WHO is the YOU giving advice on this forum?

[JayG84]

If this reality is an illusion. What is this forum? Who is giving who advice? Am I asking myself questions? Are you my illusion or am I yours?

I always get tripped up at the notion that other people don't exist. Other people obviously have their own lives that they're living. What purpose do they serve in my illusion?

I know this "Is it all imagininary?" question has probably been ask countless times on this forum, but it is the biggest mindfuck of all consciousness work. I can understand that all of this is like a video game, but I tend to think of it like a multi-player game. Yes, I might be Mario playing the game, not being aware of the pixels (Consciousness) that makes up my reality. But Luigi is also playing his seperate game at the same time. Is this not how reality works? Infinite players in an infinite game made up of infinite consciousness with infinite possibilities?  

I keep chasing this "understanding" of it. I catch glimpses of it and I know intuitively that it MUST be an illusion, because if you deconstruct anything far enough, you realize that, fundamentally, everything is just thoughts and perceptions that the ego is creating. But Leo has said that there are levels to this thing, and that even when you think you understand it, it goes even deeper.

Even if it is all an illusion, so what? It still FEELS real and your actions have consequences in other peoples lives. I get the "desolve your ego" part, this relieves suffering in peoples lives that they're creating for themselves. But what is the point in going deeper than that. It doesn't leave people at peace with themselves, it just makes them chase an idea of enlightenment for "knowings" sake. When maybe completely knowing it isn't possible for these "meat beings" we are stuck in.

Would I be better off to just recognize that this reality is crazy, beautiful, and mysterious. Desolve my ego as much as I can. Except it for what it is, and play it like it's a game? Or is there benefit to "Becoming God" that is beyond just giving your mind closure of trying to understand?

[Preety_India]

 

 

You 

 

 

(courtesy Meta-Man.. ) 

 

 

[James123]

@JayG84 you. Everything is you. All is one, one is all. You are the words that you typing, you are the breath that you breathing. And you are me. 

[Osaid]

You are every player

[JayG84]

Yes. But I would like to have a more nuanced conversation about it. This is the answer that usually is given. "You are all there is". I understand that, and it has led me to great improvements with inner work, ego desolution, and overall decrease of suffering in my life, and I'm grateful for that.

What I'm saying is that I'd like to talk about HOW it is that YOU are YOU, and I am ME. What have to experienced that has led you to the conclusion that no one else exists. Like I know you ARE me (metaphysically). But how is it that we both think we are talking to eachother?

This stuff is so hard to talk about without the "You are God" reponse. I think that leaves a lot of people frustrated because they are trying to understand on a deeper level something that is so hard to communicate. Like intuitively we KNOW that all of this is an illusion, but why are we all on this forum if we know that it's an illusion? Deep down we must believe we are making a difference by giving advise to SOMEONE right? We believe that there is someone on the the other end who is hearing what we are saying. If we truly inhabited the notion that there is no one else. Wouldn't it feel like we are speaking into a meaningless void? 

[allislove]

Quote

If this reality is an illusion

Illusion doesn't mean it's not real. It means it's not what you think.
In Truth, Illusion = Real, so you can say:
everything is real
everything is illusion
everything is pterodactyl  

Quote

Am I asking myself questions?

Yes.

Quote

Yes, I might be Mario playing the game, not being aware of the pixels (Consciousness) that makes up my reality. But Luigi is also playing his seperate game at the same time

Just look around yourself and feel that everything which is in your direct experience is You. Not just body, not just mind, but everything, including your phone or laptop which you use to read this forum, forum is also You.
The guy who are writing this message also has direct experience. The thing is, there is no difference between direct experience of that guy and direct experience of yours , it's exactly the same thing. This thing is not just dumb atoms, this thing is infinitely smart and conscious, and it's everything - Love.
 

[Preety_India]

I think @Meta-Man can answer this really well.

The mind creates an illusion of division for survival. It has to be this way. There is a you and there is a I. However when you reach higher levels of consciousness, you see the boundaries dissolving, see the enlightenment video of Leo, you begin to realize that we are always living in Maya or illusion and this prevents us from realizing how the our own actions and the actions of others are impacting the same consciousness that we all share. 

