Water by the River

Yes. Lasting Happiness = Resting in Ones True Nature = Full Impersonal Enlightenment into Infinite Consciosness/Nothingness/Reality (pointers I like), or what Inliytened1 is pointing to below. The alternative is the merry go round of chasing experiences/states for the relief of the suffering the separate self-identity/contraction causes. Francis Lucille videos linked above are along these topics. Water by the River

There is wisdom in your post. Maybe you like this here from Francis Lucille: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk0LxK9L9p8&t=62s "The purpose of life is very simple: Its happiness." And the constant version of that comes with Enlightenment, or realizing what one really is. And more of Francis Lucille on Happiness and Enlightenment: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Francis+Lucille+Happiness+ And anyone saying they prefer "Understandings" in/of the Infinity of Manifestations of Infinite Consciousness (and not the truly Infinite Absolute Reality), or any kind of (sublime) experience, or whatever, over this happiness of Ones True Infinite Being.... I don't buy that. That mindset is not the end of the road. Suffering will break that mindset at some point, by definition. Every being strives for the happiness of permanently resting and living out of their True Nature. Temporarily gaining happiness over experiences that remove the self-contraction (temporarily) is just more of the game of separation & suffering &relieve over beautiful experiences & suffering again cycle. Bon voyage! Selling Water by the River

Very true. A good conceptual framework leads to practicing a path that drops one in an empty and impersonal awakened nondual state at the Gateless Gate. For passing the Gateless Gate, the framework and its framework-holder-identity must be transcended/thrown-away completely/cut-off Trekchö-style and let go. And crossing over is grace. It can't be forced. ("Nonmeditation Yoga"). But dropping the framework/path before being in a "compatible" empty ("impersonal") awakened state at the Gateless Gate also doesn't work. Selling Water by the River

Thank you very much for posting that video. I can confirm from long time experience (10 years+) of walking this path (Mahamudra, especially the system outlined in Pointing out the Great Way, but also Dzogchen) is very effective. It is orders of magnitude more effective in taking meditation and Awakening off the pillow into daily life than any other meditation system I am aware of, and I read about & tried quite some. I am convinced that with any other system it would have taken me at least 2-3 times longer at least, probably more. Getting meditation off the pillow and into daily life, not as mindfulness but more as Trekchö, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekchö#:~:text=In Dzogchen%2C trekchö (khregs chod,with its admonition against practice. , is in my experience essential to get the momentum of Awakened States going that is necessary for further insights - at least if one is not (geneticall or karmically) prodigy-like-gifted. Here Daniel Brown talks about the beginnings of Awakened-States, starting to get nondual: One thing to keep in mind: He already had Parkinson at that time of the shooting of that video, it was 3-4 years before his passing away last year. But besides that impacting him already, one can clearly feel his awakened state and presence. Water by the River PS: A brief summary of my experiences with the Mahamudra-System:

Very wise comments. That move tends to blow up any remaining identity. Instead of gradually letting all remains naturally dissolve into the true self-less/impersonal/empty Infinite Totality of Reality itself. In Tibetan Buddhism, it is frowned upon talking about ones realization, because normally its not beneficial for anybody involved. It tends to blow up self-importance, which is among Mayas most seductive kisses. "Separate-self"-importance, or the equivalent of shooting oneself in the knee and starting running the marathon towards fully empty and impersonal Infinite Consciousness. A very sharp indiciator is the conduct with which one lives ones life over the years, and the states which one radiates during that. Instead of any claims. That is how the Tibetans do it. Sadly, not so much the Westener Students that many of the not-so-enlightened Rinpoches attract... Water by the River

Probably a few trainwrecks, clusterf*****, maybe even a few voluntary early returns to the source ahead. And bad Karma for many involved. Maybe some experienced and integrated and hopefully quite awakened ones will benefit. Lets see and hope the best. I just hope it won't be too much show. I personally wouldn't dare rolling out something like that to customers/course-recipients that have not been personally qualified on an individual basis for personal readiness, maturity and wisdom. Over a long time of screening. And rolling out a paid course to an audiance which in large parts gets picked up via the google drag-net fishing in many cases those with serious psychological problems... If we all agree that the Reality is Infinite Intelligence, this Reality has zero problems with handing out Karma for such an endeavour if it fails and has got negative (or very negative) impact on weighted average. And Reality is not fair & straight in rolling out Karma. One essential ingridient of Lila/Maya is the illusion-element of the trickster. The seductress Maya. Looks good in the beginning as attractive choice, and then later one gets served ones Karma. But in either way the outcome will be, probably literally the hell of a show ahead... Bon voyage Water by the River

