How many of us are awake?

[Fearless_Bum]

@Carl-Richard lol I agree

[PurpleTree]

how many of us are awake?

 

well there's only one

 

that's why it's called non-duality

 

 

 

 

hihi j/k

[mandyjw]

1-1=?

[RMQualtrough]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

"Nonverbal animals" "trees" "grow" "sunlight" "organism" is language.

Doesn't matter, duality is experienced by creatures without language. Humans aren't the only living things seeing duality.

Any experience is duality. A creature eats food, it doesn't eat itself, there's cognition of self and other. This applies to all living things even plants where their "cognition" is alien to us.

Nothing in absence of something is never experienced. It'd just be total nothingness.

Something does not exist in absence of nothing, because things are made of perception. Remove nothing (named consciousness) and there's no awareness, hence no perception and again just nothingness alone which can't be experienced.

All of this is happening inside the appearance of duality. Toad trips are happening inside of duality still. It's just so far from this that it seems to not be. A whiteout would be nonduality. But it's not because you can whiteout and duality continues: See me here.

Infinity can't be experienced in the actual literal sense. Only finitude can be experienced. You can easily recognize that the color red you see is fundamentally infinity, but its appearing as something finite which is red and not blue. Your interpretation of it changes so red = blue, up = down, but that's cognition. It is still appearing as something finite.

 

[Fearless_Bum]

@RMQualtrough you're falling for the trap of language. 

Animals don't exist, all the things you're saying is just words and has nothing to do with the real thing. 

Reality is infinite intelligence, no thought story will ever even touch it. 

Animals do not eat meat, what's going on is far beyond the grasp of thought. 

The truth is all forms of life are untouchable by thought, so duality is only in language. 

You do understand that you are a sensory being right? 

If you burn your hand in a fire and pull your hand back, it's not because of duality lol, it's the instantaneous response of this machine organism. 

I suspect perhaps you haven't deconstructed survival yet. Even survival is a finite thought story and can be transcended. 

[RMQualtrough]

@Fearless_Bum You don't need language. The very second a baby is born it already experiences duality and cries when slapped.

People are either finding they are nothing then ignoring that nothing, and concluding there's only something without a nothing playing the role of observer. Or finding the unification of nothing and something and saying it's beyond any word or thought, ignoring the fact of nothing and something entirely.

Always 100% of the time, it is due to talking cross purposes regarding absolute and relative. Relative is part of absolute. Ignoring it will not make it go away. The thread question could not even be asked otherwise. How could one of us be "awake" yet not others? "Being awake" is an experience still happening inside duality which is why the question even exists... An awake person is dead, which can't be experienced... Only experience can be experienced, and that is duality.

Any time you remove something from nothing, or vice versa, or try to expand to experience infinity, there is no experience. It is a whiteout or blackout or death. And experience AKA duality persists. It never ends. Duality is literally part of reality and the only part which is ever experienced.

[Fearless_Bum]

1 minute ago, RMQualtrough said:

@Fearless_Bum You don't need language. The very second a baby is born it already experiences duality and cries when slapped.

@RMQualtrough lol, no offense bit this makes 0 sense. 

How does a baby getting slapped and crying have anything to do with duality? 

A guy walks up to you and punches you in the face, you fall on the ground and your nose is dripping with blood, where's the duality in this? 

Someone pushes you off a bridge, where's the duality in this? 

I suspect you think dualities are actually real, this is something to be investigated. 

[BipolarGrowth]

30 minutes ago, Fearless_Bum said:

@RMQualtrough you're falling for the trap of language. 

Animals don't exist, all the things you're saying is just words and has nothing to do with the real thing. 

Reality is infinite intelligence, no thought story will ever even touch it. 

Animals do not eat meat, what's going on is far beyond the grasp of thought. 

The truth is all forms of life are untouchable by thought, so duality is only in language. 

You do understand that you are a sensory being right? 

If you burn your hand in a fire and pull your hand back, it's not because of duality lol, it's the instantaneous response of this machine organism. 

I suspect perhaps you haven't deconstructed survival yet. Even survival is a finite thought story and can be transcended. 

Sensory experience is built upon difference/duality. 

 

Lack of food > Hunger > Seek food > Eat food > Lack of hunger 

 

If “reality” is not also dualistic, how is language dualistic? Is language not “reality”? 
 

Creating language, thought, anything a human ever does is just as much a response to sensory experience as burning your hand and pulling it back from the fire. 
 

Seems as if you’re creating a duality between your reported accurate experience of reality and other things which are ultimately just that very same reality. 
 

