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God? Nothingness? Consciousness? There only them.

@StarStruck Exactly, all that "nothingness" can do is it can dream up paradigms for itself, that is literally it, it is the only relative somethingness within nothingness...

It's actually interesting, but there is a more core problem here that you are missing, and it is that you are misunderstand what meaning actually is. Ask yourself truly, what is Meaning? What is it's nature, what is it's substance, when is it experienced? See, you are creating a narrative of meaninglessness. This Narrative is in opposition to the narrative of "Life is Meaningful". Both of these perspectives are delusional, they confuse one aspect of reality for another. Meaning is a dimension of existence, and it does exist. Life, or existence, is full of Meaning. But nothing about life is Meaningful. Nothing other than Meaning if Meaningful. This is fundamentally your misunderstanding and why you are suffering. See, the more clearly you look at reality, the clearer it will be for you to distinguish between different aspects and dimensions of existence. A clear mind can clearly differentiate between it's thoughts and other experiences. An unclear, muddy mind mixes up it's thoughts and experiences and cannot distinguish them, confusing them to be one object. Through clear mindedness, you have recognize that Meaning and any other Experience are seperate. Redness is seperate from Blueness, Blueness is seperate from high pitched noise, high pitched noise is seperate from warmth, warmth is seperate from anger. Previously, the way your mind worked is the following: It experienced redness, and it experienced happiness, and then the mind said "Redness is Happiness!". But Redness is not Happiness, Happiness merely accompanied Redness, and then the mind created an Object out of the two. It took two experiences and said "This is one experience!". See, when you see a beautiful landscape, the landscape is not beautiful. The landscape is the landscape, and the beauty is beauty. They are clearly seperate, but the mind has connected them. This is what the mind is, that is it's purpose. So now you have learned to look clearly at everything in Experience, in Existence. You look at redness, and suddenly you can't find any beauty anymore. You look everywhere, but nowhere you can find beauty. This is because beauty is not found in any other experience but Beauty itself. So you are basically looking at the wrong places. Nothing in Life, nothing in all of Existence, is Meaningful, Beautiful or Good. Nothing but precisely one thing is Meaningful. Only Meaning itself is Meaningful. Only Beauty is beautiful, and only Goodness is good. The only thing that could possibly be Beautiful is Consciousness, or Nothingness, or the Substanceless Substance. Because only the Substanceless Substance, or Nothingness, can take the Form of any possible form of existence. Nothingness can be Everything and Anything, this is why only Nothingness is Beauty. Beauty is Nothingness, and so is Meaning. So, the question here should not be "How do I find meaning in life?", but rather, the correct question to pose is "What creates Meaning within Life?". Life will never be meaningful, because Life is not meaningful. However, Life can be Meaning-Full, full of meaning. Life can be a container of Meaning, but life never will be Meaning itself. So now that this is established, let us question, when is meaning created within the mind? Well, as you probably know, the human mind can create an extraordinary amount of Meaning by simply listening to Music. Why is this? Ask yourself, what is so special about Music? What music basically is, is individual parts creating a Whole, a rythym which can only exist if you can see the Whole the parts create. The Whole doesn't truly exist, notice this. You never can hear all of the music, you only hear music one note at the time. Yet, your mind creates the impression of continuity, of rythm, of harmony. You are seeking a Narrative of Meaning, but you are not truly seeking Meaning itself. Meaning is like a substance that can be created, and if you want meaning in your life, discover what creates this substance. I can look at an image, and when I look at it, I can feel meaning. Not because the Meaning exists in the image, but because my mind creates Meaning as a result of becoming aware of the Whole, or how the individual parts interconnect to create a Whole. When you can recognize the Whole, you can recognize within it Purpose. And what Purpose is, that is mysterious. It is something akin to intelligence, to wisdom, but it is far more metaphysical. Like I said, it is mysterious, but it is clearly present. It is basically a Self-Recognition, or a recognition of your own Creativity. This kind of Purpose, or recognition of Purpose, of how the Part fits into a Whole, a Whole that has Intelligence, that is like a vein of Ore, an Ore that you call Meaning. So, you don't need to find Meaning, you need to recognize yourself as a Part within the Whole, which will make you understand Purpose, and Purpose is the reason why anything exists at all. Mastery will be sought when you recognize this vein of Ore, and you decide that this is where you will set up camp, and where you will create a mine, a mine which will allow you to get to more and more of this Ore. And in this way, you will have played your part in the orchestra of the Whole. It is not a Narrative, it is a Substance. A substance which fuels every cell in your body, every bit of gravity, every bit of mass in all of the Universe.

