Confusion about "appearance is reality".

[Someone here]

9 minutes ago, traveler said:

"you" the apparent person who is writing this IS the imaginary position. The imaginary position is real and unreal, but for the imaginary position it is only real. If it is only real, there is an opposite to it: unreal. This is where the world of knowing springs into being.

From my perspective I'm only real. From "whom" perspective am I both real and unreal? 

[Forestluv]

48 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Can you point to me which one is the limiting belief that I need to work with?  

I’d be careful here. One defense of the mind is to focus on one belief. This can be helpful in some contexts, yet can also be a strategy to maintain a belief network. . . The limiting belief itself is secondary, the underlying energetic orientation is more important. 

For example, imagine the mind thinks that “Psychedelic experiences are hallucinations”. Now imagine this is a strongly-held belief. This mind has been conditioned to think that psychedelics only induce temporary hallucinations that aren’t real. How will this mind respond when given the opportunity to expand? This mind will defend it’s contraction because it isn’t oriented toward exploration and expansion. 

We could say that aspects of psychedelics are hallucinations, yet so are aspects of a sober mind. The contracted mind may think “Show me the evidence that psychedelic experiences are real. Show me someone that can make a hallucination of a unicorn real”. This is a contracted mindset limited to a belief. . . What would an exploratory mind that holds ideas loosely be like?. . . More like “Interesting, I hadn’t thought about it like that. What is the imagined in realness and what is the realness in imagined? What are areas that are sorta real, sorta imagined? How can I access this through direct experience? I don’t have access to psychedelics, or there other ways to explore these realms”. (Yes, there is).

48 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Also are limiting beliefs necessarily false or bad? 

It depends on intention. If the intention is to explore and expand, then yes - limiting beliefs would be bad. However, belief structures provide stability and security, so holding beliefs loosely (or letting go of beliefs) can feel unstable and insecure. Yet that is the nature of exploration. There are times there is nothing to grab hold of. 

It’s not so much wether limiting beliefs are “false”. It’s more about the limitation. Asking whether a belief is true or false is a dualism of opposites. For example, if we tightly believe “Psychedelics only produce hallucinations”, how can we explore beyond this belief? What if psychedelics are hallucinations from one perspective, yet not hallucinations from another perspective? What if both are true, depending on the perspective? However. . . If a mind tightly holds onto the truth that “psychedelics only produce hallucinations”, it will not be able to see the truth that “psychedelics don’t only produce hallucinations”. As well, the balancing belief would be “a sober mind does not produce hallucinations”. When locked into this truth, the mind will not be able to see sober hallucinations.

Ime, psychedelics are extremely powerful for exploring this area - yet there are also traps, several of which you have indicated. There are also other methods. If you genuinely want to explore realness and imagination, I would shift toward direct experience. This doesn’t mean to reject intellectual concepts. It just means holding them loosely or setting them aside for a bit. For example, when we watch a movie, we don’t have a mindset of “this isn’t real. These are just actors pretending. The setting isn’t even real. It’s just a pretend set in Hollywood”. This is true from one perspective, yet it limits us from exploring, experiencing the characters and the essence of the story. There are a lot of insights here.

There are many ways to explore realness and imagination through direct experience (that don’t involve psychedelics). Ime, I’ve explored real and imagined through lucid dreaming, sensory deprivation tanks, yin yoga, edible cannabis, shamanic breathing and being isolated in nature. 

16 minutes ago, Someone here said:

From my perspective I'm only real. From "whom" perspective am I both real and unreal? 

This is a great introspective question. Notice if the mind tries to defend *my perspective* of being real. Or if it is willing to let go of *my perspective* to gain a more holistic view of being both real and unreal.

Imagine a perspective that appears without ownership. It is merely an appearance without “mine” or “yours”. 

[traveler]

8 minutes ago, Someone here said:

From my perspective I'm only real. From "whom" perspective am I both real and unreal? 

Yes, the real me position apparently arises from a tension in the body. This tensions creates an experience of a real position. This feels unsatisfactory/not true, so it tries to find it's way out through understanding. What it can't understand is that it already is what it is looking for. It is in it's own way, an illusion trying to get out of an illusion. How can you find what is already?

[Inliytened1]

2 hours ago, zeroISinfinity said:

@Inliytened1 and I love you. 

Ditto bud Haha 

[Leo Gura]

@Someone here You are overlooking the obvious: the poison does not exist in the honey until you eat it and feel poisoned. That's when it appears.

The moon does not exist until you look at it, at which point it is created. And each time you blink your eyes the moon is destroyed and re-created.

