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Gotcha ? You seem to suggest an external god as you say “developing itself”. What is “itself”? As well, you say god is magical “beyond just IS”. I’m not sure if you are creating dualistic categories or trying to describe facets of One diamond. I think your questions have been getting deeper and more advanced over the past month or so. As you go deeper into nonduality and into the collapse of dual/nondual, intellectual concepts won’t be center-stage anymore. It will provide structural support. Nonverbal things like intuition, empathy, beingness, essence, presence, knowing, Now etc will become more impactful.

So great to have this said. There is a growing number of religious folks on this forum. I was a lifelong Atheist (40 years). The moment I learned of Nonduality I gave it up of a belief of truth. You have to unlearn everything. Hardcoded beliefs only get in the way.

If a ten year old, in relative terms of consciousness, experienced an alien, that experience has the potential to be terrifying, and life altering, and bring about a lot of suffering and fear - sending them down the emotional scale. Consider the same ten year old, now fifty, but having assimilated & actualized maslow’s pyramid, spiral dynamics, self realization, the emotional scale, collective & cosmic consciousness, and the actuality of nonduality - now knowing the illusory nature of fear, self doubt, and the world, and the actuality of love - seeing an alien. Now consider the alien which makes it from pretty f’ing far away, to earth, knows all of this already, and much more, and likely did not actually traverse space & time to ‘make the journey’ “here”. Consider the vibrational match at play, in terms of relative consciousness, as access. Then imagine, you are that fifty year old, and pretty much anyone you tell of your encounters with aliens, is closer to the ‘ten year old consciousness’, than the ‘fifty year old consciousness’. Nonduality is not two, not a question & answer, and so it is prior to concerns of ‘whys’ (nonduality is the “why”). So the alien, and the ‘fifty year old consciousness’, would already be on the same ‘nondual page’; One, same Self. No intent to harm, no fear of being harmed. Concerns are not prior, one who has not inspected their own a priori’s, is nondual, but in not yet knowing this, is reacting, living from fear & concerns, harming, in defense of “their separate self”. The ignore-ance of self, creates tendencies & intention of these things, and is already violence. An alien wanting to visit this, is like an ant wanting to attend a stomping party. They’d probably just pass on it. In appearance there will always be ‘ten year old’, and ‘fifty year old’ consciousness, and therefore there will always be consciousness which appears to consciousness as, “alien”. The consciousness of the population raising, technology, humanity & compassion, understanding - along with it, and we’ll eventually go somewhere far, and when we arrive, we will see that we, relatively, are the aliens.

1) Consciousness affects matter (I'm curious what someone like Sean Carrol would say about these studies) 2) LSD and Magic mushrooms have been shown to reduce brain activity (contrary to what materialism would assume) https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2016/04/the-lsd-study-youre-being-subtly.html https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/08/magic-mushrooms-and-brain-activity.html 3) Instead of weakening, the brain is more active than ever during anesthesia (again contrary to what materialism would assume) https://www.cheatsheet.com/health-fitness/what-really-happens-brain-during-anesthesia-truly-terrifying.html/ 4) A new paper argues the condition now known as “dissociative identity disorder” might help us understand the fundamental nature of reality https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-multiple-personality-disorder-explain-life-the-universe-and-everything/

No one is saying that this is your imagination or choice of perception. Before you can treat a wound you must acknowledge that it's there. Then you treat it in whatever way is necessary based on the severity of it, but the actual healing happens on its own. Keep in mind the analogy that Leo used in his most recent video. Enlightenment is not a single mountain that you can climb, it's a whole fucking mountain range. You've been going around comparing your progress with your wife's and others here based on the high mountain you're sitting on the peak of, not realizing that others have explored different parts of the mountain range that you were ignoring as unimportant the whole time. This is not the time to throw nonduality out the window, but it is time to scan the horizon and finally come down from the peak of that single mountain you've mastered and explore the rest of the range.

