Search the Community

I wasn't thinking about just you when I posted it. I'm trying to help you and a few others understand that duality is an illusion from direct experience. ❤ The broader perspective you are claiming is the misunderstanding itself. You're transcending nonduality talk is the ego at work. It's almost as if you are claiming to understand infinity + 1, which obviously makes no sense, since we are describing the all-encompassing already. You are trying to understand the absolute with the mind which is impossible. You are seeking outside of yourself and not doing the difficult work of turning within and dropping the false self(Maya). This will hurt your ego and it will immediately want to resist this information but I assure you it's the truth. Remember if you think you already know the answer, you won't do the difficult work. This is actually what is meant by: "The biggest obstacle to Discovery is not ignorance, its the illusion of knowledge" meaning if you think you already know the answer, it will blind you from finding the truth. This seeking outside of yourself can keep you trapped in Maya your whole life. I love you bro ❤ ❤ I hope you can appreciate the straightforwardness of this message. It's from my heart and the very definition of tough love. ❤ I'm always here if you want to chat more on private message ❤

Yes exactly. Perhaps it would’ve been better for me to say I’m speaking from a perspective that “unites duality and Nonduality” rather than “beyond duality and Nonduality”

@Inliytened1 No I’m speaking from a broader point of view. One that’s beyond duality and Nonduality

I actually think you misunderstood me. I am saying Duality is an illusion, it is not real, it is not both, and neither is impossible because there's only nonduality or Oneness. Your example here is a lack of complete understanding and experience. We can still peacefully disagree ❤ ❤

But even that is just a thought. For nonduality to be there needs to be an opposite. For Oneness to be, there would need to be not-Oneness. By naming it, you automatically imply that there is a contrast to that. That's why all that needs to be let go of. You can realize oneness and not see that that is still an interpretation of that which has no opposite, which can't be named. Duality and Non-Duality is still a pair, still a contrast. Even all that jargon is too much already!

Its not the same thing bud...The glass analogy is a true perspective, as in both statements are correct. Calling an illusion reality is a lack of understanding. Oneness or nonduality is all there is. Duality is a figment of the imagination, I mind made fictitious belief. Its Maya!! But you don't have to take my word for it find out for yourself. You are very clever ❤ Here is one of my favorite quotes: " The biggest obstacle to Discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge"

Remember Duality is an illusion, don't make it into something real. Although the waves appear to be separate there still the ocean. All the sandcastles on the beach are still just the sand on the beach. Duality does not equal nonduality because duality never actually existed it was just your mind that created it. There is no other it's always just been oneness. This is the meaning of nonduality. The separation never occurred it was just your mind that tricked you into believing you were a limited separate self. Saying duality = nonduality is like saying the Mirage of the soda machine in the desert is the same as the soda machine....it is not, the soda machine will give you a cold soda. The Mirage will have you walking until you dehydrate and die. Make sense? Love you all ❤

I'm new to the forum. Hello! Being generous. Listening to others. Allowing them to be. Allowing them to enter the stillness within me. Acknowledging that everyone is made of the same substance as me. Seeing them as more than who they appear to be, but for who they truly are: pure consciousness, or God. Nonduality. The illusion of the ego. My question is this: How do I find motivation to form deep, meaningful connection with others, when I’ve grown so detached from my ego that I’m only able to see sharing myself as a form of ego inflation? Is there a balance I need to find between relating to others in terms of being and ego? Of unconditional love for the universe and my human need to connect to others? I'm emphasizing friendships over romantic relationships, though I think the answer to my dilemma will be the same for the latter. How do I handle this situation of having no drive to want meaningful relationships, when I've identified wanting as a form of egoic action? Is this something I should seek in the first place?

@Inliytened1 Nope. The chair is not the table. One can argue there's no chair and no table. One can argue both are made out of the same substance. But if there is a chair, it is certainly not the table. Nowhere to go; everywhere to go. Within stillness I move. There is no actual difference between duality and nonduality.

