Osaid

😂🎯 It's hilarious how hard the mind tries to escape duality. It just ends up saying completely tautological statements as if they mean anything. "Hey guys, I had a new awakening and realized that everything = imagination" "Hey guys, I had a new awakening and realized that everything = you" "Hey guys, I had a new awakening and realized that everything = love" "Hey guys, I had a new awakening and realized that everything = love = imagination = you"

You are probably accessing these experiences through some odd sleep state, as you say you are half asleep. Would explain why it happens at night. I have had hypnopompic hallucinations while waking up which transitioned themselves perfectly seamlessly, for example, I would be looking at a door and hearing screaming from behind it, and then at some point I would wake up, but my visual perception of the door would be continuous. Anyways, sounds like some very vivid experiences, which would only happen during astral projection or sleep paralysis or some odd sleep state. My only advice is to increase sleep quality as much as possible and make sure that your sleep is not interrupted, and that your stress and nutrition in general are fine.

It simply has no relevance to your experience. You can sit in your room by yourself, and you can either come to the conclusion that other people exist or don't exist. At the end of the day, your experience is still that of a human that sits in their room and contemplates mental conclusions about reality. Nothing regarding other people was changed or experienced. You are still by yourself in that room, just contemplating things. Other people did not change, your beliefs about them did. There is a difference between having a physical human in front of you, and contemplating theories and conclusions about other humans. The latter is ultimately just you changing beliefs and knowledge, and it has nothing to do with the former. You can theorize about other people having their own experience or not, but that is just theory. You will never experience someone not existing, that is something that only happens in theory. There is nothing metaphysical or absolute about contemplating knowledge or theory. You cannot become more or less alone by changing beliefs about yourself or other people. Whether you believe they exist or not, nothing has changed but beliefs, not their actual existence. It doesn't change what is actually happening. You can't become more or less alone by changing beliefs. You can say that there is one being, multiple beings, or none, but those are just changes in identity if they are taken as conclusions about reality. What you are experiencing right now is a human body, and believe it or not, the experience of your body right now is neither one being, multiple beings, or no beings, those are all just relative concepts. Your physical body is exactly just your physical body, and it is beyond any of those relative concepts. If you focus on the sensation of touch, can you call that "one being" or "multiple beings"? When you taste ice cream, can you call that "one being" or "multiple beings"? I am saying that both touch and taste have nothing to do with any beings, and that saying it has anything to do with a "being" is an unnecessary interpretation, and the same goes for your experience as a whole. Even when you say "there is no being" that is still a conclusion which exists within the paradigm of "beings that can exist." When you look at the color red you say "that is red", you don't say "that is a being which is the color red." The latter is an unnecessary identity being projected. If you say "there is a being in experience" that is knowledge about things that are in experience. If you say "there are no beings in experience" that is still knowledge about things that are in experience. Notice that both conclusions can be held in experience, even if other people are present or aren't present. Therefore, it is truly irrelevant to the experience of other people, but only relevant to your own knowledge about other people. Experience itself doesn't need knowledge or conclusions to be experienced. You are what you are currently experiencing. To really nail in this point, if you lived in a universe where you were the only creature that existed, there would be no such thing as "absolute solipsism", and there wouldn't even be a "lack of other people" to begin with, because you are the only human being in that scenario. You would have no frame of reference for "other people." This really shows that none of this has anything to do with anything absolute or existential, it is just a relative change in beliefs and identity.

Solipsism is ultimately an identity or conception which is never experienced as anything other than identity or conception. It is trapped in a conceptual duality, and so it is never experienced. It is just as accurate to say "there are only other people" as it is to say "there is only you", because both concepts assume that something else can be the case, that is the only way both concepts can exist at all. My stance was basically summarized in this section: I elaborate more poetically on this point in another post of mine:

