LastThursday

@Aakash nah man I don't believe you, you can't give up. It's everyone's personal gift. Just keep poking and proding until you have exhausted all logic and common sense and then keep going.

There's boiled eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, omelette, maybe even meringue. Each one a very different experience, but it's all egg. There's nothing to do. Being is everywhere and everything, and you.

@Aakash I believe you are not disagreeing with me. You could easily just as well say that your belief in absolute self deception, is itself a self deception; ad infinitum. You don't even know if you are being deceived by your awareness - unfortunately, it's all you have. Self referencing logic explains nothing.

@Aakash you're preaching to the converted and I'm in total agreement with you. Except for the part where I take my knowledge as a belief as opposed to a certainty. But there's nothing wrong with belief, where would god be without it? Don't you after all believe you exist? I re-iterate: A belief is just a part of the present moment which is stable and persists.

@Aakash you say "identify", I say "belief". You believe in a future where you could be absolute infinity actualised. It's just a belief. The basis of your belief is an extrapolation based on another belief that your awareness is expanding and will continue doing so, until your reach absolute infinity. Please tell me that you're currently experiencing absolute infinity and you're no longer human. I may not believe you. But I will at least give you the benefit of the doubt.

The present moment is a fine balance between stability and chaos. You only think you have a future, because you believe the stable aspects of the present moment will persist. The future is just a belief, nothing more. A belief is just a part of the present moment which is stable and persists.

Offence is in the eye of the beholder. But don't go out of your way to offend, it's not nice. And if you offend by accident, then surely just apologise? Even an Enlightened one can have manners. Tread lightly in the world, don't blunder heavy footed through it.

You could also avoid a linear story, by saying that (our) consciousness dissolves into infinity at the point of death; it becomes everything and omniscient until it spontaneously chooses not to be. That is only an illusion though, because (our) consciousness is already just a compartmentalised infinity. There's no difference really, you are both alive and dead.

Excellent! The exact same thing is happening in normal waking life. The mind is constantly "coming back" from the void, with an arising awareness that "something was known". That sensation is of course consciousness/awareness itself. But the paradox is that the sensation is always retroactive. It's never now.

Paradoxically, there is a part that likes to be flumoxed, there's a part that says 'whatever dude', and another that actually understands it.

@Shadowraix yeah. We wave this conciousness word around as if we all know what it means and we agree on it. I get what you say: my argument is being preached to the converted. But really I'm just trying to put some weight on the paradigm scales, to even them up a bit. I'm going to pull out the old trope however. I hope you don't roll your eyes: 'What is the thing that finds a very big distinction in the word consciousness?' And does it come from your body? Or is it separate from it? Hahahahaha....

God feels lonely. And god feels all the other feelings. And god feels everything at once.

@mandyjw Nice video. Sitting by the loom of the present moment, god weaves the story of its creation. Would you say that Enlightenment is a new story, or just the shedding of old stories? Or is Enlightenment itself just a story, in hindsight?

There is an assumption that consciousness is somehow produced by the body, because normal 'baseline' consciousness seems to be dragged around by the body. No matter how we try, we just can't shake off this pesky body of ours. And even when we shed the body in night dreams, it still somehow manages to sneak back when we wake up. We are very confused. But consider: is the physical body trapped in consciousness? Or even better: is the whole universe trapped in consciousness? In this case to say that consciousness is 'produced' by anything starts to become absurd. And to speculate that there might be 'gaps' in consciousness also absurd; mostly because the gaps themselves would have to be contained 'within' consciousness (which indeed they are).

Isn't the root problem that you think you should be 'doing' something? Aren't you 'doing' plenty already? Or is the problem more about mastery? You wish to be a master at everything you 'do'? My advice is that mastery does not have a timetable and there's no end goal. You will need a lot of patience and practice on the long journey. And naturally you can master more than one thing at a time. For example I've been programming for over 35 years, have I mastered it? Yes and no, there's plenty still to go. I've also practised playing piano for a similar length of time, and I'm nowhere near mastery, but I'm good, yet plenty still to learn. Take it easy on yourself, don't make a decision now, just carry on doing what you love.

