Question for Advanced Meditators: Cessation

[Davino]

@Carl-Richard THANKS!!!

This is exactly what I was searching and the reason why I created this thread.

Thank you very very much

[Water by the River]

21 hours ago, Arthogaan said:

Emptiness is not to be understood as a noun but as an adjective of form. The purpose of insight into emptiness is not to reject form - it is to understand it's structure. It is to understand that it is fabricated by the source. Everything is a fabrication. And does not deny aliveness and fulness.

When it comes to structure of reality Roger Thisdell describes it very well here: 

And back to the topic of the thread - > Cessation/Nibanna is when all fabrication, all fixations of the mind cease to be and the pure Awareness/Void/Mind is reavealed and you can not say anything about it because there is ZERO information there. Zero fabrication. No space, no time, no self, no god, no infinity. Zero information. And yet the subtlest YOU is that. It's when the God's computer stops computing anything. When the dreams stops being dreamed. It is beyond god realization.

 

Great Video.

Jhana 8 "beyond perception and non-perception" available when the visual field arises, around 13 minutes... "continuously able to see it", or better (if I may): Intuit & realize the Infinite (Absolute), where the mind can't go, while appearances arise... Definitely a new fusion-style-cuisine of the age old Jhana-lingo. Yummy. Buddha meets Nagarjuna once more. Nice.

John Churchills "Planetary Dharma" in the making, with all contemporaries having the chance to watch its creation. What wonderous & magnificent times we live in.

Now we just need to get Leo back from being a bit you-do-you-annoyed to being passionate again about singing the song of his heart about his courageous Alien-realms-journeys to places no human has gone before, in poetic descriptions (where dry logical words can't convey, the poet can use its art to cast the magic into songs that tell of magnificent Eternity & Infinity). And smile back at the crocodile (when the crocodile smiles at you, sometimes all one can do is smile back) https://www.actualized.org/insights/crocodile-love, and this lovely place gets know the Infinite and also Infinity of Infinities... 

Relaxing in the River, by the River, for the River

[Breakingthewall]

19 minutes ago, Water by the River said:

Oh yes... 

So now, what is it?

two possibilities: one, reality is flowing and in its flow it creates a subject who is the center of the experience, who listens to the sounds. This subject really is the sounds, he doesn't hear them. Nobody listens, the sounds are. There is no such thing as hearing, but rather it is an appearance that occurs when the sound occurs.

another, the infinite being creates the experience to listen to it. a creator god who creates qualia and experience. which one do you choose?

imo, reality is completely impersonal, ultimately it is an unlimited vastness of existence, and from it arises the infinite being that those fragments you cited speak of, the infinite self,  and that being combines infinitely in infinite universes synchronized with each other to infinity. An atom is one universe, a cell is another, a human, a city, a galaxy, a universe, multiverse, etc. that's what it seems to be.

The question would be: what is enlightenment? Be the unlimited self, or maybe it's still a construction? Well, if it's unlimited it's eternal. When I realized I perceived it like what always was. But imo the real enlightenment is go beyond of that self, to total substance of reality, the totality before any self, where the infinite self is contained. 

The realization of the infinite self, even sounds paradoxical because it's infinite, is limited, because that self is concrete in a way: it's you. 

[Water by the River]

17 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

The moments leading up to cessation (while meditating eyes closed and seated in half-lotus position), I would describe as a progressive sense of stillness, both in the mind and in the body. The progressive unwinding of tension in the body that occurs in meditation starts coming to a conclusion, and your body becomes very still (close to zero movement). The tiny muscle twitches in your legs start to disappear and you can distinctly sense them relaxing at another level. The space between thoughts become wider, and the thoughts themselves become quicker and more subtle and faint.

The very last moments leading up to cessation, I would describe as slowly getting injected with an anesthetic, where all your senses slowly dampen and "equalize", until you lose all sense of being in a body and having a mind. The visual static behind your eyes gets smoother and more clear, and the visual field expands and zooms out slightly. The now unmowing body starts losing its sensation (interoceptively as well as externally, like the pressures under your butt and the feelings in your face and head), and it feels like you're slowly fading out of existence. This loss of bodily sensation is maybe what is most reminiscent of anesthesia, and the sense of being headless is an experience all by itself. The sounds in the room get dimmer and slowly disappear. The mind is now essentially quiet.

