Osaid

I believe it is because they experienced "less time" on Earth, thus they have less memory and knowledge to tie their identity to. Tying your identity to your imagination makes the world unnecessarily rigid.

Being a person doesn't involve a sense of self at all. You just need the person. No extra sense needed. There is a difference between being a human and thinking you are a human. The thinking is the redundant sense of self. It's an extra unnecessary input. Your sense of self has nothing to do with what is not imaginary. So you would protect what is not imagined. The sense of self is entirely imaginary and it does not represent anything actually in your experience. It's redundant. You don't lose any functioning by discontinuing your imagination of something which never represented anything. You can't lose your body by stopping imagination. You can't lose your ability to understand language by stopping imagination. You are giving too much importance to your imagination. You only lose the duality that you imagined yourself in. Anything that actually exists outside of imagination cannot be dualistic, because there is no such thing as something which is existentially dualistic. All duality is imagined, no exceptions. You are already functioning without duality, you're just imagining that you aren't. That is the crux of it. If you see duality as if it is something existential then you are mistaking the map for the territory. A lack of interest or value does not equate to a lack of self. It is just a difference in desire and value based on the circumstance. Being able to value something without any ulterior motive is exactly how love is experienced. When you taste vanilla, you love it purely for the sensation of what it is, not because of something you imagine about it. You don't need to imagine things to value things. You just need to experience them.

If the dream contains the dreamer, wouldn't the dreamer be part of the dream itself? Which part of the dream is the dreamer going to be made of? If the dreamer isn't made out of the dream, where is it? Outside of the dream? Here is an angle to look at: There is a rock. The rock is made of stone, which has a certain appearance. If you did not have eyes to see that rock, there would be no such thing as the "appearance of a rock." The rock depends on your eyes to perceive it and your eyes depend on the rock for it to exist as something which can be perceived by your eyes. Thus, the rock and your eyes both mutually depend on each other to be perceived. Where is the space for a "self" to take ownership over the "seeing" or "perceiving" of the rock? Isn't it the case that the perception of the rock and the existence of the rock are the exact same physical occurrence? It is always ultimately the same occurrence, which is just a complete and total loss of self. Their ability to explain and comprehend what happened to them might differ, but they are all explaining and experiencing the same fundamental phenomenon. The route that they take to reach there probably has unlimited variety though. There is certainly no more imagined suffering about physical pain. There is no such thing as longing for a state where the physical pain does not exist, for example. However, the physical pain itself can still be an object of desire. For example, if you cause physical pain to someone, there can be a desire to alleviate that. If you cause physical pain to yourself, there can be a desire to alleviate that. But there is no imagined resistance about how it will affect you in past or future. If someone is saying that they don't care about physical pain at all anymore, I would be suspicious of that, because that is not what practically happens after enlightenment. There are many people who are resistant to pain, or even have genetics which do not allow them to feel physical pain at all, and they are not necessarily closer or further to enlightenment. Many of them are only able to resist pain because of purely egoic reasons. This should clue you in to the fact that the sense of self is not really about physical pain, but perhaps something more than that. That seems accurate. The less you imagine yourself the more quickly redundant emotions will dissolve. There are incremental improvements in regards to thoughts about yourself that can happen prior to enlightenment. Kind of like how therapy can incrementally improve how you think of yourself. Never looked much into Jim Newman. Physical sensations are not ego but they can be the symptom of one, which may or may not be what he is referring to. Any physical sensation is not mediated by how you imagine it and therefore it is unrelated to ego. In the same way that hearing sound is unrelated to ego or seeing color is unrelated to ego. There is nothing existential outside of your imagination which can be ego. It is imagination which has to create the distinction afterwards and say "this is me, and this is not me." No point in your experience can claim that separation aside from your mind or imagination. For example, there can be a genuine physical sensation in the skull, but the belief that "you" are "located" there has to be ego or imagination. Because you are creating a division in your experience by claiming that, and experience has no feature where it can divide itself, it can only imagine that. No I didn't do any type of meditation like that. My mind is way too intellectual for that. It took a lot of self-inquiry and incessant questioning of my experience of what I am.

