Batman

Because there is no end. Take space for example. Does space end? If so, what it is limited by? No-space? What is this no-space? In order for a "thing" to exist it must have limits. But what is beyond the limits of a "thing"? another "thing" with? and then another, and another, and another? Where do all things end?

Well, we sure take life seriously. Animals don't have the learning capacities that humans posses. They are acting their the instinctual drives rather simply. Humans on the other hand has complex web of beliefs regarding their existence, that is built around the instinctual drive to survive and procreate. This cause distortion in perception and different feelings towards existence. The success of modern culture is built upon putting life on a pedestal and constructing an illusion regarding the importance and meaning of the human experience.

Yes, I sense attachment to tripping due to identifications with "high consciousness" experiences. This is why tripping as an activity serve as some sort of complex self-conviction behavior.

You were programmed since you were an infant to reject unpleasant sensations and experiences and embrace those who brings you pleasure. Over time this becomes an automatic response to the stimuli, making it hard to override. So it takes practice to cultivate new disposition towards every experience and sensations. The phrase "old habits die hard" might represent this impediment in a general sense. Of course, that being identified with a body and a self contributes much to the entire affair. Social norms also play a norm, because we have many social agreements that may be lurking in our mind and also cause us to generate experience of pain or rejection toward sensations or experiences. The good thing is, that it is mostly generated by your mind, so you can change your entire approach toward "negative" experiences and sensations. As a human organism, our instincts are minimal and so they will only "take over" the mind when a real danger to the body is presented to the senses. This allows us to program almost every response in the social and physical domain.

Detachment is the realization that the attachment nature is the mind, and that all mind activities are abstractions, so any value assigned by mind to some object or circumstance is a self illusion.

Honesty

Very nice. It is good to think about this way: when did you start to experience an "internal world", that is only privy to you, secret and hidden from other? How is it came to be that you are able to generate and experience internal thoughts, memories, emotions, imagination, ideas and so on? How this became possible from an experience of perceptions? There is a possibility that in the process of learning the possibility to represent an object or any "thing" without the object itself or the thing itself, via means of words (by writing or by speaking) or other symbols, arose to possibility to create an internal representation of "objects" and "things". This is possibility of internal representation called Mind. But it is even possible that the activities of mind were there and we didn't even notice them, and only later on we learned to distinguish specific internal activities such as thinking, remembering, having emotions, and so on. So in order to experience the mind, we had to use a very basic mind ability - splitting experience to different 'things' or 'objects', from the total meaningless perceptive field. This ability might be called 'distinguishing' or 'isolating' perceptions so you could experience them as distinct from other perceptions. Setting specific boundaries to aspects of perceptions creates the experience of the conceptually 'confined' perception, which enables to experience it as separated from the totality of the perceptive field, or from other 'carved out' perceptual data.

You have no idea how much influence mind activities has on your experience, when you are in your day to day place of living. They have a strong tendency to become a setback. This is why disconnecting and going to a retreat or a workshop are powerful. You can put to rest all the self-image maintenance.

Of course. Mind is only an abstraction. It has no real substance. It is a "mental object". An activity of representing some thing that it is not. It is like imposing a value on some physical object in order to asses its necessity to your survival. The assigned value is purely conceptual in nature and will never be the "real" value of the object at hand. Although, it has the immense power to direct the activities of survival. So even though the nature of the mind, in the relative experience, is completely conceptual, nevertheless it still is the dominant feature in the human experience. Mind is complete fabrication, but it helps to create astonishing worlds of intellect and language. This communication could not exist without the activity of mind. Memories would not exist. Future planning would be impossible. Thinking wasn't possible. The enormity of the human mind is what allows us as a species to dominant the planet. But it is a double edged sword when used constantly.

The question you should ask yourself is - are you free?

Purpose or meaning is a function of mind. Thus, it is invented and conceptual. There is no substance to it, it is imagined, usually to serve survival by assigning a conceptual value onto an object or activity. So, purpose and meaning are inventions of mind, and do not exist out of mind. Existence has no purpose, and no meaning. But it does not mean anything. It is "neutral". Meaninglessness and purposelessness is what allowing the "vacuum" or "emptiness" for creating invented purpose or some creating meaning for yourself. In our day and age, most purpose and meaning are attributed to survival and material success. But it does not have to be this way. It could be anyway you choose. You are completely free to design your own meaning and purpose. Mind has no inherent value. It is an abstraction, pure conceptual activity. You can form your mind - you already did, but mostly in accordance with the mind patterns that your family and the society in which you leave has already formed. But it can be reformed. Have fun playing and creating!