I appreciate that all of you are trying to comfort me, but this is not just my imagination, or choice of perception. We went to couples therapy session and I had a shouting contest with the therapist, he said that I'm using emotional violence against my wife, that I treat her like a dog, that I will start hitting her in a year and that we should get a divorce. He was scared that I will hit my wife after we leave the session and reassured her that he will help her if she calls him. THIS WAS A FIRST SESSION! Either he's being serious or this is an incredibly cruel scare tactic to get me to cooperate. I was observing how I manipulate others in how he was manipulating me. I am projecting my misogyny onto my wife and using pop-psychology to "fix" her. I have no concept of boundaries and personal space and I am using nonduality to justify it. I am treating people instrumentally, as a way to get my needs met. I have authority issues. And all of this happens when I lose my temper and I get angry A LOT. This is fucking dangerous. I'm a loaded gun ready to go off.

First of all, solipsism is a conceptual scheme, a philosophical system. This is very different from actuality. In this sense solipsism is a fantasy whereas nonduality is actuality. Map vs territory. This is a HUGE difference. Don't underestimate this. Secondly, solipsism is not even a good map. It does not recognize the truth of no-self and the truth that you are God. Solipsism is still dualistic in that it denies the reality of others by upholding the reality of the ego-self. Nonduality makes a more radical move. It denies the reality of all individual selves, especially oneself. If other people are unreal, you as a person must also be unreal. If you are unreal, then what are you? Solipsism doesn't answer this ultimate question. The part that solipsism gets right is that ultimately you are all alone. But what are you? You are not a finite being, as solipsism assumes. But when you finally realize that you are an infinite being, you will also realize that you are both alone and together, because infinity includes all dualities. You are so ONE that you cannot even distinguish oneness from twoness! Unless you do

Ehh... so then how is nonduality you teach, different from solipsism? I don't get it, you are basically saying it's not solipsism yet only my mind exists?? Sure it does feel like solipsism. Like nothing exist, neither ever was existing outside of my mind I remember in one of my trips right before I entered total unity, I was thinking about Martin Ball and his advice for symmetrical body posture etc. and suddenly in one moment all distinction between me and Martin collapsed, and it literally felt like I was Martin Ball and I've been talking to myself all this time. It just so happens that I was thinking about him at the time so he was present in my consciousness when it all melted into one. But for example, Leo Gura for some reason was completely absent from my conscious experience at the time. Does it mean there literally was no experience of being Leo Gura at the time because he was absent from MY mind? I don't assume that

If YOU is the only being, that IS the universe. Full Stop. That's it. Nothing = Everything. Notice how the ego won't accept that and adds in dualistic somethings about "others", "you" and "me". The ego loves to say "Yea, yea - I understand all that nonduality stuff, but. . . ". And then starts adding in dualisms. This boils down to "I am". When you ask "If I am the only being in the universe", the personality Shaun is identifying to that "I am". It is seeing itself as separate from other "things". There is a transcendence of Shaun in which there is One Everything. Yet that realization would mean the dis-identification as Shaun and the ego will fight like heck to prevent that from happening. From the ego's perspective, that is death. For these solipsistic thoughts to have personal relevance, there needs to be identification to a construct of a person - in this case shaun. Without that personal identity, the solipsistic thoughts are merely appearances with no more relevance than appearances of birds chirps.

Solipsism is the idea that only my mind is sure to exist. Nonduality is that only my mind exists. One is just an idea, the other is fact and they are both the same. Now, if I'm the only being in the universe, why do you tell other users on here that they are also the only being in the universe and are all alone? Surely, you should only be addressing me? Why do you tell people that you don't exist and they are imagining you? I ask a lot of my friends if they exist and they look at me like I'm mad and strongly assert that they do indeed exist.

@Shaun It's very simple. If you are a student of nonduality you should know by now that nonduality means oneness. How can you pursue oneness while maintaining the notion of twoness (self vs other)? You are not conscious yet of the implications of ONENESS. It means... you know... that everything is ONE! Which means you are the only being in the universe. This does not contradict Rupert Spira. You're just not understanding yet the full implications of Spira's teachings. Don't confuse oneness or nondualty with solipsism. Solipsism is not radical enough to be true. And yet, you are all alone. Technically, the duality between aloneness vs togetherness collapses. But when this happens your ego will perceive it as solipsism. If you're not careful you will reject/deny this important insight of God's existential aloneness because you are so attached to the idea of there being others.