Just use one of the less religious synonyms for God instead and proceed, substitute on of these words: Everything The All Consciousness Nonduality The Universe Existence

Preface: This was the first proper trip after my last one which was preceeded by a panic attack and subsequent ego death. I was not entirely sure if I was ready for another round however I felt really good this morning and decided to go in again. The Come Up: Just like last trip the body panicked upon intake of the tea. However this time I was able to stay completely calm. The heart and stomach were beating, yet the mind was calm and clear. And after a couple of minutes the body panic stopped and the trip started. The trip: After the heart beat returned to normal there was a simple sentence that came to me: "Remember, the Darkness is the Light". And as it turned out this should be theme of the trip. The Darkness The trip started of dark. Really dark. Mushrooms can be like that. Someone once wrote here that it's kinda like being dropped of on a random planet. Pretty accurate I would say. Well this planet was at war. I had a vision of someone being tortured. Me being the one leading the interrogation and the one taking the pain. I had vision of a couple young boys having a fight and beating the living shit out of each other. I had a vision of an Asian genocide happening before my eyes. Lastly I had a vision of some violent alien race pillaging the galaxy... led by some sort of hive mind. Note, I include this to be accurate. I don't know if there is any truth to that whatsoever. Yet it kinda felt like a warning. The Shadow After all that darkness I decided to take a little break. Once I came back from taking a piss I lied back down and the darkness revealed itself as the shadow. The male shadow to be exact. The male shadow is anger. And, very interestingly the female shadow is deception. I have not studied shadow work yet, however this is my direct experience. Both energies seemed to be wounded deeply and I had visions of both being acted out by people I know. Then I was also shown how to be a man. Being a man entails dealing with that shadow and shining a light on it (note that everyone has both male and female energy). And very interestingly it includes homosexuality. I have one gay friend however I noticed that I have a bit of a resistance towards being gay. That resistance was surrendered. This side of me which was resistant was able to be re-integrated. I still like women last time I checked but I feel more whole as man. The Light After all of that the Light came. I still had some violent visions however this time it was different. There was a light shining through. There was a particular scene I remember. The light merged with the darkness becoming pure light setting the scene in stone. I remembered that all that darkness is Love. It is light. It is Goodness. Love (with a capital "L") includes all of it. It is it. It is the darkness and the shadow. That is what pure Love entails. And why all the darkness? Out of Love. The Voice I still wanted to break through to God and tried to surrendered further. Then, for the first time I was able to see existence as a projection. It's a hologram. It has no substance. What we call life is a projection onto the screen of consciousness. The body is a thought and has no absolute essence. The mind is illusory and has no absolute essence. My birth is a story. I am a story. What I call "me" is a character in a game called life. It has no essence. What is left then? Isness. Pure self aware Isness. Why is there a voice inside of my head? Most of the breakthroughs I had were kind of narrated by the voice in my head (until the event horizon was passed so to speak). This time I could see how the voice lost itself. It still narrated but it lost itself in a sort of echo chamber of God. It too had no essence of itself. I, as God was talking to myself. There were no bells, whistles of ecstasy this time. It also wasn't a complete breakthrough. More of merging in and out of Nonduality. That's it. Short and sweet. Most important (for me at least) was to be able to face the fear and jump into the deep end again. There is still work to do. Don't know when I will trip again though. Have a good one! Much love

Here you are using a relatively much more secular word "The Absolute". I have seen you use similar words said in other statements that you have made using the word "god" and then for a moment switching to "The Universe" and "The Truth", relativity secular words You are speaking here of consensus. The consensus in America of what "God" means is that it is superior being that watches over us, judges us and cares for us, most perceiving it to be a part of a biblical dualistic paradigm. The consensus is that it refers to a being described in the Bible. The word "devils" , by consensus also has a connotation of the Christian or Islamic tradition (but if it is in the same speech as the word "god" probably not connoting Islam since they would be using the word "Allah" ) So if you use the word "god" in America or Europe and some other places, the consensus is that you are referring to "god" as described in the bible. But if you then have to explain to each stranger you meet when you said "god" you mean something else or you tell them "your are god" you would be going against the consensus and expressing you " willy-nilly" variation of the word So why do you ever use the word "God" instead instead using the word "nonduality" or "everything" or "consciousness" or "actualized" or "the universe" or "the Absolute" or "The Truth" or "The All" or "It" ? You do switch to some of these other words at times but you are still using the word "god" much more Instead of using these much more secular words why would someone not referring to a Biblically described God use the word "god" and have to explain to each new person, going against the consensus connotation that you in fact don't mean the biblical version? One reason might be that the word "God" (capital G noted) evokes a sense of authority and these other words don't or are less personal feeling