Think of it as a long stream of all objects, people, events, and imagine all these elements interacting with each other within the stream. These elements although part of the same consciousness, have out of their egos separated themselves from each other and thus living in an illusion and impacting each other meanwhile all their collective actions are actually impacting this collective consciousness..

So it's not totally meaningless when you are giving advice to the other. You're giving advice to someone who is also a part of you. You are giving it to yourself who is found in another.. That person's mistakes are your mistakes. Your advice is helping you to overcome your mistakes in the other self. These are parts of you, versions of you, you see them differentiated, just like many streams arise out of the same river. So even if one stream is different from another, they all meet in the same sea.. All these parts of yourself that look unique to you will come together to unite and form you again. And the whole will be formed again. 

[Osaid]

@JayG84 There is only the illusion of duality. How does God truly separate itself from itself? It can't. It's all God. It can only trick you into believing you are separate from God.

You are looking through the eyes of every creature, but if you become aware of that from your experience, you wouldn't be you or those creatures anymore.

If you wanted to be a dog, you would have to completely be a dog, with no memory of your current human self. That's exactly what you're doing right now with every creature on earth.

[Seraphim]

30 minutes ago, JayG84 said:

If we truly inhabited the notion that there is no one else. Wouldn't it feel like we are speaking into a meaningless void? 

Exactly, no need to take it that far, keep it simple. There is a great joy in being a human, interacting with other humans. <3

We can have the feeling that everything is the Self all the time, that only makes us want to embrace this human experience even more, duality becomes wonderful and familiar.

[Aaron p]

2 hours ago, JayG84 said:

Or is there benefit to "Becoming God"

Yes, eternal life, perpetual bliss, super knowledge and divine wisdom. 

Also man, don't worry about understanding too much. Get a basic conceptual frame for how this stuff works for a kind of "loose guidance" but then forget it after...your job is to do the practices.

It's like if you studied how to fall in love in an imaginary college for 20 years but then one day you see this lovely chick and all of your learning goes out the window and you float towards her and all you feel is the feeling, and you talk to her and boom it is effortless. Doing something with your head is different than doing something with your heart. What I've said before; the most important part of spiritual concepts is abandoning them in the much greater light of actual realization.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Aaron p

[seeking_brilliance]

Study your dream characters. What makes them act and give you advice? 

[Inliytened1]

11 hours ago, Preety_India said:

I think @Meta-Man can answer this really well.

The mind creates an illusion of division for survival. It has to be this way. There is a you and there is a I. However when you reach higher levels of consciousness, you see the boundaries dissolving, see the enlightenment video of Leo, you begin to realize that we are always living in Maya or illusion and this prevents us from realizing how the our own actions and the actions of others are impacting the same consciousness that we all share. 

Think of it as a long stream of all objects, people, events, and imagine all these elements interacting with each other within the stream. These elements although part of the same consciousness, have out of their egos separated themselves from each other and thus living in an illusion and impacting each other meanwhile all their collective actions are actually impacting this collective consciousness..

So it's not totally meaningless when you are giving advice to the other. You're giving advice to someone who is also a part of you. You are giving it to yourself who is found in another.. That person's mistakes are your mistakes. Your advice is helping you to overcome your mistakes in the other self. These are parts of you, versions of you, you see them differentiated, just like many streams arise out of the same river. So even if one stream is different from another, they all meet in the same sea.. All these parts of yourself that look unique to you will come together to unite and form you again. And the whole will be formed again. 

Beautiful words @Preety_India

[Preety_India]

@Inliytened1 thank you 

 

[EnlightenmentBlog]

@Preety_India Nicely put.

Out of the top of my head, there's a great short story, called "The Egg" that more or less brings this point home.

A simple google search will do the trick.

12 hours ago, JayG84 said:

What I'm saying is that I'd like to talk about HOW it is that YOU are YOU, and I am ME.

I'll try a logical approach.

If I were YOU and YOU were ME, we find ourselves exactly where we started. Now YOU experience ME and vise versa.