... and some questions concerning the clarification on the definition of "God Realization" from my side are also still open. Quote from this post: Thanks. Water by the River

Hi Ima Freeman, maybe you find that helpful: Awareness OF something stops. But not the potential for Awareness/sentience, or "Pure" Awareness, or however you want to call it. That can't go "anywhere" or stop. "It" is always right here. "IT" doesn't have a name here, it is beyond duality, nothing can describe it. It is the Absolute, or True You. You can call it of Awareness, but not Awareness OF, since there is no of then. It is void, empty, silent, infinite, and can only be described in negative terms. Yet, It manifests the potential of all possible worlds. quote from the link: You (capital Y) are the whole Infinite Reality (imagined body, imagined appearances, imagined everything n+1). With nothing outside of it, because that would be an imagined arising too. Any boundary separiting IT from an imagined other IT would be an imagined arising, an appearing phenomenon. Infinite. Try to imagine everything gone, including thinking: NOTHINGNESS. Not big, not small, just NOTHINGNESS. A vast infinite Nothingness, that is not even vast, because there is no 3D-space or anything (no objects/arisings). Similiar to Deep Sleep. YOU are still there. YOU awake every morning after having been there. You already know that you can be totally something/somebody else in dreams, and have totally forgotten all the past you imagine right now to be your "real" human self. But IT is not Nothingness like nothing there at all, but Nothingness with the POTENTIAL for sentience as soon as anything is imagined, and with Infinite Potential to imagine ANYTHING within it, n+1. Imagine a water pistol pops up in this Nothingness (see example Massaro, Conversations with a Skepctic): Then you have a) an imagined appearance (water pistol) and b) "something" perceiving it, the subject. Or just the perceptions of the water pistal in case no separates self is imagined/arises. Just the waterpistol perceiving itself, perceptions perceiving themselves. Impersonal. Then you have a "world", and subject/object. So what are you then? a) The Infinite Field with anything that can possibly be imagined? Yes. Nondual/Totality/Oneness. The manifest/imagined side of Infinite Consciousness. Always changing, never stable, since no appearance/form lasts. NONE. But there is a constant: b) But even more so, you are that Nothingness that can be unaware of itself, Infinite Consciousness initially unaware of itself, but with the potential for sentience if something arises. The unmanifest side of Infinite Consciousness. The unchanging, Unborn and constant core of the True You/Reality itself. So empty that IT is the Abyss, Impersonal. NOTHINGNESS. But also Infinite Potential, since IT can imagine anything. and "Both"a) and b) is indivisible, nondual. Totally the same essence, ONE Reality. The Nothingness or the True You is already the essence/"substance" of every imagined arisings/phenomenon, including the water pistol, or all separate self arisings (they are all appearances within you). a nice book about that is Szyper, "Infinite Consciousness" Any name for it brings some problems with it, because Reality contains all pointers/words, and a word/concept only has meaning in terms of its opposite. But nice pointers are Absolute/Pure Awareness, or even better (in my opinion) Nothingness. Because IT is not the everyday Awareness with subject/object (Awareness "OF) duality. Of course, it is the same Pure Awareness throughout, but when containing the illusion arisings of a separate-self, Its true Nature is covered by clouds and can not be realized. And it can not be realized by thinking about it, only by waking up. But nice pointers give the space to practice, and practice makes ripe for the grace of crossing over or realizing IT, passing the Gateless Gate. Selling Water by the River

For the Caption of your Thread: How heavy is Reality? Infinity? Absolute Reality is infinite. Not finite. Infinity is different from infinite. Mathematically there are many differently sized Infinities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor Infinity and Infinities are contained in the Infinite Absolute Reality. Of which can not be spoken. The Tao Te Ching: “… Tao is both Named and Nameless As Nameless, it is the origin of all things As Named, it is the mother of all things …” ~ Lao Tzu And for the content of your post: PS: Mass can be physically defined quite easily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass#:~:text=Mass can be experimentally defined,gravitational attraction to other bodies. For example over its Inertia. For the kilogram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram Selling Water by the River