Do you think it is right to give form to something which is inconcievable and is nothingness? And that too human form?

God is infinite Love ; God is nothingness; God is consciousness; God is omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely intelligent ; God is .

@Tim R ahh yes, this actually makes more sense ? of course, it's nothingness There is still something very peculiar about transitioning from relative to Absolute. @Nahm I guess a better question would be, why does a psychedelic disrupt the flow of consciousness? If it's just enhanced neurotransmitters in the imaginary brain .. that means I imagined the psychedelic and I imagined the psychedelic wearing off. So basically I have zero free will. But relatively speaking it feels like l have choices as a human? Like to take the imaginary psychedelic or to not, for example. So therefore God chooses when to reconnect with the Absolute?

You (the father) created an avatar (the son) that experiences reality (the Holy Spirit) this division makes experience possible. Other way there’s only nothingness . here are some analogies The father is having a dream , he dreams he is the son living in the world (the Holy Spirit) Or... The father is the game developer the son is the player and the Holy Spirit is the game itself

Hi guys. I'm Fearey and I've been a long time lurker of the forum. I started watching Leo back in 2012, and transitioned from being interested in self-help work, to consciousness work back in 2014. I've been following most of Leo's content up until 2019. I still watch some of his content from time to time. Few seem as dedicated to providing quality content and explaining it in a thorough manner as Leo. I'll always be grateful for that. With regards to the post title and SD stages in general, I consider the process of trying to find the true nature of self (the process of self-transcendence) to start at SD stage Coral / integral stage Indigo. What follows, having transcended the self, being the entering into SD stage Teal / integral stage Violet. Going through the later stages of Coral was a very depressive, painful experience for me personally. Dwelling into nihilism was commonplace. Not just simple depression, but an all-encompassing, existential dread. Feeling like you're slipping out of existence. It was a weird thing to let go of assumptions and beliefs I had held about myself all throughout my life. Assumptions I had already accepted as fact long ago. What followed, however, was a powerful sensation of peace and belonging. To explain my process of moving from Coral to Teal I'd tell you to imagine taking away all the parts of yourself that makes you you. Then witnessing the remaining emptiness/nothingness that's left as the self somehow becoming something more than what you had before. Note: I'm entirely open to the possibility that my interpretation of SD/integral stages with regard to self transcendence could be flawed, or incorrect. I've been lurking the forums for some time and I'm well aware about the grudges held about people mentioning or claiming to be at stages past Turquoise, as there seems to be so little understanding of these stages, making such claims seem unfounded. I'm not coming from a place of bragging, I'm simply interested in sharing my own personal experience with like minded individuals. Having experienced the completely altering shifts in being that comes from entering a state of obsessively trying to solve the question of self, to the even bigger shift that comes as a result of actually being successful in it, finally transcending the self, leaves me quite certain that both of these represent stages of development past stage Turquoise on the spiral. I could be wrong, however. To close, for any tier 2 individuals highly interested in consciousness work, I'd very much recommend The Book of Not Knowing and The Genius of Being. Both are books written by Peter Ralston and will take you on a journey down the deep end of self-realization. Both has helped me tremendously, and I consider them two of the most impactful books I've ever read.

Our nature is Nothingness [or infinite potential as @toocrazytobecrazy would like to label it] But how does Nothingness understand itself when it is nothing? By projecting itself as everything reflecting back to itself as itself. Like a mirror. Our nature is Love [or intention as @toocrazytobecrazy would say] How can we love more?

No. Seeking oneself is seeking Now. Not future. You are assuming that to seek is to seek a future self. For Awareness. For Love. Can you not see that everything is perfect and there is nothing to seek? Just BE. That's it. I get that we are intention and expansion is inevitable. But I am talking about BEING. Nothingness. We are a miracle, there is nothing to change. We ARE change. Stop seeking what you already are.

@toocrazytobecrazy Yes, exactly. Void, Nothingness, it's all the same. God. Maybe I should say, like the Nothingness inside of you then. But even saying nothing isn't really it. Even saying inside of you isn't really it. It's prior to all labeling. There's nothing better to seek. It's all there is.

