theleelajoker

Honestly asking: What's the practical value of repeating this "there is no you, there is no self all is a dream, all is illusion" message"? As far as I can observe, people (including me) are dealing with real life problems. I can "know" the wall is an illusion and part of myself. Still get a bloody head trying to go through it. So, what use has it to repeat (not only you do this) that message for others? What do you get from it?

I can relate to your experience re "why I am here, self-improvement, trauma etc." . Re ayahuasca and the shamans I want to share some personal moments that helped me to gain perspective: Someone close to me introduced me to ayahuasca and recommended it highly. The persona authentically believed in its potential to transform and heal. And I believe there is sth to it. However... ...first time doing ayahuasca (in Iquitos, Peru) I experienced two things: 1) There was a British guy staying at the retreat center for many months, participating in many ceremonies. And let me just say - he did not look healed but rather a hollow shell. 2) The shamans did not really care, they did not really listen. They were less healer and more of business men. Second time doing ayahuasca (5 years later) I made sure the shaman was "a good guy", seriously interested in healing. He really was. He said he gives and takes ayahuasca for many years for healing. I got to know him personally before and after the ceremony and tbh, he was not more or less hurt, healed, traumatized then anyone else I know. The same impression I get with every person taking the medicine, no matter how often and how long they take it. Moreover, the shamam told me stories about his shaman teachers in Peru and Mexico. He said he learned a lot from them, but he left several of them because of fights about honesty, money, scams etc. He himself said that they were "bad persons" despite drinking it for many years or even decades. So, what's the point of I want to make? Maybe there is'nt really a medicine that really heals, and there is no savior like Jesus that can guide us. We look for sth on the outside, a solution, a final state - but it simply does not exist. Yes, of course psychedelics and believes systems like Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism etc can (temporarily) help. But as of now, I am not convinced that any of those things can really create a final state of "all is good all is healed etc this is the solution". Or at least, I haven't seen it with any person. Finally, I am very skeptic re the story of Jesus (Things are not as clear as people want to make it look. See here and here for instance). What's really true, what's historic, what's just made up? We assume a lot of things about the Christianity ans Jesus story, but if you take a look at any religion you can see how it was typically abused by rulers to achieve certain political goals. So maybe it's square one all the time, all our life? Maybe sounds disappointing, but can also be a relief : )

Point taken

Yes, it is : )

Good question, I don't remember I googled the quote to find a transcript. Could not find it yet, but it seems it's a quote from "Dōgen". I see if I find the Watt's talk and what he said afterwards... Edit: I think it was this one: https://www.organism.earth/library/document/taoist-way "And so, also, the meaning of this wonderful Zen saying. Tài (太)—that’s the character for the sun; tài—that is good day. Every day is a good day. On condition, you see, that tài, tài is like niàn, niàn. They come one after another, and yet there’s only this one. You don’t link them. This, as I intimated just a moment ago, seems to be an atomization of life. Things just do what they do. The flower goes poof, and people go this way, go that way, and so on, and that’s what’s happening. It has no meaning, it has no destination, it has no value. It’s just like that. And when you see that, you see it’s a (great relief. That’s all it is. But then, when you are firmly established in suchness—in that it’s just this moment—you can begin again to play with the connections. Only: you’ve seen through them. But now, you see, they don’t haunt you. Because you know that there isn’t any continuous “you” running on from moment to moment who originated at some time in the past and will die at some time in the future. All that’s disappeared. So you can have enormous fun anticipating the future, remembering the past, and playing all kinds of continuities. This is the meaning of that famous Zen saying about mountains are mountains" (...)

Alan Watts said sth I liked: To the novice zen student, a mountain is just a mountain. To the intermediate student, a mountain is no longer a mountain. To the advanced student, it's just a mountain again. Source: "Being in the way" series, one of the early episodes on spotify

This whole "no self, nothing is real, nothing exists, all is illusion, no body etc " is nice to write on a chat forum. But its limited. It's a point on a spectrum and both common sense and my experience tells me that is not practical for real life events. (it's pretty annoying for me, too. 99% of times it does not add anything meaningful to conversations) This approach can be useful, no doubt, to get a certain distance and relativity to events in life. Like in mathematics, how they call it? Limes? You might approach this point where you just "live the illusion" - but emotional and physical pain just seem to me too "hardwired" as a human to constantly transcend it in extreme events.

+1 to what @Breakingthewall and @WelcometoReality said IMO, curiosity is key. It's not what you think. It's never what you think it is. It's not what other people write or say it is. Its never what other people say it is. Everybody has a subjective experience even if there are overlaps. Language is always symbolic, not more than that. Even calling it "spirituality", as in "stopping spirituality" is just a mental game, a fragmentation that might be useful in the short run but a hindrance in the long run. How you want to stop sth that is around you, that is you all the time? Anxiety etc will pass. It always does. And at least in my experience, life gets much better afterwards

Happy energy year!