You could call it a kind of experience, but like a null experience. The experience of no experience or pure empty consciousness. It feels a lot like emptiness. It's so empty you cannot even feel it as being empty, because that's still not empty enough. "Experience" and "perception" are concepts which are already loaded with a hidden assumption of an experience and an experiencer. What you have thought of as "experience" your whole life is actually the body of God. Ultimately experience isn't experience. Experience is an improperly understood BEING. Being is not experienced or perceived. Being just is. You cannot get any more fundamental than Being. You cannot ask, "But who is experiencing Being?" Because at the level of Being there is no who and experience. You with a capital Y cannot be observed. YOU is! Again, "observation" is a loaded concept which assumes a subject/object duality which is illusory. Subjective/objective is a duality. We are talking about nonduality here, which means that you cannot ask if it is subjective or objective because there is no difference between anything in nonduality. What is a dream? A dream is when you think there is a difference between any two things, including the difference between a dream and not-a-dream. Is there a difference between a kangaroo and a refrigerator? If you said YES, then you're dreaming. You are dreaming that difference! The difference seems "real" precisely because you are dreaming it! A dream is when something, anything, seems "real". You are even dreaming the difference between "real" and "unreal". There is no such difference unless you dream it. Absolute Consciousness cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not.

I think most of the world that say they believe in God do not mean it means "everything" However for those that do, why not use the word "everything" or "consciousness" instead of "God" and with it's capital G has heavy religious connotations. Why use the word "God" and then have to explain to people you don't mean a separate being that watches over and judges us when if you used another word "nonduality" , "everything" , "consciousness", "The universe" , "existence" may not be perfect but do not have the religious baggage attached like the word "God" does? Trying to align others with your conceptualization is absolutely unnecessary, enforcing words is trivial, having the similar understanding is enough.

1) please quote of there is a quote 2) The statement everything = nothing is similar to duality = nonduality Devil = God oness = duality one = all big = small hate = love 3) Given the fact that I am God and everybody else is do the most well known people who speak on and consider themselves nondualists consider themselves theists or atheists? Do most do the most well known people who speak on and consider themselves nondualists use the word God? This is not a rhetorical question I don't know and am not saying that whatever the majority of them do is the correct thing

Logic is not transcended through logic. Sense is not transcended by making sense. This is the challenge for a logical, sensible mind. I'm trying to think logically here. . . Rather than imagining Everything as a collection of all individual things, imagine One Everything. There is no thing separate from One Everything. We cannot say "All those things over there is Everything, yet this thing is separate from Everything". . . . The is no thing that is not Everything. No thing = One Everything. There is truth and knowing prior to proof. For example, imagine there was a murder. Is there truth to that murder prior to proof? What if there was no evidence/proof of the murder. Which comes first, the truth of the murder or evidence/proof of the murder? Truth is first order and evidence/proof is second order. Similarly with knowing. There is knowing that comes prior to evidence/proof. . . Imagine you have a headache. How do you know you are experiencing pain in your head? Do you need to undergo brain scans to show neural activity as evidence of your pain? Do you need a neurologist to prove to you that you are experiencing pain in your head? What if the neurologist couldn't find evidence/proof of that you have head pain? . . . The knowing of that head pain is prior to evidence/proof of that head pain. That's hard to answer because nonduality isn't really a thing. If I were to try and answer those questions, I would keep saying that the opposite is also true and that there is an infinite number of partial truths. It would be like asking "Is what is, is?" , "Is ISness theism or atheism?", "Is the term 'God' the term 'God''?". It doesn't make sense, yet that is part of the beauty and magic of it. . . For nondual understanding, direct experience and awakening is much much more profound than analysis and conceptualization. If you want nondual exposure, there are many great speakers, youtube videos and practices. Yet ime, the fastest most certain way for direct nondual experience would be to take a psychedelic.