Nonduality and duality are ultimately the same. You don’t get one appearance without the other. 
 

0=1.

 

People seem to be falling in love with the = and forgetting the entire role of 0 and 1 which allowed them to ever reach =. I’m just telling you guys from personal experience: insight into the whole equation takes you far deeper than getting caught up on one part of the equation. 

Edited November 13, 2021 by BipolarGrowth

[The0Self]

2 minutes ago, RMQualtrough said:

The very second a baby is born it already experiences duality and cries when slapped.

Not quite. For a baby there is only what appears. No knowing; duality; better/worse. Just boundlessness appearing. At about 18 months, duality comes online, and at death or enlightenment, it goes away again.

 

On 11/10/2021 at 8:27 AM, Carl-Richard said:

Awake? Maybe. Persistent non-symbolic awareness? Nah. That stuff is mindblowing.

Yeah it's complete free fall. Nothing compares because this could not be better, unlike an experience which could always be better.

[Fearless_Bum]

26 minutes ago, BipolarGrowth said:

Sensory experience is built upon difference/duality.

@BipolarGrowth I would disagree, there is only what is right now this very moment  nothing else. 

The sun is bright, I don't see the moon at all, I don't even know that the moon exists. 

If you experience only what is right now without believing the memories of what was back then, then there would be 0 distinctions. 

Feel your body sensations right now without memories arising or believing them, there would only be what is and nothing else. 

All dualities are projections of thought, there is nothing here in the present. 

26 minutes ago, BipolarGrowth said:

If “reality” is not also dualistic, how is language dualistic? Is language not “reality”? 

The energy which language is made of is pure wholeness manifesting as the appearance of two, it appears as two but it is impossible for two to actually exist. 

26 minutes ago, BipolarGrowth said:

Creating language, thought, anything a human ever does is just as much a response to sensory experience as burning your hand and pulling it back from the fire. 

To be clear, when I mentioned instantaneous response, that's really a finite phrase and it's hard to convey the real thing. There isn't even a response, infinite intelligence is so amazing that there's no response at all to anything. 

Thought creates the belief/projection that there is a response. 

Thought identifies as a person, and the person then invents the word response in order to take credit and say they responded to something. 

Edited November 13, 2021 by Fearless_Bum

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, RMQualtrough said:

Doesn't matter, duality is experienced by creatures without language. Humans aren't the only living things seeing duality.

Any experience is duality. A creature eats food, it doesn't eat itself, there's cognition of self and other. This applies to all living things even plants where their "cognition" is alien to us.

The conceptualization of form (or void) is dualistic. This is called relative truth. The direct experience of form is non-dual, just like the direct experience of void is non-dual, because they're both direct experience, both One. This is called Absolute Truth. 

The direct experience of "a create eating food" is one process, not two. There is really no such thing as "a creature eating food" in direct experience. There is just direct experience. If you want to invoke concepts like cognition or sensory experience, then that is also in the relative realm, not direct experience.

[Fearless_Bum]

6 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

The direct experience of "a create eating food" is one process, not two. There is really no such thing as "a creature eating food" in direct experience. There is just direct experience. If you want to invoke concepts like cognition or sensory experience, then that is also in the relative realm, not direct experience.

@Carl-Richard I would agree, another important thing to note is the assumption that an animal even knows itself. As in, the animal knows itself as a living being, what if there's nothing there?

Humans have the self-consciousness mechanism which gives the convincing appearance that I know I exist, animals don't have it. 

Although to be fair, it's been shown that elephants may actually have this to a lesser degree. Their memory is really good, memory and ego go hand in hand.

[Galyna]

4 hours ago, RMQualtrough said:

I don't think language is the cause of duality, nonverbal animals also experience it

"Animals" are a part of "your" first order reality (pristine perception) and "you" (or call it "your mind", (both statements are wrong)) automatically assign meaning to it, calling perception "an animal", second order reality. Are they separate from you? 

4 hours ago, RMQualtrough said:

nonverbal animals also experience it

by which means do you know this? have you ever had a direct experience of it?

[Inception]

What’s the difference between being asleep and awake?

When does one know that one is awake and no longer asleep?

Who is to say that you’re asleep and not awake?

Who is to say that you’re awake and not asleep?

 Am I asleep or awake? How can you tell?

 Are you asleep or awake? How can I tell?

[Carl-Richard]

34 minutes ago, Fearless_Bum said:

I would agree, another important thing to note is the assumption that an animal even knows itself. As in, the animal knows itself as a living being, what if there's nothing there?

Humans have the self-consciousness mechanism which gives the convincing appearance that I know I exist, animals don't have it.

