Johnny5

@QandC I had a time where the visual world seemed to lose much of its depth and definition somehow, if that's what you mean? That's probably how it became secondary, come to think of it... What's actually going on there is the "mental overlay" thinning out. In other words, we assume that we're attending to the visual field, but usually we're actually attending to fleeting, barely noticable mental projections "in front of" the visual field, without even realizing it. In fact that's what directs your eyes. They don't move towards something in the visual field, but towards our own mental projections in front of it. In other words we tend to see only our own accumulated "knowledge" about things (i.e. the past) rather than the actual things themselves. And awakening will tend to involve a significant reduction in that. Does that sound anything like what you mean?

Not sure if I understand you correctly. To me the external senses are secondary, but maybe that's just me. I think vision may actually be the most difficult one. So much of our usual sense of reality is informed by it.

Not sure what you mean, could you rephrase?

Peeling the onion...

Love the irony in that statement... ?

Two masks, one for each head...?

Sounds like an object, though....

Relax bro

I was in a very similar place up to just a few weeks before you started this thread (but without the guilt or the entities). For now I'll just say use this golden opportunity to face your own mortality. Regardless of anything else, you'll never be in a better position to do so than you are now. Focus especially on the feeling part, turn toward and into all the fears and baggage that comes up in relation to this. Light them up like a supernova, dive headlong into worst case scenarios, etc. You have nothing to lose. Whatever, just use it to your advantage. Nobody cares what you did, and that's a good thing. You are the magnifier glass now, what are you going to burn... Much love,

If everything is imaginary, maybe it means that we simply love to imagine stuff.

Maybe decide not to decide. A.k.a. release the tiller and let the universe be your secretary. You can never decide what you really want anyway, you can only discover it.

? Thank you, yes that's the intention. In my opinion it's generally more helpful to unravel "wrong knowing" than to "explain how it is" (except insofar as such explanations may help someone do their own unraveling). Not only is "explaining how it is" rather impossible, but it's also prone to becoming just another belief system. Explanations need a frame of reference, and generally speaking ones existing frame of reference tends to only get in the way. Because that's where the obstacles reside. And that's why straight-up explanations are often misunderstood, or not understood at all. So to me "the path" is always subtractive, hence Via Negativa, Neti Neti, etc. Even if that's ultimately just another device. No one ever needs to wake up, but everyone could always do with fewer obstacles. Development clarity and insight are automatic in the absence of obstacles, they are a natural consequence of being alive in the absence of unnatural barriers. Just like you don't need to pull on grass to make it grow. So addressing obstacles is usually the crux of what I try to do, for myself as well as anyone I talk to about this. To quote Jed McKenna, the only construction required is that which facilitates demolition. Or at least, that's one way of framing the approach. Until everything turns out to have always been nondual... ? Therefore reality can't exist in the way that it seems to exist, yes. Foundationlessness would be another equivalence of duality, relativity, finiteness, etc. In short, strange-loopy. But that is part of the illusion, in truth the foundation that's always been hidden in plain sight is consciousness. In other words when you go looking for the foundation of reality, the only possible candidate turns out to be consciousness. And to go one further, it's not even a foundation because there is nothing else apart from consciousness. Which is why all duality can only ever be apparent, not true. Nonduality appearing as duality without actually being duality. Hence illusory. Consciousness pretending to be not consciousness. Some people like to say that nonduality is so flippin' nondual that it includes duality. I think that's a misleading word game, although it may help against overly exclusionary tendencies, so sure fine why not. "Real" is subject to interpretation or redefinition. It's often said that reality is both real and unreal. Personally I'm not a big fan of those kinds of word games, I don't see the value in them except perhaps as cute little tests of comprehension. Tests of your ability to do "nondual thinking", I suppose. And also because it's equally false to stick to one side. Real and unreal is just another duality/mental category. Mental categories are false in the sense that they purport to refer to something pre-existing outside of itself, when they actually don't. So basically they are lies, albeit useful lies. They are how you create past, future, other, and indeed self. They are like a thin layer of narrative draped over an underlying structure, like a secondary layer of apparent duality. Together with the fuel of emotional energy, they form the "gestalts" that make your reality (including especially yourself) seem convincingly solid and objective, and differentiated. That emotional energy is what's refered to as attachment, and where the real work of disillusionment is done. The result being undifferentiated (nondual) consciousness. Even though of course differentiation is also illusory and consciousness has actually always been nondual.

