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Death will be exactly like your experience before birth. There was not even a perceiver to perceive nothingness. At first glance, this can seem scary. Until you realize that if nothing can be known on either side, the only thing that can be known is in-between. So the in-between is all that can be known - all that can exist. In other words, you must exist, because it's impossible to know non-existence.

@Natasha Tori Maru @theleelajoker Thank you for taking the time and your thoughtful replies. I appreciate it. My case is a bit unusual. I'm no longer a spiritual seeker. I dropped the search because I saw what it offered and wasn't very interested. For a long time, I thought it was a matter of me just not putting in the work. Then, I figured out the path itself is not compatible with how life wants to express through me. Curiosity + construction + coherence-seeking. That's my engine. It doesn't matter if it's me or God acting these things out. It just matters that they are acted out. From my perspective, whether I experience inner peace or not is secondary to this expression. I think life is expressing through you as surrender and peace, and through me as exploration and creation. I don't experience mine as ego - just a different way of participating. I don't treat one as higher than the other. If I wanted to optimize for inner peace, I agree that your orientation would be better for that. It's possible I just never progressed far enough on the spiritual path and just said fuck it, I quit. But it's also possible the spiritual path can rightly be rejected. I agree that a higher intelligence is animating all of life. That recognition persists as a hum in the background, but I choose to not amplify it by surrendering my faculties, as I've done that before, to the detriment of what I am. @Natasha Tori Maru Thanks for the additional clarifications and your contemplative effort. Means a lot.

Lol, yeah. This error is very common actually. It's what happens when your model of humans doesn't properly account for demographics.

Yes, it’s a transition. You always wake up into a story. I once had a dream where I was being chased and I jumped off a cliff into water, but it was so high there was no way I was going to survive, so instead of landing in water, I landed in pure blackness. While I was there, I thought there was no way out but then I realized the dream wasn’t over if I didn’t want it to be. So I turned the emptiness into water and rose out of it. “What was it like before I was born?” and “What will it be like when I die?” are the same question. Also, if you have experience with anesthesia, that’s helpful.

You mean something like this: This seems like the "flood with zone with shit" strategy.

😂😂😂 This is brilliant!

This is hilarious. DOJ fucked up big time and released "redacted" files but the redactions were just black rectangle shapes placed on top of the words in Adobe Acrobat. They didn't actually delete the text, so you can just highlight it all and copy/paste to see the redactions. 😂😂😂 Jesus Christ, the fucking incompetence. Not sure how many files are like that but this is some funny shit, nonetheless.

@Natasha Tori Maru I've had a taste of that state as well, but one thing I noticed was missing in that state was thinking. Thinking was replaced by perception of experience and action. My actions were prompted by the environment and pre-existing behavior patterns, no thinking involved. But I don't see how this state could persist in a situation where one has to generate new strategies and actions over long timeframes where you're trying to oppose reality to create something new. Maybe it could persist in environments where you're already established and competent, but what happens in an environment where things actively resist you over long periods of time, where failure and friction persists? A few questions: In such a state, is it possible to have "values" or a "vision"? If there's no thinker, where are the values and vision located? Surely inside a self structure? And a really interesting question: Is it possible to think without activating the self structure? What if thinking itself requires a self structure? I intuit that more often than not, it does. You can see a tree without modeling yourself in relation to it, but the moment you think "what should I do about this tree" - you're back, because thought positions things in relation to each other, including you in relation to possibilities. I'm not sure it's possible to impose our will onto reality without thinking and activating the self structure. My main idea is: the non-dual state is incompatible with strategic thinking. I'm not saying you can operate from both, just that you can't operate from both at the same time, and you have to choose one or the other based on goals and circumstances. From my experience, when thinking turns on, the self turns on. Self just comes with the territory. If I care about imposing my will onto reality, I need thought, and therefore, self. I want to shape reality, not to experience it with no friction. I accept friction as the cost of imposing my will. No self, no long-term goals. That's a high price to pay for equanimity. lol Just some exploratory thoughts.

Identity is speaking from a comfortable perch. As a human, if you ignore what serves you for a decade, your life will fall apart.

Neutralized by Bf3.

Holy shit, that line is badass. lol. My opponent didn't find Kf3. Here's how it went: I'm not used to playing in the 1600s, so I felt pretty good about myself, lol. I notice I always get a rating boosts on the weekends, but IDK how in the hell I jumped 100 points. Probably a fluke.

Close. But Re6 allows Bh5. Still a winning position but not forced. There's a slightly better line, although still not forced if white plays perfectly.

interesting position I was in earlier. How does black win?

Deep spirituality is destabilizing for most people. Spirituality is for the extraordinarily curious and/or escape-seeker. It's destabilizing even for these people, but identity structures and cognitive addictions allow for persistance. Maybe you could say light spirituality is beneficial for most.