axiom

@Someone here Yes, absolutely something seems to be happening. That's the crux of it. Seems to be

That is why I pre-empted you. Languages have evolved with the assumption that 'I' exists. One of the reasons that talking about this stuff is impossible. Also one of the reasons why it is so rarely understood...

This will sound incoherent... but I would say that awareness does not exist, and no-one knows they exist.

To clarify, I consider that self-awareness is a misapprehension. For there to be self-awareness, there must be a self to begin with. There is no self. I do not consider there to be any such thing as "pure awareness" either. Ultimately, I think the question of AI consciousness - or lack thereof - will lead to a complete overhauling of naive human notions of consciousness not dissimilar to the Earth-shaking paradigm shifts in physics which occurred in the 1920s. Placeholding this post for a revisit in 2040

@Michael Jackson This is a forum devoted to spirituality which often also touches on subjects in the relative domain. We can talk about things like awareness as if they are real, but in truth they are legacy concepts borne from a dream. The entire framework of an aware subject and an object of awareness is completely wrong, like Flat-Earth wrong. When I see articles questioning whether or not AI is conscious, it feels like reading a debate concerned with exactly how many turtles there are supporting the flat Earth. Entertaining, but a tad misleading.

There is no such thing as self awareness.

Solipsism only seems to be true so long as the Self seems to be real.

I don't entirely agree with you, but I love your overall tone. Very nice.

I’m currently writing a three-volume series of books about @Razard86 … OK, not really. I’m actually halfway through a fairly puerile horror / sci-fi graphic novel, and producing another one related to some of the themes discussed here.

Not sure if I can help with this.

Spiritual practice seems to have some sort of effect on personal characteristics. That being said, neither of those things has anything to do with enlightenment, the apparent occurrence of which may leave a character entirely unchanged.

Life seems good, fun, enjoyable. No career anymore as such (I was involved in running businesses for many years, sold a few, made money). I write books, I paint, and I sometimes make films. I have a two-months young baby daughter. No major goals as such. The things I do now seem to be imbued with a lot more fun and much more of an easygoing attitude than in the past. Life seems like play. The story arc of the character seemed to go from severe depression through to complete contentment over a period of say 35 years. All of the above can only be said to be apparent, because in truth no one is ever born, and no one actually lives a life.

The feedback loop of selfing is the cosmic joke. No one was sent here to make sense of anything. That is the dream.

“The dream experience” does not need to be - and cannot be - improved. The dream is the self. There is no “your true nature” because there is no you. ”You created the dream for a reason” This is inference. Appearance does not come with a reason. Appearance is pure and complete. The self wants to make meaning out of what is because it feels separate and incomplete. And in so doing it perpetuates the dream.

When you knock down all the walls of a house, you are no longer inside, and it is no longer a house.

@Razard86 Persuasion doesn't look like this

@Breakingthewall If you mean that the self / Self includes the sense of being in control, then yes. There is no actual control.

It seems likely that I would have argued until I was blue in the face: "But I am here! I have free will! I have a point of view! Don't be ridiculous!" And so on. I would have taken it very personally Only an apparent self can make things seem real or not. "Real" and "cosmos" are just ideas. What seems to be is what seems to be, but nothing can really be said about it (even this). There is an apparent point of view. But "consciousness" is an inference based on what seems to appear plus apparent (illusory) ownership. Ownership and thus consciousness is not a real thing. There is only directness. God. Infinity. This.

You are asking this of words on a screen.

I don't disagree that there is an infinite source of love and freedom. But I do not agree that this is what you / I / we are. The "you" was never there. It does not suddenly appear if enlightenment happens. What seems to happen is that the illusion of the "you" just completely dissolves, and that is enlightenment, so far as it can be pinned down. What is left is just this / existence / infinity / God / love / liberation. All of the things that the self formerly claimed as its own (duality), and in so doing diluting them manifold. The workings of the world, the seasons, the movement of the sun and planets can be reasonably well explained in terms of a flat Earth by someone very attached to the idea (as a quick youtube search confirms). Or, it can be seen as an outdated legacy concept borne from a relatively naive period in human history, i.e. prior to the 5th century BC. "You", similarly, can be seen as a legacy concept borne from a dream. Enlightenment, if it does anything, exposes it and outgrows it. In the end, a "you" can only be shoehorned into what is. It doesn't fit, just as an obese woman doesn't fit into a size 0 dress.

Yes, and that is true. There is noone. Noone can say if space and time do / do not exist. That which seems to appear seems to appear. Yes, this sounds along the right lines. I think consciousness is a misleading pointer however. Yes... awakening doesn't really change anything. This sounds like it might be a bad translation or a subtle misunderstanding. In the end, there is no goal, and there is noone to realise anything.

@Breakingthewall That's not very easy. But I would say it is something like: the sense of existing as a disconnected, autonomous, unfulfilled and insatiable conscious being with a personal history. I have also heard it referred to more succinctly as "seeking energy", and that seems like a good definition too.

This type of messaging may be out there somewhere, but I haven't seen any examples of it. The notion of "so why care?" sounds like a misunderstanding, since noone is there to care or not. Apathy implies there is someone there who can be apathetic... and there isn't, so this is not apathy. Life... it depends what is meant by life. The living of a life, yes - that is illusion. Life in general (that is, whatever seems to be appearing) may be empty but it is not illusory. The only illusion is the self (and all of the bells and whistles that go along with selfhood) So long as there is someone there who believes they can lucidly celebrate a dream, then that whole thing is still the dream. All distinctions - apparently transformative or otherwise - within the dream are the dream. The dream is the sense of selfhood, ownership and doership.

Mocking and apathy are not innate qualities of enlightenment. But the whole spectrum of emotions can still happen just as they apparently did before. Being apparently awake or asleep is exactly the same from the perspective of what is. Both are simply appearance and as such are are already perfect, without meaning. What is different, probably, is that no veil of selfhood remains. No staking of any claim to what is. No need, and no way, to make this any more this than it is. This, I would suggest, is what is meant by "the royal secret". Absolute directness and immediacy. Full saturation, full colour. No self standing in the way.

Consciousness is not a great word for the same reasons @Breakingthewall describes. We should never forget (so to speak) that all words are just pissing in the wind. And very obviously so. That said, some words seem like relatively less confused pointers. For example "Being", "this", or "appearance". Even "God" is probably a better pointer than "consciousness", but it does have quite a lot of baggage. "Being" is in fact the very highest order of "understanding" from which all apparent understanding (just noise) is always only reflected, derived or inferred. To be more precise, there is actually no such thing as understanding at all, nor "consciousness of". There is only being. The rest is concocted and grasped for by the self / Self, as it hopelessly tries to become what it already is.