Osaid

That's fine, but I would make a distinction and say that the dream stays a dream. It's indirect in the way it affects reality. I make that distinction because it still operates within this paradigm of "I was sleeping, dreamt something, and then it changed something in the waking state."

No, I'm not using mind or paradigms at all. I'm enlightened. So everything I'm saying is just me describing what I am directly experiencing right now. I am directly conscious of what I speak about. I know that this is different from how awakenings tend to be, though.

When you're lucid, the experience of being lucid is you imagining yourself sleeping in real life. Your waking state memory is discovered. That comes with imagining brain activity and a real physical body. Of course that is not directly experienced. But I am saying that being lucid is you "overlaying" that story of you existing in the waking state onto the dream. That is the only way for you to come to the conclusion "Oh, this is a dream I'm having." Your waking state identity is meshed with the dream identity, and your waking state identity involves a human who has brain activity and dreams. The idea of "having brain activity" is an idea and experience that occurs in consciousness. Consciousness can imagine that it does have brain activity and that the dream state is harmless. Yes, the experience is as real as can be. And it is experienced. But it does not have to have consequences which you are unaware of, consciousness can of course be aware of that if it wants. "consequences to self" is always just whatever you experience, ultimately.

It's not an insight you integrate, so it's not intellectual or memory based like awakenings. You're not "deepening" it and "fitting it in", that is intellect and finite mind. It's as insightful as seeing the color red or hearing sound. It's just experiential. It's something you are directly conscious of. Again, this entire statement is an attempt to "go beyond the absolute." "Reality is infinite" can also just be seen as saying "reality is reality." If you follow this, you are saying that there is something beyond reality. There just isn't. When you say "reality is infinite, but there's more!" as if that is just one aspect out of many, that is your mind partitioning reality into different components. But reality is one.

Good thing enlightenment is the former and not the latter. You are operating from the latter, which is mind, and so you project finitude onto enlightenment. All of you arguing don't even know what "reality is infinite" actually means. You have a very materialistic notion of it, and you project it onto enlightenment. But of course, if you're not enlightened, it just exists as a finite idea for you. So I totally get it! I'm just saying to keep an open mind about it, which is not happening here. That is all. As I've said many times, it's not an insight or understanding that you integrate, as you do with awakenings. Awakenings can be imagined and chased after forever, yes. Not enlightenment.

I get what you're saying. But you're projecting waking state logic onto the dream. The waking state logic is exactly what allows you to perceive the experience as a dream in the first place. Waking state is deciding "this is and isn't harmful." You are not having this conundrum during the dream state. The dream state has nothing to do with it, and therefore the waking state conundrum actually does not exist there for the time being, and this is exactly what defines a dream. The sentiment of your conclusion doesn't really matter. To dream means that you're not conscious of the waking state. If you are conscious of the waking state, only then does the dream become a dream. When you're dreaming, the dream is not a dream. When you're awake, only then you can say "that was a dream" because the waking state contrasts it. So there's nothing to do at all, really. If you're dreaming, you're already doing the best you can. If you're lucid dreaming, you can simply see that it is a dream and it won't have any affect on you because it gets recontextualized as harmless brain activity and you can also act lucidly like your normal self would. That becomes your new dream, so to speak. The dream then adopts the context of a "lucid person." There are certain states like sleep paralysis and astral projection which might have more "realness", but those are different and I wouldn't consider them dreams. Is it possible for dreams to affect the waking state? In a sense. But it always stays as a dream, because it is a dream. So it's indirect at best. Anything else is not a dream anymore.

Sorry, I was being sarcastic. I guess it would be irresponsible to not clarify.

Because there's MORE CONSCIOUSNESS (sarcasm)

The reason why enlightenment seems like an illusion to you guys is because you're comparing it to your awakenings, which ARE relative "illusions." All you guys have ever known in regards to spirituality is just endless awakenings, that's your method. And so you project that same standard onto enlightenment. You're thinking: "Oh yeah I've had lots of awakenings, but I've also had much deeper ones! And all of them showed me different aspects of truth and reality! So there's no way that this singular awakening called 'enlightenment' is final!" You think enlightenment is just some state of consciousness or awakening among many. That's how awakenings and "higher consciousness" work, but enlightenment is something different. There is nothing higher than the absolute truth. Enlightenment is realizing what is absolutely true. Not an aspect or facet of it, the actual thing. There were never "different aspects" of truth, of course not. To say otherwise means that you have abandoned the idea of reality being one thing.

How many times are you guys gonna realize what God is until you realize what God is?

Weird how that happens You love to see it

I don't know what you think I implied, but it probably wasn't what I was saying. Never said anything about "all there is" and wasting possibilities. I think it is a common human interpretation to see what I just said as some sort of value system, like, you're not allowed to think or believe things. And so you compare it to living like an ant or whatever.

