LastThursday

@Stakres no doubt there's materialistic limits and rules. Do you think beliefs have more control of you than your biology?

Who or what determines it?

@Jahmaine then time travel would be possible, and fate would be a thing, the history of the universe would be set in stone. Given the right magic or technology, you would be able to re-live your childhood because it is always "there", or you could experience what happens after your death in the blink of an eye.

@dyslexicFcuk I appreciate your vigour. This forum is a bit like real life. You have a whole range of folks at many different levels and with different backgrounds and so on. It has its own flavour and way of speaking as any community does. You'll find it difficult to shift the centre gravity if that's your aim. The forum does have a collective ego! I also think you've slightly misunderstood the forum. I for one am not interested in converting the masses to mysticism and spirituality. More I'm just here for self discovery and advancement, I reckon a lot of others are the same. Anyway, do what anyone in real life does, either ignore the bullshit (I do) or call it out (as you've done) or better just acknowledge to yourself you don't understand it and move on. Humility goes a long a way as does rational discourse. Peace be upon you.

Apportioning blame for suffering to God is analogous to the characters in a film blaming the screen for their misfortunes. There is a difference between the content and the medium which conveys it. The medium in our cases is consciousness (a.k.a. God). Consciousness is resolutely neutral, in fact it is outside all suffering and it is meta to its content. In my opinion to be enlightened is to be at one with the meta-nature of consciousness and hence above all suffering, but also above all ecstasy. In this context to say that being enlightened is this or that experience is to miss the point or more accurately to be still caught up in the content of consciousness. The meta-nature of consciousness is without description or attributes, but it is directly knowable. The analogy with film characters is that the characters can get to understand their screen. Consciousness can know itself - that is its nature. But it is also powerful enough to indulge itself and to get caught up in its own content. How does the content then differ from the medium? This is like the difference between the knot and the string that makes it. Because consciousness is reflective or recursive (it knows itself) it can tie a knot in itself – like a string that is able to tie itself into a knot. Why is suffering in the content and not the medium? The first clue is the transitory nature of suffering. Suffering has a characteristic ebb and flow and so suffering is by nature impermanent. Any experience which is transitory must be unreal or imaginary because it happens on the knife-edge of the present moment. No sooner has it happened than it becomes “lost” to us again. In other words the entire content of consciousness is transitory and ephemeral – it is all “appearances” never again to be repeated in exactly the same way – yesterday’s suffering is not today’s suffering. Suffering is an appearance like a knot in consciousness. The meta-nature of consciousness is on the other hand not impermanent, because it has no attributes to change. Because it has no attributes it is indifferent to suffering and not the cause of it. The screen of the film does not care about the suffering of the characters playing out on it. God does not directly cause suffering or cause bliss.

@Jed Vassallo agreed. If there is no Time, then we are everything at once, all characters.

@Jed Vassallo we are all storytellers and Time makes for a good story.

How about @Schahin crystallised out of god/nothingness/infinity? The medium the crystal grows in is consciousness. The nature of consciousness is to get more twisty and knotty and self referential as it becomes more and more aware of itself - the crystal expands and gains more and more structure. But the power of consciousness is unlimited and it can disolve that crystal whenever it wants to and poof! You're gone. God carries on.

Being tucked into my pram (it felt warm) and looking up at my mother blue sky behind her. Definitely before I could walk I guess, so, less than two years old?

@Nash to get to the bottom of it, you have to understand what "exists" means. There's two kinds of "exists". One is the direct experience of hearing a tree fall, right now. The other is imagining hearing a tree fall in some forest somewhere. One is a certainty the other a possibility. Don't underestimate how confused people are between the two types of existence. Naturally, if you push it a lot further there is no difference between the two types of existence: they both occur in consciousness. In the end one is not more real than the other. Even a concrete direct experience is just imagination - albeit one that can kill you (when a tree falls on you).

Whether becoming someone takes ten years or five minutes doesn't matter - once you are there it's passed. Nothing is ever wasted in getting there, not even all the mistakes and wrong choices. The future unfolds at its own pace and in its own special way. Just do or be whatever you want to be right now. It's all you have. But do it with your eyes wide open and fully consciously - don't spoil it with whatifs. Well, that's my humble opinion anyway.

Direct experience is the only thing we have. But would you say direct experience is permanent or impermanent? If it is impermanent is it true?

"What Might Maybe "Mindfuck" Leo If It Were Actually True?" That Leo actually exists?