You in your limited state will have a personality, likes and dislikes and resonate with certain things and people. If you are open spiritually you may resonate with certain energies, and certain energies may lead you to have experiences and those experiences can have profound effects on the course of your life. Nonduality, is the reason why this can occur, and it happens where nonduality and duality merges. Remember that because of the nature of nonduality you cannot separate it from duality. That can be a tricky thing to "understand". That's why you can appear to have had past lives or to be contacted by certain nonphysical personalities. However you could say that oneness is the background through which everything is occurring.

This is a Nonduality forum, so the answers you're going to get are that you are God, you are Jesus, you created the bible, you imagined it all, you are all that there is imaging it all.

Spiritual teachers who have read A Course in Miracles seem inclined to accept the possibility of a different form of reality. Neale Donald Walsch writes in his Conversation With God books about highly evolved beings. Advaita nonduality teacher Roger Castillo, who has talked about ACIM, hasn't experienced a different reality yet but says he is open to the possibility. Eckhart Tolle, who is a fan of ACIM, writes in The Power of Now: "Our collective human world is largely created through the level of consciousness we call mind. Even within the collective human world there are vast differences, many different "sub-worlds," depending on the perceivers or creators of their respective worlds. Since all worlds are interconnected, when collective human consciousness becomes transformed, nature and the animal kingdom will reflect that transformation. Hence the statement in the Bible that in the coming age "The lion shall lie down with the lamb." This points to the possibility of a completely different order of reality." - The Power of Now, chapter 9

Welcome to the forum Itp! You ask a wonderfully inquisitive question. Your question is at the interface between objectivism and relativeism. It is a major jump up in consciousness. In SD terms it is going from Orange to Green/Yellow. I can explain it logically, yet keep in mind that there is logical understanding as well as embodiment. Embodiment often comes through direct experience in which the person just "gets it", deeper than thinking. You question combines duality and nonduality, which can cause confusion. You start off with nonduality, then switch to dualistic relativity. Let's consider the four different constructs we can create: 1) Pure Dualistic: The vast majority of people are in a pure dualistic mindset and will subconsciously have the following construct: There is a difference between dreaming experience and awake experience. As well, there is a difference between ethical behavior and unethical behavior. Such a person will subconsciously believe that dreams are illusions and awake is real. They will also subconsciously assume that things like violence is unethical and things like honesty is ethical. The problem with this construct is that the person assumes there is an objective reality of dream vs. awake and ethical vs. unethical. They are not conscious that these are relative constructs they are creating (and society creates). I would estimate 85% of the world's population is locked into this orientation. About 13% of the population has rudimentary awareness of relativity and about 2% have a fairly solid understanding. 2) Pure Nondual: There is no difference between dreaming experience and awake experience. As well, there is no difference between ethical behavior and unethical behavior. It's all just ISness. Here there is no difference between sleeping and awake or between violence and peace. This is an advanced conscious state. I would estimate that only about 1% of the population has a solid theoretical understanding of this and has had some nondual direct experience that they recognized and integrated. Yet I would estimate that only about 0.0001% of the population has deeply embodied this. The challenge with this orientation is that is runs counter to the pure dualistic perspective described above. Humans will strongly resist this pure nondualistic perspective because it involves the dissolution of all dualities including right vs wrong, sense of self, personal survival etc. A subjective nondual experience can be blissful and liberating - yet it can also be very scary and threatening. . . A second complication is that humans live in a relative world and 99.9% of the world's people are spending the vast majority of their time within subconscious dualistic constructs. It would be very difficult to function and survival while always being in a nondual state of consciousness. Imagine trying to function in society with no sense of ethical vs. unethical. No sense of up vs. down. No sense of dream vs. awake. It would be very difficult to function. Those at more advanced stages often talk about "flipping" between nondual and dual conscious states. (Yet this itself is also a dualistic construct). 3) Dual/Nondual Hybrid: There is a difference between dream and awake (dual), yet no difference between ethical and nonethical (nondual). Such a person would distinguish between when they are dreaming and when they are awake, yet would not distinguish between things dishonesty/honesty, violence/peace etc. I think this would be more of a thought experiment and not relevant to your question. 4) Dual/Nondual Hybrid: There is no difference between dream and awake (nondual), yet a difference between ethical and nonethical (dual). This is the framework of your question. Notice how you start off saying "what if there is no distinction between dreaming experience and awake experience". That is a nondual construct. . . Here comes the big jump in consciousness, fasten your seatbelt. . . Notice how you subconsciously assumed that there is a difference between ethical and unethical (violence). There is an underlying assumption that this difference is objective. The big jump in consciousness is to realize that this difference is not objective, it is relative. You are creating it. Societies create it. This underlying question led to your question "Is he *supposed to*. . . ". . . *Supposed to* is reflective of a mind that is assuming there is objective ethics and is unaware of relativity. This is a very very common assumption. This first step is to consciously realize this intellectually, yet the much deeper realization is the post-intellectual embodiment, which is much more difficult to obtain. . . Many people may say "Yea, yea, I know it's all relative. . . but what about. . .". They may intellectually recognize relativity, yet their underlying orientation is objectivism. So there highest conscious answer to your question is there is no answer. You can create any of the above constructs you want. You create your own reality. . . However, we live as a person in a relative world and some constructs are more practical in life. If I were to build a practical construct regarding your question it would look something like this: If someone is dreaming about suffering and violence that is reflective of underlying psychological issues at the human level. The mind and body may become distressed by such dreams. This could interfere with there waking life. It may cause problems in their relationships and at work. It could be a signal that the person has psychological issues they need to work through for personal development toward a healthier life. However, I wouldn't judge the violent dreams as ethical or unethical and I would not judge or sham the person for having them. If they asked me for help, I would try to empathize and help them.