Excellent. And if we now go looking in what all of that concepts/thoughts arise, and what remains after all (!) ideas and concepts have been killed and have lost their hypnotic power, are seen through and transcended.... Especially all identification (thought/feeling/lense/filter) with each and anything one can identify with (even God-Realization or whatever). The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao. One can speak a lot about the paths that drop one at the Gateless Gate. But for describing the Tao beyond Duality, and for "entering" it, being accepted to cross over, no concepts hold and can assure the passage. Silence, grace and non-doing. An empty mind. Not a mind filled to the brink with ideas about any kind of realization that will never pass through the Gateless Gate. An act of grace, for the being that is ready and empty enough to fully let go and die of its separateness/Identity. Because the death of any kind of separateness is the entrance price. On the other side, the death turns out to be the death of an illusion, and literally Everything is won. Water by the River

Yes. Projecting the properties of Absolute Infinite Reality on the small (and separate) self that re-appears after the trip/opening and which then interprets the experience is, um, well.... Something like the mother of all pre-trans-fallacies (Concept of Ken Wilber). On the other side, probably in this lovely place here, the most sophisticated version of that ever tried has been performed.. The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Selling Water by the River

@Moksha @Bazooka Jesus An die Freude / Ode to Joy by Friedrich Schiller translated by William F. Wertz Joy, thou beauteous godly lightning, Daughter of Elysium, Fire drunken we are ent’ring Heavenly, thy holy home! Thy enchantments bind together, What did custom stern divide, Every man becomes a brother, Where thy gentle wings abide. Chorus. Be embrac’d, ye millions yonder! Take this kiss throughout the world! Brothers—o’er the stars unfurl’d Must reside a loving Father. Who the noble prize achieveth, Good friend of a friend to be; Who a lovely wife attaineth, Join us in his jubilee! Yes—he too who but one being On this earth can call his own! He who ne’er was able, weeping Stealeth from this league alone! Chorus. He who in the great ring dwelleth, Homage pays to sympathy! To the stars above leads she, Where on high the Unknown reigneth. Joy is drunk by every being From kind nature’s flowing breasts, Every evil, every good thing For her rosy footprint quests. Gave she us both vines and kisses, In the face of death a friend, To the worm were given blisses And the Cherubs God attend. Chorus. Fall before him, all ye millions? Know’st thou the Creator, world? Seek above the stars unfurl’d, Yonder dwells He in the heavens. Joy commands the hardy mainspring Of the universe eterne. Joy, oh joy the wheel is driving Chorus. Fall before him, all ye millions? Know’st thou the Creator, world? Seek above the stars unfurl’d, Yonder dwells He in the heavens.

@Water by the River what I didn't understand anything sorry Beautiful analogy by Moksha. Sorry, I am no native English speaker. Sprechen Sie deutsch? Ummm, what I wanted to say was: You said you are not human. Yes, right. I said you "have" a human. In You. In Big You. Reality itself. That is why I wrote Capital Y because You is the "Opening" of Reality itself. Transcend and include the human. And it seems you get more and more succesfull in installing a switch to lower the volume of any internal self-talk. And on that, I congratulate you! Good job! Water by the River

You have a human, buzzing around in You . Capital Y. And it seems you are quite successful in installing & wiring a button for radio-volume control for it... Good job. Water by the River

Moksha, thanks for this post. I clearly made a mistake quoting this Wilber article that is indeed ripe with potential misinterpretation without further context in this forum. "Ego is NOT the human mind, with its perceptions, drives, and desires. Enlightenment precludes none of these phenomena, nor does it imply that people become mindless automatons. Ego is IDENTIFICATION with the human mind. It is blind enslavement to perceptions, drives, and desires in the false conviction that these attachments will lead to happiness. It is inevitably suffering." Nice summary, fully agree with it. Ego Identification is what I call separate self, separate self arisings or separate self gestalt. The identification with only a part of Reality (an illusion part to be precise) that splits the Infinite Oneness of Reality into two, into duality. "Wilbur is right that mystics change the world. Their motivation is not misidentification, but is the pure channeling of the absolute into its cosmos. The mind is not abandoned, but is deconditioned and transfigured from an oppressive demon into a companion dragon that will take you into depths and heights that would have been impossible in the unawakened state." Yes, beautiful. Water by the River