No. Why would you need something that does not exist to function? It's like saying you need Santa Claus to function.

That is the common conflation of it; that you become dysfunctional and what not. There is a conflation that the body is antithetical to no self, which is just not true. There are common "anti-human" sentiments like this which pop up in spirituality; that no self or absolute truth is located in some ethereal state of consciousness outside of being human. You are talking about a specific state where you cannot function in the body anymore, that is all. If you say that state is coexistent with a loss of the perception of time, that could be the case, but then you are conflating specific ego-defying states with enlightenment itself. Enlightenment exists everywhere, always.

A big point of mine was to highlight that the physical sensation of the body is not ego. It is as much ego as hearing sound or looking at a color. I feel this is a common conflation. Physical sensations are not ego or limitations. It is what you imagine about them that is ego. The body is as valuable as your current experience of it. In order to not notice your body you would have to phase yourself into some state where the perception of body does not exist. Otherwise, the body is not imaginary, and thus it is inherently unrelated to the ego. If you remove your hand from a hot stove because of the pain, that is not ego, that is a biological motivator designed to move you away from physical danger. If you afterwards say "I decided to move my hand from the hot stove" and you genuinely believe that, then that is ego, because it is the imagined sense of control and ownership which you are overlaying on top of the experience.

Yes that's right, desiring something is the same as putting attention on that thing. This is mostly correct except for one thing about the ego. The body is a common identification but it's not actually what ego fundamentally is. Ego is simply the belief that you can imagine what you are. Many imagine themselves as the body, but they can actually imagine themselves as many other things too. They imagine that they experienced the past, that they will experience the future, perhaps they imagine that they are the universe, etc. The variety for identity is really pretty much limitless. This doesn't necessarily increase or decrease the pain perceived in the body, it is desire which does that, and that desire may or may not come from ego. If you desire to avoid pain, it actually creates an emotion to drive you away from that pain in the form of fear/angst, and so yes it brings attention to it which exacerbates it. However, if there is no desire to avoid pain, or if there is even a desire to experience pain for whatever reason, it does "override" the sensation to a degree, because there is no emotional resistance, and furthermore there is going to be some another sensation/emotion which takes its place, like love/excitement/pride/joy. In the case of playing video games, that is a perfect example of how a strong desire can create a feeling of love which can completely override your perception of pain, so yes that is possible. As you said, when you're focused on a game, you don't really notice the pain in the body. That is because you actually have a desire to continue playing the video game despite the pain you are experiencing. This is the exact same thing that happens when you "surrender" to physical pain, but in this case instead of surrendering you are replacing the desire to avoid pain with the desire to continue playing video games. I imagine that the game probably induces a flow state which causes you to ignore the pain too, because the flow state has no "self" in it. In the scenario of sitting for 50 years, the problem with the pain is entirely dependent on your desire, yes. If there is a genuine desire to endure the 50 years, there would be no problem. If there is a desire to preserve the health of the body, there would be a problem. If I am forced to do it with no way out despite having the desire to leave, it is possible to "surrender" to the pain which simply means that I absolve the desire to avoid the pain momentarily because I see no way out of it. It entirely depends on what you want. You could "phase it out" as if you are busy playing a video game, but nonetheless it is biologically programmed that your body will indicate that it is being harmed through pain, and that will create a biological motivation to drive you away from that pain unless for whatever reason you have a desire to stay with that pain. I want to make something very clear about this part though, which is that the sensation of pain itself is infinite. Same goes for the sensation of the body. I imagine you could figure out some technique which "zones you out" of perceiving physical pain in some way, but that is more like a mental "resistance training" because you are training yourself to phase out the literal perception of pain in some way. Samadhi is simply the state of having no ego which "merges you into infinity" because you realize that you exist as something which has no limitations or boundaries. Physical pain does not contradict that state though, because physical pain has no boundaries or limitations to it either, along with the rest of your experience. Physical pain doesn't inherently have anything to do with the ego because you don't imagine it. It is like hearing sound or seeing color.