Lol no, the "dream" perfectly incorporates itself. Never changes. Just your beliefs about it. Very funny when you truly realize this. Imagine you start up a new Minecraft realm. The immediate and absolute perception is a terrain of blocks, and a rendered distance, and whatever else. You think, "I'm human". You think, "Nothing exists beyond perception". You think, "I'm God creating all of this". You think, "I'm a creature that survives in this weird dimension." You think, "There are other dimensions beyond this one." You think, "This is all just illusion." You think, "I'm just imagining all of this." You think, "I'm just playing a video game." And you can think forever. But all these thoughts revolve and contort themselves around the EXACT same perceptual experience, which is always there. Because experience is not actually changing, what is happening is that you are literally imagining different concepts as if they are more true or real than the previous one, and then using those concepts to point to the exact same direct experience which all your previous concepts have pointed to, but you perceive it as different because you react differently, and it triggers different thought patterns, and the content of the concept is slightly different, and whatever else. In a hyperbolic way, it's kind of like when someone smokes a lot of weed and is like "Oh my god dude, have you ever realized that this wall is literally like, a wall? You can't think of a wall, it's always directly experienced! Woahhhh..." It's the age old stereotype of weed smokers stating the "obvious" in a more profound sentiment. The experience of the wall did not change. Their previous beliefs about walls did.

Knowing happens inside of you. Knowing is a part of you. A part of something cannot capture something that is bigger than it. Fundamentally, the very nature and medium of knowing cannot capture YOU. It infinitely obsesses over itself because it is a small part of what it is trying to capture. Anything you know about something is always ABOUT something, it is never that thing by definition. Thus, knowing is only useful for things that are not experienced by you. Like, the weather tomorrow. Or a math equation. There is no point in knowing about a door that exists in front of you, because you are already directly experiencing the door. There is nothing to know about it, because your knowing is a symbol of the actual thing. Knowing about it becomes a useless input on your part. The only thing to be known about is what is not experienced, and that knowing will always just be experienced as knowledge, until it is experienced. But when it is experienced, it is not knowledge anymore, it is just experience. The desire to know what you are is contradictory, because the thing which you are is CREATING a part of experience which is saying "I want to know what I am." Whatever you know yourself as, is not you. It's always a part of you that was created by you. It's like a TV which is trying to display itself on the screen. This is impossible because the screen is just a small part of what the TV is, so no matter how accurately it displays itself, that display will not be itself. And then it will fruitlessly engage in that forever, until it understands that it already is what it is trying to display. When you ask this question: "How do I know myself?" It is in a similar sentiment to asking: "How do I know what the color red is?" The color red is ALWAYS the perception of itself. It cannot be delegated to "knowing." This is exactly the case when it comes to YOU as well. The color red exists inside you, along with all the other sense perceptions. And they will not be delegated to any "knowing" achieved by any entity inside of itself. If colors do not exist, do you know what they are? If you do not exist, do colors know what they are? The reason you don't know something is because it is not you. It is knowledge. You can't know knowledge because it is not experienced and it is not you. <<<<<<< This is the most fundamental and succinct way to put it

You. If it's not you, then you don't know it.

What stage matches with a glass of water?

That is very well put, and If I were to add my interpretation, I think it naturally highlights the main issue of "trying to transcend the absolute" which will inevitably keep popping up.

In order to perceive a higher consciousness state, you must be a human. A human who dreams of higher states. A human who dreams of psychedelics. That is a relative human conception. Created by a human who has returned to a lower state, who imagines other states. Who then imagines exploration. Your entire idea of reality is based on human anthropomorphisms.

This is exactly what it is, but somehow you guys have reasoned to yourselves that this isn't what you're doing.

It is wild. Big cognitive dissonance. I think it happens from taking too many psychedelics. At some point he genuinely convinced himself that there is "more beyond the Absolute" and he just phrases it as "higher consciousness."

Does this mean that it is possible someday that you fully understand yourself? And you'll just be "done"? What is the difference between realizing that you are God/Infinity and realizing that you are an alien squirrel entity? Are they actually different realizations somehow? And why does the former take "less consciousness"?

Sounds like a very cool experience, happy for you. Thank you for this very important sentiment.

Yeah, one percent of Truth and God. Makes sense. So now we have to INCREASE to a higher percentage so that we can become MORE God. And how are you coming to that conclusion? Surely it's experiential and not intellectual? But wait, percentages only exist in contrast to other things. Uh oh. Right. Being human is anti-consciousness. Ok got it, hopefully one day my consciousness will become proper and not improper.

You don't understand either. You don't even know what the weather will be tomorrow. No I don't. That's not something you think. You do, otherwise you wouldn't have listed out everything else after. Yes, exactly. You don't know how things are going to unfold. It's open-ended. I think you are ungrounded. That's all. Get involved with people and nature or whatever else. There is more to life than this.

That's what your entire post is. It is possible to transcend this sentiment. I get it. You're bitter. But it is 100% possible. You do get glimpses of it. If it isn't working for you, leave it. Go do what you want. Connect with people. Build something. Or just rest.