Leo Ultimate Question

[Leo Gura]

13 hours ago, JoeVolcano said:

No self also means no god.

Lol.

Careful not to make a fool of yourself

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

@Breakingthewall

https://o-meditation.com/2009/10/16/from-the-unitive-state-to-no-self-bernadette-roberts/

Don't mistake that for God-Realization.

None of that is God-Realization.

You are God.

There is no such thing as unconsciousness. You are imagining it. You are also dreaming no-self. You are even dreaming enlightenment.

[AtheisticNonduality]

There's a distinction between self and Self. An experience of no-self is when you stop identifying with your human body and mind and see it as a single perspective within the dream, see it as just another system of images and objects. An experience of Self is identifying with the Emptiness. An experience of God is direct realization of the Infinity of it.

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

An experience of Self is identifying with the Emptiness.

No.

Self makes no distinction between form and formlessness. It's all SELF.

There is nothing but SELF.

Notions of emptiness and formlessness are ironically holding you back from fully realizing SELF.

[AtheisticNonduality]

52 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

@AtheisticNonduality Let the grown ups talk.

Go back to your Eckhart Tolle.  Also there's this cute place called "Actuality of Being" you might enjoy more than this one.

[AtheisticNonduality]

53 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

No.

Self makes no distinction between form and formlessness. It's all SELF.

There is nothing but SELF.

Notions of emptiness and formlessness are ironically holding you back from fully realizing SELF.

I'm conscious that form and formlessness are the same, but I have the sense that formlessness is "larger" because space can't confine it.

The Emptiness is in my field of experience, yet there's also Emptiness outside the border of vision.

If Emptiness has the entire realm of space and time and conception and thoughts plus more, it seems more profound than form (and this was not logically deduced; it's something I actually have access to; my senses/experience are like an island in an ocean of Emptiness or a Void).

I can't imagine a Self without Emptiness holding all of reality, including form, together.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

I'm conscious that form and formlessness are the same

No you aren't.

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

but I have the sense that formlessness is "larger" because space can't confine it.

Space doesn't exist. You're imagining it.

Larger also doesn't hold because it's a relative notion.

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The Emptiness is in my field of experience, yet there's also Emptiness outside the border of vision.

There is no border nor outside to your consciousness.

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If Emptiness has the entire realm of space and time and conception and thoughts plus more, it seems more profound than form

This is not full awakening. Full awakening is so one that it cannot see any difference between from and emptiness.

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I can't imagine a Self without Emptiness holding all of reality, including form, together.

You are imagining emptiness without form right now.

[AtheisticNonduality]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

No you aren't.

Really? If I see forms and formlessness occupying the same region of reality, Emptiness permeating form, that's consciousness that I have. If I can literally ascertain with my consciousness that formlessness IS form, with no separation, that is direct knowledge.

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Space doesn't exist. You're imagining it.

There is an obvious problem with language here. You can't simultaneously say "space doesn't exist because it's imagined" and "space exists because you imagined it exists" without resorting to paradox, and it seems the paradox isn't an actual structure of reality but just an interpretive linguistic issue based on reconciling infinite with finite or formless with form.

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There is no border nor outside to your consciousness.

My lowercase consciousness though definitely has contours, shape, definition, contrast. With my visual field specifically, there are colors, and then when you reach the edge there aren't any colors and only Emptiness, which is not intellectualized to be there but IS LITERALLY RIGHT THERE.

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This is not full awakening. Full awakening is so one that it cannot see any difference between form and emptiness.

The issue is that a single limited form can only be in one location at one time, but Emptiness can be at all locations and all times and outside them. An object can't be outside of itself unless it stops being an object or stops "imagining" that it's an object, and the color red can't be the color blue in itself because that would be absurd. They need some greater principle that goes beyond the finite that unites them, and that's what I mean by Self.

[Leo Gura]

23 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Really? If I see forms and formlessness occupying the same region of reality, Emptiness permeating form, that's consciousness that I have. If I can literally ascertain with my consciousness that formlessness IS form, with no separation, that is direct knowledge.

And yet you still create subtle dualities with your thinking that keeps you from the full realization of Oneness.

23 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

There is an obvious problem with language here. You can't simultaneously say "space doesn't exist because it's imagined" and "space exists because you imagined it exists" without resorting to paradox, and it seems the paradox isn't an actual structure of reality but just an interpretive linguistic issue based on reconciling infinite with finite or formless with form.

There is actually an awakening you can have that space does not exist -- it's a conceptual projection of your mind.

For example, right now I'm sitting in my room typing on a laptop, and I'm conscious that space isn't real.

23 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

My lowercase consciousness though definitely has contours, shape, definition, contrast. With my visual field specifically, there are colors, and then when you reach the edge there aren't any colors and only Emptiness, which is not intellectualized to be there but IS LITERALLY RIGHT THERE.

I would suggest your visual field has no edge.

23 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

The issue is that a single limited form can only be in one location at one time, but Emptiness can be at all locations and all times and outside them.

See, in this way of thinking you create duality between form and emptiness.

At the highest levels of awakening this duality dissolves away as everything becomes one. You should not be able to separate form and emptiness.

[AtheisticNonduality]

22 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

And yet you still create subtle dualities with your thinking that keeps you from the full realization of Oneness.

The main issue is that I can't see a Self without Emptiness, like how I can't see a human without a human body. Yes, the human may have other features besides its body (like how its behavior affects other people or how its interior mind behaves when made conscious), but the defining feature of identification is the body.

Even if there's no boundary between the mind and the body and there's no boundary between all Form and the Emptiness, the body of the Self is Emptiness because Emptiness being a permeation of everything and a formlessness not limited to any single form helps to identify the Oneness of things.

And yet I can understand the equation Emptiness = Form, because that which is outside of my visual field is also inside. But the island-ocean analogy still applies, because I am not in relative terms the one possible form that dominates all existence since there's a whole Void outside.

31 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

See, in this way of thinking you create duality between form and emptiness.

At the highest levels of awakening this duality dissolves away as everything becomes one. You should not be able to separate form and emptiness.

A major part of the work here is creating/discovering trails people will take up on the path upward. It seems the Void is something people will have to discover.

[RMQualtrough]

20 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

The main issue is that I can't see a Self without Emptiness, like how I can't see a human without a human body. Yes, the human may have other features besides its body (like how its behavior affects other people or how its interior mind behaves when made conscious), but the defining feature of identification is the body.

Even if there's no boundary between the mind and the body and there's no boundary between all Form and the Emptiness, the body of the Self is Emptiness because Emptiness being a permeation of everything and a formlessness not limited to any single form helps to identify the Oneness of things.

And yet I can understand the equation Emptiness = Form, because that which is outside of my visual field is also inside. But the island-ocean analogy still applies, because I am not in relative terms the one possible form that dominates all existence since there's a whole Void outside.

A major part of the work here is creating/discovering trails people will take up on the path upward. It seems the Void is something people will have to discover.

Nondual terminology is trash.

There's something common to both forms and the formlessness. They exist. You are, literally, existence itself. And inanimate objects are, literally, existence itself... Which is of course the underbelly to any sort of relativity you or others discuss, that existence IS, and everything that IS, is necessarily existence itself and nothing else.

I don't understand why it is phrased in all sorts of bizarre ways, when right there is an obvious fact that everyone knows.

Edited July 10, 2022 by RMQualtrough

[AtheisticNonduality]

30 minutes ago, RMQualtrough said:

I don't understand why it is phrased in all sorts of bizarre ways, when right there is an obvious fact that everyone knows.

Because we're not discussing obvious facts everybody knows?