I think to know what a camera is taking pictures of, you need to understand deeply why there are cameras in the first place. The idea that springs to mind is that a camera turns impermanence into some sort of permanence. In other words it's a trick to allow us to keep re-experiencing a thing over an extended period of time. It's the embodiment of a tug of war between the ever-shapeshifting forms in the world, and the source of our completely unchanging stillness. How could the forms of the world ever create permanence? No, the permanence comes from elsewhere. So looking at a photograph is to look into the stillness of the void - not into a reality that it supposedly captured. The reality is inks on a paper or pixels on a screen.

@seeking_brilliance I like what you say, but I'm being perhaps differently radical than you. I'm saying that you have an experience of a yesterday having happened, but in fact it didn't happen at all. I'm using "yesterday" figuratively. You came into existence just now.

My personal favourite: yesterday never happened.

Notice that when you're thinking in words (subvocalising) , you have a small amount of tension in your jaw, tongue and throat. Relax the jaw, tongue and throat and it will be harder to subvocalize. When you're walking in the street, pay attention to your peripheral vision. For example, look straight ahead as you walk, but pay attention to any trees or cars or people that go by you (don't look directly at them). If you try this frequently, you'll notice that your vision expands - and it will put you into a light trance. Relax any tension in your body any time you notice it (shoulders, chest, face and so on). These techniques are designed to reduce self talk and enable you to be more mindful.

What is this "book" thing you speak of? @Schahin this is a very interesting question you raise. I think some people may think that the idea of seeing a black cat as having a particular meaning is ridiculous. You can lead life perfectly well without putting meaning into black cats. It's just a cat, and it's black. But I wouldn't dismiss it entirely. The world is awash with symbolism. From advertising to news, language, rational thought, science, mathematics and so on. Human beings are defined by the symbols they use and meanings they attach to them, they will even die for them. To recognise or be aware of anything at all in the world, it needs to be turned into a symbolic representation by you. The representation is then slotted into a web of interlinked symbols, which allows you to attach "meaning" and "context" to the symbol. A symbol is ALWAYS a simplification and generalisation of part of reality. This is why symbolic thinking (e.g. science), can never equate to reality. It is possible to experience reality in a non-symbolic way (i.e. non-duality), but realisation of that is difficult to say the least. I do think that there are subtle undertones to the way symbols pop-up in day to day life. People talk about synchronicities and Law of Attraction (forced synchronicity). After all, what exactly is generating all the symbols in the first place? The answer is: the same thing that is generating reality.

Discovery and exploration, for the sake of it, nothing else. If I become an enlightened god living in a dream in the process, then that's just a bonus.

@SerpaeTetra expand into all corners of yourself, even the dark ones, it's the only way to be light and at one with yourself. And... don't judge me.

I feel like this about 9 to 5 in the office. I know which hell I'd prefer. A giant stupid society or a giant stupid mind?

@xthebentnecklady you are quite right - you're definitely perceiving something. But perception can't be reality (see optical illusions). It's just a matter of viewpoint. Maybe light is falling onto your retinas from distant stars. Maybe you're staring into the mind of God. Maybe you're God staring at itself. The thing is, either reality is solid and unbreakable, or it's pure imagination. It's a binary choice, there's no middle ground. It can't be mostly solid, but a little bit imagination. Once you start having any doubt whatsoever, there's only one conclusion: it's all pure imagination. Next time you are away from your parents (maybe now), think about what they're doing right now. Is that really what they're doing? Or is it your imagination? Don't they just become a figment of your imagination when they're not there?

Until you've actually slapped Leo in the face, its not real. Maybe Leo's computer generated, who knows? 99% of what you call 'reality' is in your mind - it's all ideas, concepts, potentialities, inferences, what ifs, circular reasoning, rationalisation, extrapolation, guesswork, mind reading, speculation, filling the blanks and so on. Just look at some optical illusions. Change blindness is a good one. The real question is how do you know the difference between 'reality' and your 'mind'? Where does one begin and the other end?