Sure, fully agree. Thanks for highlighting that. ( : A functioning healthy working character floating around in oneself it not a bad thing. I generally like the model of Ken Wilber on these topics (below). Any kind of healthy realization/transcendence should make one more loving and productive. If it kills the functioning character, makes one disfunctional, insane or mean, it is not the healthy version of realization/transcendence, but the sick one. If at all. differentiate, transcend and integrate (the healthy model of growth and transcendence), but disassociate/split off, don't transcend, and of course don't integrate (the sick version of failed growth and transcendence), and, uuum, mucho problemas. Daniel Brown once said: How can one spot deep and mature Realization? With the conduct with which one lives ones life. Yours truly believes that this is the ultimate compass, beyond blabla-bravado, conceptual castles in the sky, the lastest new awakened state of the day, claims of superiority of whatever-kind. Anybody who claims otherwise: Why not? Too difficult? For whom? Selling Water by the River The Meaning of Egolessness – Ken Wilber Ken Wilber: Precisely because the ego, the soul and the Self can all be present simultaneously, we can better understand the real meaning of egolessness, Egolessness-awaken - a notion that has caused an inordinate amount of confusion. But egolessness does not mean the absence of a functional self (that’s a psychotic, not a sage); it means that one is no longer exclusively identified with that self. One of the many reasons we have trouble with the notion of egoless is that people want their egoless sages to fulfill all their fantasies of saintly or spiritual, which usually means dead from the neck down, without fleshy wants or desires, gently smiling all the time. All of the things that people typically have trouble with money, food, sex, relationships, desire they want their saints to be without. Egoless sages who are above all that is what people want. Talking heads is what they want. Religion, they believe, will simply get rid of all baser instincts, drives and relationships, and hence they look to religion, not for advice on how to live life with enthusiasm, but on how to avoid it, repress it, deny it, escape it. In other words, the typical person wants the spiritual sage to be less than a person, somehow devoid of all the messy, juicy, complex, pulsating, desiring, urging forces that drive most human beings. We expect our sages to be an absence of all that drives us! All the things that frighten us, confuse us, torment us, confound us: we want our sages to be untouched by them altogether. And that absence, that vacancy, that less than personal, is what we often mean by egoless. But egoless does not mean less than personal, it means more than personal. Not personal minus, but personal plus all the normal personal qualities, plus some transpersonal ones. Think of the great yogis, saints and sages from Moses to Christ to Padmasambhava. They were not feeble-mannered milquetoasts, but fierce movers and shakers from bullwhips in the Temple to subduing entire countries. They rattled the world on its own terms, not in some pie-in-the-sky piety; many of them instigated massive social revolutions that have continued for thousands of years. And they did so not because they avoided the physical, emotional and mental dimensions of humanness and the ego that is their vehicle, but because they engaged them with a drive and intensity that shook the world to its very foundations. No doubt, they were also plugged into the soul (deeper psychic) and spirit (formless Self) the ultimate source of their power but they expressed that power, and gave it concrete results, precisely because they dramatically engaged the lower dimensions through which that power could speak in terms that could be heard by all. These great movers and shakers were not small egos; they were, in the very best sense of the term, big egos, precisely because the ego (the functional vehicle of the gross realm) can and does exist alongside the soul (the vehicle of the subtle) and the Self (vehicle of the causal). To the extent these great teachers moved the gross realm, they did so with their egos, because the ego is the functional vehicle of that realm. They were not, however, identified merely with their egos (that’s a narcissist), they simply found their egos plugged into a radiant Kosmic source. The great yogis, saints and sages accomplished so much precisely because they were not timid little toadies but great big egos, plugged into the dynamic Ground and Goal of the Kosmos itself, plugged into their own higher Self, alive to the pure atman (the pure I–I) that is one with Brahman; they opened their mouths and the world trembled, fell to its knees, and confronted its radiant