@anxious_turtle Damn bro, you were so close to a Kundalini awakening. You already had the prana activated. This is going to be a fun and terrifying ride if you go through. Instead of moving the energy. Get to one pointesness on the mind, while fully surrendering and place it on the piercing sensation in your lower spine that is activated by that prana vibration energy once it shows up. Forget the orgasm you had, Kundalini is like being penetrated by a Goddess, having an orgasm in your whole spine. Word's can't describe the beauty. There's more to it. Inform yourself about Kundalini as much as you can before you do that, because it can be a terrifying ride. By far the most pleasant experience I ever had. Not sure if you already experienced ego death or nothingness, but your mind will freak out once you have kundalini + ego death + kryias combined and don't know what's going to happen next.

Okay, I would love this to be true. However, for now I haven't been able to consciously do this once! I tried, but I have yet to experience it. When I was "trapped" into the nothingness, I had that worldview. I don't know what exactly I tried to manifest, but I haven't had the "wow"-moment it happend. At least I couldn't consciously create it. However I already dreamt about something very specific and absurd, that happened in real life the following day. On the other hand, I also dreamt about stuff, which I feared would happen, that fortunately didn't happen at all (Car crash). Do you have anectodal evidence for your method? I would love to hear it in details. I am actually more afraid of it working than it not working, that would terrify me. I fear it being selling my soul to the devil lol. Do you have other easy methods I could try? I'm going to buy a lottery ticket and meditate on the numbers, but I am afraid of karma backlash.

By ultimate truth, I am referring to the underlying ultimate reality, beyond the cosmos. Ultimate truth is timeless, changeless, infinite Consciousness, which is beyond all forms and boundaries. It is uncaused, and is the cause of all things. Relative truth is the dream realm created by Consciousness, bound by illusory time and space, from which all forms arise, and to which all forms return. Both ultimate and relative truth are real, within the realms that they inhabit. It is all Consciousness, in different states of Self-awareness. The Bhagavad Gita describes this beautifully, especially in Chapter 8. The Day of Brahma ends after a thousand yugas and the Night of Brahma ends after a thousand yugas. When the day of Brahma dawns, forms are brought forth from the Unmanifest; when the night of Brahma comes, these forms merge in the Formless again. This multitude of beings is created and destroyed again and again in the succeeding days and nights of Brahma. But beyond this formless state there is another, unmanifested reality, which is eternal and is not dissolved when the cosmos is destroyed. 1,000 yugas equals 4.3 billion years; clearly it isn't literal, just a figurative reference to the near-eternity during which the cosmos lives and grows, before returning to dormancy, in an endless cycle of creation and destruction. Commentary on this chapter from Eknath Easwaran Just as day follows night in eternal, unvarying rhythm, so does the entire universe undergo cycles of creation, death, and new birth…It ceases to be – or, rather, it continues only in a subtle, unmanifest form, a dream in the mind of [ultimate Consciousness]…cosmos after cosmos arising from the black immensity of nothingness – is quite similar to modern theories of the expanding and contracting universe put forward by contemporary cosmology.