The funniest thing is when you realize that "imagination" and "concept" are themselves concepts. They are categories of experience. You can't experience a category of experience. So when you say "that's just imagination so it's not real", the distinction of "imagination" and "real" are themselves concepts and imagination. So, you are using imagination to determine that imagination is not real. There is no meaningful metaphysical implication of identifying that something is imagination, because that is just more imagination. It is just a tool to describe experience, yet many people hinge their entire existential position on it. You can say that there is "visual perception", but notice that this label of "visual perception" is a category of experience. It doesn't actually describe what is visually perceived, it just turns it into a general abstraction through thought. Categories only exist in thought. What is missed is that you can abstract thoughts through thoughts as well, by calling them "thoughts" or "imagination." You generally don't use visual perception to deny visual perception, but notice that you deny thoughts with thoughts. When you visualize an image in your mind's eye, you might have an extra thought/interpretation that comes up and says "that's not real, it's just imaginary." Or maybe a more relatable thought for the members of this forum would be "that is metaphysically wrong to think about" or "that doesn't exist metaphysically." Thoughts are a sensory experience just like visual perception, but you believe that you can truly dissect and figure out the entirety of reality using that sensory perception, which is false, in the same way that you don't "figure out" reality by tasting ice cream or visually perceiving something. All your metaphysical conceptualizations are still conceptual, they are not actually metaphysical or existential or absolute. And they get conflated with the absolute all the time, because the concept you think of says "This is absolute, not conceptual. I am God, I am this, I am that, there are no others." But this is still in the realm of concepts, and you are essentially just building up a philosophy which says "this is not a philosophy, this is absolute and existential because I experienced it before, yadda yadda." If you are still using concepts to identify yourself and explain yourself, you have not left the realm of the average philosopher coming up with their own theoretical conclusions about reality. What you are is not a theory or answer or conclusion or anything like that, it is just what you are, and that contains any theory or answer or conclusion inside of it. You are the thing which generates answers and conclusions about yourself. Notice that whenever you say something like "I am the only thing that exists", that statement only exists in contrast to the opposite duality of itself, which is "I am not the only thing" or "something else exists." So, it is still a conceptual identity. It exists in relation to a concept, the opposite concept, which is "there are other people." The experience of being the only thing that exists does not exist, and the experience of not being the only thing that exists does not exist either. Because they both depend on each other conceptually. They are dualities. When you see another person in front of you, that is not you being alone or together, that is simply just the experience of another person being in front of you. It's just that fucking simple. You can theorize all you want about it later, but that is exactly what you experienced. The "you" which can be alone or together is a conceptual interpretation of that experience. It does not change your experience of that person at all.

Realize what you are, the irreplaceable uniqueness of yourself that no thoughts about yourself can touch or describe. This can really be a permanent and immediate shift done from a sober baseline state, and the only reason it doesn't seem possible for it to be that way is because all your glimpses of non-duality have been induced through temporal states, through chemistry or energy changing activities. I recommend self-inquiry: What am I? What are all my thoughts and beliefs about myself pointing to? How do I know I am myself and not somebody else? The meditation creates a situation which does not contain certain stimuli. Outside of meditation, certain thoughts and activities "trigger" you back into beliefs about yourself. You are always in a non-dual state, but there are just beliefs that you aren't. There's no such thing as absolute/relative, non-dual/dual, finite/infinite, those are pointers, and pointers can only exist in the realm of duality. They never actually occurred. To believe that any of those actually has some significance to your experience is confusing the map for the territory. That map has to be thrown out at some point if you really want to get serious about what you are experiencing. If there is truly some kind of energetic shift, I would say that is similar to changing your physiological or biochemical structure in order to induce a certain state. Which is the point of certain yoga, like kundalini yoga. But it is not necessary or inherent to realizing what you are, if that makes sense. In the same way that a psychedelic can induce a non-dual state, but the psychedelic itself is not necessary for non-duality to exist. It is simply a result of the forced chemistry change that the substance/activity/method brings. In this case, the desire to "master energies" for me seems similar to saying "I want to master psychedelic states" or "I want to master self-inquiry so that I can become non-dual." All of them bring experiences of non-duality, but they are not striking at what is fundamental, since they are just methods. I am not saying to abandon any energetic practices, I believe this is how someone like Sadghuru mainly teaches people, but the idea that you have to control some kind of energetic knob to realize what you are is confusing a practice/method for non-duality itself. It is not necessarily wrong, it might even trigger a permanent shift, but my only concern is that you shouldn't confuse non-duality for a practice or method. It is something that can be perceived while you are enjoying a cup of tea, or watching a TV show, or playing video games. It is a simple yet profound shift that just happens, either you get it or you don't.

