BlueOak

@Moksha By your definition yes. We are not separate they are you! We are not in a special box on this forum. That doesn't exist. They observe like you do. What you call the absolute is them/you/it/whatever. Then there is noise in the way, which clouds it. Okay they might not have looked behind the curtain and had an experience that explicitly defines a concept of larger ME in their mind but they see larger ME every day they exist. Maybe they don't need the experience, maybe they don't want the experience. What I have experienced they probably won't, they'll have their own realisations about life. As they do, I will too, because everything ripples out, and influences everything else. You having your experiences, us having this conversation is the stream I spoke about and nobody is out of that stream. There really is no separation, no end point either, no final absolute realization. Because tomorrow you are going to have another if you are open to it. Which, to me, was the point of the message in the thread. The second someone says ah I have it, they tend to say that's it. Maybe they write a book telling everyone that's it, and it becomes a religion. Meanwhile the stream they were in has become something else entirely.

@Moksha Thank you for this conversation The environment and collective support identity, they reward and encourage it. Using a role allows you to be the identity for anyone looking to engage with or in it. People look and say oh he's a X. Nobodies experiencing every possible detail/connection/aspect whatever of their consciousness at all times. You have a Plateau that you (and almost everyone here) keep referencing, it doesn’t exist. There is just a stream that keeps going, and it keeps changing direction, you see other things when it does. I experience what you say daily. Everyone does. There is a certain level of noise in the way for all of us. We do get in the way of ourselves. I let go of everything often. It gets me nowhere :D, but then there is nowhere to be. Unless I put on a role and go do something. I understand that what we focus on we magnify (because that’s all that exists). What is immediately around us always has some of that focus, it can’t not else we’d walk into a wall for example. I might want something to be another way but it isn’t. I can’t change the base of the tree, even if I look up and see how beautiful the leaves are Can I turn a boring job interesting by allowing it to be? Sometimes. Sometimes the room will be more vivid in color, the energy will be warmer or more comforting, the connections or interactions bring joy and synchronicity or I feel like I helped someone. But I cannot also escape that I am also stacking shelves, running a till, sitting in an office counting numbers, sitting in a chair waiting for work, looking for patient files in a cluttered filing cabinet, cleaning up a disgusting fridge, working with itchy fiber glass, looking at a factory floor that is itself a horrific energy/state. I can draw hundreds of meanings and connections from each of these events, some only come years later in another form. Depending on what I focus on, i could list everything above as having helped and hurt me in different ways. I could say they built a foundation, or wasted time or whatever observation I want to give it. It's just a stream of life coming at you.

@Moksha I'll give the otherside of the coin to. With distance you learn a lot. Without identity, you are much more open to things outside of that identity. You see the connections more easily, there is no resistance when the identity is perceived to be damaged in some way. A war would be much less likely to be fought or continue past its origin, the same with an argument, or perceived damage to that identity. Its an easier way to live. Things flow easier, life is more comfortable and peaceful. You are not constantly shattering parts of yourself or your consciousness into individual pieces. Right now I don't have the identities listed above, Except for the last one :D, but I can take them on if I need them and want to achieve a goal. I do use the identity of being from my country and also European, also one of family, but these are loose.