1) what is the logic or proof behind the statement Everything = Nothing ? How do you know it makes sense? 2) Does non duality mean everything = nothing? 3) Do most adherents of nonduality consider themselves theists or atheists? 4) Is the term "God" appropriate for someone who is a nondualist? thanks

@Nak Khid Look around the room you are in. See it as One Everything. Point to a thing that isn't One Everything. There is no-thing that isn't Everything. There is Nothing to contrast Everything with. I could give many examples of meaningful practical applications. Yet any example of meaning would be relative. Thus, there is no proof of objective universal meaning. Yet, there is truth prior to "proof". . . Have you ever searched for proof that now is now? Of course not, because the truth of now is prior to any evidence/proof of now. It would be more accurately categorized as "nonduality" The Einstein quote is an insight in a certain context, yet it goes much more radical. The Einstein quote asserts that there are so many things in existence that the human mind cannot comprehend it all. This is true. Yet it isn't what is being pointed to as Everything. This is more radical and goes beyond logic. This is intuitive since logic must be within it. One cannot transcend logic with logic. . . Direct experience becomes key.

@Leo Gura I understand completely. However, I definitely would not call my online publishing businesses soul-crushing or painful. I'm even building brands around meditation and spirituality to help introduce people to these topics who aren't ready for the full-blown nonduality side of things. On top of that, I'm coaching others now and helping them grow their businesses which is very fulfilling. I've also recently upgraded all the products (Books) I provide and the system makes sure each book we publish is very high quality and provides solutions to the customers' needs and actually helps them. I've also started my own fiction brand which requires minimal work as me and my partner have a coach who does the majority of the work for a % split, and that alone will hopefully provide substantial income after the 3-year contract is up. In terms of my own businesses, I'm beginning to outsource a lot of the work and training employees to my quality standards, therefore I know in a couple of years fully outsourcing this to where I max spend 5-10 hours a week on it will not be any issue at all, while at least maintaining similar earnings. It could also lead to my LP as it is possible to build a brand around near enough any sort of topic. Right now I completely feel this is what I want to devote my next 2-5 years too, maybe that's being stupid but it allows me incredible freedom to work on Personal Development, Health& Fitness and my Spirituality (working with Ramaji and Ananda (RASA)) and have seen amazing results in the areas in the last 6 months. Have you ever heard about how Purpose can work in 3's? I was contemplating this as I feel one of my purposes is to do with helping people achieve financial freedom as I have always been passionate about Business, Investing etc, but I also feel one day I want to become a Spiritual Teacher, however I wouldn't want to do that until I am completely finished and ready, as there's too many people I believe who simply try and talk the Ego to death and it rarely works, I endlessly listened to Eckhart/ Rupert etc for almost 2 years, and while the theory is helpful it doesn't really allow you to reach the highest levels of self-realization and is easy to take that 'back seat' route. Onto number 3 and I'm extremely passionate about Health/ Fitness, Sports (as you know from my posts lol) and Biohacking or even finding ways people can optimize their health and how they feel. Maybe you think I'm being stupid or wasting my time, but what feels right to be right now is to grow my businesses to the levels I have in mind, and keep providing products that are helping/ entertaining readers in various areas of life, and that to me is far from soul-crushing, I also did this to avoid going to University and going down a corporate route related to Investment Banking, Accounting, etc where corruption can certainly be rife. This is a stupidly long reply and I have waffled on for a while, but I hope you get the gist of what I'm trying to say

Same here. I feel that it's the right thing to do in my life but at the same time cannot really comprehend most of the nonduality videos. Maybe I'm just pursuing it because Leo whom I respect talks about it all the time but deep inside I am not ready and won't be for many years to come because I haven't fulfilled my purpose and material needs yet.