I know, right? Boring! Been there done that. Where's the solipsism? The infinite love? The omnipotence? The thrill? The profundity? The depth? The newfound insight? The metaphysics? I want DEEPER. Awakening™ is in another castle.

It definitely feels lighter, like a weight being lifted off your head. There is actually a noticeable and measurable difference in how the body uses energy, it becomes more efficient. Sleep becomes different as well. Incessant thought-creation uses up a lot of energy and strains your perception. I literally had an experience happen where it felt like my body was gonna start floating lol. Sometimes energy gets high like that. Overall, I think it's a natural consequence of being zoomed into the present moment.

It didn't. You can't understand this because it isn't the case. You've created a relationship between "me" and "awareness", which is of course perceived as limited, because it can't be the case and isn't the case. Awareness can't expand or cover anything. Awareness is just awareness. It doesn't become more of itself, or expand itself, because it is itself, always. You can't get it down because it's not there. There's nothing to "get down." You're making it up. Nothing you can speak is actually the case. You can't speak the color red. Any conclusions you have about yourself are basically garbage, because they are not the thing. In the same way that any conclusions you have about red are garbage, because they aren't red, they are just conclusions about red. Conclusions != red. Conclusions != you. Finite doesn't exist. Relative doesn't exist. Limited doesn't exist. Only deception can perceive deception. Only the limited can perceive what is limited. Conclusions about the color red only exist as conclusions, not the color red. So the conclusions can only ever perceive red as a conclusion, not the actual color red. Because that is the mode of perception it is stuck in.

You said that infinite consciousness is equal to everything, but apparently the human state is not accounted for? Is it not formless enough for you? Are humans just forsaken by God? Does infinite consciousness = an inability to type? You also say that the future does not exist, but infinite consciousness is located in some future event of the "universe ending." So, to reiterate your position, the universe is capable of not being everything, and then becoming everything again at a future date, in which the universe ends and you become "formless." Assuming that I got everything correct, I will say again that none of that can be the case, because of the cognitive dissonances I have highlighted. Your idea of infinite consciousness is not very infinite at all. It is relative to time, the future, temporal states, and also a "lack of everything." It's just wrapped up in dualities which come and go.

That was quite the read. Leo is really in a divine goose chase.

That just begs the question. I asked you why this indicates to you that I am not infinitely conscious. Where are you coming up these standards? As if infinite consciousness is exempt from being able to type something. Or that me being able to type something is antithetical to infinite consciousness. These are big fat assumptions which should be investigated. All I'm trying to do is point to the fact that visual perception is not finite, that can't be the case, but you say it is.

Leo's favorite religion is Buddhism. He even went bald to show his devotion to monkhood.

Does "working on lucid dreaming" involve a change in sleep schedule? I would consider that interrupted sleep. I remember I was able to enter sleep paralysis with about 90% accuracy just by following a certain sleep schedule. I think it will be very hard to work on issues while you're dreaming non-lucidly. Like, you're not gonna do shadow work while in the dream. That's gonna come from waking up and analyzing the dream, and then working on yourself from that waking state. That's what I think at least. I also think that is the simplest way to do it. Although you might be able to do something with lucid dreaming, but I don't have much experience in that.

Right. How do you know that? How do you know that you aren't everything right now? Where are you getting that information from? How are you perceiving a part of experience which is lacking in "everything"? I want to clarify I'm not pointing to solipsism or something, it shouldn't be thought of that way. I'm just saying that "possibility" is not some event in the future, it is something you are mentally generating right now and extrapolating from yourself. You say this, but then you immediately refer to past and future here: This is not actually invalidating or nullifying the future, it is just an intellectual supposition which is being projected onto your experience. You are extrapolating from the present moment that things already happened. You are just experiencing a present moment which is perceiving that. There is no "happened" in experience, that is memory. There is memory in experience, which you perceive through the present.