Yep and all of us are right. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Being as the Actual Presence of True Nature We are in not using the term "being" in its everyday sense. Usually, "being" means mere existence, and that "existence" is, like everything else, experienced conceptually. The spiritual traditions, on the other hand, use this term to refer to the actual presence of true nature, which can be directly experienced. We are using the term in this latter sense. As human beings we are Presence, we are Being, we are actuality; we are not simply mental constructs. Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 27 The Experience of True Nature as Nonbeing Does Not Mean that there is No Reality, No Soul or Manifestation True nature is absolute being, but also absolute nonbeing. It is both presence and absence of presence. It is both but not exactly, because these are conceptual elaborations of which true nature is innocent. We say it is both being and nonbeing, or neither, only because these are fundamental concerns for the soul. Being is the last thing the soul needs to surrender as she opens up to her true nature. As she does this she learns about nonbeing. She experiences the emptiness and ontological absence of her existence, and everything else in manifestation. So she may believe that true nature is total emptiness, absolute nothingness, complete absence of existence. The experience of true nature as nonbeing or emptiness does not mean that there is no reality, no soul or manifestation. This is a nihilistic perspective that experience and understanding do not support. The wisdom of emptiness or nonbeing is an attempt to understand the final ontological mode of things. We normally believe that things exist when we perceive them. This belief is accompanied by a subtle underlying feeling or sense of what existence is. Things feel real in a substantial way. We consciously or unconsciously feel that the existence of things is a substantial solid quality. Existence becomes the existence of substance and solidity, which becomes opaqueness if we continue in this direction. In other words, we not only perceive that things appear to our perception, and not only believe that this appearance is objective and independent of our imagination and mental construction, but feel at the same time a sense of substance to this appearance, a sense of solidity. Existence for us then is not only the true appearance of things in perception but the imbuing of what appears with a quality we call Being. The Inner Journey Home, pg. 258 None of Us is to be Blamed for Our Shortcomings Each of the boundless dimensions in our work reveals to us and teaches us something about reality and about experience. We learn that reality has true nature. We’ve been using the concept of true nature in our teaching for a long time, and now I’m introducing Total Being, which is an overlapping, though not completely identical, concept. I am leaving it ambiguous on purpose. True nature is total purity and freedom all the time. If we only say, “Everything is always true nature,” that doesn’t account for the fact that most people don’t experience things that way. We could explain this by saying, “Well, that is because they are not aware of it.” But when we understand reality or true nature, we realize that people don’t really exist the way we think they do. So when we say, “They don’t understand true nature,” we believe that they are responsible for not understanding it. But when we blame somebody for not understanding it that way, we ascribe to them an independent existence apart from Total Being. They don’t have that; nobody does. So actually, it is Total Being that is ignorant—not the individual. An individual does nothing on his own because he is a manifestation of Total Being. So none of us is to be blamed for our shortcomings. Runaway Realization, pg. 170

I have the same experiences you've had especially after my first several LSD trips. I saw non-duality everywhere. My partner was my self, my parents were like me and even more so, were me. Everything become equalized and transparent, nothing had solidity. I was staring at a mirror all the time and it felt kind of empty - void. I really contemplated the meaning while living a 'typical' life; I was school trying to achieve good grades, maintain a relationship, and not appear weird to friends. and even then, I still didn't really know what IT is, which is why I was so confused about the meaning of meaninglessness or why everything is a mirror to me. What will happen if you keep going is you will transcend this and integrate it. you will let go of non-dual stance, the thoughts surrounding it and what will happen is you will just BE. and that Being will be who you are meant to be on earth. Not too long after of feeling the meaninglessness of life, I kept trekking on and I still didn't really know God, or rather, I could not differentiate God, I felt like what I was living was a disguise and Truth is purging of all my ego. Is God pure illusion? Is it a cruel joke? Are all creatures to suffer in illusion, until they realize it is? and then what, drop out? as in give up and die? Then I had a mushroom trip where I contemplated God and realized God is nothingness - the experience of no thoughts, and open awareness to what is. - Note this is different seeing non-duality via a neurotic point of view. I completely let go of trying to figure it out. I had a guitar in my hand and without any thoughts, I played what came to me, I completely let go, and there I found myself. Who I am in the light of God, who I am as a human; making sounds, vibrations, and ultimately I am fullness, I am love. I am nothing to my mind, but everything to God. I am experience; the suffering, the longing to know, the ache of being alive. What I didn't realize before was what IT was, what non-duality is, I saw it, but I didn't know what IT is made of and its made of love. So what I want is for you to keep on going until you realize that this meaninglessness you are feeling is actually the fullness of Consciousness, God and Love. To be full and whole is to be have a wholesome ego resting in the light of God. When I played that guitar, I had no idea who I was, but I was. That's the best way I can explain at the moment. but just keep going, please do not do something drastic until you are feeling whole.

The unmanifest and the manifest... If you take a piece of paper and draw on the paper what you believe is out there independent of mind, you will find yourself drawing icons. In other words you are drawing perceptions. To say that any perception like sight is accurate to what is out there is to remove seeing from seen. Which cannot be done. There is ONLY infinity and perception. The world we call home is merely a dream. Brains are made of what we call matter, so are eyes. Brains and eyes are part of the dream, fundamentally they are icons, we might draw a brain or eye but you see they cannot really be out there in the way we draw them for seeing is part of seen. The brain and eyes are essentially nothing, as is absolutely everything. There is only experience. If you nuke the brain you do not destroy what you would call "out there", you simply erase an experience. If you imagine ANOTHER human's brain it is easier. When they die, the world does not vanish. This is of course obvious. But that is what I mean, see, the dream goes nowhere. The dreamer is emptiness... Nothingness... You cannot destroy nothingness because it is nothingness. There is nothing to destroy. Something is merely a manifestation of nothing. Everything happens within that emptiness. That is why there is nothing external, because all somethings are fundamentally one. Everything is "imagined" from nothing.