Welcome. I understand because I've been in it. Happy that you're out.

Why do you need to define something you already are? Can you stop being yourself? If you imagine yourself differently, do you stop being yourself? It's a maladaptive way of seeking out love in other people, caused by trauma.

It's not metaphysical. Do not turn it into something divine or metaphysical. It is your thoughts trying to predict and control reality. Your thoughts are trying to put reality in a box which you can understand. You want to fully understand how the sun rises. You want to completely understand whether you will wake up tomorrow or not. Not knowing the answer to these creates fear, confusion, disruption, because it then causes you to imagine and assume the possibility of those things not happening. It is the incessant desire to control and understand reality through thoughts which leads you to smack your face directly in all the gaps and inconsistencies that your thoughts will never be able to fill. You can never understand or control reality through a thought. Let that realization liberate you. You cannot think reality. It is unbounded by any of your thoughts. It is free.

You are assuming the properties that you refer to. This is correct, which is why I personally never say that phrase since it wouldn't convey much. But also, it is possible for there to be a word which has no meaning in its context, in the sense that it points to nothing existentially. The word "non-existence" for example. It literally means "doesn't exist." It could very well happen that you are trying to form an existential conclusion using words that point to nothing existentially. I didn't say that everything is conscious, and that would actually be different from saying that everything is consciousness. The former views consciousness as an emergent property. I am simply trying to say that the distinction of "me" and "other" happens within consciousness, as with all distinctions.

When you have a dream, is there is a dreamer which is inside the dream? Is it possible for there to be attention without an object or experience to pay attention to? Why does it seem that attention and the object of attention are always enmeshed? Maybe there is no difference between the object and observer? If there is no difference between the object and observer, then is there any space left over for a "self", or even a sense of it? To a degree. I did a lot of self-inquiry which incrementally changed my perception of things. It ultimately led up to a singular "drop." There is a psychosomatic relationship created using your imagination. You are using your imagination to create desires within yourself which you then act out. The problem is that the desire is based on an imaginary self. As an example, if you imagine yourself in an undesirable future scenario, you genuinely believe you are experiencing that future scenario from that present moment, and so it creates a desire to avoid the literal imagination of that future scenario, which creates real physical biological symptoms in the present moment such as a racing heartbeat, high cortisol, etc. In other words, it creates the emotions which would transpire if that imagination really happened to you. You now have a desire to change your physical environment so that you can stop imagining the scenario which you imagine yourself inside of. For example, if you were stressed about going to work, calling in sick would cause you to stop imagining yourself at work and thus it would alleviate the stress and anxiety caused by that imagination. This psychosomatic connection can be severed by realizing that there is no entity called "you" which can be at risk of that future scenario in the first place. There is obviously the qualia and different phenomenon happening in your experience, that much is true, and perhaps that is what you mean by "seeming to be here." The imagined part is the entity which you imagine to observe that phenomenon/experience. There is no middleman which has to observe experience, because which part of experience would that entity be made out of? To be as accurate as possible, you believe that your imagination is representing real objects of experience, which is to say, you believe your imagination represents something beyond your imagination. You have turned yourself into an "object" inside of your imagination which you believe actually represents you. You use your ability to imagine yourself in order to place yourself inside of various forms of imagination about the past and future, so you have turned yourself into an entity/object which exists inside of those imagined scenarios which you must protect and look after. Similar to how when you look at the ingredient label of a food product, you have to imagine that those ingredients exist inside of the product. You are using your imagination to symbolize the existence of the ingredients inside of the food product, that is how you know the ingredients that the food is made of. So, the imagination serves to represent something in your experience, which would be the ingredients inside the food. You are doing this exact same thing to your "self", you are imagining yourself as if you are a real object of experience, but that imagination actually symbolizes and represents absolutely nothing in your experience. There is no part of experience which that imagination of yourself represents, it is purely self-serving. Once you stop imagining, then the self stops appearing too, the imagination is self-contained, and thus it does not actually represent anything outside of itself.