God. Saint Teresa was a great contemplative? Yes, and Saint Teresa is the only woman ever to have reformed an entire Catholic monastic tradition (think about it). Gautama Buddha shook India to its foundations. Rumi, Plotinus, Bodhidharma, Lady Tsogyal, Lao Tzu, Plato, the Bal Shem Tov these men and women started revolutions in the gross realm that lasted hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years, something neither Marx nor Lenin nor Locke nor Jefferson can yet claim. And they did not do so because they were dead from the neck down. No, they were monumentally, gloriously, divinely big egos, plugged into a deeper psychic, which was plugged straight into God. There is certainly a type of truth to the notion of transcending ego : it doesn’t mean destroy the ego, it means plug it into something bigger. (As Nagarjuna put it, in the relative world, atman is real; in the absolute, neither atman nor anatman is real. Thus, in neither case is anatta a correct description of reality.) The small ego does not evaporate; it remains as the functional center of activity in the conventional realm. As I said, to lose that ego is to become a psychotic, not a sage. Transcending the ego thus actually means to transcend but include the ego in a deeper and higher embrace, first in the soul or deeper psychic, then with the Witness or primordial Self, then with each previous stage taken up, enfolded, included and embraced in the radiance of One Taste. And that means we do not get rid of the small ego, but rather, we inhabit it fully, live it with verve, use it as the necessary vehicle through which higher truths are communicated. Soul and Spirit include body, emotions and mind; they do not erase them. Put bluntly, the ego is not an obstruction to Spirit, but a radiant manifestation of Spirit. All Forms are not other than Emptiness, including the form of the ego. It is not necessary to get rid of the ego, but simply to live it with a certain exuberance. When identification spills out of the ego and into the Kosmos at large, the ego discovers that the individual atman is in fact all of a piece with Brahman. The big Self is indeed no small ego, and thus, to the extent you are stuck in your small ego, a death and transcendence is required. Narcissists are simply people whose egos are not yet big enough to embrace the entire Kosmos, and so they try to be central to the Kosmos instead. But we do not want our sages to have big egos; we do not even want them to display a manifest dimension at all. Anytime a sage displays humanness in regard to money, food, sex, relationships we are shocked, shocked, because we are planning to escape life altogether, not live it, and the sage who lives life offends us. We want out, we want to ascend, we want to escape, and the sage who engages life with gusto, lives it to the hilt, grabs each wave of life and surfs it to the end this deeply, profoundly disturbs us, frightens us, because it means that we, too, might have to engage life, with gusto, on all levels, and not merely escape it in a cloud of luminous ether. We do not want our sages to have bodies, egos, drives, vitality, sex, money, relationships, or life, because those are what habitually torture us, and we want out. We do not want to surf the waves of life, we want the waves to go away. We want vaporware spirituality. The integral sage, the nondual sage, is here to show us otherwise. Known generally as tantric, these sages insist on transcending life by living it. They insist on finding release by engagement, finding nirvana in the midst of samsara, finding total liberation by complete immersion. They enter with awareness the nine rings of hell, for nowhere else are the nine heavens found. Nothing is alien to them, for there is nothing that is not One Taste. Indeed, the whole point is to be fully at home in the body and its desires, the mind and its ideas, the spirit and its light. To embrace them fully, evenly, simultaneously, since all are equally gestures of the One and Only Taste. To inhabit lust and watch it play; to enter ideas and follow their brilliance; to be swallowed by Spirit and awaken to a glory that time forgot to name. Body and mind and spirit, all contained, equally contained, in the ever-present awareness that grounds the entire display. In the stillness of the night, the Goddess whispers. In the brightness of the day, dear God roars. Life pulses, mind imagines, emotions wave, thoughts wander. What are all these but the endless movements of One Taste, forever at play with its own gestures, whispering quietly to all who would listen: is this not you yourself? When the thunder roars, do you not hear your Self? When the lightning cracks, do you not see your Self? When clouds float quietly across the sky, is this not your very own limitless Being, waving back at you?