Nightmares tend to be a manifestation of unresolved worries and thought loops from the waking state. Your dreams cycle through and process all the different thoughts and worries and scenarios you have during the day, and also many of the thoughts that you suppress. In the dream state, there is no ego to prevent thoughts from manifesting. The strength of the dreams and how often they occur can be greatly amplified through bad or interrupted sleep quality. If you enter a deep and peaceful sleep, you won't get much dreams. Just as an example, if there is a certain thought which occurs to you during the day which creates a feeling of impending doom or something of that sort, and you find yourself encountering it often, this can trigger your dreams to carry a similar emotional sensation.

It is possible to observe without thought, yes, absolutely. But, the statement "I observed a thought" is a thought/communication, and it is not the experience that occured. So that is just the limitation of language and communication itself, which should not be confused for the actual experience itself. The confusion on his part seems to be that he is looking at the statement and seeing it as something that is a completely true representation of what happened. He himself identifies with that thought, so his conclusion is that thought is inescapable, which is not the case. But also, a lack of thoughts does not really bring clarity. It's how you perceive the thoughts, and yourself as a whole.

You are just referring to the future here. This is a fancy way of saying "time is real and the future exists." And also, yes. I am experiencing every possibility that exists right now, which is just a thought that extrapolates from myself. Possibilities are referring to potential future events, always. Any perception of possibility is perceived from this moment. The only actualized possibility you will ever encounter is just your current present experience. You can try to escape your present experience if you want, but I suspect you won't really get anywhere. "Many possibilities that aren't happening right now" is not what being infinite means, it's a materialistic rendition of it.

That is just visual perception. You're not seeing it as a hand or finger. Your visual perception has no feature where it makes one thing finite or a part of something. Those are mental labels. Visual perception is always infinite.

That is just another way of saying a tautology, which is "the whole thing is the whole thing." That defeats the definition of a facet. A facet by definition is not the whole thing, it is relative to a whole which it exists inside of. In order to even conceive of a facet, you have to simultaneously imagine something for that facet to be a part of. So, the whole thing is always experienced, you need the whole thing to even conceptually come up the idea of a "facet." This never actually happens. You can't view something as one thing, but then have it exist within another thing which is the whole thing, that is your mind dissecting reality through thought forms. Your perception of the finger is equal to the perception of the whole thing. It is relative to the whole thing. You're not actually experiencing a part of anything, you're experiencing a thought that describes things as parts, and the only way for you to do that is to contrast it with the idea of a "whole." You need the entire hand, which is the whole, to perceive parts of a hand. A finger by itself is not a part of anything, you need to perceive the whole hand connected to the finger to make that conceptual connection.

There aren't actually any facets, it's just a way of describing it. A description can't be the thing, it can only compartmentalize it and convey it in the form of a neatly packaged thought form for your ego to metabolize. What is the color red? You could say it is red. You could say it is color. You could say it is similar to the color blue. You could say it is not the color blue. You could say there are different types of the color red. You could say it is a perception. You could say it is you. You could say it is God. All correct, as far as descriptions go. All of these descriptions are correct, but they never convey what it is, because it's just a description. A description doesn't capture anything ever. The only way for a description to fully capture red is to say: The color red is the color red. Which is just a tautology, which is absolutely correct, because you are a tautology and you cannot be explicated beyond yourself. The "ego" is exactly the phenomenon I have described above. It is you trying to describe what you are in the exact same way that you try to describe red. Descriptions are equal to identities. You are doing the same thing to yourself when you say "I am a human" or "I am this" or "I am that." You are the thing which is generating the questions about yourself and the answers about yourself, so no identity, answer, description or conclusion you ever come up with is ever going to actually be correct.