What you see is what is. What you don't see is what is not.

A video game engine does not render parts of the world which are not visible to the player, as that would be wasteful and silly.

[montecristo]

@Leo Gura This idea imbues my eyelids with supernatural ability to destroy the world. Empirically, in my experience this is obviously the case, but it smacks of the childish notion that if I close my eyes the boogey man goes away. To that you could say well of course there's the boogey mans perception to consider and that's why the world continues to exist independent of your perception. But If i close my eyes an asteroid can still bonk me on the head though and i assume the asteroid doesnt perceive.

Isnt there something prior to eyes? Arent eyes a sort of technology that exists because there is something to see in the first place?

Should I be placing such importance on the visual rendering? Couldnt there be more reality than my human interpretation. 

I get that things are unknowable outside of my perception but cant we make a distinction between perception and awareness?

[James123]

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

From my perspective I'm only real. From "whom" perspective am I both real and unreal? 

I told you before, you are a human and god at the same time, you Are exist and not exist at same time. It is just depends on your consciousness  level. You are your body and its same time you want to think that who created your body.  all is happening at the same time. That’s why entire consciousness non duality, duality, the god, human life, death, chair everything is. you nothing except you. You are exist as a human now, if you increase your consciousness level , you will be god, and exist as nothing (that demonstrates everything exist as nothing). Thats why all is one. You wont be able to run away from yourself. Lol

[Osaid]

@montecristo @Someone here Anything you become aware of exists exactly as how you are aware of it. Simple as that.

If an asteroid hits you on the head and your eyes are closed, the asteroid exists as a loud and deadly force that hits you on the head, but it has no appearance that you can see because your eyes are closed. If you open your eyes, the asteroid now exists as an appearance you can see. It's like when a video game renders to fit what you can experience. You can tell yourself that there is an asteroid coming at you, but it only exists as a loud noise and deadly momentum until you actually look at it, then it will generate an appearance. That explanation is just a story you tell yourself to help you survive and predict situations in reality.

Everything is exactly how you perceive it, but your labels and thoughts are clouding the truth. 

 

Edited May 8, 2020 by Osaid

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, montecristo said:

@Leo Gura This idea imbues my eyelids with supernatural ability to destroy the world.

It's not an idea.

It's what is.

1 hour ago, montecristo said:

Empirically, in my experience this is obviously the case, but...

Stop right there.

The but is imaginary.

1 hour ago, montecristo said:

it smacks of the childish notion that if I close my eyes the boogey man goes away.

But that's not what is the case.

The case is that you open your eyes and the boogey man appears.

Everything is EXACTLY as it appears! That "EXACTLY" is highly important. I am not syaing that closing your eyes will allow you to escape suffering or manipulate reality in favorable ways that benefit your survival. That is not the case and not what actually appears.

1 hour ago, montecristo said:

But If i close my eyes an asteroid can still bonk me on the head though

Sure, in which case you will experience it as a feeling in your body. There won't be an asteroid, there will be pain, burning, suffering, etc.

1 hour ago, montecristo said:

and i assume the asteroid doesnt perceive.

You don't perceive either.

1 hour ago, montecristo said:

Isnt there something prior to eyes? Arent eyes a sort of technology that exists because there is something to see in the first place?

No

Eyes are imaginary.

In a video game Mario's eyes are NOT drawing the world.

1 hour ago, montecristo said:

Should I be placing such importance on the visual rendering? Couldnt there be more reality than my human interpretation. 

It's not just visual. Direct experience is every possible experience you have.

Direct experience is NOT human interpretation. It's the end of humanness and all filters.

1 hour ago, montecristo said:

I get that things are unknowable outside of my perception but cant we make a distinction between perception and awareness?

You can make whatever diatinctions you want, but they are all imaginary.

[montecristo]

@Leo Gurawell i'll consider myself schooled then. I do recall going through a phase where i was getting VERY absorbed into my direct experience to the point it was causing some problems self-survival speaking. I quickly stopped bc it was disorienting to not engage in all the conceptual activity. 

I started to doubt the exactly part, and gave up on it. But I knew intuitively that i was on to something with it, thanks for confirming that.

"You don't perceive either." good point

[Leo Gura]

@montecristo See my video: What Is Perception, where all this is clearly explained.

"Perception" is a very sneaky business and a very loaded notion. Perception is not a biological or physical process.