Generally speaking without identity there isn't the same investment in something. You can't for example take on the identity of a harder worker, or someone who is flexible, supports others, and thus looks good to an employer. This identity gets you a promotion, more money, more respect from the staff or at least the management. Stacking shelves. No. This made me laugh a bit when I first read the post. If you don't comply to strict rules and regulations working in a grocery store, you are out. The companies all actively want you to promote them as part of your identity. Different bosses have different tolerances but the rules of the company are still paramount. There is a constant want to leave inside of myself in these types of routine jobs, this usually starts within the first three months. Creating a series of books. I can get deeper into them using the identity of a writer, but yes you probably could without. There is more freedom and creativity there. Using identity I can immerse myself more fully in the role. I can put myself in the space using writing music, listening to lectures from writers, old connections for publishing, make new connections more easily. I'd introduce myself as a writer, market myself as a writer to an audience, go on podcasts as a writer etc. This would build the brand as an identity. - You can copy-paste this last part for all self-employed identities. As a student, it does depend on the teacher or program. There is more freedom there for creativity, but the rules for a student still exist. It helps to take on a certain amount of identity to socialise with the other students, become part of the programs at university, get your homework on time, take it seriously, work hard, and make that hard work part of the identity. For a Bus Driver I was meaning as a passenger. So i'll use that example. As a passenger I have to pay, respect where others sit, respect the rules of the company, and comply with the Bus Drivers' directives. It's a very temporary role and identity I take on for the journey, but its there. When communicating from a position as an employer, it would help to tell people what I am. Then build those things into the identity I have when working with them, and try and uphold those qualities as best I am able. These are conscious identities that benefit the role. For more frivolous identities. I have for example an identity of being contrary to authority, and I keep it because it makes me feel good. It gives me something to do in the daytime. I can at any time, engage in a video/discussion/film/activity about challenging labels, the government, a fantasy authority, a political identity in power, a boss, laws/rules, or a religious authority etc and feel good. Because this is about such a broad concept, and authority can come from almost anything, it is pervasive and it lingers in many things I do. If I remove it, I'll lose a lot of what makes me feel good Without these chosen identities life is hollow. It lacks the intensity of being without any ego whatsoever. I constantly see people on here saying well what now? Well you can choose to take on a role for a while, like a hat or a new pair of pants until you tire of it again.

Your Boss. Your Customer. Your Bus driver. Your Pet. Your Client. Your Patient. Your Friend. Your Social Convention. You. Me. Whatever it is. We take on a role and do it, depending on the rules that have been set to follow. Then we take off the role. Further than this. If i had taken on the role of boyfriend better in certain relationships i'd be with a partner. Same with employee. Same with writer, i'd have a series of books out now. Identity is an incredibly useful tool, that's why we created it. I can't stay in them for very long, but without them, pfft I'm next to useless in modern society. Is modern society an ideal construct no it isn't, but its not for me to tell everyone else that.

It would depend on many things, how does that person best learn? How do they connect their life together? The amazing experience or fearful nightmare sticks in my mind, stands out to me. Its with me for longer, until I realise the abnormality doesn't matter and learn or see what I was meant to from it. I don't do drugs and when I am receptive to experiences, they can happen in the same way. To realise anything, it takes multiple exposures to it. Masks are just pieces of ourselves I choose to use that day for the role I am doing. Until they are no longer required I can't put them down, I am required to be X to fit Y. There is always the want in me to go back to what I know, (or knew to be true) its easier, its comfortable. Only slowly does the old fade away from relevance, and even so I will go back and try to revive it. Over and Over. Until i've seen all I can from it. @Yimpa Gratitude.

Certainly. I can choose to go into a happy state at your comment, and feel gratitude that you are speaking to me and giving me your time. Putting my hands together and giving thanks. I can choose to feel that gratitude throughout my entire body and carry it with me. I can choose to get angry with you, laugh, be excited, fearful, or joyful. I put myself in those states by reacting to that part of myself. There is almost always distance between the observer and what is being observed when there is no or little ego identification, then its up to the observer to assign meaning to those states. Where I am ego identified for example as a son or family member, or where I choose to be, for example for where I live, or some element of my past. I can feel compulsions the same as anyone else, then I get to choose whether to indulge them as they happen. In this I am choosing the collective identity to influence what my state will be. Even in the most intense moments I have a thought arise that I can now choose to react and pick the way I will do so. Will I be sympathetic me, angry me, defensive me, repentant me, caring me? Yes. As you go through these processes more dissolves. To answer your question. There is nothing to dissolve in that state. Nothing individualized exists to dissolve because you exist as everything. Once you can be everything. Look at something you hate/dislike/distance in yourself from what i've said, or someone else has said, can you be that too? Can you accept that as part of yourself? The mirror you are seeing/feeling/experiencing? Because it is you. All of this is. For anyone wanting a fast track. Go find the place you feel most distanced from, the person you feel most repelled from, and accept that as part of yourself. And a warning here, you might feel love, gratitude, joy (cry or relief) or you might feel pain or get hurt in some form, because there might be a good reason you cut yourself off from that aspect of yourself. Maybe accepting the distance or dissolving of that connection is what's needed. Most of the time my mind is completely silent. I don't have what they call a monkey mind rattling off ideas as I once did. I have conditioning still, I have behaviors, patterns, fears etc. I give that the jargon name the superego but its just a name. The space in your mind is you, it's the soup of every experience dissolved.