Glad you benefitted.

Peace

You're trying to turn it into a willpower thing when it really isn't. It is purely a psychological absolution of the perception of time. The length of time I sit somewhere doesn't make time more real, that is just a physically strenuous activity like exercise. There are much bigger motivations than restlessness and impatience though, those are the mental imaginations of yourself. There is the physical pain for example.

If I had to go through that I would not experience restlessness or impatience, yes. Probably just physical pain. I would never do that though lol.

You can frame it that way, but logically you can very easily understand that past and future must be imagined, because there is only what is happening right now. Sitting in the same spot for 50 years would be physically taxing, but irrelevant to time. Physical sensations do not indicate time because they are always experienced presently. If you say that you experience past and future (time), I can very simply say: How can something which experiences both past and future be experienced? It is impossible for past and future to occur at the same time. There must be a fundamental error in how you perceive yourself somewhere.

They might think it, but they will certainly feel otherwise. The feeling is like a dashboard indicator which continues to pop up until they alleviate the cognitive dissonance.

Right, it seems that way. Believe it or not, all those layers are perpetuated by a singular misperception: That you can imagine yourself. It is like the butterfly effect. If you spend a lifetime imagining yourself you will create all sorts of elaborate miseries and boundaries about yourself. Your imagination of yourself is equivalent to the perception of time. What would your experience be like if you weren't afflicted by time anymore? Really think about it, though. It must be simple and intuitive, if worms or babies or animals are free of mental suffering.

I dislike that there is "weight" because it is such a simple misperception which causes so much suffering. It should be seen as simple and easy and mandatory. That is part of why I try to communicate it so bluntly and simply. That seems to be a common sentiment at this point. Skepticism is fine as long as it doesn't diminish your inquiry or you don't turn it into some standard which you project onto your inquiries.

There is no difference between the emotion and the situation itself. If you say the emotion is a response to the situation, then that emotion cannot exist without the situation. They both depend on each other and thus they are literally the same. The subject-object duality collapses.

I imagine that once people start doing a better job of teaching it, it will increase quite a bit. I really feel like people just don't explain it well enough. That is one big factor, and also it seems that no one really cares about observing their experience. Otherwise it really is a simple shift which can definitely happen through self-inquiry. If you have a desire to observe and examine your experience, you are already a big outlier. It is not a matter of fighting or pushing away fear, it is realizing that the object of fear does not exist in the first place. Impatience is imagined time. Insecurity is an imagined self which is contrasted with your current experience.

That is correct. The only emotion worth desiring is love. It is the most intelligent thing to do. Your imperative essentially becomes to change your environment in order to facilitate that emotion, in whichever way you want to manifest it. It is very interesting how it works. The baseline emotion becomes "peace" or "content" which are forms of love, because there is no desire at the baseline. If you have no desires, then that fulfills your desires, which creates a positive emotion. It's like a double-negative type of thing; the desire to have no desire fulfills itself, creating a baseline emotion of being content.

Yes, none of that. Impatience is the same as boredom created through a perception of time. You perceive it by imagining yourself in a desired future scenario. There is zero perception of time so that cannot occur anymore.

I can say that all anxiety vanishes, because that is all future imagination. Yes, there is no ego-generated misery. There is simply just immediate fear, which I define as "an object in the environment which you want to avoid." Once the situation ends so does the fear, the fear is equivalent to the situation. The reason I'm being so specific about describing the emotions is because it is very important to understand how they work after enlightenment, and how they fundamentally work in general. They don't completely vanish, they just serve your immediate experience instead of your imaginary experience. The emotions purely become situational instead of something you carry.