Bernadette Roberts wrote a book on her experiences with True No-Self: The Experience of No-Self. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernadette_Roberts Some comments on the topic and Bernadette Roberts book in the link below: Inliytened1 quotes above also provide an excellent perspective on the topic. Selling Water by the River

Very nice description, and interesting similiarity. That is exactly the essence of the method (Mahamudra stage 1. Skill of Reckognition) once really implemented (after a long time of practice to get really able to do that) that got things really going for me with awakened states. "What happens if you investigate into emerging thoughts this way, is that they get FASTER. VERY FAST. Like 20-30 emergent thoughts/feeling arisings per second, most of them rudimentary. The mind does this to keep the illusion going. To make it too fast for you. But at some point, one learns to get that fast also..." Basically, looking into a thought, one sees its Emptiness/Nothingness (one doesn't find the thought, it evaporates). It is cut off. Dzogchen calls this cutting off "Trekchö". Daniel Brown called this stage a "High Speed Search Task into the unfindability of the nature of thoughts". A High Speed Search task into their emptiness, into their nature as consciousness, as Nothingness. So the emerging gets fast, very fast. Daniel Ingram also mentions that. But at some point, with enough practice and familiarity, YOU get faster. You spot and cut off every very fast, subtle, fragmentary thought arising. None of them "grips" you anymore, since you have seen them all, and their structure. Just thoughts arising very fast ...., see link below Selling Water by the River

Oh, I had my share of suffering, as every other being. But also some kind of compass and intuition that seemed to have pointed in a not too wrong direction. Concerning psychedelics, as I wrote before somewhere else: This is a public forum, and the stuff is illegal here. So please excuse that I don't give a comment. Daniel Brown (Author of Pointing Out the Great Way, the book I mainly used for the meditation techniques I describe) once answered when asked if he had experience with Psychedelics,in a tongue in cheeck-style: "I would never do something like that", and smiled .He did studies while studying Psychology at Harvard giving LSD to terminal Cancer Patients, with great results. Until it was forbidden. Luckily, Johns Hopkins University and others continue with similiar studies with Psilocybin.

Yes. I saw too much deep structure similiarties in all the spiritual traditions. That made sense to me. That was the only coherent explanation of the Kosmos for me. And the concept of Integral (Wilber) resonated deeply in me. So, a long time nothing happened where it could be said that meditation is more than just mindfulness training. Relaxing, interesting, a bit of bliss, but also in the beginning just one of the hardest and most annoying things one can try. Basic meditation training: Formal training on the pillow, mindfulness during daily life. Over quite some years. Stage 1 Mahamudra: Skill of Reckongition: And the thing with the increased thought-emerging-frequency was really the point where it took off. First, the ability to stay "on top" of the mindstream and cut it at will. Later, awakened states with nonduality followed. Stage 2/3: So then, a few years later, Nonduality followed. Before that point, it brought quite some bliss. But nothing where one could say: Yes, thats it. Don't need any external proof or convincing anymore. Nonduality changes that. It is evident. Stage 4: And then later, after some years letting these states develop and ripen, always here Ultimate Reality started dawning. 4 Mahamudra Main-stages: 0: Initial Concentrative Meditation as preaparation 1 stage: Skill of Reckognition: Cutting off the Thought Mindstream 2 stage: Yoga of Unelaboration: Always Here (never not here, timeless) Mind opens up 3: Yoga of One Taste: Nonduality 4: Yoga of Nonmeditation: Separate Self gets transcended. Pure Impersonal infinite Consciousness/Awareness without any separate-self flying around in it, itself being the world and all manifestation. That is the deep structure found in every meditation system. It is always in a deep structure similiar to that. And the tricky point, where most of the discussion happens here: Between 3 and 4. Psychedelics do bring one to a pretty empty nonduality. But not to that which stage 4 brings.... Not fully empty and impersonal. Not fully conforming to the enlightened mindstream. Water by the River

For me psychedelic are a tool for understanding. I think that's the key. Not conceptual understanding, of course. Understanding of the barries that veils. For me will and control are not tools in this game, because they are the walls. I wrote a bit sloppy: Sure Psychedelics dissolve large parts of the separate self. But not all of it. The most subtle layers remain. And they are very subtle But If you do that, you strength the you. Because YOU are doing a effort, trying something, and that is precisely the barrier Yes, correct observation. But necessary at this stage. And that gets automated by training. At some point, when its automatic, one throws the stick in the fire. But that comes quite late (Yoga of Nonmeditation, last stage). And to get to 15-20+ Thought/feeling arisings cut via Trekchö, its fully automatic. Thinking is waaaay to slow to do that. Thinking works in time-frames of 0,5 seconds, normally 2-4 seconds to think complete sentences. On that point I am really sure. It is not a problem of using a bit of effort here. It will get automized soon. Trekchö it not countering thinking with thinking. That is the begining stage before. Trekchö is really that fast. It is a "High-Speed-Search-Task into the Unfindability/Emptiness of thoughts. Ever seen one? They evaporate when looking into them. Problem is then only: They get faster and faster then.... Water by the River