Yes there is suffering from the perspective of the person. Humans have constructed a thing called "suffering". Different humans have different suffering constructs. For example, a common construct of suffering is that the mind and body experience intense physical/emotional pain and don't want to feel this physcial/emotional pain and there is a strong desire to be free of the physcial/emotional pain - yet an inability to be free of it. That is a human construct of suffering. It has practical value when humans are discussing their experience. When someone tells me they are suffering - I use this type of construct to relate and communicate with them. When you say their is *nobody, nothing* then how can there be suffering? You just said there is nobody to suffer, nothing. Is a bowl full of nothing suffering occurring in nobody wind? From a trans-human perceptive, we could say that there is a "thing" that the human calls "suffering" that appears in a "thing" the human calls It's mind and body - in which the human identifies as being "me". If you say it's "the suffering before nonduality is revealed" - then we are now immersed back into the perspective of the person. Which is fine. So overall, is it happening or not? Both. Illusion = Reality and Reality = Illusion. Non-happenings = Happenings and Happenings = Non-happenings. This is a deeper level in which the duality between dual and nondual collapses. Yes Nothing wrong with philosophising about duality and mechanisms of happenings. Confusion and inner turmoil arises when there is conflation between absolute and relative. As well, when there is a belief/assumption that relative is absolute. From the perspective of a doer, there is choice. From the perspective of no-doer there is no choice. From the perspective of intention and meaning, suffering is meant to happen. From the perspective of no intention or meaning, suffering is not meant to happen. You are getting into causation, determination and choice again. Your answer depends on how you create constructs of causation, determination, doer and choice. We can create all sorts of constructs, just like we can construct all sorts of sand castles. Creating constructs can allow insight and we can create more elaborate constructs. Nothing wrong with that - that's what humans do. Yet the inner turmoil comes with the seeking energy of wanting to create a construct that is objectively and universally true and permanent. Just like a child will experience inner turmoil if they want their sandcastle to be grounded and permanent. At the end of the day, all sandcastles will get deconstructed by waves. And all constructs get deconstructed to Nothing. . .