The moment of entering cessation itself, I would describe as entering an enormous "place" which has no sense of time, no sense of space, and you feel that it's a place that will last forever and has lasted forever. It existed before you were born and it will exist after you're gone. And it's a place of perfect stillness, tranquility and bliss. Of course, the main "attraction" or challenge of the experience is the sense that you're going to disappear forever and never come back, that your sense of identity is fundamentally collapsing and that you're being erased from existence. This can feel extremely terrifying, literally like you're dying, but this is only the last throes of the ego before it can choose to rest and you identify yourself with the larger identity of Consciousness.

Very nice description. According to Ingram, Yang and Thisdell, enough of these will make the survival of any remaining separate-self-lenses quite challenging.

That enormous "place" without time, space, anything at all, not even nothing, is always right here, right now. Eternally or timelessly so. It is not in time. 

Daniel Brown commented that Nagarjuna & company (the guys who sparked the Nondual Revolution in Buddhism, from early Buddhism and its cessation as summum bonum towards Mahayanas True Nonduality, or always right here Enlightenment/liberation, even when the visual field arises) said that the Dissolution/cessation experience presupposes time. Before cessation, after cessation. And time is a construct. That vastness/Infinite Reality/"place, non-place" is always right here. "Before" and "after" cessation arises "in" It.

 

 

[Water by the River]

4 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

two possibilities: one, reality is flowing and in its flow it creates a subject who is the center of the experience, who listens to the sounds. This subject really is the sounds, he doesn't hear them. Nobody listens, the sounds are. There is no such thing as hearing, but rather it is an appearance that occurs when the sound occurs.

another, the infinite being creates the experience to listen to it. a creator god who creates qualia and experience. which one do you choose?

imo, reality is completely impersonal, ultimately it is an unlimited vastness of existence, and from it arises the infinite being that those fragments you cited speak of, the infinite self,  and that being combines infinitely in infinite universes synchronized with each other to infinity. An atom is one universe, a cell is another, a human, a city, a galaxy, a universe, multiverse, etc. that's what it seems to be.

The question would be: what is enlightenment? Be the unlimited self, or maybe it's still a construction? Well, if it's unlimited it's eternal. When I realized I perceived it like what always was. But imo the real enlightenment is go beyond of that self, to total substance of reality, the totality before any self, where the infinite self is contained. 

The realization of the infinite self, even sounds paradoxical because it's infinite, is limited, because that self is concrete in a way: it's you. 

Here we are in an area where Ludwig Wittgenstein & Nagarjuna have placed signs stating "Whereof one can not speak, thereof one must be silent".

Therefor the Sales chap mumbling "What is THIS??" by the River recommends Bassui: "Who is hearing these words right now?"

 

 

 

[Breakingthewall]

4 minutes ago, Water by the River said:

Here we are in an area where Ludwig Wittgenstein & Nagarjuna have placed signs stating "Whereof one can not speak, thereof one must be silent".

41 minutes ago, Water by the River said:

 

they just wanted to appear mysterious. It's possible to talk about everything. There is no difference between talking about a session with 2 prostitutes and a lot of cocaine than about the infinite being or the absolute void that opens and shows its heart of absolute fullness. The important thing is to try.

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, Arthogaan said:

is a great surprise (at least it was for me) that with no distortion at all you are left with no perception, no consciousness, no nothing even.

And that is the deepest Freedom. That may sound empty and nihilistic but it isn't - only language makes it seem so.

In my experience, that's not the final realization, but maybe we are talking about different things. Once you realize the inherent emptiness of all forms, absolute emptiness opens before you and you realize that you are total emptiness. If you can endure absolute emptiness for a while without withdrawing in horror, since it can be perceived as death, the emptiness opens and shows you (it sounds corny) its heart, which is your heart. The infinite void is completely impregnated with what we could call love, and this love, given its infinity, is the total light of existence. one moment, you find yourself looking into an infinite immutable vastness of absolute light or absolute love, and the next moment, you are that. It is immutable, and cannot be thought or imagined, since the mind or self is contained in it. This is reality, and everything else is appearances.

Edited July 12 by Breakingthewall

[Arthogaan]

1 hour ago, Breakingthewall said:

In my experience, that's not the final realization, but maybe we are talking about different things. Once you realize the inherent emptiness of all forms, absolute emptiness opens before you and you realize that you are total emptiness. If you can endure absolute emptiness for a while without withdrawing in horror, since it can be perceived as death, the emptiness opens and shows you (it sounds corny) its heart, which is your heart. The infinite void is completely impregnated with what we could call love, and this love, given its infinity, is the total light of existence. one moment, you find yourself looking into an infinite immutable vastness of absolute light or absolute love, and the next moment, you are that. It is immutable, and cannot be thought or imagined, since the mind or self is contained in it. This is reality, and everything else is appearances.