The essence of fears is the same as oft thoughts: Looked into their nature, they dissolve in their own emptiness/consciousness. Same practice as described in my last post. Yet, better one starts with "easier" every-day-thoughts first, and slowly works oneself up to the major opponents in this game: Fears, Trauma, Core-problems.... One opponent after the other. And just staying on top everday-life-thoughts and cutting them brings the skills/ability to face the larger enemies... Water by the River

The deciding step for really getting the nondual awakened states flowing what is described below. Before that point in practice, no Nonduality, the visual field rock solid "material" and out there "external". No awakened state. To get there took quite some years. Could have been faster with good coaching, but didn't have that. Imagine it like this: Many years of meditation the mindful-way. Zero awakened state from that, not to even think about Nonduality at all. Didn't even know what that really is, despite reading about it. And then the bliss of these states, and nonduality opened up.... But that was also a process over several years. Cutting off the mindstream like this, or at least letting it fully transparent flow in oneself (that is not the usual mindfulness, its thought train appears like an object-flow in you), changes the energetic states of the whole system. It is an indirect path (but it can't be different): You influence the thought via ATTENTION (this is something you can guide/focus/control). You can't directly influence the Awakened State, how could you. You look into the thoughts, like described below. They dissolve then, their nature IS emptiness/consciousness. That done long enough brings the energetic shift to the awakened states. At least for me. And for thousands of others, see the Mahamudra-and Dzogchen practicelineages. Since more than one Millenia. And of course you can do that also! Every being can. The essence of each thought IS Consciousness/Emptiness. The separate-self IS these thoughts, and corresponding feelings. One can dissolve them all. And that clears the way. Reality it litereally desinged in such a way that: Separate Self = Clouding over= thought stream when that is not cut/Trekchö, the clouding mechanism starts: Reality is "out" there/external/duality, "solid/material, and limited (visual field bubble has an imagined border) not infinite. Switch off the separate self thought/feeling flow, the illusion-system ("out" there/external, "solid/material, and limited) gets switched off). That design of Reality makes complete sense: Samsara NEEDS this illusion (external/duality, solid, not infinite) The illusion can be dissolved by aligning to Reality (EMPTY IMPERSONAL JUST AWARENESS, NOT separate self-illusion).when that is practiced to make the mindstream conform to Reality, the illusion arisings (external/duality, solid, not infinite) fall away. Yoga of One Taste And in that nondual impersonal state of Infinite nondual mere appearance/lucid/not solid Infinite Consciousness, one can dissolve the final subtle illusion: Subtle Separateness of a Transparent witness, still coloured by Individuality and Separateness. Yoga of Nonmeditation. I can only highly recommend you to read the book, start the practice (similiar as described below) over a longer time period, and see what happens. Psychedelics only lift the veil mainly concerning this here (external/duality, solid, not infinite). But they don't dissolve the Illusion mechanism, the clouding over. Let's describe it in Engineering-language: The separate self is a positive feedback-loop: Uncut/Untranscended thought-stream including separate self I-thoughts/I-feelings triggers a system that cause these illusion arisings for the visual field: illusion arisings (external/duality, solid, not infinite). And also regular dissatisfaction/suffering, which make the ego work on its next salvation-project to bring experiences that bring bliss and relieve. The endless circle of suffering, N+1. and an enormously stable clouding-over illusion system of the separate self. Works in Billions of people, normally nobody wakes up just by chance. Some do, then its normally Karma or something the like. But extremely few. Cut that system, at some point the cutting/Treckchö becomes self sustaining: positive feedback loop. Because its lovely, brings bliss. And before that tilting point, it takes energy, because its unpleasant. A negative feedback-loop while meditating. Mayas Illusion-protection-mechanism. Must be there, else everybody would be meditating. Then, via keeping the mindstream cut/Trekchö/Transcended, another positive feedback loop sets in: The Endohuasca-system gets triggered. This then makes the visual field mere appearance/lucid/not solid/infinite, and especially duality/externality goes. Brown calles it Boundless Timeless Awake Awareness/Consciousness. And resting in that brings even way more bliss, which allows dissolving core elements/Traumas of the separate self, and staying lucid in daily life also with problems. In these states, the last remnants of the separation-illusion are dissolved... Try to