Of course this will be the next big realization But still you know what I mean with I suffered or he suffers right? It is the appearance as you say of suffering. It is not me suffering actually. B That is the core question, there is no doer, nobody, nothing but still the appearance suffering appears for some of "us" while for "others" not (sorry I didnt now how to explain it here without using pronouns, but yiu know what I mean right) its the suffering before you realized nonduality, it was actually happening as a part of being or wasn it? :)) Lets say I would be tremendously suffering mentally right now writing this, someone could say no that is not true but somehow it still is? Transcendence is important but philophising about duality and its happenings is not wrong either is it? So the questions remains, is it meant for the appearance of suffering to occur or does the "doer" have a choice here (even if there is no doer, but you understand right?)

Notice how you say *I* suffered, rather than suffering appeared. There is an "I" dynamic that can be transcended. Again, notice how you say *I* tried to end the suffering. It's fine to talk at the level of the personality, yet there is transcendence of that. To me, it seems like you keep reaching out for that transcendence, yet can't quite take the plunge. Who/what is this *I* that is suffering and trying to end it's own suffering? Is it a story of *I*? Is it the brain suffering? The body? . . . So far, you have said "I know *I* doesn't exist, yet you know what I mean". . . If you don't get clear on the "you know what I mean part", you will be swimming through muddy waters. Notice how you default back to your pre-conceived assumption and construct. Using the framework of a psychological self is fine if you want to talk about suffering in the context of a psychological self. Yet you are using the framework of a psychological self and reaching toward transcendence of that psychological self. You've said multiple times "where we obviously don't exist" - and then you speak as if we do actually exist. To me, it seems like you are reaching toward nondual transcendence of the psychological self, yet you are still clinging to the grounding of a dualistic psychological self. Eventually, the duality of nondual vs. dual collapses - yet you seem to be trying to skip a step. From the nonduality, there is no god experiencing through us. You said yourself: "where we obviously don't exist". So Everything is God. There is One God. Not god experiencing ourselves. Just God. No ourselves. . . To me, this seems to be the next big realization which comes through direct experience.

How to reconcile romantic relationships with nonduality?

A hand cannot grasp itself. But it is itself. God knows itself by being everything that is. Isness & knowing collapse into one, as you'd expect if you assume nonduality. The reason it must be this way is because knowing is finite. So it cannot encapsulate infinity. By definition, infinity is that which cannot be encapsulated because it is endless and all encapsulations are part of the thing they are trying to encapsulate. It's like you're trying to put all of reality into a cardboard box. But what you're not realizing is that the cardboard box you're using is part of reality itself. So to succeed in putting reality in that cardboard box you'd have to fit your cardboard box inside your cardboard box. Which is obviously impossible. This is what I call the self-reference problem. Which is why reality/Truth cannot be grasped with thoughts.

Do more contemplation on what nonduality and by extension nondual consciousness entails. Warning: it includes the very thing you are trying to pick at. By becoming enlightened you would become what you declare extremist.

I can say that I am not distracted by thoughts involving time (past and future)--that is the realm of the separate 'me'. So I'm very present, but other than that no special powers or abilities are granted. It's surprising how little changes (but everything is totally different at the same time). The same basic thoughts and feelings and actions are there, but without anyone invested in them. I'm not sure how helpful concentration is on its own, really. It felt like the single-minded determination was helpful here, but it's hard to say. The illusion is so convincing and so enticing that concentrating on self inquiry and direct experience should be helpful in seeing through the illusion. Still, someone could stumble upon an awakening (for example, I met a woman who at 6 years old tried to think about what 'nothing' was and had an awakening experience). I highly advise seekers to follow their gut. It's good to 'get' nonduality intellectually (if that's part of your path), but your flow, your path, is sort of given to you through your 'heart'. It's intuitive. In a way, liberation is about authenticity--following the natural impulses and thoughts that arise, and not the ones that we 'think'--those are shoulds and shouldn'ts and are part of the illusion. Mind itself is not the problem, but some ways of thinking are the problem and it can be hard to separate them. Try to be sensitive to your intuition--your path could be completely different and it's all good.

