Riddle Me This: If...

[DocHoliday]

Reality is only consciousness, non-physical and only a dream, and consiousness is infinite, then how come we always wake up as the same person after we went to sleep? As Rupert Spira once said, the waking state is contracted consciousness and while asleep consciousness opens back up to its boundless form - but, why does it then always come back to the same contracted form (Me) till the day I die? 

[John Iverson]

Ask Leo about this one after he Died  HAHAHAHAHA!

[who chit]

The body identity. When you,as the individual "I", are awake,you experience the world through the body/mind and 5 senses,taste,touch,smell,hearing,seeing. Contracted consciousness is consciousness or Self,forgetting it is the formless infinite and wrongly identifying itself to be a form,the finite body (5 senses)/mind (thoughts/beliefs). It's what is commonly referred to as the "ego identity". The egoic identity is,in reality,just a thought/belief. In deep sleep, thoughts cease,and therefore the "I am an individual,separate self made of form" thought/belief,also ceases. Consciousness or Self,no longer identifies itself with the belief it is a body/mind,and returns to it's original unbounded,unidentified,formless nature. Upon arising from deep sleep,it resumes misidentifying itself as a form again.

You are the unbounded,infinite consciousness,but you have not realized this,and therefore repeat the same mis-identification over and over. This is the wheel of samsara. Enlightenment is experientially realizing "I'm not the body or the mind,but in reality, infinite consciousness". One no longer identifies as an individual body/mind. When that conditioning has permanently dissolved,one abides as the formless,infinite Self. The body carries on,but there is no longer the recognition of it as being "me".  Being "In the world, but not of it."

Edited May 6, 2018 by who chit

[Solace]

In your sleep you are using your astral body which can perceive 3 dimensions of time instead of one dimension. Thus the astral body can move sideways in time (can view parallel realities) and can move to any point in the past, present and future. It's the body that still exists after death, and thus carries our karma with it, in our dreams even. We can get to that higher consciousness state in physical form too, it's just that our nervous systems are overstimulated so they can't hold that high vibration until we start to relax it through self-love/meditation/unraveling our deepest beliefs about ourselves (all of which are designed to transmute our karma). That is the journey <3

[DocHoliday]

Thanks for the replies but you didn't quite understand my question properly. All I want to know is why it couldn't be that when we go to sleep, we wake up as a differnt person for example with a completely differnt life, given that consciousness is infinite. Why is it that it's always exactly my body and my life that I have known for years and why not potentially a completely differnt one. 

[DocHoliday]

In other words: how come consciousness is temporarily bound to the experience of my body and mind, contrary to it not being bound temporarily and experiencing different perspectives or bodies all the time. How could it be that life plays out the way it does, meaning that you go through the process of growing up, maturing and dying some day. Why is it this way and not some other way. 

[tsuki]

@DocHoliday What do you rely your certainty of constant identity on?
Memories? What constitutes their reliability for you?

Do you perhaps remember that you remember correctly?
Isn't that a little too self-referential as a basis for certainty?

[Solace]

How come we are a localized consciousness, experiencing ourselves as a person? Why can't we wake up as another person, since they too are just localized consciousness? There are universal laws/a greater intelligence working which prevents us from jumping realities in this way. In every moment we are jumping an infinite amount of parallel realities to create the illusion of time and thus, movement; and this greater intelligence wants us to have this linear experience. If you had a a extremely high vibration, and transcended the limitations of this physical realm it may be well possible to jump to any infinite reality you desire such as to being a American woman for one millisecond then, a fish the next; who really knows? Let's try and see for ourselves!

[DocHoliday]

@tsuki Identity is nothing that is set in stone, I know that, but what I can say for certain is that I always come back to the same body and mind for sure. @Solace I get what you're saying, it's a good point. But notice, time is created by the amount of thoughts that you have. In sleep, we experience no time necessarily because there are no thoughts. 

[tsuki]

3 minutes ago, DocHoliday said:

Identity is nothing that is set in stone, I know that, but what I can say for certain is that I always come back to the same body and mind for sure

That is an invalid assumption. Even from the standpoint of so very much 'debunked' science.
Each microsecond cells that you call 'you' die and are born. There is nothing that separates you from 'outside' of your body.
Is the air that you breathe 'you'? Is the food that you eat 'you'? At which point they start to become 'you' that you so much defend?
Any choice of such a point is simply that - a choice that upholds the duality you live in.

The other duality is the duality of sleep/no sleep.
If you do not remember your sleep - how are you so sure that you're not sleeping right now and the 'the other side' is the dream?
What if you go to sleep and the moment you're 'out', you wake up as another person and live their day?
You don't necessarily go back to your 'current' body back when you wake up as your memories are not a reliable basis for identity.

What if the body that you call 'you' from before you went to sleep is just the part of the dream that you've woken up from?

So many assumptions...

[tsuki]

15 minutes ago, tsuki said:

That is an invalid assumption. Even from the standpoint of so very much 'debunked' science.
Each microsecond cells that you call 'you' die and are born. There is nothing that separates you from 'outside' of your body.
Is the air that you breathe 'you'? Is the food that you eat 'you'? At which point they start to become 'you' that you so much defend?
Any choice of such a point is simply that - a choice that upholds the duality you live in.

And that is a very crude way of putting things.
I haven't mentioned the first-perspective side of being engaged in the worldly affairs.

The usefulness of a cup does not come from the clay it is made of. It comes from the empty space it has in it.
If all you see is material - you will say that the cup is full of air, and yet call it empty.