I am observing myself experiencing the state. I can choose to go into this one or this one. What am I missing?

Everything I type I realise I am typing into a mirror and then delete. Thank you for being that today. Gratitude. No state is above another. Don't get hung up on labels/definitions. Including Unique and Beauty vs Mudane and Ugly. Ultimate reality. Dream etc. I am speaking to myself. Maybe that will help you in some small part as well whoever reads this, if the universe is working as it should. All the best.

Nobody on this forum is asleep either. You are everything you've ever experienced. Experience doesn't sleep. You can experience sleep, ignorance, split personalities, LARGE ME, SMALL ME, and self-imposed definitions of sleeping or waking etc. Maybe stop using the word dream so much, if you want to really shake perceptions up. Like 'watching a film', its getting ingrained into the dialogue at the expense of insight.

Use the guilt to remind yourself that you'll be there for others when they need you. Especially when they are alone. Could be the greatest and most painful gift you've ever had. Every single person reading this has ignored others at some point. Most of any age reading it have lost someone, and most reading it will remember a time they wish they could have done something differently, better, been more attentive or kinder etc. I wouldn't let the guilt go myself until I was sure the reason for it was 100% integrated into my life. As for him, he's in no pain anymore, he's everything that ever was or is. So you just told him, because you read and felt the words. Now you can show yourself in your actions. Take care of yourself.

Just keep going until you have a state that time/space/distance/life doesn't exist. You get so big that the concept of size doesn't exist. You are that and this, everything in between. Also the body is so HEAVY :D. Don't seek this out. Just be open/receptive to it. Set an intent and carry on with your spiritual practice, meditation, life, dream analysis, shamanism, whatever it is that brought you here. Same for divine love. Same for being incredibly small. Nothing I can write here will ever replace or even replicate a small glimpse of those states.

I am whatever I/We focus on. Whatever I/We experience. Whatever I/We decide life is currently.

Unless it's built into the foundation of what we do day to day, curiosity won't be there. Maybe I can identify as a curious person again for a while. It won't last more than a month at most, it never does for me. I can put the reasons down, get them clear in my mind, and even using old NLP tricks I can't get those reasons to stick more than a month. Because there is just this .... But maybe a month is enough for all of us? Now and again. The other option is to have a collective structure where curiosity was taught as a virtue, in how people approached life. OR somehow stop people jumping to denounce any slightly off-script idea or concept.

Internet - Shares information quicker. Everything loses some of the mystery. Everything is STILL speeding up. Easiest to see in the media but also in the workplace if you've lived for a while. I wonder if eventually, a need for instant gratification will reach a peak and then slow down with one of these newer generations when they reach a burnout too quickly. Cynical - Lot more people are cynical or skeptical around us, and this inevitably means we are too. We can cite the various social issues of the last decade. This is the opposite of being curious or open-minded. We are in a pulling-back phase and have been for about 10 years to my mind. I tend to think we go through phases of consolidation and exploration. If I want a positive spin on it. Like a closing and then an opening of the mind. I personally find it very difficult to deal with, almost universally in day-to-day life, as I constantly want to go in the opposite direction toward exploration. Just part of the cycle.