So this was actually a very confusing point for me, probably because of the early Zen reading/study I did. In Zen, it seemed like monks were always getting instantly enlightened, so that's what I expected. However, that isn't how it works. First, there is what could be called, 'Awakening'. These are glimpses of source/nonduality/reality (it has no name, really). These are spontaneous, "wow!" moments that can last hours or days or weeks. They are like sneak peeks and for me usually came while inquiring but not always. For example, this is what happened to Eckhart Tolle when he questioned whether there were two of himself. He was not 'enlightened' at that point. Many people confuse awakenings with liberation. Then there is what could be called realization (these stages are just concepts)--more of an intellectual 'understanding' of what is happening. Finally, there is liberation--at some point, enough things fall away that you look back and see that there is no longer a sense of "I", or fear, or suffering, or whatever. Liberation is all loss--nothing is gained. It's like the ending of a headache. You're not really sure when it ended, but you know your head doesn't hurt any longer. The main meditation I did was simply abiding as awareness. Then I started abiding as awareness outside of meditation (very slowly at first--like 2 seconds at a time--but it gets 'easier'), and after about a year or more of doing that, it became permanent. The connection to source is always there. In the process, the sense of self dissolved. Self inquiry or self abidance (also called 'self remembrance') is like poking a fire with a stick. The stick is the sense of separation and it dissolves into the fire. It just takes what seems like forever.

No one who'd realised nonduality would waste their time on converting others to it.