There are many ways to see thought as @Serotoninluv says. The everyday notion is thought is rooted in some sort of private experience that other people can't access - in other words reality out there is shared and public, but thoughts are not shared and are private. If you take the most expansive version of thought though, then the entire subjective experience itself is just thought. If you give up on the idea of there being a delineation between the private domain of thought and the public domain of reality (you collapse the duality), then thought ends up being the same thing as reality out there. A simple exercise to try is to purposefully think about moving your arm. Say to yourself "Arm. Move!" and then wait for your arm to move. Try and notice the exact moment you move your arm. When did the thought become an action? Did the thought cease once the arm moved? Notice how hard it is to pin down the moment thought becomes reality out there. The more you explore it, the more you realise there really is no boundary between the two. It may seem absurd that reality is just thoughts. Reality seems to happen with or without our input, but thoughts are somehow under our control and have deep relevance to us only. But the illusion is broken just by asking where do thoughts come from? If you examine it closely, they come from nowhere. Thoughts just "arise" spontaneously and just as quickly disappear. If you try and force a thought, then the thought about "forcing a thought" arose spontaneously from nothing. Thoughts are not "controlled" by you at all. One way to view it, is to think of consciousness as a continuum between ephemeral intangible thoughts and solid tangible reality. Reality and thought are not different in kind, just different in quality. Consciousness is just like a fluid that can observe itself, and its self-act of observation brings itself into being. Thought and reality is just the constant movement of that fluid.

You're making an assumption that your consciousness is 'located' in your body - and by using mental gymnastics you're assuming that it could be 'located' in a different body given the right circumstances. But it's the other way around. Your body and and all the other bodies are 'located' within consciousness.

One purpose of judgements is to hold the ego together. It's one of the ego's survival mechanisms. In order for the ego to survive it has to pit itself against everything else external to it. One way it does this is by constantly comparing itself with other egos in the form of judgements. The ego sets up a false battle that it always wins. But it's literally life and death for the ego. For every comparison there's usually an unspoken counterpoint to the judgement. Here's a few I made up: "I don't eat that sort of food, it's digusting." The unspoken part of the comparison being: "The food I eat is the best sort of food, and so I'm virtuous." "I would never give money to a beggar, they should just find a job." The other side might be: "I have a job because I'm hard working and motivated. I would never let myself be degraded by begging." And so on. For the ego to lose a battle (when we ourselves are being judged), is a slow death.

It's good that you have the contrast between weekdays and weekends. It helps you learn what makes you motivated and gives you direction: having a routine. Without the weekend downtime, you wouldn't have realised that having a routine was beneficial to you. By the way, you also need downtime. Maybe you are not naturally a very regimented person, so at weekends you get your "freedom" back - enjoy it. Enjoy the contrast between the weekends and the weekdays. You could also use the weekends to work out why they make you feel bad. Why are you externally driven? Could you be internally driven? What would that mean? Do you need some external force to organise your time and your life? Some questions to go through.

I would say that's exactly right. Consciousness doesn't need an owner or observer - but it does have an inherent nature: consciousness is aware of itself. In that way it is able to manifest an ego. But strip away the illusory observer and you have Enlightenment. But whether you have stripped away the observer or not, consciousness is still aware of itself.

The mind is just an appearance like a red apple or the sound of a bell ringing. It's all occuring within consciousness. More accurately: consciousness forms itself into red apples, ringing bells and minds.

Chill bro don't worry about it. Having a mind is overrated. Embrace The Everpresent Now. Let the nothingness engulf you until you disappear.

Why don't you ask Him directly? Or at least ask your conception of Him. Then you will have your answer. God is whatever you are currently thinking god is. You cannot escape that. For as long as you use the word "God" you are in concept land. Maybe there's a way out? You could try and distil some sort of essence of "God" by cutting out anything extraneous. So God could be Awareness or Being or Existence. My point is, to even begin to answer your question you need to be very clear about what "God" is. And for "God" to be something you have to set up an equivalence relationship with a bunch of other things which are "Not God". Is God a supernatural male? So is God equivalent to some parts of reality, no parts of reality or all of reality? My personal favourite is the last one. In which case God is definitely not a "He" who "Feels".

@Derrida I'm totally with you. Don't believe other people's BS until you've validated it for yourself. Note I said "believe" not "dismiss". You shouldn't dismiss anything: it might just be true. There is a difference between the two. In fact you shouldn't believe your own BS either - but that's a lot harder to validate - maybe even impossible for some things. Even if you have validated something for yourself, you should still be ready to drop it if something better comes along. Lastly, be sceptical of your own scepticism!

It's funny how when you tug at a thread the whole fabric moves. I'd say do some deep contemplation about the causes of your addictions (as well as cutting off distractions regularly). Once you're satisfied that you've got to the root of each cause, actually do something proactive about it. Do small things at first and then when you're confident do bolder things. And watch your life change dramatically.

That your addictions are a product of your circumstances (I'm guessing here): Easy access to material that over stimulates your reward centres A possible lack of contact and opportunities to meet the opposite sex An under-stimulating hum-drum work/home environment you need release from Perhaps a lack of control you feel in your day to day life. In other words, the bigger picture of why you do what you do. Cutting off major distractions is definitely beneficial. But you'll have to do it constantly to fight against your circumstances.

Just an observation: Where does thought end and action begin? Could it be in the boundary between the two that our sense of control and free will lies? But could it also be that thought and action have the same source and are therefore related siblings, but one doesn't cause the other? In which case our free will and control must also spring from the original source (like a third sibling)?