As a general note, bring in to mind the fact that you have already identified the limitations as beliefs. Now, be conscious of the fact that belief is created in the mind. It is an abstraction, a conceptual activity with no substance or real fixation in 'physical' reality. Dispelling beliefs is a possiblity, but when it comes to core beliefs that formed your self it might not be that easy, because they are "hooked" to your sense of being and much of emotional activity. So contemplating and dispelling beliefs is a one possibility, but sometimes in order to break a limiting belief you must cross that limit by action, sort of "proving to your self", and usually it will be accompanied with much emotional reactivity. Good luck my friend.

Perception is inherently indirect. By definition, you have no real perception of the thing perceived, because perception is a process by which 'data' is gathered and filtered by the senses to the mind. You believe that you are located in the head, because you identify your self mostly in the location where it seems that you control and interact with the environment (The eyes, the ears, the nose, speaking ability and facial recognition and expression). However, you do have sensations in other parts of your body. In fact, you have sensations all over your body, including inner body sensations. Why are you not being identified with being located there? When you generate a thought, where is it "located" in your experience? Do you perceive the thought being inside your head, or is it just being perceived regardless of any location, as an abstract conceptual sound that actually isn't located anywhere but only you are privy to it? Is it possible that you identify only with perceptions that seems to be in your "personal" and "immediate" control, such as mind and body? Why would a form distinguish itself from other forms by creating insular identity? Is awareness itself distinct from the thing that you are aware of? Is it possible that the assumed location of our awareness is somewhat of a red herring, distracting us from our original "place" of Being?

Kudos. Don't put to much emphasis on the visual reflection of the Consciousness. It is just your mind trying to form the Consciousness into knowledge or experience.

You are failing to grasp the meaninglessness is not a negative. If every thing lacks meaning, then meaninglessness is also meaningless. This means freedom, because as a self you can create meaning, and drop it if you find that it does not 'work for you'. You are not bounded by any seemingly inherent meaning. Work towards greater Consciousness but also ground your self in a life you want to live.

There is no 'other time' for 'God' to experience other perspectives. It is only Now, always. And experience can only occur in the Now. So 'God' does not experience any perspective 'simultaneously' to other perspectives, nor does 'he' experience them 'gradually'. This is indeed a Paradox, and why the Mind will never understand this. Now is not a moment in time, because time does not exist outside of the Now. Time is a figment of mind. Of course that 'You' as a mind cannot know other minds from within your own mind. Even if you would to 'bounce off' into 'other' mind, you will be exactly the mind that you bounce into! See how that works? It is impossible to figure it out from the level of Mind, so don't bound yourself to this self-mind imprisonment. And yes, within any experience, 'other minds' only exist as a conceptual assumption. However, isn't the experience of any mind, even your own, is itself a concept, an illusion?

Your observation regarding the eye inability to perceive itself is key and really on the spot regarding any existential questioning. However, the assumption that our senses give us direct access to reality is false. The perceptive faculties of any organism were developed for serving the survival of the organism. Survival is the principle behind every facet of your experience. Can you grasp that your entire experience is self survival, and not on a logic and intellectual level? You know a 'thing' only by perceptive or mental faculties. And they are never the 'thing' itself. Knowing is an abstraction of what is. And you don't see red, you only perceive a certain light, and distinct it from another by conceptualizing it into the label 'Red'. That is the case for every distinction you make conceptually in order to know any thing. Of course the moon does not exist for you other than be perception and conception. It's existence (or non-existence) are dependent on you making a distinction of a moon.

No, there is really nothing to add. There are many traps in this work, so being honest with your self is key for transforming. I think when it comes to transforming into a different self, Psychedelics and Contemplation are powerful because you can become more conscious of what a self is, what mind is, why are you generating the emotions you generate in certain conditions, what are your core beliefs/assumptions regarding who you are and what reality or life is, etc. If you had some direct consciousness of who you really are, than this pursuit becomes much more possible and less prone to limiting beliefs. It is very easy to feel trapped and stuck in the present self (of course, this is the self's purpose...). When transforming, inner resistance is to be expected. Moreover, inner resistance and emotional response will signify that you are touching some deep aspect within yourself, that you are not conscious of. The more you become conscious of how and why you created the self that you are Now, the easier it becomes to change it. Unfortunately for my self, which I mostly adopted from much childhood trauma and fear, this is exceptionally hard. Sometimes it feels that in order to change I must express the hurt and fear the child I was more than 10 years ago. A lot of times I get that Consciousness is 'buried' right behind the fabricated self, and this is why Consciousness work and Transformation are not mutually exclusive, but overlap in some way.