The first insight I got at the doctor's stone foundation was that I was afraid. It was a pretty obvious insight, I was in the middle of the woods, I didn't know who or what was around or what I would find. But the significance of it the the benefits that could be on the other side of that fear really shone through. I quit drinking coffee and saw how it fueled my anxiety. The second was that, I was still afraid, but this time it presented in the way of feeling like I was unworthy to be there, trespassing on someone's property. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I knew from the feeling of the insights that they were important. If I went back too soon for another, I wouldn't receive it. If I returned when I felt really drawn to go back, I would. The third insight was from a literal tree. It was an ash tree that was one tree until it had grown into two trees at about height of my chest. The trees were really damaged there and were splitting apart. It was a little windy and the tree actively made splitting sounds as I looked at it. Then I understand that nonduality also included duality. I've seen the same illustration from others before with the tree. I had been unconscious of how much I moralized spirituality and denied my own desires. In order to control my anger, which is the reason I found Leo's videos in the first place, I had also tried to kill the fiery passion I've always had. I had demonized and let a part of myself die. My mind had taken the present moment and made it into an ideal and a thought. The shadow work intensified and I lost the sense of doership. Revelations came in the middle of the night and strange connections were made between things. The best thing I can compare it to if you've ever read Harry Potter, it's like the conclusion of those books when this complicated interwoven story with at the time, seemingly insignificant clues from earlier in the book comes together and all makes sense in the end. It was like that with my entire life. Reality is stranger than fiction. Sometimes thinking back on my life, particularly turning points and times of major conflict, or events like how my parents met, I've thought about how it's too strange to be real. The shadow work showed me that my hunch had been right. Lots and lots of pieces came together. I realized that in a way I had always been awake. The things my kids and husband said to me were channeled and had deeper meaning. Everything fell together in a creepy magical nonduality. All this time I was just managing to hold me life together, dropping off and picking up my kids. If anyone asked why I had been crying (there was tons and tons of tears) I told them it was because my dog was dying, which was true. The dying dog was interwoven into the story. I hadn't asked for the dog, I took him as a favor for my best friend. He had always been a creepy dog, nothing like the purebreds I bought as puppies. Sometimes he would just stare and stare at me and sometimes I had the thought that he was possessed or had been human in a past life. I realized then, that he was more than just a dog. When things started getting intense he literally stared at me all day long. After the awakening, he got so sick I decided that week to have him put to sleep. I had to hire an excavator for some plumbing work, and I had the man dig a grave for me under an old apple tree. The very next morning he passed away on his own. There was a lot of shadow work dealing with the repression of my Christian upbringing. I realized that I was figuratively a whore all along regardless of how pure I had been and I realized the significance of Mary Magdalene being a whore. Verses I had always understood were understood on an even deeper level. Matthew 5:27-28 27 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. I had the insights of how psychedelics are themselves a trope, a thought, an element of the story and my reasons for judging them so harshly were gone. It couldn't really be possible to take something external when everything is you. How I had benefited from other's use of psychedelics! My bizarre experience of sort of tapping into Leo's "Enlightenment Experience Happening In Real Time" live video and having been in a near bliss state for hours after made sense. Months before this I had really started disagreeing with Leo's videos. A little part of me felt guilty coming to his forum and using his website when I so disagreed with his approach. I basically came to the forum to try to help set people straight because I was concerned that he was deluding people and I was concerned that people were ruining their lives with psychedelics. Whenever I saw his picture on the homepage I was disgusted. I finally understood how incredibly valuable and integral his work had been for me, how the forum had been. I had given Eckhart Tolle all the credit, but never fully appreciated Leo. I made the connection between Leo and the symbol of a lion. My shadow work started getting religious. I fully understood what the Devil was. He was truly part of me, part of my psyche, part of oneness. Leo had made me intellectually understand and accept this fact, but you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. I was Voldemort, I was the White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia, the books that made me start believing in Jesus as a lion, as a kid and helped me reconcile Christianity and my deep love of nature. There's something associated with me, an area code that is 666. As a Christian I was always horribly embarrassed about this. Now I understood how fitting and how funny it had been. Jesus came back into my life. If my own life and memories were just a story what was Jesus? I understood communion, "you must eat the body of Christ." The hamburger I had for lunch became a "holy cow" and the body of Christ. Nonduality and oneness gave this a whole new meaning. Other smaller revelations and synchronicity fell into place. Then, on my 666th post, I was awake. My third eye had opened to synchronicity and insight before the awakening. Now my heart chakra was open. It felt completely light, like it had lost its physical substance. In my sleep I felt weightless. I started manically posting on the forum, professing my love for everyone. I was literally high on life. My vision changed, literally. It was like a scene in a movie when everything is enchantingly bathed in light, that's how I saw. The picture on Leo's homepage changed and I saw the honest love in his eyes. I could scroll Facebook and love and see the beauty in every single face I saw as if it were my child's. I went to the beach where you can find fossils if you spend a lot of time looking. I would have the insight to turn a rock over and it would be covered in fossils. As a normally extremely shy person, I lost all shyness and inhibition in conversation and I became magnetic and always had the right thing to say to strangers. My balance became perfect, and I could walk across any surface without tripping as long as I was