Time != memory. As for saving previous experiences in your body, I have no idea, but it sounds interesting. And I get the logic, the body can store memory. And if you can induce a non-dual experience with it, that's good. Sounds like some kundalini stuff or something. Most of this stuff is very subjective and personal, so if you believe you can do it, go for it. Ultimately, nothing is preventing you from figuring out what you are though. It might seem that way if you cling to some specific experience you had a while ago, because now the current experience is seemingly contrasted. Otherwise, what is being prevented exactly? Is it the memory perception you are creating right now? But then how is something you are perceiving right now being prevented? I'm just saying that your current experience is all you need to figure out what you are.

Group conformity almost seems wired into human nature. You slowly lose your individuality through that even if you are aware of it logically. Then comes commitments, genuine personal bonds which you have to abandon, etc. It's like a frog being boiled, it's not some logical argument they're going to throw at you that you can just easily debate against. Gray areas and cognitive dissonance are slowly manufactured.

Oh ok, I'm just trying to understand what the fear is like. I hear a lot of people describe it as if they're dying, which is why I guess the term "ego death" exists, but I never really perceived it that way, so it is odd for me to see it described that way. It felt like "I" was unravelling or dissolving psychologically, and then my experience just recontextualized itself, but I wouldn't describe that as deadly at all. It was just happening "internally." For me, death has to do with a physical threat or something. It was very lucidating and liberating overall, which doesn't seem very deadly to me. I just realized exactly what I was. I will also say, there are many flavours of what is called "ego death." You can get ego death from turning into a chair through salvia or something, or you can get "it" just from the baseline state. It is true that certain ways of getting it will be more uncomfortable, for example, it would be hard to conduct normal human life by being a chair, but I feel like looking at it that way is losing yourself in the content instead of the structure. "Ego death" can happen while you're just sitting on a bench, and it can also happen while being transformed into a chair, but the content of those situations is irrelelvant. It is simply just that the psychological identity-making stops, and then experience is left to be exactly as it is, and then that experience by itself is simply what you are and what you always were. For example, it is hard to continue creating the identity "I am a human" when you have literally been transformed into a chair, so that is why that experience tends to cause ego death. It is not that the experience itself is more true or "higher consciousness", but rather just the fact that you are literally a chair with an identity crisis. The input of "I am" is naturally recognized to be useless in that state. Furthermore, living your normal life as a human is not really contradictory to ego death. From a certain perspective, you could say ego death doesn't exist at all simply because the ego never existed. And to expand even more on this, only the ego can perceive something called "ego death", so it is a catch-22. Living from this place might be called "enlightenment." Thinking about things and having memories about things is not ego, it is creating a second identity based on the perception of those phenomenon which is ego. The ego can be seen as an unnecessary secondary interpretation of your immediate experience. I will also say this, but any ideas of yourself dissolving or disappearing forever is also just ego. It's not actually ego death. The ego describes "it" that way, but of course that is not "it." You never actually reached "the other side", so what are you fearing exactly? I think it might be the case that at that moment in time, the ego decides to run through a lot of what it has heard about what ego death is, and how it should be scary, and how it involves disappearing forever, stuff like this. And then this causes fear. Perhaps it would be much easier for someone who cannot create the label "ego death" in their mind at all, as they have never heard of the phenomenon and thus cannot fantasize about it. I think it is possible for it to unfold in a way where you don't immediately come up with that label at all, you might have some insight that just immediately pulls you into it, which is kind of what happened to me personally. There are many ways of "going into it", and your mind can frame it many ways. As previously stated, it could involve turning into a chair, or simply just sitting on a bench doing nothing. So there is that variety in what could trigger "it." And I personally feel that it doesn't have to be a very deathly or frightening experience at all, but it could just be something very simple and immediate, and then you can continue to go on with your life afterwards.

Psychedelic-induced? Does it feel like a panic attack (fast heartbeat, feeling of experience seeming unreal, trembling, etc.)? Is there an actual perceivable threat to your body/experience aside from the aformentioned symptoms? Also, if not psychedelic-induced, have you ever taken psychedelics in the past?