axiom

That part was tongue in cheek ”The real work” is surrender.

It’s sort of the other way around. In fact, “That which cannot be understood” is a good description of infinity. Thinking you know what infinity is = believing you have collapsed infinity to a circumscribable - and therefore finite - form. This cannot ever be done. Understanding and Being are made of exactly the same stuff, but they are at different vibrational levels. Sort of like water and ice. Or corn starch. It is free and fluid, but as soon as you stir it to investigate it, it solidifies and becomes inert. Infinity will similarly collapse into finitude with any effort to circumscribe it. The point is not to keep going until we think we’ve understood it all. That would be like making your life’s mission to learn *all* of the digits of Pi. Rather, at some point, we recognise the effort is futile. And that’s where the real work begins.

Neither comprehension nor embodiment is useful for - or indicative of - enlightenment. Embodiment and comprehension relate to each other. They bring much satisfaction to the ego, but they are second order.

Yes, time is the self.

@patricknotstar A single neuron either releases its neurotransmitters or it does not. It’s pretty much a binary setup. The function of a hypothetical synthetic neuron is identical to a “natural” biological neuron. At what point would you stop being you if you had 1% of your neurons replaced with synthetic neurons every day for 100 days? Day 1? Day 10? Day 50? Day 100? Again, the synthetic neurons do exactly the same job as the natural neurons. No difference. Where are you in this picture?

The National Grid should plug in to @Razard86 to alleviate the energy crisis. A state of permanent shock must produce a lot of electricity… ;-)

Reincarnation is simply attachment to forms, some of which may resemble lives.

In the end, spirituality is seen as the biggest and somehow silliest game of them all. When I look back upon my own life of earnestly seeking, these days I can see what a complete waste of time it was. Not in some regretful sense, but in a cosmic joke sense. It is genuinely funny. It all feels so important and worthwhile while it is there, but in “awakening” you find that all the satisfaction and wholeness you could ever wish for lies in simply enjoying any given activity that arises - whether it’s watching clouds, planning a holiday, going for a walk or eating your favourite takeaway pizza. The need to know disappears totally and unavoidably. For “me”, the insatiable thirst for understanding what this is - the false expectation that some ultimate reality lies somehow hidden behind, beneath or beyond it - is seen as a grand, self-perpetuating psychological hoax. I guess I consider that to be the yardstick. All the rest is theatre, which admittedly is sometimes very entertaining.

It’s not really an experiment. It’s pot luck at these doses and frequency. Leo’s desire to keep pushing this further and further is dangerous (for the body). It’s a bit like a death wish, isn’t it? At some point, he will push it too far. Maybe he already has. He wants to. One cannot generally spot how much insanity is in one’s own resting / default state. Don’t try this at home. It shouldn’t need to be said really, but… everything in moderation. Actually, understanding moderation is the real achievement and the real superpower. That is where the ego dissolves - in surrender to what is. Not in addiction to novelty. Ego, left to run amok, will always carry people to extremes and into the realm of addiction. Having a “passion for truth” is an excuse. It gives the ego somewhere to hide and metastasise.

Ego is necessary for the misapprehension of “knowing” to exist, seemingly. But knowing (the notion of holding the infinite as finite, perceived, circumscribed) is just as illusory as the ego. There is just stuff (“this”) that seems to be happening, and it includes what seems like “knowing”. Knowing is just a particular texture, colour, another quale. It is not separate from anything else. It is not about perception. There is no perception.

Sort of. But it's not the grass that is suffering or contemplating, rather it is the ego that thinks it is the grass. It is always the ego. Grass may not offer much of a distraction to a very powerful ego, since it is a relatively basic form.