What are you? It seems like if you strip away all the things that are not you, you aren't left with much. For example, if you lose a limb are you still you? It would seem so. So you are not that limb, or that limb isn't needed to define you. It quickly gets metaphysical. It appears that you could be a kind of disembodied (i.e. limbless) entity that observes or senses the world. In this view your body and the rest of the world is observed and is in some way separate from the actual you. I like to think of it like a bar magnet: You can see the lines going from North to South. You are the observer in the South pole sucking in everything from the world in the North pole. If you cut the magnet in half width-ways you get two magnets each with their own North and South; hence there are many observers in the world, each observing their own version of the world. Looking at this analogy the world (North pole) emanates activity and the observer (South pole) passively sits there taking it all in. But it's worth noting that without the South pole, the lines have nowhere to go, and without the North pole, there are no lines to observe. The whole is a system one part co-dependent on the other. Can we do better than this analogy? Notice how the field lines seem to circulate out and then back in. If you were to remove the magnet, but keep the lines it would form kind of circuit perpetually going round and round. Also notice that the field lines have no edges, it fills all of space in all directions. You could imagine how these circuits of field lines are self-sustaining, once they get going. There's also a sort of centre to the circuits where all the field lines squash tightly together into nothingness. So maybe, you're a self-perpetuating field of something? You are everywhere and are neither observer or observed, but both simultaneously. You have an ill-defined centre from which everything springs and is subsumed. This centre is the thin slice of the present moment, and all the lines are awareness or consciousness. That is what you are.

Thanks for the recommendations guys, great stuff at the gym when you want to blast some metal - but also don't wanna stop listening to non-duality... We need a new genre... "non-dual metal". My absolute favorites so far are Scar Symmetry! especially the Holographic Universe-album, check out those lyrics... and the music is stellar as well if you're into melodic death, lots of interesting songs on the other albums too. http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/scarsymmetry/holographicuniverse.html#1 Holographic Universe Bathe in laser light, the beam will underline The birth of universe from nothingness Prime awakening, the second beam comes in To bounce and interfere as drawn by will We're finding that we can never die A subject no more to loss than gain The more you try to connect with form The less you're yearning to see all you could behold Then the third beam comes to bring it all alive And bring to form the once chaotic swirl See creation sing the word infinity Behold this organized constructive skill We're finding that we can never die A subject no more to loss than gain The more you try to connect with form The less you're yearning to see all you could behold While all we did was to divide Breaking down the whole We never looked at what we found: Hologram within Why we relied on space and time No one here can know At last we looked at what we found Holographic worlds are in sight To consciousness we moved from where we used to find a god We have made this concept our own Now we believe that this reality came from a dream Forever tried to tell us: "Time is on our side" You recite this knowing and you find it all Night leads to day as mind finds a way You were asleep now you leave the role of one forsaken play This time we found a way to view the world inside Now we've come to know it and leave the past behind While all we did was to divide Breaking down the whole We never looked at what we found Rise from decay in worlds gone astray Truth lies beneath, hiding deep within a once forsaken way While all we did was to divide Breaking down the whole We never looked at what we found: Hologram within Why we relied on space and time No one here can know At last we looked at what we found Here unfolds the truth of all that is alive And here we wash away what was proclaimed Hail awakening, forever lead us in the urge to be alive We know you will

The ego cannot possibly have the quality of awareness. One finite object cannot be aware of another finite object. The only possible thing that can be aware is Pure Nothingness/Infinity. Just like how a movie can only be cast to a blank screen. If there is already an image on the screen before the movie is projected...the movie would be ruined. In the same way, the only "thing" that can be aware is the Thing-less. That which is beyond things.

In the nothingness there is unmanifest everythingness. The chair universe exists in the unmanifest. When an unmanifest-experience takes place in said unmanifest-universe it becomes perceived and hence manifest? How about that... There are perhaps infinite universes just like ours which always remain unmanifest, with unconscious rocks floating around or w.e., because there never develops a perceiver to """collapse the wave function""" from unmanifest into manifest? Hm. So the infinity contains both infinite manifested things and infinite unmanifested things. That could make sense if not Panpsychism. Yet it remains the case, there is nothing "out there". So what do we interact with? Well I suppose we too are part of the apparent outer world and interact with it thusly. A solid concrete wall will always represent something impassable regardless of how it is perceived? Even though it is fundamentally nothing outside of perception.