think in "positive-feedback-loops", and tilting points/mountain-passes to reach, having climed in goes downhill or automatic/nice/blissful. and initial uphill-climbs to get to the first downhill-track after crossing the mountain pass height Willpower/Suffering while meditating until a certain point, then blissfull/downhill/automatic. Then, ego/Trauma/pain throws curve ball, and the current meditation/bliss fails. Further practice. Momentum building. Gradually dissolving of the separate self contraction and suffering, bliss gets stronger. Increasingly, more and more difficult life situation can be handled lucid. And the magic point is, after some years: Sitting somewhere on a park bench, the bliss flowing, and: realizing the freedom & fullness of not needing anything. Water by the River From this Link: For me, the crucial Point for really getting the meditation "really" off the pillow into daily life was getting to THAT here Skill of Recognition: (1. Yoga of Mahamudra system) Now it gets interesting. That was the decisivepoint for me once I understood that, and implemented it. Afterwards, it started to get nondual pretty soon... If you look HOW the thoughts emerge, (1) out of what they emerge, (2) what they are, (3) in what they move (4) into what they disappear ALL of that (1)(2)(3)(4) must be present. Thoughts DO appear. From "something". Stay in "something". Consisting of "something" All of that is Emptiness, or Consciousness, or Nothingness. Thoughts are made of "that","move in that", "dissolve into that". and you will never SEE that, or can say what it is. Nothing. But not a blank nothing. An aware Nothing. Actually the essence of all world-appearances, but that comes later, when it gets nondual, at the Yoga of One Taste. What happens if you investigate into emerging thoughts this way, is that they get FASTER. VERY FAST. Like 20-30 emergent thoughts/feeling arisings per second, most of them rudimentary. The mind does this to keep the illusion going. To make it too fast for you. But at some point, you learned to get that fast also... Basically, looking into a thought, one sees its Emptiness/Nothingness (one doesn't find the thought, it evaporates). It is cut off. Dzogchen calls this cutting off "Trekchö". Daniel Brown called this stage a "High Speed Search Task into the unfindability of the nature of thoughts". A High Speed Search task into their emptiness, into their nature as consciousness, as Nothingness. So the emerging gets fast, very fast. Daniel Ingram also mentions that. But at some point, with enough practice and familiarity, YOU get faster. You spot and cut off every very fast, subtle, fragmentary thought arising. None of them "grips" you anymore, since you have seen them all, and their structure. Just thoughts arising very fast. You don't control which thoughts arise. Depended origination, they are just emerging by themselves. You can focus on just their arising (of thoughts), just their staying, just their going away. At some point, they just emerge, looking into their nature is automatic, and they immediately dissolve. No duration. Just emergence, and poof gone. And when you are fast enough, you get a continuance of staying mindful. When that happens its pretty clear what happened. Your attention got so fast that you can stay mindful even through the high-speed thought emergence. At the end, they come very fast, they don't get "elaborated out". Thinking, or elaborating the thoughts out, is slower than their emergence. They emerge already fully complete with their content, and then slowly get "talked/elaborated" in your mind. Natural reaction: So WHO the f*** am I (pardon my french) when I don't control what thoughts emerge and if they appear fully with their content in a fraction of a second, and get elaborated later in a hypnotic show over several second? good question... to be answered later. Outcome is: You know the nature of every possible thought (Consciousness-Emptiness-Nothingness), of the whole mental-continuum of thoughts, all that there can be. Their nature. you can cut off or transcend/just watch your normal mindstream in most daily situations without getting caught up/hypnotized by it, which already here leads to a lot of bliss. Not sufficient bliss to get ones separate self completely handled, but already quite wonderful. That is the start of real freedom. You know how your mindstream hypnotizes you, and gets faster when you actually look into each thought arising and its nature. At some point you get fast enough to cut off every arising, or let it elaborate in a controlled aka mindful way. @UnbornTao Oh please hit me. Instead of watching some nice travel-documentation as planned on TV yours truly did again the overkill...

Same in Mahamudra: "Tashi Namgyel's crossing-over [to Enlightenment] instructions are as follows: The likely time is when the practitioner has refined any intense experiences of nonconceptual stillness, clarity, or bliss, and then continuously meditates, having attained certainty letting the mind's [natural] brightness and clarity come forth in awareness," Brown, Pointing out the Great Way Selling Water by the River