I find many of Leo's videos to be similar to ACIM. In this video from about 1 hour and 8 minutes Leo explains that to erase evil requires removing evil from oneself, which in turn as I understand it is to remove the sense of separation in oneself, and that sense of separation is also the foundation of the ego. Edit: Leo's explanation is a bit lukewarm here though it seems to me. I think that removing the evil in oneself also means that one's physical body can no longer be harmed. Otherwise there is a split between mental evil and physical evil and that's duality, not nonduality. And I believe evil will be eradicated from the entire world within a few decades. Leo says in the video that there will be evil still many centuries to come.

Here I found yet another spiritual teacher, Paul Hedderman, talking about ACIM. Hedderman is a nonduality teacher. They seem to like ACIM! In another video he said something like how the self cannot experience the self. Very good point. In a sense everything is the Self yet I see the truth of there needing to be a duality for experience to happen.

@Javfly33 A few thoughts: 1. Low/moderate doses of psychedelics can be great for dissolving the sense of self and revealing one-ness without going into some bizarro reality. Yet keep in mind, that when the conditioned mind returns, it will want to contextualize the experience and make sense of it. The mind may create all sorts of thought stories. These can have practical value for the person/human, yet these thought stories aren't actual - they are contextualizations. The human mind has attachments/identification to a thought story of "me". At a deeper level, there is attachment/identification to experience and feelings. Awareness of all this is a major expansion. Yet the awareness doesn't mean the underlying attachment/identification to that self dissolves. There is recognition and there is embodiment. 2. Recognizing the illusory nature of self does not mean conditioned impulses in the mind-body will suddenly stop. A nondual realization will not cure someone's broken leg and will not stop pain impulses in the mind and body. It is the relationship to those impulses that changes. There is an energetic shift. Mentally, it may be a "game-changer" and relieve a lot of personal anxiety and neuroses. Yet conditioned neurotic impulses may still appear in the mind. 3. The human mind is conditioned to perceive duality it's entire life. The first glimpses of nonduality will seem radical and cause a sense of instability and groundlessness. The mind might start thinking "Who am I?", "Do I even exist?", "What is the point of doing anything in life?". This can cause discomfort in the mind and body. . . I am a big proponent of following one's true desires. If the mind and body reacts with strong resistance/anxiety and says "Whoa, this is too much - we need to slow down and get our life together" - I would honor that. We don't want to traumatize the mind and body. If you were climbing Mt. Everest and the body started hyper-ventilating and went into hypothermia, we would pause and allow the body to recover. 4. Follow your true desires. All there is, is this moment you are having right now. This moment is Home. The deepest human desire is to return Home to this moment.

Glimpses of nonduality are often contextualized as solipsism by the personal self. Solipsism is a cognitive construct - there is a prior to that construct. Solipsism is still dualistic. It sees others as unreal and it's self as real. Therefore thoughts like "i am all alone" arise. That is only a half-truth. If others are not real, that means that i am not real as well. This is the next step: to realize "i am not real". You keep using the terms "i" and "me" in a personal context. How can "i" be all alone if there is no "i"? There is no "i" to be all alone. Nonduality is much more radical. In nonduality ALL selves are nonexistent. Other selfs and my self do not exist. Cloaking a personal "me" as a transcendent "Me" is a sneaky trick of the ego. Remove the cloak and realize there is no "me". There is no point to all your questions because they all assume there is a thing called "me". Consider the following questions: How much money do I need to invest in feeding my unicorn? Where is the best place to train my baby unicorn to fly? How can I keep my unicorn in my yard? Won't it fly away? Do I need to get a licence to own a unicorn? I have two dogs that are very territorial - how can I protect my baby unicorn from my dogs? . . . We could go on and on and on. . . All of these questions are a waste of time because they all assume that a unicorn is real. . . The questions are a distraction - it is much more important to realize there is no unicorn. When one realizes there is no unicorn, all the unicorn questions dissolve. . . Similarly, these questions about "me" assume there is a "me". This is a distraction from realizing there is no me. Once this is realized, all the "me" questions dissolve.