There must be a universe of floating chairs. But chairs aren't a thing unless perceived. Put a human in the dimension and they see chairs. Now, was it always chairs even before the perceiver arrived? Was that nothingness a bunch of nothing-chairs waiting to be perceived? If a nothing-chair crashed into another nothing-chair and there was no perceiver, what happens?

Who wants enlightenment? The mysterious ego. What you truly are -- Soul, God, Pure Eternal Consciousness, Love -- is already Enlightened. Of course. So what is 'spirituality' about? It's about 'unifying' your mind, heart, body with YOU (Ecstasy/Spirit/Soul/Love). Yoga. Self-exploration. Self-discovery. Meditation. Self-contemplation. Getting in touch with Ecstasy through various practices... -- Breathwork, meditation, sex, tantra, love, community, silence aka 'observing being instead of doing', life-purpose, dancing, music, embodiment exercises, drugs, cathartic art, nature, travelling, casting yourself into the unknown, challenging your comfort zones, psychedelics. ?⌛☯️??? There are infinite ways. What works for you? What haven't you tried? What are you afraid of? The unknown. The unknown is a symbol for death. ☠️?️??️?☠️?? The only truth, we humans can all agree on around the entire globe, is that we shall all die. Death. Our physical bodies and accompanying memories (ego) shall die. Sooner or later. The past & the future are composed of 'nows'. Do you realize the implications of this? You are already dead. Don't you see? There is only NOW. Time is an illusion. A social construction at best. Time is the ego's mode of functioning. Only the ego 'regrets & worries'. Only the ego is stuck in melancholic/fearful fantasies about the past/future. Only the ego is 'in a hurry'. It's all thoughts. Where do thoughts appear? Now. Now, now, now, now. Where do thoughts disappear? Now. You are Now. Thoughts appear 'in you'. As long as you are believing you are controlling your thoughts, as long will your thoughts (ego) control you. Only when 'the need-for-control' is fully 'let go of', shall you see that thoughts are insanely mystical and appearing out-of-nowhere IN YOU (= Pure Consciousness) without any of 'your doing'. And only then will you be free: You are NOW directly in touch with Divine Imagination: thinking without thinking, feeling without feeling, acting without acting. By letting go of & completely surrendering '(ego)control', you 'remember'/'get back': *true, divine control*. Liberation. The past is the future. The future is the past. You see how they imply each other? You can't talk about 'the future' without 'the past' to contrast it with. But... You are, in actuality, always *right in the middle* - always *NOW* - and the past only happens/appears-to-you as 'thoughts / stories / interpretations' *NOW*, and the future only happens/appears-to-you as 'worrying / expectations / planning / fantasy / predictions' ... NOW! It is always, always, always ... *now* ... - don't you see ? ? ? And thus you are already both alive AND dead, simultaneously! You just 'are'.... Being'ness. But by inwardly, intuitively knowing that you will eventually die, while outwardly, acting like you are eternal, there is a deep dissonance IN YOU. Disconnection. Disharmony. Suffering. *Ignorance leading to fear of death leading to ignorance leading to fear.* A strong, deeply programmed survival-loop-of-ego. How do you get out of it? By realizing you truly already ARE out of it, and haver never *really* been caught;... only 'in-mind' (imagination). To ever believe that you are caught is exactly that: a belief. Imagination. Stories. The ego LOVES stories, haha. How do you realize you are already God? By letting go of beliefs, by letting go of clinging... to thoughts & old ways of behaving. By being open-minded enough to follow your divine intuition instead of 'always doing what you know & what feels safe'. 'Psyche-delic practices' means 'soul-manifesting practices.' You can do Soul-manifesting practices sober by just having a really deep vulnerable talk with your best friend or a stranger. What works for you? It doesn't 'have' to be psychedelic substances; that's actually only for the really curious or really fucked-up (imaginary) ego-brain-minds ;-). It's about being open-minded, curious & courageous enough to surrender to faith, instead of clinging to old conditioned ways of being. It's about going through 'enough' suffering/devilry/selfishness to understand that you don't want to live in ego (disconnection, ignorance, slave-to-fear) anymore. Enough of all that endless self-inflicted mental pain (=suffering), ignorance (=slumber) and selfishness(=devilry). Enough of that. It's then about being humble, brave & curious enough to take a leap-of-faith and cast yourself head-on into 'the truth/unknown, whatever 'truth' might turn out to be. The truth is death itself. And that is the unknown. You see? ... You don't know what dead is. Zero fucking clue; 'no one' does. Only those "who have already died without physically dying" are, perhaps, lucidly aware of 'what's going