I'd settle for the headwear alone...

Except the material substrate doesn't disintegrate either, it just changes configuration/shape. "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." Same thing, really...

If you don't see any intelligence in the "motion of nature", then maybe make a list of events in your personal life that had an impact on how your life and your own development unfolded. Things like where you went to school, moving to a different towns, death of loved ones, breaking up or getting dumped, reading a particular book, finding a website or youtube video, significant conversations, etc. and most of all, how each thing affected you inwardly and how that changed things for you or led you to the next thing or pushed you into some decision, etc. Can you see how each thing on that list was necessary to make the next thing possible? Can you see how all of it contributed to get you exactly where you are right now? Who did that? Or is it all coincidence? Confirmation bias? Wishful thinking? Was society really designed by humans? Are ape societies designed by apes? What about ant colonies? What about the cells in your body? No intelligence? ?

Babies and most animals are still in what is called the "natural" state, or integrated state. That's pretty much SD stage Beige. That's not the same as enlightenment, but it's what you return to if and when you transition out of the "unnatural" ego-dominated paradigm of separation. Not an infant's Beige cognitive development, but an infant's state of integration with the larger energetic environment. Sometimes also refered to as an oceanic state. Except, whereas an infant or an animal doesn't recognize its own state, an integrated adult does. That's pretty much SD stage Turquoise. That's what makes development a spiral rather than a circle. And hence the "natural" in quotes. Because of course the whole spiral represents natural development. So that's where so-called shadow work comes in for example, and where the term integral comes from in this context. What they call integration is really just re-integration. Shadows are created in the ego-dominated paradigm, i.e. the segregated state. Babies generally aren't born with them, they accumulate mostly during childhood (which for most people extends way into physical adulthood, that's really the only thing that could be said to be "unnatural" about it).

What else would be "controlling" reality, if not reality....?

Can confirm.... Neediness is insatiable by its very nature. The only remedy to psychological dependence is psychological independence. That said, neediness may need to be met to a certain healthy level before it can be let go of. It is a natural part of childhood development, it's just not natural to remain stuck with it into adulthood the way so many people do. In other words the child inside needs to be loved first before it stops needing love.

Everything that is finite "exists" only by virtue of being one thing and not some other thing. Which also means that its existence is at least in part determined by what it's not. And yet, it is always comprised of other things, defined in terms of other things, dependent upon other things to exist at all. In fact if you take away its causes and constituents, no thing remains. So one thing is never just one thing, nor even ever an actual thing in itself. As the saying goes, if you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you first have to create the universe. That's one way of getting at the equivalence of finiteness, relativity, contingence, differentiation, and indeed duality. Each of those terms immediately imply all the rest. And then there's the strictly mental categories that have no direct physical referent, such as good/bad, tasteful/disgusting, etc. In fact what you discover is that physical categories don't actually exist "out there" and at bottom it's all mental categories. Non-duality is nothing other than the refutation of duality, meaning that all duality can only ever be illusory. Nondual thinking is a contradiction in terms, there is no such thing. But what is generally meant by it is that one is fluid and flexible in their use of mental categories, precisely because they know none of them are ultimately true.

Maybe that's why it is typically a men's game. Green or yellow business politics is a different animal, but orange........ Be careful what you wish for. I mean this in the best possible way.

So everyone who ever made it past Orange had to first climb the corporate ladder....? ? They might, but what they consider appropriate may or may not align with your ambitions, if you have any. They work for the company, not for you. Obviously I can't speak to your specific situation because I don't know the first thing about it. But if I had such ambitions I certainly wouldn't leave it to chance. You already know that doesn't work, it shouldn't be that difficult to understand why it doesn't. Whether or not you like it is a different matter.

It could be total bullshit what I just said, mind you...

Could be that they represent your own latent interest in "Mosess". Remember, you are creating those people too, they have no independent existence outside of yourself. Everything they do is by you and for you, it's your dream. Maybe something clicks when you consider it in that light?

?

Agree 100% , but then that means it is only a young lady if you insist. And indeed you may not have a choice about it. No argument there.