How do I capitalize on the fact that I create my reality?

[flowboy]

23 hours ago, TrippyMindSubstance said:

I've had peak experiences on psychedelics that showed me that "my reality" is just the result of a bunch of distinctions created by my mind - basically infinity filtered in some way that results in a finite experience. 

That's so cool... I had this insight on LSD... still remember what it looked like.

[BipolarGrowth]

14 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

If you actually actualized spirituality, you would not need to make your life better. Just being conscious of yourself as God is enough for you to feel complete. Everything else would just be the cherry on top.

You don't do spirituality to make your life better, you do spirituality to realize your life is already Perfect regardless of how it is.

Of course you can still make material improvements, but they are of little import relative to your spiritual connection to reality.

The purpose of spirituality is to build that inner metaphysical connection. It is like an umbilical cord to God. To ask, "But how can I use this cord to make myself rich?" misses the point. The cord itself is the highest prize.

You do spirituality to increase insight. Insight is a bridge between dualities. The deeper and more intrinsic a duality is, the more progress can be made from it. Leo is right. The ego does not get the power of God. By the time you can create whatever you want, you’ll realize the nature of experience and see that preferring anything over what you already have in front of you is pointless. If you are attached to manifesting one million dollars, you still would have to be under the illusion that there is a self who could benefit from one million dollars and believe that that money could somehow create anything other than an impermanent experience of suffering. 
 

The ego gets brought to its complete and final destruction through the three characteristics which are always baked into any experience. This is why Buddha called nirodha samapatti (the cessation of perception and feeling) nibbanic bliss. It’s the bliss of no longer existing. The most satisfying experience is no experience at all, and you can’t know that satisfaction until you have direct experience of going from samadhi, the ultimate absorption into the limits of experience, into the passing away of that most unimaginable experience into the impossibility which is the lack of consciousness, lack of existence, lack of God, lack of truth, lack of illusion, etc. If there wasn’t illusion, there’d be nothing at all. This isn’t the nothingness people talk about in spirituality. That nothingness is still a bundle of subtle sensations creating the possibility for experience. We’re talking about something so alien and plain that it could never be uncovered. There would be no distinctions in anything. Distinction and duality are the illusion, but without distinction, there would be no way to point to or even be truth. 

 

Nibbanic bliss is like being a Holocaust victim then going to deep sleep and having the relief of being completely detached from the miseries of your previous day except the enlightened person has the experience of ultimate reality and God which they are escaping from. They have reached the maximum temporary satisfaction that could be held in experience yet still want more. The only result is the complete loss of everything. It’s the dissolution of any possibility of self, suffering, and impermanence which is the best gift. Losing everything is the best gift. You can’t reach that dissolution experientially. 
 

After tasting that bliss, you realize that anything that could ever be real or formed or experienced is intrinsically tied to suffering. Any self you hold onto long enough to create a goal is guaranteed to create suffering. When fully enlightened, you become the arising and passing of everything simultaneously while also being absolutely certain there is no continuity that could ever accurately be called a self. You recognize that the present moment is itself an illusion. As soon as something can be perceived, it’s already gone. Even to say there is motion, activity, perception, distinction, consciousness, or truth is to imagine that any of these things could be defined in a way that lasts. There’s absolutely nothing to hold on to and no ability to choose whether to hold on or let go. 
 

A definition is a self. If whatever goal you want spiritually can still be defined, it isn’t the highest attainment. 

[TrippyMindSubstance]

7 hours ago, Nahm said:

@TrippyMindSubstance

For sure. Life is just one big shit sandwich after another and you just gotta eat em & suffer through until it kills you or you die of old age. Whenever it get’s rough & you’re not feelin how you’d like to, just suppress that nonsense of feeling, bury it deep down inside. People have been not meditating daily for eons and there is no reason for you not to fall in line and live an unexceptional mundane life filled with fear. It’s all Radom luck man, maybe you’ll be a politician and make your millions from fear mongering. ? 

I don't really get the sarcasm, this response really seems to misunderstand what I was saying in my previous post. I definitely don't think life is meant to be one shit sandwich after another that we all have to just endure. 

I mentioned that there are certain ways in which me manipulating reality is really me trying to avoid certain fears and that I need to learn to surrender to, and that every time I try to manipulate the external world to "fix it", it just manifests in another way. I'm not saying this always happens, but around certain things it seems to be the case. 

A perfect example seems to be self esteem based on looks. For a lot of my life I have struggled with self esteem, and the thought was always "if it just wasn't for these one or two things that are wrong with me, I would feel amazing". And then over the years, the "one or two things" that were the problem would often change. I would fix a couple things and expect to be good, but soon enough a new problem would emerge. For example, I gain some muscle after being super skinny my whole life, then I start getting super bad acne. I take dairy out of my diet and the acne goes away, but then I start balding at a very young age. These are only a couple examples, but the pattern has basically gone on for 25 years. 

In this case, it seems to be clear that manipulating the external world is a dead end and Life is trying to point me is to something deeper, for example, "stop obsessing over your looks, get over the fear of people judging you all the time, start meditating etc." 

That being said, I'm still interested in utilizing and growing my power to create my reality in other aspects of my life, I'm just having some trouble balancing being content with life as it is and not being so needy, and also living it up and trying to get the most out of life.  