focused. I had to drive somewhere in slippery dangerous snow and spent the entire drive in a bliss state knowing that I could never die. My mind had been blown open. It felt like there was space between my eyes that didn't exist. If I looked at a tree or my baby niece I would feel the space expand or tingle. I understood hidden meanings in symbols and signs. Things people said to me often felt channeled. I realized the importance of my dreams and how dreams had shaped my entire life, including dictating who I fell in love with. Devilry set in. Everything I had been repressing for so long was coming through. I had been very tight with money for years, and I bought myself a new wardrobe, books, tarot cards, anything I wanted without a second thought. My conversations with men online weren't considerate to my husband or appropriate. I had been repressing my femininity ashamed of all the girly things I'd always loved, letting society make me think they were silly or insignificant. At the same time repressing my own feminine power. I was very confused between believing that everyone was already enlightened and just had been waiting for me to catch up to them and feeling like "the chosen one." My American patriotism I'd had as a child hit me full force and I realized that I had repressed gratitude for my country in an attempt to be politically correct. Other insights came from this. After the devilry played out, I had a religious revival. I did not want to live a life of devilry and didn't know what else to do. I was scared of myself. I realized that people like Charles Manson had also been awake. So I said "Jesus take the wheel." Like with my lack of appreciation for Leo, I had not fully appreciated how far Christianity had taken me on my spiritual path. I even started praying again. Then I discovered Ramji and his understanding of levels of enlightenment. This explained so much, it explained the stages I went through, the devilry I fell into, and it fully explained my religious revival. "if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him." It's very easy to misinterpret realizations and how they should be embodied after the fact. As the effects of the awakening died down I started meditating and found that it grounded me. I continued to return to the place where the doctor's house had been and I dug deeply into his history. His house had burned down when my Grammie was 20. He died a few months before she was born. She died days after I found the remains of his house, a month before the awakening. Visiting her had always made me incredibly sleepy. I always thought that it was because she was boring but it was uncanny how strong the effect was. Her parents were buried two lots away from his grave, not one had ever told me that they buried in that cemetery. I found a piece of glass that had been part of the highest window in his house and made it into a tear shaped necklace. To this day I find little signs there and I enter states and places where everything is channeled and fits into place of a greater story. Over the months I made many connections between his history and symbolism. I met a woman at the place by the river and she had a very old pug dog that my daughter played with. A week or so later someone donated a photo album to the historical society and it had lots of pictures of the doctor's pug. There are several old apple trees on his property and just about every old abandoned place I go around town. Years ago when I first moved here, there was an active graffiti artist around. On a telephone pole they painted the word forever and right before the telephone pole was an apple tree that had been broken off by a storm. That summer the apple tree flowered and bore apples as if nothing had ever happened to it with the word "forever" in the background. In the winter before I discovered the remains of the doctor's house, a small fox ran across my path while I was running right by there. I discovered fox holes in the woods by the cemetery later. This summer I went up the steps to the platform and on the other side feet from me was the fox. We both ran away from each other. Later, when I went back I found the remains of a white rabbit, a huge pile of fur and just one foot. The white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland comes to mind. There have been too many signs and strange connections like this to mention, strange apple trees, mushrooms, trees with eyes. Time in nature has become like a psychedelic trip for me. If I get the inclination to go somewhere, I do. I looked a lot into the history of witchcraft and the use of poisonous plants including nightshade as a hallucinogens. The nightshade plant that the crows planted on the doctor's grave was purely symbolic. To me psychedelics and poison are a trope, a symbol, a pointer. Death without physical death. The color red became very symbolic and kept coming up again and again and again since the awakening. The story "The Scarlet Ibis" that I had loved from highschool came to mind. I read it again, understanding the allegory and symbolism and in the end was stunned that Doodle's body is found under a red nightshade bush. Elements of stories that I grew up with like the poison apple in Snow White, living in the forest, falling asleep and being woken up, all came alive in my own life. Everything is channeled. There are pointers everywhere. Just examine what you really love and have always loved or have feared. Write down your deepest desires and fears. Dig up childhood memories, dreams that you haven't forgotten. Write your own story. Hone your intuition and sensitivity. That's how you enter the rabbit hole. It's all up to you, how far do you want to go? We have free will, we ate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and were kicked out of paradise. It's not just a story. We were split between male and female, God and the Devil, good and bad, past and future. We gained the ability to intellectually understand, remember and plan. We gained the ability to tell stories. Instead of living life with the heart we lived split between the heart and the mind. By opening the heart, you open your mind. Open your eyes and ears and understanding to the love that makes up this phenomenon of us. We are all born with unique gifts. Some are born with hearts open and some with sharp minds. Enlightenment is about combining the potential and duality of the two. The power of love was always fully awake and alive but I didn't have wisdom and I didn't know how to control or channel it for good. I read Proverbs as a kid and ever since I always prayed to God for wisdom. Passion and wisdom are the perfect match made in heaven. But one without the other creates a sort of hell. We live and write a story that never ends. There's no rising above the drama, only seeing it in a different light. It's not personal, it's not OUR story, it's OUR story. The show must go on. Embrace it, enjoy it, become it, savor it. It's beautiful, delicious and a tiny bit poisonous. Take the apple.