can seem like compartmentalizing. There is "spiritual time" in which one may meditate in a spiritual room or sangha. We may have spiritual statues and light incense to create a spiritual atmosphere. We may contemplate afterwards. . . The tendency is to then switch back to "regular" mode. Now it's time to run errands, study, go to work etc. After a while, they start to integrate and overlap. The world becomes one's sangha. At the personal level, it feels like a process. For me, it felt like I was transcending my personal story during my spiritual practices - during solo time in nature, yoga and meditation. And then I went to work and it felt like I was "flipping back" to playing a made-up character. Then I would "flip out" of it. It made for some uncomfortable moment at work and with family. I spent a lot of time alone. . . One thing that helped me was realizing that this "character" appears and disappears. Yet this is not outside nonduality. The character appears just like music and bird chirps appear. That character can appear without any attachment or identification. . . For example, last week I was at a meeting at work. There were appearances of characters in the room - including "me". At one point, someone asked me "what's your opinion?". Then an "I" appeared and words of an "opinion" left "my" mouth. Yet there wasn't attachment/identification. There weren't thought stories like "I hope my opinion was good enough", "She thinks she is smarter than me. I saw how she sighed when I was talking". That type of personal attachment/identification dissolves. . . Then later, I'm walking through nature. There is no need for that character and it disappears for a while.

We can't because Nonduality is recognition that we are all one and separate entities "you" and "I" are delusions

Here's one of the videos where he talks about Leo but also some on Nonduality teachers in general He likes Jed Mckenna but says he is also in the "consciousness trap"

@Lento @Inliytened1 thanks, this is helpful. I do find my mind having these two distinct states. I have an intuition there is a deeper level which encompasses both duality and nonduality, some people talk like that, but haven't reached it yet. It's ok either way. I'm not striving for anything other than awareness of the present moment.

@Lento I get what you've saying in theory, but in practice I'm only aware of nonduality at 'special' moments, when my mind is in a state of stillness. Perhaps that's just my nature, or state of development or something. Anyway, just curious if anyone here experiences nonduality while thinking.

My glimpses of nonduality have so far all occurred when my thinking has stopped. Is nondual awareness incompatible with thought? If so, then when we're in a state without thought, cognition, recognition, interpretation, mental map-making, then we aren't having illusions, truthful concepts or anything abstract like that. Just pure awareness of sense perception. Maybe. I'm still looking.

Nonduality beliefs and ideas

@Nak Khid If there’s you, and anything else, what’s the word Nonduality mean?

This topic cracks me up so much because it's so easy to understand but difficult at the same time ❤ The separation from oneness never occurred it was an illusion. Nonduality is all there ever has been and ever will be. If Oneness is already the case, twoness could never be... The ten thousand waves in the ocean were never something apart from the ocean. So you could say they're included but that doesn't make sense because they were never apart. The apartness is the illusion.... Duality is an illusion...❤

5-MEO-DMT Bufo AlvariusTrip Report ROA: Smoking Dosage: 93 mgs After many months of failed attempts at experimenting with plugging 5-MeO at home. And many more months trying to find a professional facilitator close to me, and many more months getting our schedules to align, I finally got to do my very first Bufo 5-MeO ceremony this weekend. He was decades experienced, and had me stay at his home, where we did the ceremony. As it was raining up at the property up in the mountains where he usually holds the ceremonies. I was pretty calm leading up to the ceremony, until he said it was time. There were 3 of us there for ceremony. He would take us up to a room one at a time, for about an hour each. We debated who would go first, I requested I go first, as waiting and listening to what happened for someone else, would just make me more nervous. As it finally came time, I was really nervous. Him and his female partner sat with me in a circle and did deep breathing with me until I was calm and ready. He asked me if I wanted to start out with a low dose, or jump right into a high dose. I told him I am prone to panic attacks when I have time to resist the effects. So he suggested a high dose. I didn’t ask or want to know what he loaded. He later afterwards told me it was 93mgs. Not sure how much that translates to synthetic 5-MeO dosage. He explained to me how it was going to work. He would hold the pipe. I was to slowly draw in, until my lungs were full, as he counted to 10. Then as I lay back he would count back from 10, as I hold it in. I never made it to the pillow, and I only heard the count of 8 before I was gone. It is hard to describe what came next. It was indescribable unimaginable pure nightmarish Terror. There was no concept of who I was or what anything was. I was obliterated. But at the same time my ‘soul’ was being ripped apart in an endless cycle, over and over. There was zero possibility of resistance or surrender, it just was what it was and far too powerful to try to control. It was pure torture. Even though I was gone, I could tell I was screaming the loudest high pitch scream possible. This seemed like it lasted for only a few seconds. Coming back, I didn’t know who I was, where I was, who the people in the room were, for about a minute. Then I came to pretty fast, within another minute. There was an instant feeling of sadness. I knew right away that the ceremony was a failure. No experience being God, no infinity, no experiencing infinite realities, no insights into the nature of reality, no death (at least I don’t think, unless death is endless torture), no infinite love, no bliss, no insights, no epiphanies, no alleviation of suffering/depression/anxiety. I started to cry as all of it was for nothing. I felt exactly the same as I did before the trip. The facilitators told me I had been screaming for many minutes. Then was saying “Oh Shit!!!” over and over again as I crawled around the room thrashing about. They asked me if I wanted to do another dose, I said no. This was traumatizing enough, wouldn’t want to go through that again, even if there was a chance of a blissful God breakthrough. I was perfectly normal and fine within a few more minutes. They offered for me to go into a dark room to process, but I said that was unnecessary. I popped downstairs, and cheerfully said “hey guys!”. The two guys waiting for their turn looked traumatized. They said they wished they had gone first now, as they heard all the screaming and it made them all that much more nervous to go next. I felt bad about that. They asked me how it went for me, and I told them I would tell them later, as I didn't want to influence their journey. All in all, it felt like the trip had never even really happened. There was a few seconds of infinite torture and unimaginable terror, then nothing. So my trip only seemed to last a few seconds. I thought, if I knew nothing about Nonduality teachings, what was possible, or anything about 5-MeO, and a friend just invited me to participate in the ceremony, I probably would have angrily bitched him out for the horrible experience, with zero benefits (other than the awesome people who I shared it with). Oh well, I guess I have to get even more serious about my spiritual journey and try try try again. I’m not sharing this to discourage anyone. I’m not even discouraged. From what I hear, every trip can be different.