Everything you wrote I can look at as true and compatible with what I wrote.

Our views do not contradict. 

Thisdell calls it superposition view of enlightenment.

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, Arthogaan said:

Everything you wrote I can look at as true and compatible with what I wrote.

Our views do not contradict. 

Thisdell calls it superposition view of enlightenment.

I don't know anything at all right now. I'm in a park at night, I smoked some weed, my mind is clear, it's not attached to thinking. A year ago I would be analyzing, fearing, controlling. Now it is empty depth. It is pleasant, beautiful, quietly joyful. but I know absolutely nothing. What I am? what are people? I exist, that's it. and existing is something that must be felt to the core. pure, clean existence, without content. this is all. I would like to be able to go deeper, understand, but that only brings confusion. confusion clouds the perception of the now. only the simple is real, everything else is meaningless. 

The perception of the situation is totally clear, the feeling of the body, the air, all is clean. It's like I'm an empty hole. Who listen the sound? An empty hole is listening the breath. What means that? Nothing 😅. Immortality? God? Infinity? No idea. Anyone really knows anything? Well, there is something that I know: emptiness is perfection.  

Edited July 12 by Breakingthewall

[Breakingthewall]

First you reach the total void, meaningless, in which your body gets transparent dissolves and expands, until you have no body, there is nothing. then you don't know anything and don't understand anything. allows that to be so, eliminates the need to understand reality. Then open your heart, it is the heart of emptiness. Observe how all reality flows from it, everything that is. Why does he do it the way he does it? Are the people who appear in turn a source of reality? who knows. If you start thinking those things everything closes. Simply be one with the flow, then you intuit beneath the flow the total absolute that you are, you intuit the smile of existence, its joy. It is eternal, immutable. 

On 12/7/2024 at 7:47 PM, Water by the River said:

Bassui: "Who is hearing these words right now?"

Is it who is hearing the words? Seems so but seems that the immutable is hidden behind mutation. that behind every form is that essence that is transparented, but that does not manifest itself completely. It's not void, void is an illusion, behind the void is the totality, and it's full. You have to open yourself as if you were an orange, and show the eternal light . For that you first have to equalize this reality, remove all distortion, clean your mind 

[gettoefl]

cessation you power down, thoughts give up bugging because you don't bite, you're just above sleep, time and suffering stop for you, can't be done off mat, good insights are likely, likely you won't remember, rebooting feels good

enlightenment is powering up, ego and spirit doing their own thing on the world stage, you're desirous of lavish experience, ego so it can dig in, spirit so it can let it be and bask and abide in the wonderment and speak of god when so tickled, all is right in the kingdom, creation is god's finery on parade and i get to see it first hand, no mistake here is even conceivable

Quote

How could He not be glad if you appreciate His masterpiece? What could He do but offer thanks to you who love His Image and His Likeness as He does? Undoubtedly He will make known to you His Love, if you but share His praise of what He loves. God cherishes creation as the perfect Father that He is. And so it is that His joy is made complete when any part of Him joins in His praise, to share His joy. This brother in front of you is His perfect gift to you. And He is glad and thankful when you thank His perfect Child for being what he is. And all His thanks and gladness shine on you who would complete His joy, along with Him. And thus is yours now completed. Not one ray of darkness can be seen by those who will to make their Father’s happiness complete, and theirs along with His. The gratitude of God Himself is freely offered to everyone who shares His purpose. It is not His Will to be alone. And neither is it yours.

 

[CoolDreamThanks]

On 07/07/2024 at 9:45 PM, Davino said:

@CoolDreamThanks How was the experience? Would you be so kind of describing it to me moment to moment?

How did you know: Oh yes, this is clearly a cessation.

It’s impossible to desribe a formless experience outside of all experience. Cessation as a word is accurate.  Talking more about it would just remove us further from that non-experience. 

Cessation is a dead-end anyway. It’s a trap Buddha fell into and all those who follow his path.  
 

It’s just an “experience” of nothingness. Sure it feels like the mind and all the universe reset - so what? You will have to reincarnate again with this level of atainment. 
 

clowns like Frank Yang, Shinzen, Spira and most other teachers reach it and then preach it as enlightenment. Lol.  
 

read ACIM and start to learn true wisdom what enlightenment is. All other teachers are the messengers sent by the ego and will lead you only to death, a thousandth time.

Edited July 17 by CoolDreamThanks