All words, language, concepts, images, things are dualistic. If there is a "thing", then there must be something that "thing" is not. Any "thing" separated from One Everything is dualistic. If there is a "thing", there is a "not thing". If we say there is a thing called a chicken, then there must be non-chickens for contrast. If we say there is a thing called blue, there must be non-blue for contrast. If we say there is nonduality, there is duality for contrast. Yet all words, language, concepts, images, things are also nondualistic. All things are One Everything. It all IS. There is no thing that is not Everything. Everything is every thing. So all words, language, concepts, images are Everything, just like a bird chirp, sunset, knee pain, confusion, selfish thoughts, tuna sandwiches, ESP, lucid dreaming, NDEs, psychedelic experiences, astral projection, budhhism, hinduism, perception, theory are also Everything. All communication is dual in the sense that what is communicated is not what is non-communicated. And all communication is also nondual in the sense that all communication is Everything. We don't step outside of Everything, point and say "That stuff over there is Everything". Creating constructs is one form of communication. This generally involves the intellect. Yet there are other ways of communication. Most human communication is nonverbal - yet we are not aware of it. It is mostly subconscious communication. Most communication is nonverbal: tone of voice, facial expressions, body language etc. As well, there are other modes of communication via energetics, empathy, intuition, a smile. . . I've done eye gazing with sessions in which we gaze in each others eyes for 5-10min. and let all thoughts dissolve. It is amazing what can be communicated and learned about another person. Yet it's not something that is figured out. After the session, you can't really say "Wow, let's make sense of what happened". I suppose you could, yet this would be a recontextualization. Yes, much can be realized through direct experience. Thinking and conceptualizing is a small part of what is available. Imagine going 20min. without a single thought. Will there still be happenings? Of course. There are happenings of Now. And a whole new world opens up. It's amazing what can be learned and understood without a single thought. I generally don't like using the term "enlightenment". It can be helpful as motivation for spiritual practice, personal development and communication. Yet there is a tendency for people to create an "enlightenment story". The self gets immersed in this enlightenment story, creates an imaginary thing called "enlightenment" and starts viewing things/people as being enlightened or unenlightened. I find this to be a distraction, yet others like it. Yes. All theory, concepts, constructs etc are eventually circular and deconstruct to Nothing = Everything. Yet constructs have practical value to the person/human. Yet this realization is liberating because it dissolves attachment/identification to constructs. Like a sandcastle. Once one realizes the sandcastle they are building will eventually be deconstructed to the beach, this can allow letting go of attachment/identification to the sandcastle. This can be scary, it can be liberating. This is what makes human connection so special. Imagine a "knowing" that can't be explained through words and concepts. We can try, yet it is difficult. Yet when there is a shared knowing of the ineffible, it's really meaningful. And it's not just sharing theoretical models (although that can be fun too). . . Yesterday, a student was trying to communicate her experiences with anxiety and panic disorder. She quickly stopped, sighed and said "It's really hard to explain, no one understands". I told her I also had experience with anxiety/panic and said "for me, it's kinda like XYZ". Her eyes opened wide and she replied "Yea, that's sorta like it. It's also kinda like ABC". Then my eyes got wide opened as I said "Yea, that's another good way to say it". The energetics between us totally changed. We weren't trying to intellectually build a construct of what anxiety/panic is. Rather, we both had direct experience with anxiety/panic and were trying our best to communicate it through words. Yet most of it wasn't through words. It was also the way we looked at each other and the energetics between us. We fumbled around with words trying to point to it, yet the understanding had nothing to do with the construct. The understanding wasn't a thought construct of what anxiety/panic it - the understanding was the knowing of the direct experience. And there was a "knowing" present. We each knew that each other knew. At the end, I don't her "You are the first person I've shared this with that *gets it*. She smiled and replied "Me too". . . This is a different mode of beingness and it is really special in terms of human connection.