You are the emptiness of a cup. You are not found inside of your skull, but intertwined in everyday object's usefulness.
There is no difference between you and the 'outside world'.

Edited May 6, 2018 by tsuki

[DocHoliday]

23 minutes ago, tsuki said:

The other duality is the duality of sleep/no sleep.
If you do not remember your sleep - how are you so sure that you're not sleeping right now and the 'the other side' is the dream?
What if you go to sleep and the moment you're 'out', you wake up as another person and live their day?
You don't necessarily go back to your 'current' body back when you wake up as your memories are not a reliable basis for identity.

I've thought about that as well. The consistency of the "waking dream" is what makes it feel so real and gives you the impression that you're "awake" and "actually there" in reality. Night time dreams don't have this consistency and therefore, we like to draw the distinction between them and attribute different values and meanings to them, for the "waking dream" is certainly the "more important" or real and relevant dream for many people. 

As for identity, what would you then suggest to be a reliable basis for identity ? I think that memories are indeed a valid basis for identity, even though it is surely just conceptual. But at the end of the day you simply have to identify as something, right? Running around and merely saying that you identify as consciousness/nothingness/awareness isn't that practical I think. 

[who chit]

Quote

As for identity, what would you then suggest to be a reliable basis for identity ? I think that memories are indeed a valid basis for identity, even though it is surely just conceptual. But at the end of the day you simply have to identify as something, right? Running around and merely saying that you identify as consciousness/nothingness/awareness isn't that practical I think. 

Saying you are awareness,and being that awareness are very different. Realizing you are that obliterates any delusion or question ever had of being anything other than that. There's no longer a choice of deciding to be anything different. It destroys illusion. After the realization,you can choose to play the role of identity for practical purposes,but always knowing you are not the character identity. You can also go off into seclusion,limiting social contact to an "only if/when needed" basis.

[DocHoliday]

@who chit Well yeah, that's exactly what I was saying, essentially. Being awareness. But, based on that, just why couldn't you then be aware of a totally differnt body for example in the "waking dream"? While in deep sleep and while consciousness is unbounded you can literally experience anything, hence the infiniteness of consciousness, but why does "my" body then first need to die in order for consciousness to inhabit a differnt mind and body? That's the question I'm interested in. 

[tsuki]

1 hour ago, DocHoliday said:

As for identity, what would you then suggest to be a reliable basis for identity ?

I'm afraid that there is no such thing. Identity is a by-product of self-awareness.
Everything is you. Consequently - there is no you. At the same time.
The moment you ask 'who am I?' - you simultaneously, genuinely don't know, and are something that does not know what it is.

Self-awareness is born out of the ability of non-dual reality to become dual in a way that does not contradict itself.
Self-awareness is equally awareness and unawareness. Anything you grasp as 'you' comes with a blind spot.
The moment you become any concrete you (as in body) you will have an impulse to defend yourself from the other (the world).
If you do not see how your body is the world - you may have an impulse to fight it back so that it will not hurt you.
If you try to kick the wold - you will kick yourself in the ass precisely from the place that you are blind to.
If you try to fight the world, it will seem like the world is a threat.
It will be a perpetual fight for survival that has not been caused by anything and will go unnoticed.

This is why paradox is the symmetry of reality.

Edited May 6, 2018 by tsuki

[who chit]

The why questions of consciousness can't be truthfully answered. This is the problem with conceptualizing/imagining what the reality is,rather than realizing it experientially,which is the only way to know it. If it comes into reality for you,there would not be such questions. The mind could think about this unendingly and never come to a conclusion,but once the reality is realized all questions of what it is or could be, end. It can be entertaining to theorize anything about consciousness,but that's just playing around. The only way to know is to take the jump.

Probably not what you want to hear,but that's the truth. Anything other than that is just a story.

[DocHoliday]

@who chit No, it's perfectly fine, it's nice that you reminded me of that fact. I've also watched Leo's episode "Life is a Dream" again and in it, he said that there are certain rules or boundaries to them dream, much like guidelines along which "reality"/the dream plays out, soo... yeah, I guess that's quite synonymous with "simply taking reality as it is". And you're correct, I was in fact simply theorizing - and perhaps got a little lost in it, so thanks again for reminding me.

Edited May 6, 2018 by DocHoliday

[who chit]

 

[Maycol]

Great question, @DocHoliday. With all the pointers given here, have you drawn a satisfying conclusion yet? I have not. I'm just enjoying the exchanges here.

@tsuki, your replies consistently stir something inside of me, they are like koans. The thinking immediately desires to have your level of realization, and tries to find ways to achieve it by acquiring more knowledge from writings, books, or teachings out there, that seduction of gaining and improving is strong.

At the same time, as I'm reading all these interesting replies that I so hope to be my own truth, there is also an blank openness that allows all these forms to pass, seeing that they don't really matter that much and won't have the same intensity once the moment is passed. I can't come to any conclusion, but I enjoy it tremendously when they are pointers here that twist my thinking and loop it into itself, and makes me wonder "isn't everything I'm experiencing, all self-referential? Can I ever stand outside of myself to objectively know myself? I feel like I'm just a strange loop, including the whole Reality I'm experiencing, ever just existing inside of a bubble. What's beyond it? I don't know."

 

[Epiphany_Inspired]

@DocHoliday I don't know...my only guess is that maybe you still have lessons to learn or growth awaiting as this version of "you"