@Moksha Do you feel trapped? Is that why you perceive life this way? I know I often do myself. My reasoning for it evolves but the feeling remains. It seems a common enough thing to feel when speaking to spiritual people. *Look how many say they live in seclusion or as a recluse for example. I would point at the flower. Which also outshines any other form. I could point at anything but a flower is easiest. Things might be very simple on the surface or infinitely complex the more you look or observe it. Not only its own design down to the molecular level but how it sits in harmony with everything around it, supporting and giving life to a complicated and balanced ecosystem. How it's all designed around the golden mean ratio, like all of life. We could sit here now and write for days about a single flower, or a single human. I used to say you can have a spiritual or life-altering realization from a dog just as easily as a human, but that applies to anything, because it's all coming from you. Anything can shine brightly. (It all does in certain states of mind/body).

What makes you think or feel this?

Yes like layers. I'd peeled them all back manually ten years ago to have a temporary ego death. Through self-inquiry if someone wants a fast-track route. The ego also comes back of course. The realisation I had here, was I'd compartmentalized instinct and thought to be Above/Below each other. So even though I say to myself there is no great difference between an animal and a man for example, because they are both parts of my consciousness I represent to myself when I look at them. I had been putting instinct as below thought or lesser than it. I won't as much now.

I've always considered ego to be more tied to unconscious instinct, also things we've been conditioned to do but are unaware of why we are doing them, After reading this and doing a search. I am wondering if it's what happens directly after unconscious instinct fires and our ego then engages to defend or act on that part of ourselves. If it's the former, animals have more ego than humans, as they are more instinctual. If it's the latter, humans have more ego than animals, as they are more prone to thinking about an unconscious impulse they have before then acting on or carrying it out. So part of my ego is to want to analyze things, like this above. So first i'll feel an impulse to do something, it was initially to agree with both sides of the above discussion, then my ego comes in and rearranges the impulse for X reasons. Here at the end I return to analyzing it :D, and I laugh because I begin to observe the process mid way through. How does that relate to a dog? Well we can only assign our own way of thinking to the dog which could be far from the truth but. Object Thrown (Observation) - FETCH (Instinct) - Where is ball? (Thought) - SEARCH (Instinct) - Where is owner? (Thought) - Observe Owner (Observation) Alternatively, the thought here is the ego trying to better control the instinct. Outside of that you have observation separate from both. A fun rabbit hole either way.

Yes. An observable event or Phenomenon. I don't know if focusing attention away from the eyes when talking about life divides us unnecessarily or helps refine our understanding, Perhaps both. Thank you.

I am wondering if this certainty is a creation of our continued separation in watching life on TV screens. If TV wasn't invented, if film didn't exist, or when/if these things fall out of favor. Better yet say you are blind. If you were outside a lot, socialising a lot, smelling different smells, having many different tastes, needing to rely on other people/other aspects of your consciousness, and feeling a lot, what would you call life then?

Detachment can be useful for perspective but when practiced exclusively it leads to degradation, callousness, and ruin. Connection and emotion are required as much as an understanding of everything being in your own mind. You built it this way, do you think you made a mistake?

Interpretation -> Everything goes through your mind -> Nothing you've ever experienced hasn't gone through your mind -> All that exists is in your mind. -> You are always reacting to yourself. There will never be an experience you have that isn't in your own mind. I agree that I do occasionally get pulled back to this. Because I too want to see the process of creating reality more clearly, to see there is no separation. But the process is the plant growing, this thread getting new posts, or whatever feeling and interpretation is now occurring inside of you/us reading this. Helpful synchronicities and things breaking down to the point I can't ignore reality are two ways I also experience my own creation as an example, created by me for me. Maybe if we set our intent to see the process of creating reality more clearly we will?

My point of view is not superior to yours. Your suffering isn't less than mine. Same for (Their and Our) Suffering/Points of view. Your Cycles. Precognition. Dreams. Gut Instincts. You could argue that gave the experience more meaning not less just as easily.