Having an Enlightenment or Awakening experience is one thing, and transforming the self that you created is another. You are saying: Consciousness is awesome, but what about me? Well, if you want the embody Consciousness in your self, you will have the change your self. You need to change 'you'. There is no other way. You want more connectedness and less separation? Be more honest and straightforward. Study the self that you created, because it is what causes you to feel separate and identify with specific aspects of experience, while excluding others. You constructed a conceptual and fabricated self in order to persist as some form of experience. By distinguishing a specific form and directing your life force towards maintaining it, the result is separation from other forms. This is fundamentally the illusion of the self-mind, and a few awakenings are usually not enough to break the self that you are being for some time. You want to attain 'Christ Consciousness' or 'Buddha Consciousness'? That means you need to transform into a self that represents Consciousness (or Truth) as much as possible. This is no easy task, because the mechanisms of self-survival are not designed to reflect the nature of being and existence, they are designed to serve the survival of the organism. I wish you good luck.

Mate, those are some good question which only you can answer. Knowing is a function of mind and perception, and occurs only as a process. Not knowing serves to 'open' you to Consciousness, because knowing contracts (so to speak) Consciousness into some form of concept or perception, and so must be a limitation or restriction of Consciousness into that form of knowing.

Fear is a function of mind, serving the survival of particular self. You claim that you couldn't think, but miss the fact that fear is based on thought (although, a rather automatic and fast enough that we fail to notice that we create the fear using our mind). 'God' is not any state, experience or awareness (nor is it separate from them). Being raped is not 'God'. It is an experience, a manifestation or expression of 'God', and this is why it is not separate from it, but not what God is. Don't mistake an experience of sleep paralysis with Consciousness. Maybe you were cut off from some functions of mind, mainly those relating to operate the body. But it seems that you had perceptual experience, which was also interpreted and produced emotion in accordance with the circumstances. As such, a sleep paralysis experience may reveal some aspects of mind and bring about some insight.

There is no contradiction. But common self-survival and Truth might not be 'Parallel Pathways'. In the world of self-survival, a lot of people manipulate or use others to serve their personal survival. They are lacking Consciousness and therefore hold an exclusive self (meaning they identify almost solely with their body and character traits or behaviors). From this vantage point it is also possible to forgive them for their 'devilry', because they lack Consciousness. In the world of Truth, there is only you. Your sense of self is all-encompassing. These births expressions of love and compassion that are aligned with the Truth of who and what you really are. But this does not negate survival of the organism, and only the survival of the conceptual self. This level of Consciousness will sure affect the drive to pursue uncommon wealth, material success and so on. Seeing behind the illusion of the self may cut many motivations to accumulate or gain something that is not currently present. The self drive still exits, but is diminished, in a scope that is reflected by the new level Consciousness.

If it was 'SO SCARY' it wasn't 'God'. You were still in the domain of experience and self.

Mate, did you try Psilocybin? The experience might reflect mind activities that may cause your 'root chakra' imbalance. What signals does your body gives you regarding your imbalance? Do you suffer from fear and anxiety?

No, they are concepts which are distinct one from another. Brain refers to a distinction of an organ in animals, usually the one that is central in the nervous system which is controlling most of the activities of the body. Mind refers to the complex conceptual activities in our experience, such as memory, imagination, thinking, interpretation, etc. It is common that people believe that the source of mind activities is the brain organ. This may be where the concepts meet or overlap. This is a legitimate assertion, but the fact of the matter is that if you open the skull, you will not find a the mind activities. However, it is possible and even probable that affecting the brain will in turn affect the mind activities. This seems to suggest a causational relationship between this two distinctions in our experience, but this does not mean that the source of the mind is in the brain. The brain is a concept of the mind, the same way that the mind is in itself a concept and a product of mind activity (conceptualization, interpretation). So, in the usual sense of your question, brain and mind are not the same thing. But, on a more wide sense, yes, both brain and mind are distinctions, concepts, and a product of mind activity.