Although to be fair, it's been shown that elephants may actually have this to a lesser degree. Their memory is really good, memory and ego go hand in hand.

Then the elephant uses cognition (thought) to form the concept (duality) of "self and other". But that doesn't mean direct experience isn't non-dual. Cognition and conceptualization happens at various levels (not just human thought). Humans are just particularly good at it so we forget the oneness of direct experience.

This model gives a nice overview over the range of complexity of cognition/conceptualization/behavior:

 

[RMQualtrough]

47 minutes ago, Galyna said:

"Animals" are a part of "your" first order reality (pristine perception) and "you" (or call it "your mind", (both statements are wrong)) automatically assign meaning to it, calling perception "an animal", second order reality. Are they separate from you? 

by which means do you know this? have you ever had a direct experience of it?

No but you can observe them. I myself experience it right now. All experience is something appearing to nothing. Infinity alone, could not be experienced.

Imagine a dream, if you dream of a beach, do you see that the very moment you see any part of the beach you're located somewhere inside ofthat beach scene? You couldn't experience the beach dream if you didn't appear to be somewhere in it. Which is dual. That is right now.

[VeganAwake]

Nonduality is not about attepting to metaphorically smash everything together into some kind of imagined non-dual soup within a thought process.

For example a race car in a japanese auto factory is never going to appear the same as your grandmother's rocking chair on the front porch.... there IS apparent separation in that sense.

Nonduality is the recognition that the separate sense of self within the body("you") or any body for that matter("them") was never real to begin with. 

It's the END of the experience of being a separate individual that needs to find something.

OR

It's the END of seeking because it's clearly recognized that the very one seeking is just an illusion of self.

AND simultaneously Nonduality IS ALSO the experience of being a separate individual because there is no real separate experiencer for that experience to be separate for.... there's NO WAY to get outside of EVERYTHING to point back at it.

No real individual = No real separation 

Not two = THIS exactly as it appears

"The separation never occurred"

- A Course in Miracles

It appears or seems hidden by already being the case.

The phrase "Non-dual awareness" is not used because that would suggest that there is "someone" who could become aware that there isn't any separation.

Nobody becomes aware, nobody becomes awake, nobody becomes liberated.... and yes that seems like a big let down for the "sense of self" that so desperately wants to wake-up.... totally get it!

But they're already isn't a separate individual which is exactly what the word Awakening is pointing out.

❤ 

 

 

 

[Terell Kirby]

18 minutes ago, VeganAwake said:

Nobody becomes aware, nobody becomes awake, nobody becomes liberated....

God does, silly…

And you are God.

Become aware of this life you are imagining and you’ll be all set .

Edited November 13, 2021 by Terell Kirby

[VeganAwake]

2 hours ago, Terell Kirby said:

God does, silly…

And you are God.

Become aware of this life you are imagining and you’ll be all set .

Do "you" think my dog bailey is also God?

I don't think he really thinks about that stuff but nevertheless he seems pretty happy or all set as you put it.

 

 

 

 

[BipolarGrowth]

32 minutes ago, Fearless_Bum said:

@BipolarGrowth I would disagree, there is only what is right now this very moment  nothing else. 

The sun is bright, I don't see the moon at all, I don't even know that the moon exists. 

If you experience only what is right now without believing the memories of what was back then, then there would be 0 distinctions. 

Feel your body sensations right now without memories arising or believing them, there would only be what is and nothing else. 

All dualities are projections of thought, there is nothing here in the present. 

The energy which language is made of is pure wholeness manifesting as the appearance of two, it appears as two but it is impossible for two to actually exist. 

To be clear, when I mentioned instantaneous response, that's really a finite phrase and it's hard to convey the real thing. There isn't even a response, infinite intelligence is so amazing that there's no response at all to anything. 

Thought creates the belief/projection that there is a response. 

Thought identifies as a person, and the person then invents the word response in order to take credit and say they responded to something. 

There is a key difference between 0 distinctions on the level of thought, language, or other symbolic overlay vs. 0 distinctions in perception. I am referring to 0 distinctions in perception. All experience relies on distinctions in perception. 
 

When there are no distinctions at all you reach cessation. There is no “what is.” 
 

You can have no thought, no person, no word response and all of what you’re pointing to so far and there still be perceptual distinctions.
 

Perceptual distinctions can still occur at the level in which no functioning of the mind, human organism (which doesn’t even exist in this state), etc. is even possible. If you think you’re having 0 distinctions while you can drink a cup of coffee, this is infinitely more distinction than what I’m talking about which was still experiential. Just for clarification, this paragraph is not referring to cessation.