Awakening? | More conscious than before, that's for sure!

[Keryo Koffa]

I used to believe in "Non-Duality" a few hours ago, but that specific interpretation I held onto feels ever more delusional the more I self-reflect. I thought I had to relinquish all desires and maybe even phase out of existence. But I wondered what I would do if I were egoless. And I thought "nothing", because there'd be no need for anything. But how do I draw the difference between nothing and something, isn't it equally arbitrary. This whole world has form and direction, desires arise, they are a reflection of this homeostatic body's survival evolution. The feed of information appears in consciousness as desire, bodily needs, safety desires, comfort, belonging, self-esteem, actualization, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. All of it is arbitrary in the grand scheme of the universe and localized to this body, which I seem to be in control over.

It is reality and exists regardless of my interpretation, my present experience is the only knowable reality. But practicality exists, I can recognize patterns and navigate the experience, it's just that nothing is fundamental, it's always interpretation. It's right until proven wrong, the mind is a map and not the territory. Only qualia is "real". Even that sentence doesn't seem right, because everything is equally real and unreal. But in a pragmatic sense, I create a duality between perception and interpretation, map and reality. The map isn't the same as reality but it is a subset within it, a contrast to actuality, but that's a duality, they're both reality, make of the same stuff, but I distinguish them as distinct out of an intent for navigation, sense making and understanding. All things, that the form I appear to be in control of is defined by, I define it into existence by these traits. I define into existence all of existence, every "thing". There is only perception, I perceive but I am also perception and I am the undivided being that splits into that duality. A "be-ing" rather than a being.

Transience is proven by change, though change itself might not exist as we know it. Time and space, change itself is really just a perspective, a way to "navigate qualia". I can theorize an infinite fractal of qualia, each part mirroring every other, to zoom into it might be to move in that space in a specific manner and observe the perspective of entropy and generate the framework for space-time and sensual perception. I am not aware of these mechanics, they are interpretation, equally arbitrary as everything else, purely based on instinctual observation and perspectival intuition. Which themselves are all words, which I use to describe other words, to make sense. But reality already makes sense, reality is sense, reality is everything, every contradiction, every duality and unity. Reality does not appear to change based on my perceptions, but my perspective is changed by experience of reality. And even that might not be true, my perception creates reality, my mood changes my focus, psychedelics change the qualia I perceive.

Reality is undefinable, for no subset can encompass a superset, or can it? Reality is every pointer and its opposite simultaneously, it integrates all perspectives, and all opposite perspectives and all non-perspectives and absolutely everything that we are and aren't aware of. Is there only awareness, or is awareness all that awareness can be aware of? Awareness can only ever know itself in the now. But awareness changes form, so that intuits that there is more. What, I don't know. How? I don't know. I can only know it by being it. I can retain memory, though its nature is projection. Regardless of all the thinking, my hand feels physical but I do not know its nature, or do I? Nature is something I invent. It is only and ever itself, a hand a concept and that which I point to that which I point to.

I can distinguish many layers of awakening up until the one I am in now. It is becoming ever more aware of existence and leaving ever more lenses and the need for lenses behind and also the desire that spawns the need and then the reason for the desire and then realizing all of it was made of the same stuff as undivided reality, which I cannot with my current vision perceive as such. My eyes focus on "objects" with bias, easily recognizable forms enter awareness and my intuitive understanding tells me their purpose.

But the way I understand Non-Duality in this consciousness-configuration is that it's not about "rejecting ego" but about "accepting everything". And on a healthy practical level, to free oneself of programming and fear and instead act on reason, awareness, self-reflection and taking ever more responsibility for existence. To be one's most aspired version, but in a way that does not dismiss the present for the future, but to be in the present that which one sees as the best way to be. To take care of one's desires, dismiss them when adequate, follow them when adequate, question them always, but also recognize the inherent nature of diminishing returns and the arbitrary nature of the whole fabric of reality on which everything builds.

[Keryo Koffa]

I intuit why we talk about nothingness over everythingness. Dualities are arbitrary and infinite. To hold one side of a duality over the other is a bias. But to be attached a duality that encompasses both sides itself is also bias. To think is bias, to exist is bias, to appreciate is bias, to feel is bias. Everything is bias. One can overcome bias by either integrating all biases or letting go of them. But there as infinite biases, infinite lenses, that through their own unique existence infinitize infinity infinitely on top of the infinity that led one towards them. One will never dissolve bias through more bias because there is too much bias for a finite mind to remember.

On the other hand, to let go of bias completely is to be. But the most radical version of it is not to be, for any perception is distinction is bias. To live is bias, to breathe is bias, to die is bias, to not be biased is bias. Mindfulness is bias, mindlessness is bias. The only way out of bias is less bias, but there is bias behind a desired level of biasness and the memory that led one there and keeps that state of mind.

There is no escape, but there is surrender. Awareness is ego, there is no ego-death in our lifetime as in the extinguishing of all bias. But if one sees ego-death as ego-mindfulness and a conscious perspective to be as dynamic as possible through continuous ego-deconstruction and then one rebuilds oneself from nothingness of mind through our inherent body awareness and reality reinterpretation from a higher vantage point, to give up the ego and build one anew, then ego-death makes perfect sense. In that case, ego is personal attachment, and by giving it up, one is reborn into oneself. One still carries memories of the past-ego, but they are as arbitrary as the rest of existence and only reference points to be used and navigated like one's "physical environment", without the same level of attachment as identifying with it.

So then ego-death is really ego-rebirth, the conscious letting to of one's projected identity.