If YOU were both of US, lets say through some telepathic connection that enabled you to experience ME as well, you'd still find yourself where you started. Now YOU experience yourself through YOU and ME.

And so on. Even with all humankind. YOU is defined by what is experienced in the moment. In our daily existence a body and a mind and perceptions are experienced, so they are labelled YOU. Take a psychedelic, for example, and experience is widened, so do YOU.

I don't know if this makes any sense. Just tried to give an alternative explanation.

[Preety_India]

@EnlightenmentBlog yep

 

 

[mandyjw]

14 hours ago, JayG84 said:

If this reality is an illusion. What is this forum? Who is giving who advice? Am I asking myself questions? Are you my illusion or am I yours?

I always get tripped up at the notion that other people don't exist. Other people obviously have their own lives that they're living. What purpose do they serve in my illusion?

This way of imagining or thinking can help because you're stuck on your current one. Imagine that there isn't a you or a me, but we are this interaction itself, in this very moment, which if we try to pinpoint, doesn't exist. There isn't a you or a me, but a space in between, a space that encompasses everything. Think of us as a woven net. We think that we are the holes between the threads of the net, never considering that that shape that we perceive in the net is actually nothingness itself. If one thread in the net is pulled, all the other holes in the net tighten and adjust. The ones closest to it seem to be more affected and visibly change shape and the others further away less so, but the net is one. Everything you seem to do or think affects everyone else, even if they are too far away to be conscious of the effects. 

What purpose do others serve in my illusion is like asking from the perspective of a hole in the fabric of the net, what the other holes in the fabric of the net have to do with me? Well the answer is they aren't at all. They are one empty space, or one net.

To go even deeper the mind has to look at or consider either the net or the empty space in this analogy, but they are one. 

[zeroISinfinity]

Trust me still I do not know.My only (only?sure  boyo) desire is to drink coffee with Jed in Eugene.Then I would 100% know what me is?! 

[Nahm]

@JayG84

You are the creator of your reality. Meditate, let resistance go. Trade ten thousand thoughts of what it is, for a single impulse of what you want. Enjoy. Repeat as seemingly needed. 

[JayG84]

14 hours ago, Preety_India said:

We are always living in Maya or illusion and this prevents us from realizing how the our own actions and the actions of others are impacting the same consciousness that we all share. 

Think of it as a long stream of all objects, people, events, and imagine all these elements interacting with each other within the stream. These elements although part of the same consciousness, have out of their egos separated themselves from each other and thus living in an illusion and impacting each other meanwhile all their collective actions are actually impacting this collective consciousness..

Yes, I see. Great way of looking at it.

I'm becoming more and more conscious of the interconnectedness of my actions and words in other peoples lives around me. I tend to often take conversations in a meta direction with my best friends and we fall into deeper conversations about life. But sometimes I'll say something to someone that might challenge an unconscious paradigm they have and they'll seem shook up by having to face their egos in that moment. I don't know if I'm doing them a service when I do this. I'll think "maybe their ignorance is bliss". But then again, if they're not ready for it, then their ego with provent them from thinking about it deeper...or they'll just think I'm crazy...lol

But really I'm just talking to myself, so sometimes I think that this is all just me being selfish, trying to pick apart other peoples (and my) unconscious behaviour so I don't fall in the same ego traps. But if we are all connected, I guess I'm raising the whole thing's awreness by a bit, right? 

Do you guys ever feel that way talking about this stuff in person with people who aren't ready for it? Or do you see it as a net positive? This forum is a safe space with open-minded people to talk about interesting stuff, but do you ever think that some people are better off being unaware of the true nature of reality?

[JayG84]

4 hours ago, Meta-Man said:

These puppets are animated by Consciousness and has no free will/doership of their own. You are not a character inside the movie. You are the screen on which it appears.

Interesting. That's another thing that's hard to conceptualize, that time is an illusion. It feels relative. But the idea that the past and the future are happening right now in my imagination, and that we have no say in the grander intelligence of it all.

If you give someone advice and it affects their behaviour. Did you not use free will to change the course of future events?