[TrippyMindSubstance]

7 hours ago, flowboy said:

That's so cool... I had this insight on LSD... still remember what it looked like.

It's always super cool when it happens. I can also sort of remember what it looks like. I guess it's kind of like looking at your hand - even though you can see five fingers, you can simultaneously also see that it's just one hand.

[TrippyMindSubstance]

6 hours ago, BipolarGrowth said:

By the time you can create whatever you want, you’ll realize the nature of experience and see that preferring anything over what you already have in front of you is pointless. If you are attached to manifesting one million dollars, you still would have to be under the illusion that there is a self who could benefit from one million dollars and believe that that money could somehow create anything other than an impermanent experience of suffering. 

This is pretty much what makes it hard for me to balance surrender and action. I've had these awakenings where reality collapses into a singularity, everything disappears, time doesn't exist, preferences are absolutely meaningless etc. and then its like there's nothing left to do but restart the universe and separate back into a separates self.

But once I'm back in separation, I have two desires that seem to be in conflict with each other: the desire to know God, Truth etc. and basically re-enter the singularity, and the ego desires like survival, pleasure etc. The pain caused by my ego desires is always what pushes me back to spirituality and re-seeking enlightenment, and then the result of enlightenment always seems to be "congratulations you've awakened, now go back into duality and play the game. Without rules there is no game, so go play within the limited rules of duality!".

Maybe this back and forth process is what I need to surrender to. Maybe it's equally as okay to seek enlightenment as it is to seek normal "wordly" desires and that I need to fully give myself to whatever seems to be calling me.

I can tell my mind is just getting way too chatty right now so it's definitely time to go meditate and enjoy the present moment and let all these thoughts subside for now. 

[Nahm]

@TrippyMindSubstance

 I see, thanks. The emotional scale would be most helpful. Blame is keeping that cycle of oneness & separation going. It’s pretty subtle. If you reach for the better feeling thought / emotion up the scale from blame to love, you’ll realize that’s what you’ve been repeating. But, you’ve been repeating this “about yourself” (in thought), vs understanding you’re creating & experiencing an emotion (feeling). Doing it mindfully, on purpose, illuminates when done unconsciously. Consciously, it wouldn’t be done anymore, simply for how you feel now, rather than in regard to what seems to have happened, or how the world is believed to be responsible for how you feel, or for ‘you separation’. 

[TrippyMindSubstance]

@Nahm For sure. It became very clear to me the other day after watching one of your videos that I was the one creating my own frustration by adding all these self-referential, constricting thoughts to the present moment. After realizing this, I was very quickly able to consciously generate good feelings, and all the frustrations went away as I realized that everything previously was just my mind unconsciously bouncing around out of control. Once I saw this, it sort of naturally stopped and I was at peace and in control. 

I've put hundreds of hours into "manage your vibration" type stuff a few years ago, with pretty good success. It was a big component to curing the extreme depression I suffered from at the time, but I sort of moved away from it after I got a little lost on the path and also to allow myself to develop a bit more in other ways. 

At the time I didn't properly understand the significance of the present moment, I had trouble separating circumstances from feelings and I had trouble separating the teachers from the teachings. I guess my focus changed back to traditional meditation and seeking deeper general understanding, but I guess it wouldn't hurt at all to re-explore that side of spirituality now that I've spent the past few years developing my foundation.

[Nahm]

@TrippyMindSubstance

Awesome. The ‘ultimate’ self referential thought is about a ‘you’ which ‘goes from’ singularity to ‘back in separation’. 

Going from singularity implies to somewhere.

Singularity be’s somewhere. 
 

 

[Anahata]

Let's play a game.

Think about a blue sky. Now move your right leg.

What is That which decided to 'do' this?

Can you point to it?

Was it an experience co-created by two ego-minds? 

Was it an experience created by one ego-mind?

Or is it Awareness/Consciousness?

Is That which is aware of reading this text separate from 'reading this text'?

 

Edited July 27, 2021 by Anahata

[TrippyMindSubstance]

12 hours ago, Anahata said:

Think about a blue sky. Now move your right leg.

What is That which decided to 'do' this?

Can you point to it?

I don't know. I can't point to it. Some ways in which i can try to describe it are: it is "I", it's "behind" everything,  it's prior to everything, and it's elusive because if I try to find it, I find myself lost and confused, I simply can't seem to find "it". It is also intelligent because it can do these things.

12 hours ago, Anahata said:

Was it an experience co-created by two ego-minds? 

Yeah, in a way it was. Both of our ego minds came together to create this experience, my ego-mind wouldn't have done it without yours.

12 hours ago, Anahata said:

Was it an experience created by one ego-mind?

It was in the sense that only my ego-mind actually "did"/experienced it.

12 hours ago, Anahata said:

Or is it Awareness/Consciousness?

This is confusing me for me because at this particular moment, I can only see how Consciousness/Awareness can be aware of things, but I don't see how it can "do" things. 

12 hours ago, Anahata said:

Is That which is aware of reading this text separate from 'reading this text'?

I guess when I'm aware of reading this text, I become 'reading this text'. I have a bad headache so it's hard for me to really understand this at the moment, but I can see that it is related to my confusion above.