The0Self

If @Flowerfaeiry were any more beautiful, God would get charged with unsportsmanlike conduct. Excessive celebration perhaps ?

There is no connection. Yeah there's a surrendering aspect but there's also a take no prisoners aspect and the taking back of your authority. When you're 100% responsible for everything that happens, no one is responsible, so surrender and searching can kind of go full circle anyway. Yeah.

Everything can be known = nothing can be known. Again, words...

As I said truth is all there is. Nothing can be known. The concepts are not the direct recognition. It is too simple to get

Meh... I didn’t get enlightened. I stopped. It is direct. Truth is all there is... It was never born. i.e. nothing can be known

Only “advice” I’d (very lightly) suggest is don’t wait. Seeking false enlightenment is seeking a state so good that it’s impossible to not want it, and impossible to understand that it doesn’t exist. Perhaps avoid that trap, as you’ll be waiting forever. It’s all about stepping away from the belief that there are separate things (or just things).

Fear of death/change/unknown. You sort of get used to it when it becomes obvious that there is nothing to fear.

Still and train lightly and diligently the fine control of the attention. Then inquire and feel: What is true? Turn away from the untrue — you might as well not assume that anything objective is outside the untrue. What feels good?

It is there as itself. It has no reality separate from absolute is-ness, by definition. What is known about it? Any apparent answer simply appears.

The truth is inconceivable. It can be pointed to though: nothing; everything; appearance; causelessness; timelessness; unconditional freedom/love; that there is no separation; that what is happening never becomes something else (i.e. nothing happening)...

The illusion is that there’s a difference. Neither exists. Only truth does.

Apparently not.

Fear is that which fears itself — it’s empty. There is no-thing to fear.

If it is a thought, then it is a thought. But what’s the one undeniable truth? It’s far too absolutely nothing to actually state it but this comes close to stating the truth (i.e. absolutely nothing/everything) — That there is only what appears, and nothing about it can be known for sure. Can anything else be true? Well, what can you say for sure other than (it) appears? Is there even an it? Apart from its appearance? Can you know that for sure? Check. If you can say anything else for sure, how do you know you’re not deluded? — But... it is still undeniable that even this appears. Radically simple to recognize it but that recognition is just the beginning.

Who would do that? Notice how the answer is never a prescription, it's always a question or a dead end. So any who, how, or whatever question will always be met with negation. The truth is inconceivable. That there is no separation is inconceivable. Seeker seeks until it stops, and then it never was, and the whole time, it was wholeness. While your love of knowing trumps your repulsion of false, enlightenment will be delayed, and delaying it is (in a sense) paradoxically the only way for you to be enlightened now, and there is no un-enlightened one, so it must be as it is. I would hope for this to help in some way if it could, but it can't. I mean, in the sense that this is already complete. You are already good enough, as is everything -- appearance of the opposite of that is one of the manifestations of the illusion. Can't explain it, simply because the illusion is impenetrable -- it is both gamemaster and nonexistent... There is no one separate and no inside & outside.

It's a rather extensive endeavor which absolutely nothing is gained from in the end. And yet in its own way its worth every moment. You don't sound like you know what you're looking for if you think awakening could somehow be just a belief. It's the end of "truth" and the recognition of Truth. There is no one separate from everything that could know (or need) anything -- never has been.

I used to get something like this. Kind of like a sharp, dense metal chopstick lol

This is correct OP, I would not trust Layne Norton. Just my opinion.

Good advice, but I disagree with the darkness part -- I never found that necessary or even useful. Any particular reason you advise that? Other than that it worked for you? Silence, though... Yes, that would be optimal. Meditation can basically cure ADHD, especially when it's taken really far. Without a teacher, you're likely going to hit a lot of sticking points, and that's why I'd recommend Culadasa's TMI.

Yeah it's almost like learning how to swim faster or play guitar better -- the movement patterns can't really be taught with mere words, they just develop automatically after hundreds of hours of practice and intuitive, non-mental active learning, with maybe a bit of tweaks along the way. But it's mostly an automatic development of movement patterns -- like the movement patterns of walking -- despite their immense complexity, they happen and develop automatically. If you had to consciously and lucidly intend on every single muscular contraction involved in walking, it would be overwhelming, but luckily, movement patterns develop automatically with high-level, non-conceptual "intelligence."

Oh you play with the balance. Play and play until your mind learns and basically gets molded into shape from learning that y happens when x is tweaked. For me it ended up being a very light touch of attention on the object with rather the majority of conscious power on the periphery — but then you use a sort of balancing act where you’re ready to change that balance depending on hindrances that arise. Basically, it’s incredibly 1. subtle, and 2. dynamic. Don’t be overwhelmed, this will develop in time rather automatically if you’re experiencing at least some joy/bliss and sitting an hour every single day.

^^ Ridiculously helpful stuff, OP. What he said. All of it.

Fair enough. But “me” refers to the one who knows any objective truth at all, and there aren’t any objective truths, so what is the me? It is in fact an illusion, but as you indicated, it IS an illusion — that IS is its only substance. But since it is an illusion, and illusion means having no reality, there ultimately is no illusion. Only perhaps the false claims that there is some thing/one separate, or that something is needed, or that what is happening could be different from what is happening. Believing that something is going to happen, when there’s only what’s happening. Listening to nonduality is a waste of time in most cases. The dream goes on until it comes to an end, all choicelessly done but not by any one/thing separate, and then it’s recognized there was no dream. The most misleading statement would be to say there’s nothing to do — that’s only the case since there is no one. So if there seems to be someone, there will be the appearance of doing things. So the seeker might as well be honest about that and not fall into the trap of giving up seeking. The search does not end, the seeker does. Thinking about what has happened is what is happening after what has happened — but there is no “after what has happened,” nor has something happened. There’s no before or after separate from now. There is no separation from what is happening. The whole message boils down to this: what is happening never becomes something other than what is happening

This is what love means: At the ultimate level, love is that which loves itself, and happens to do so for no reason (i.e. without needing to). It’s tautologous, just like truth. Love = no need. (If the definition of love is that which loves itself, then of course it is empty... when it is defined! The closest one can get to the ground is love, but there is no ground. In that sense, while James12345 is correct that love is but a last-step of duality (or relativity), love can be meant as the absolute. The absolute is of course empty as well. And the relative is the absolute.) The feeling of love is well-being. The circumstance or “thing” of love is need. In other words, what is meant by “love=truth” is simply: there are no things or circumstances. That’s it. ? ❤️

Well... Sure, but it's not exactly like that. The "me" referred to is the reality of the one who is separate from what happens. It is admitted that there is in fact potentially a claim that there is someone separate from what happens, but the me has absolutely no substance of any kind -- all there is to the me is the false claim that it is real, which as you can see is not the same as the reality of the one who is separate. (Me = real one who is separate). The false claim that the me is real... is an appearance, not an illusion; it's not separate from what apparently happens, but the truth of the me actually being real is an illusion and not something that IS... at all. And in that sense, "it never was."