The ego traverses the the gamut of forms. For example, blade-of-grass consciousness > tree consciousness > fish consciousness > reptile consciousness > human consciousness > superhuman consciousness > trans-human consciousness > God-consciousness. The ego thinks the answer to its own immortality lies in the direction of increasingly complex and convoluted distractions from the truth, which is that it isn't real, and never was. It will keep up this charade until it is entirely dissolved. Right now, you are identifying with your human body. Or perhaps, if you consider yourself "awakened to God consciousness", you are identifying with a different form. All such identification is an egoic effort to survive and to hide. To combat self-entropy, the ego builds ever-more sophisticated puzzle structures around itself. It is all a game of survival. Given a lifeline to prolong itself in a new form, it will grab it with both hands, day after day, "lifetime" after "lifetime". Many romanticise the idea of reincarnation, and think it is something desirable. Reincarnation is simply the ongoing attachment to form(s), which is the cause of all suffering.

@AtheisticNonduality You could use my quote instead if you like: "Lighting a scented candle versus being hurled into the sun", but it'll cost ya.

Yep, ridiculous. A pity as it undermines some otherwise very impressive insight.

So long as attachment remains, attachment remains.

Yes. It is a huge source of resistance, as it becomes so imbued with personal meaning over the course of practice - sometimes over many years. The self grows incredibly attached to it because of what it comes to represent. Giving up all attachment to spirituality is towards the end of the process for many. Apparently. The full circle completing. As you point out, it cannot be chosen. A true recognition of choicelessness is complete surrender.

Exploration of peak experiences is fun for a while. Sometimes a long while. But lacking a strong foundation, it will always eventually cycle back to hollowness.

Sounds like a real glimpse of enlightenment. No-self. The self veils the immediacy of forms and in so doing extracts much of their beauty. When the self is gone, everything has an inexplicable purity and vitality. It is like beauty and anxiety combined. It will probably seem to happen with greater frequency now. With surrender, the anxiety will ultimately give way to a greater beauty and aliveness. Happy for “you”

No problem - none of this actually matters :-)

‘You’re Hopelessly Stuck, Ya Loser!’ - Ramu’s keenly anticipated follow-up to the wildly popular ‘Have You Even Thought About Awakening, Bro?’

Yes I do. I’ve been through that phase, and it lasted about a year. You are referring to when all distinctions between self and other collapse into a singularity of “I AM” / Infinity. What happened next cannot really be expressed or understood, unfortunately.

It’s not just semantic. There is an actual misapprehension going on. “I can hide here…” the I said to itself, as it closed the doors of the red and sealed itself inside. “They’ll never find me here.” Rooting the self out of the appearance is almost impossible, but not quite. Some apparent people get “lucky” (it is actually quite terrifying and anxiety-inducing when it first happens) but it will elude the vast majority because it is exactly like dying, and no one wants to die badly enough. The notion and the sense of self as reality / infinity is the final hiding place for the illusory ego. It’s as simple as that. It can be completely deconstructed. No-self is not merely some Buddhist philosophy, it is reality. It’s just a very rare realisation because it is 100% counter intuitive and seems like it must break all the laws of simple logic and / or science (all constructions of the self, of course - hence the problem..) You won’t believe me, but if no-self realisation has happened, it is very obvious that something different is being discussed when someone says “you are infinity” or “you are red”. The word “you” in this context is seen as completely meaningless and is no more suitable a word / idea to describe red than any other word. Red is just red. Red is not you. Red is not blue. Maybe it is worth pondering why the word “you” is being used at all. Could it be because the qualitative essence of a “you” seems to have remained essentially unchanged all the way along your “path” from small self to big Self..? The answer is yes. Big Self is simply the small self in disguise, on a tightrope, enjoying the thrill but being very, very careful not to fall.

@Thought Art Observer and observed are two entirely distinct ideas. There is only one facet to “God”. Appearance. Anything else added to this is dream-building. The reality is, there is only appearance. The appearance is without a self or a Self. It is singular. This is the oneness you are referring to. Not observer and observed somehow bundled together. Simply appearance. No taxonomies, no distinctions, no multiple facets. No room for you. Just this.

We don’t need leaders. God consciousness exists as an idea. You know this already.