on'. They have become 'no one' (once again). See, that's the fucking trick: to die (ego death) before dying, and realize that there is no death. That what 'death' is, is simply equal to what 'the background' is in relation to 'the foreground' in a painting. They imply each other. Arise together codependently, reciprocally, simultaneously, 'go-together' ... just like heads/tails, physical/mental, up/down, selling/buying, bad/good GO-*TOGETHER* !! And be open to the possibility that perhaps life itself is actually 'the background' to a much more blissful larger 'foreground' (death). (Death as in 'letting go' -- not physical death per se) Life IS death. Death IS life. All opposites are seen as UNITY. Oneness. One. You are One. Right in the middle of all imaginary opposites. And here, with Me, right in-the-middle, the golden mean, there is infinite nuances, infinite balance ⚖️ ☯️ ? . Here, the world is too full to talk about, just: silence, feeling, looking, eyes, accepting, forgiving, listening, loving. Here, there is no right or wrong, just being. Here, there is no self, just is'ness. Here, there is no bad or good, just wonder. Here there is no selfishness or selflessness, just Eternal Infinite Unconditional Love ('Neutrality'). No judgments, just openness. Here, everything is nothing, nothing, everything. Here, everything is mystery, incomprehensible for the mind/the thoughts to understand or know or speak about. 'Mind' expresses itself through thoughts. The social conditioned survivalistic ego 'hides in the mind' and controls the thoughts, as long as it is untranscended. In other words: you feel 'caught' in the meaningless chaos of life; like a 'conscious poor-little-me', seemingly 'stuck inside a human brain' on 'probation' in a seemingly: physical, robotic, random, nihilistic, chaotic, outside world. Right? But be happy, cos if you're a good well-behaved conforming rabbit that blindly chases the carrots of life (authority, religion, science, looks, success, career, money, power, sex, alcohol, new iPhones and cars, achievements of all kinds, then, well, then you're supposed to be HAPPY! ? Death is simply liveliness. Destruction, annihilation, letting go of the old, dying ... IS: ... transformation, change, growth, novelty, LIFE. ????? Life (mind, thoughts, fear, ego, physical body, survival, safety, sex; judging, dividing the world into good'n'bad; chasing the next dopamine kick) is not your true self. It's a character (body) and a play (world). Death (letting go of all of the above) is not your true self either! It's a new character, a new play. Novelty! ? Eternity! ⏳ Impermanence! ?️ Infinity! ? ☯️♾️???????⚖️☠️❤️?️? So ... Why did you get disconnected from yourself in the first place? Survival: childhood trauma, of course (which you should work on in some form or the other). We must learn to love ourselves, before we can really love others. We cannot fix anyone -- only ourselves. When we have 'healed ourselves' through our 'inner teacher' (soul, intuition), we can 'help others' with finding their own inner teacher, so they, too, can become 'whole' ... again. .… Actual Enlightenment is basically when you integrate all polar opposites into your soul, cos you 'lucidly see' they are complementary (ONE). Many people seeking enlightenment on this forum are believing that if they became enlightened they could sit in a cave in the Himalayas and meditate for eternity in bliss; like that is the point of enlightenment; like you need to do 5-MeO-DMT 100 times or do 1000x 1 month silence retreats to 'achieve, attain' enlightenment…. BUT. GUYS. Let me be the first to tell you that while psychedelics, silence retreats and meditation/contemplation can be absolutely fantastic for some, if not for many, on the path, it is still just 'external, imaginary solutions' to an 'inner, imaginary problem'. The inner problem is let go of when you see that there (truly) is NO problem (only imagination). When you fully let go and see that death is life, life is death. This can happen during regular life, it can happen in a cave in the mountains, it can happen during meditation, it can happen on DMT, it can happen whenever. You have nothing to say in this matter. It is absolutely mystical and beyond your control, if, and when you awaken during this lifetime. God decides. The Universe decides. Not you, your cute little ego. You are just a small, perhaps big, wave skating on top of a bottomless, infinite, eternal ocean. The ocean is doing you, not the other way around;) If you can let go of identification with being a finite wave, you will start feeling and sensing the magic of the whole ocean more, which is liberation, which is enlightenment, which is awakening. After all, your true nature IS the ocean (Infinity, God, Consciousness, Love, Nothingness, w/e u wanna call that which can't be explained through language… *THIS* !). .