@Sugarcoat Thank you that was reassuring that I wasn't the only one feeling this way. I've always felt like this. I've always ended up stepping out of the role I was in eventually and realising the attachment to it was causing the issues I was facing. Identity does creep into everything yes and then it takes effort to then maintain, which can often interfere with the thing we were trying to do in the first place :D. @Judy2 I appreciate your thoughts, encouragement and empathy I think I need a long break from identity-based conflicts. @Razard86 For me Karma means experience, and experience generates more experience/karma. So we go on infinitely while attached to identity. It's a problem when the identity itself is why you can't get something done. It divides us up and puts boundaries in the way, all the time, in everyone. Let's do a few Examples Example One: You want to run a great business, you do so for a number of years. Someone attacks your identity of being a great business owner who offers value, you feel the need to defend it. That is a complete and utter waste of energy most of the time, unless it's going to publicly ruin your reputation, but you still feel compelled to do it back and forth in email chains, even giving refunds and extra credit, because you've taken on that identity and it hurts when it's damaged. This could happen at a job, and now you feel what you've built there over time is threatened, so you feel threatened, emotions run. I left my last job because I really cared about it lol, I formed an identity around being hard-working, reliable, and pleasant. When I was blindsided by someone above me I didn't see a way of working with them. I felt I was almost put on trial because she felt her own identity threatened, and she was anxious about it, I couldn't work for someone who felt anxious in their own role/identity, because working for her made me the same. A step further, you might be running a great service, but someone else hears this about this attack on your identity, and so doesn't do business with you. You lose a client. All over nothing. Maybe because you were 'not born from that city' or some other superfluous identity-based argument or reasoning. My Own Example Two: I used to work in alternative health and therapies for about 8 years, and my entire purpose there was to put people in touch with the right specialist or product they needed. We had about 6 regular therapists and about 20 total, so a broad spectrum. Often, it was when people couldn't get the results they wanted with the doctor, because GP general practitioner doctors here don't use things like nutrition/diet or ongoing physical therapy all that often to heal a problem. So I developed an identity around being an alternative health provider and diagnosing initial symptoms. My mother's health has been getting a lot worse recently. She's lost a lot of weight, appetite, and has a bad taste in her mouth, blocked throat, with stomach problems. I don't remember half of what I knew then, but offered what I could, and then kept insisting she see a specialist as soon as possible. We have specialists on the NHS here, that are qualified medical professionals in a specialized field. So it's not an alternative, but it is a step up from a GP's level of knowledge. For me it's very useful when the regular the GP, general practitioner, we see at first hasn't the expertize to diagonse you. Another member of the family stepped in and said what do I know, how often do I use the NHS. I do/will use the NHS when I can't diagnose myself and have always found specialists beneficial. However this put an identity barrier that I had to then argue about first in the way of getting my mother the specialist care she needed, and turned her off the idea. Thankfully eventually the doctor recommended she see a specialist anyway, so by luck she got there as things got more serious. But this stuff happens all the time, in business, sports, politics, etc, people get an identity for one thing ,then it blocks them from even doing something else, or giving advice on something else. Example Twitter: I don't use twitter, ever. Have you seen the identity fights going on twitter and the enormous waste of time/energy that it takes to maintain them? Its like a black hole where identities go to die. Its all people discuss on most media channels too or social media most of the time. When reality TV first started (showing my age ) I never knew why I hated the idea of it so much, I mean its just a TV program who cares, but its because almost all of it was discussing/defending/attacking self-created or show-created identities. Example Cults of Personality or Branding Identities formed for a task or to achieve something, even just sell a brand. I won't go into this but you get the idea, they do a heck of a lot of harm to impressionable minds, and form a barrier in the way of greater understanding of a product or the results of a test, experience, or self and group reflection. Constantly getting in the way of necessary improvements or restructuring inside a company or civil service. *Oh and I've had now TWO sets of aunt/uncles that won't leave their home to go into assisted living because of the strong identities they've formed around having a house and being independent. All of them have had extremely bad experiences as a result of this, I won't go into too much detail but a lot of suffering was/is involved.