@Raptorsin7 Like I said, the technical details are irrelevant. You can get all the technical details right and still come up totally wrong. Or you can get the big picture right and screw up the technical details. Chopra has the big picture right. And that's what needs to be understood. Maybe he is doing a disservice to science, but science is doing a disservice to God, which is the far greater sin. Science basically understands nothing about consciousness, so to act as though science is this great thing which is being maligned is a joke. Science itself is the malignment of intelligence and Truth. The hunter is the prey here. Sam Harris would not stand a chance in a serious discussion of nonduality.

1982 Christianity and the Doctrine of Non-Dualism, a work which was first published in French in 1982 first published in English in 2004 "As for ourself, we will say unequivocally that after more than forty years of intellectual reflection on this doctrine [of non-dualism or advaita-vâda], having allowed it to impregnate us more and more profoundly, we have found nothing that has seemed incompatible with our full and complete faith in the Christian Revelation." - A Monk of the West This semi-anonymous work was written by 'A Monk of the West' who used the pseudonym of 'Elie Lemoine' (Alphonse Levée), a French Cistercian monk who, at the young age of twenty, found a copy of fellow countryman René Guénon's Orient et Occident (East and West) in a second-hand book stall while he was posted in Asia. This event had a tremendous impact that endured for the rest of his life and was instrumental in his decision to take up the monastic vocation. 'Elie Lemoine' also worked as an editor of the distinguished traditionalist journal Études Traditionnelles that was central in making Guénon and other traditionalist writings accessible to wider audiences. It was in the discovery of the René Guénon's works that 'Elie Lemoine'--A Monk of the West-- found an integral metaphysical doctrine that was universal in its principles, known in the West as the philosophia perennis--perennial philosophy. The metaphysical 'doctrine of non-dualism' (advaita-vâda) is not exclusive to Hinduism (san'tana dharma) alone but is also present in Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is in this universal light that Christianity and the Doctrine of Non-Dualism was articulated. Though this book on 'Christian Ved'nta' is modest in its length, it is dense in its scope and reflection. The book begins with a thorough and insightful Preface by the late perennialist Alvin Moore, Jr. (1923-2005). The work consists of eight chapters and a Forward: 'Philosophical Monism and Non-Dualism', 'I am Brahma', 'In All Things Like Unto Men', 'Without Me You Can Do Nothing', 'Who am I?', 'I am not the Christ', 'East and West' and the Conclusion. ________________________________________________________________________ I challenge somebody to find a book in a European language that has "non-duality" in the title earlier than Christianity and the Doctrine of Non-Dualism from 1982. However I am going to propose Rupert Spira* is the first European to be called a teacher of Non-duality where that word is put front and center, prove me wrong *fun fact one of his talks about nonduality is included in the video game The Witness.

@Nak Khid I would agree that pure nonduality teachers are relatively recent in Western civilizations. My hunch is that the internet accelerated the process.

My Spanish isn't quite good enough to comprehend easily. I will give a closer listen later. As an aside about learning languages. . . I've found it super helpful to listen to native speakers on content that I am interested in and can understand 70%-90%. The nice thing about nonduality / consciousness speakers is they speak relatively slowly with pauses. This speaker articulates very well. He is speaking at an upper intermediate B2 level.

Hello friends, I'm fairly new on my awakening path. It started about a year ago after a lot of suffering. I still struggle to meditate and to understand the concepts of nonduality but this forum and Leo / Abraham Hicks / Alan Watts etc have been very helpful in paving the way. Please share anything you think might be helpful to hear for a new seeker. Thanks!