@Princess Arabia The energy in me that is me is wants to tell the energy that is you, which is energy too, that the energy of your statement is useless for everyday energy doing energy stuff. This energy here thinks that all the talk of energy - which is energy itself - is bored by the energy telling that the energy we call "you, me, he, she" etc. does not exist. Because that energy that is me is still dealing with the energy that is an appearance energy, doing non-existent energy stuff like eating, sleeping, talking, interacting etc. with other energy appearances. I hope the energy that is you is not mad at the energy writing this, which is me, which is energy too, although it's an illusion. But since that is an illusion too, and you are an illusions and since your energy is my energy, without separation, I am energetically writing this to myself. And how could my own energy, which is your energy, which is just energy, be mad at energy? Illusory peace and energy to you all!

Nice text

OK. Sounds like an honest answer to me With all this talk in this forum one might expect magic. But probably that's about it. Nothing except "Show must go on. Show will go on"

Ans then what? You're awake - and then what?

I once got a gift card from a friend. It said: "The secret of life is to align your flow with the flow of the universe" As of now, it's the best idea (direction) for me to follow. Anything else complicates things unnecessarily.

Eating helped me to come down in the past. Sugar or fat. Pizza, sweets, etc. Other then that - one option is to play video games, it might distract you until you're good again.

Seems you do not recognize the humor in my post Seems you either ignored or did not recognize the main points of my post. So I ask directly: What are the criteria for "real" and "false" self? You say there is a difference - so what is it? Who created the criteria? Who decides if the criteria are fulfilled? How is it even possible to separate what is one in a "real" and "false" self? Bonus: which self of you is replying to my questions? Bonus 2: My beer self wants a beer. But there are sub-selfs of my beer self. One is the la chouffe self, the other is an indian pale ale self. Both wants to have it their way. My compromise self decided to have both tonight. But now my la chouffe self and my IPA self are arguing who goes first. So I have to rely on my coin-flip self to flip a coin. I hope my decision self is not mad at me for flipping a coin to decide instead of asking it. But wait, I made the decision to flip a coin - so all selfs should be happy!

And who is telling what is the real self and the false self? Because how can you describe sth objectively? Clearly you need perspective to do this. Ah I get it! Of course there is a third self, that watches from the outside, observant all the time, careful and attentive as a hawk. And this third self watches the real self and the false self, and then it decides who is doing this right now. How does the third self do this? Of coure it has a list of things the real self does and doesn't. And and another list for the false self. Probably it's a list of ten things. Ten things handed down by the fourth self to the third self so that the third self knows the difference between the true self and the false self

Sorry, I don't get your post. Don't take it personally but this sounds like just an intellectual game lol. How do you make a difference between the "real" and the "false" self? You can't tell the difference, but at the same time you finally figured it out? I think every time we think we "figured it out" it's just a temporary state where the mind program feels like "oh I made it, that is the equation how life works, that is the solution" . It its job to solve, and to compute a final result. But if reality is infinite change, how can one solution (insight) ever be final?

@Ishanga @Aaronp Maybe it is like you say and there is a meeting of god which does transform / gives some form of knowledge. As for now, I don't count myself as one of those people. Also, I noticed the irony in my post: When saying "nobody knows shit" I am the one knowing that nobody knows, right?

My 5 cents: No matter what solution/concept we discuss here re reincarnation - it's still a story. Some people apparently said some things about reality, and suddenly it's a thing. Green lamas are gonna rule the universe. I found an old scroll where Jesus talks about it, Sadhguru was there too they both agree and [enter random Name here] believes the same So why do we even assume there is a "constant thing" like reincarnation that defines reality? If reality is one thing, then it's constant change, isn't it? So maybe reincarnation was a thing once, no it is no more? Maybe it will come back like the 80s Maybe everyone lives out his/her own reality: You get reincarnated, I don't. Coin flip, nothing else. Why do we assume that there are fixed rules governing all of us the same? Yeah, humans are similar, we all breath, eat, sleep etc but we all also create our own subjective reality and if we are one thing, then we are different, right? So many people talk like they know sth. I say nobody knows anything. I say nobody knows shit.

So I don't know - but my opinion: It's always there I just don't notice it The filter of "what becomes conscious" during meditation becomes just a) different b) more granular

Sounds like a hell of a trip. Thx for adding your personal experience. Much easier to digest your first post with more and different information. More entertaining, too : ) When I was a teenager, I smoked bong with a friend. Some strong weed. Was too much for our young minds. No portal experience but for many hours, we ended up in an subjective experience where everything and everyone was in cartoon style. We were very afraid that it will never go away. Late in the night, we were "normal" again. We threw away the weed and swore to never smoke weed again. A few months later, we smoked again But never again we had an experience remotely close to this... Re the portal - anything further you do with it? You try to access it in meditation, setting some intention or similar? Just curious.

OK, I get the concept. You have any practical experiences re this portal? Seeing it, even using it, being in touch with it during ego death? I remember a story of a friend many years ago. He had taken a lot of LSD during a festival and he told me about him seeing a portal. He said he felt like being giving a choice to either leave through this portal or to stay in this dimension. Personally, I never experienced anything similar.

Thx for clarifications. The story with the guru is confusing me. What you are saying is: (?) We look straightforward and we do see subjective 3-D reality If I could look "backwards", there would be a portal into a different dimension So this pic from another thread is symbolizing what you are saying? (love the pic, btw)

I don't get your post