… To live 'in the world' (the marketplace), or to live 'outside the world' (the mountains); now, that is the question! The hedonist or the ascetic? What to choose? I will say one should choose to land 'in the middle'. But before one can attain/remember the golden mean, one naturally need to have tried out 'the extremes' first. In the middle is where you simultaneously live life in the world (buy and sell at the market place, participate in society, enjoy the small pleasures) while also being lucid enough to see that it is all 'just': an inexplicable, incomprehensible, mystical, mind-boggling magical, infinite, eternal dance, where the best thing to do is to just 'keep dancing' -- always innovating, developing, transforming the dance, so that it never dies, but stays alive, in motion -- rather than to stop or hesitate and cling to one or two dance steps becoming scared, angry, annoyed or ashamed towards other, new or deceased or silly dance steps. Let the dance happen by itself as it unfolds rather than tripping yourself up all tight, alright? To 'strain, hold on, control' is a 'limiting contraction of Infinity' to ego. To 'relax, let go and let happen' is to become 'whole again with the Universe' - to melt back into the 'Now of Infinity'. Dance. Dance. Dance. Lifedance. Follow the Divine Intuition inside & outside 'your ego'. (It is all inside God's mind, anyway). Your ego is that inside you which is afraid, ashamed, angry, envious, etc. Act despite fear. That is being brave, that is following the intuition. Actually embody the sentence 'follow your intuition' by actually doing the things you are afraid of! Like ACTUALLY *DOING them*, I mean WITH YOUR BODY .. *not in your mind!* . (The classic trap on this forum: Replacing direct experience with concepts, trying to eat the menu, mistaken the finger for the moon, mistaken the map for the terrority, ENOUGH OF THAT! <3 <3) .… “Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.” “Dance is the hidden language of the soul”. "And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon.” “We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.” “Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...It's about learning to dance in the rain.” “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” “To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” "You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like there's nobody listening, And live like it's heaven on earth.” “Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.” “Live your truth. Express your love. Share your enthusiasm. Take action towards your dreams. Walk your talk. Dance and sing to your music. Embrace your blessings. Make today worth remembering.” "Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.” “You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in.” “Sleep my little baby-oh Sleep until you waken When you wake you'll see the world If I'm not mistaken... Kiss a lover Dance a measure, Find your name And buried treasure... Face your life Its pain, Its pleasure, Leave no path untaken.” "Do a loony-goony dance 'Cross the kitchen floor, Put something silly in the world That ain't been there before.” "Nobody cares if you can't dance well." “The job of feets is walking, but their hobby is dancing.” “Who're you going with, then?" said Ron. "Angelina," said Fred promptly, without a trace of embarrassment. "What?" said Ron, taken aback. "You've already asked her?" "Good point," said Fred. He turned his head and called across the common room, "Oi! Angelina!" Angelina, who had been chatting with Alicia Spinnet near the fire, looked over at him. "What?" She called back. "Want to come to the ball with me?" Angelina gave Fred a sort of appraising look. "All right, then," she said, and she turned back to Alicia and carried on chatting with a bit of a grin on her face. "There you go," said Fred to Harry and Ron, "piece of cake.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Right it's happening now. Is this the best explanation though, for how the cosmos all came together before it was perceived from within space and time? Is there another explanation? What about a universe of just chairs that is never perceived, for in total infinity this must exist (and really should since nothingness is legitimately without boundary). Though in chair universe the chairs wouldn't objectively be anything, until a human or something is plopped down into it and suddenly the chairs are there.

Right but how or why is it happening before a conscious perception of the material world exists? Because to experience something you have to be localized and finite. Say there is a universe with just chairs? Without a perceiver that entire universe is simply nothing. So how can it be going through cosmological changes? Once the nothingness is perceived it becomes qualia. If we finite selves perceive a wall, even some animal with no senses would fly straight into it. It could be perceived totally different and the model of reality would still work for that creature (eg it could seem longer or shorter, wider or narrower) but the creature's own physical form stretches etc with it so the model still works. But there is no wall there. So creatures which perceive nothing, why don't they go through the wall?