[Galyna]

I love this topic, it is so enjoyable to read all the questions and answers. 
wow...thanks for making my mind think. 
i love ❤️ this forum 

[The observer]

@Someone here

When we say appearance is reality and there's nothing behind the scenes, we are pointing to Oneness, which is the present moment. It's very simple, really. Is there anything that isn't the present moment? Even the past was the present moment and the future will be. The past and future are merely appearances happening in the present moment. Sure, there is a practical value in imagining them. However, the mind tends to confuse them for the present reality. In your present experience, there are layers of imagination that include the present moment, the past, and the future, and on different spans. I think the past and future imaginations are obvious so I'll discuss the present moment imagination.

About imagination of the present moment; are there pixels that constitute the screen you're using to read this right now? Of course there are, if you put the screen under a microscope in proper settings, you will see the pixels, but you won't see the screen anymore unless you stop seeing the pixels. Notice the sleight of hand. Right now, what are you perceiving exactly? You are perceiving an appearance of a white background with black formal organised graffiti on it. The rest (mental sounds ascribed to each individual black graffiti, multiple meanings ascribed to each unit of graffiti and to each cluster of graffitis and to the whole graffiti, judgements of true or false ascribed to every single meaning which is pretty much biased by survival but that's for you to discover, light pixels, hardware, software, electricity, battery, a worker on the other side of the world, the amount of things we can mention here is infinite so I'll just type: etc... Everything is working together to produce your present experience. How beautiful is this?!) is in your imagination and all of it is done unconsciously. There's nothing wrong with imagination. Yet notice how much information goes unquestioned, unfiltered, and unnoticed, even more tricky, the majority of the information gets summoned for no good reason. Spirituality is about revealing these underlying issues and bringing them to awareness. Why? The preoccupation of the mind with all kinds of thoughts makes it really difficult be present in your direct experience. This makes you a prey for all sorts of delusions. One of the main delusions is to forget what's right between your hands, right here, right now, and to live in stories and imagination. Again, you can do that if you want to, there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong in life at all. But when you're not present here, you're missing out on a lot of things. You can't see a beautiful sunset. You can't really see beauty at all. Imagine the depth of the most beautiful experience you've ever had, now multiply it by a thousand. It's like the difference between having sex and masturbating to porn.

Hope that clarifies something.

Edited May 9, 2020 by The observer

[The observer]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Someone here 

A video game engine does not render parts of the world which are not visible to the player, as that would be wasteful and silly.

A video game engine so infinite and powerful would be capable of doing that without breaking a sweat. It's all rendered for you, because God loves you. That's something I feel very grateful for. Everything is being taken care of for you.

[Someone here]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Someone here You are overlooking the obvious: the poison does not exist in the honey until you eat it and feel poisoned. That's when it appears.

The moon does not exist until you look at it, at which point it is created. And each time you blink your eyes the moon is destroyed and re-created.

What you see is what is. What you don't see is what is not.

A video game engine does not render parts of the world which are not visible to the player, as that would be wasteful and silly.

Leo of this is true who are you communicating with now?  I'm not real from your perspective! 

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, The observer said:

A video game engine so infinite and powerful would be capable of doing that without breaking a sweat. It's all rendered for you, because God loves you. That's something I feel very grateful for. Everything is being taken care of for you.

If God rendered everything to itself, it would no longer be a human, it would become an infinite singularity.

For God to be a human is has to only render what the human sees.

An Infinite video game would simply be a white dot.

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Leo of this is true who are you communicating with now?  I'm not real from your perspective! 

There is no Leo. There is only you talking to yourself.

[Someone here]

6 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That's right. I'm talking with myself cause there's nothing else for me to do.

Why you have to look at this way?  Why don't just assume the conventional way to look at it.. I'm a real person who lives somewhere and I have actual independence existence without you needing to perceive me.?  Or is this impossible to assume? 

[Osaid]

@Someone here There are other finite minds but they are ultimately you. There is only 1 consciousness through which different experiences are viewed. You are looking through the eyes of every creature right now but you cannot access that or else you wouldn't be you and the creature you are accessing wouldn't be itself, it would become a mix of the two experiences.

[Someone here]

42 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There is no Leo. There is only you talking to yourself.

Well this is really problematic!.  Is this the same response you are going to give to someone else if he offers you a big chunk of money?  Is this the same  assumption that you take when making a patreon account for "others" to donate? (didn't want to bring this up and not trying to be disrespectful but just want to see how consistent are you with your beliefs). 

In what sense is there "no Leo"?  Do you mean it in metaphorical way?  Or do you mean it physically actually? If I fly to Las Vegas and go to your address I won't find you in there? Really?