Joseph Maynor

From page 56 of the book "Heidegger, Phenomenology and Indian Thought" by Peter Wilberg. "[T]he essential principle of 'non-duality' [is the] principle of inseparable distinction -- understanding pure awareness as neither separate from the world of experience and its differentiated contents of consciousness, nor merged in indistinct unity with them."

Sounds like you have a slight fear of growth. You shouldn't be scared to watch any of Leo's videos. None of them are really more advanced than others. Every element of personal development is necessary.

@Anna1 Here's what is confusing me. And it is on point with this question too. How can I be both part of reality and all of reality at the same time? How can I be the caterpillar's perspective of reality or the jellyfish's perspective of reality? If I am all of reality, I should have access to the perspectives of all creatures, to all distinctions. It seems as though I am a form in reality that mentally can (at least) partially transcend it's own default programming, at least to the extent that our Inquiry can accomplish. But that mental transcendence does not change the monkey that I am on the ground, what my body-mind actually is and will be while such a distributed system exists in reality. And it will not change the fact that a monkey is trying to self-inquire too. There are a lot of red flags with this too, if you think about this. We like to overlook this fact.

@Anna1 Does this video kind of get at what you are saying? Understood practically and less theoretically.

@Anna1 I take a very stark view. Existentially, reality is non-conceptual. It is just what is. It is to be noticed. Anytime the mind gets involved, that's where we lose this very genuine sight of reality. The mind screws up our understanding of reality. That's the basic problem.

@Anna1 The only real truth is that thought-stories have nothing to do with reality. And even this truth doesn't have to be formulated conceptually. We can confirm this empirically. It's just that trickiness of thought makes that hard for people to do without some instruction from someone else who has observed this difference. Everything else said is just scaffolding. Like little zen-stick slaps, nothing more. Little jabs to the monkey to keep it useful to some purpose.

Philosophy should make things clearer not more opaque. It's just a different language game. A different paradigm. All beliefs are paradigms. Reality has nothing to do with 99.9% of paradigms. But, if you wanna play the communication game about this stuff, you gotta pick your poison. Otherwise we could all just shrug our shoulders, smile, and this forum would no longer exist. Who has the audacity to conceptualize enlightenment here? haha. 99.9% (It's cool that I was able to use that twice.)

@Dodo The crazy thing is that this is just happening naturally for me by realizing that all of my beliefs are false. Not a single belief in my mind has anything to do with reality. Once I realize this fully, all my perplexities will fall away. Even all the non-duality theory is false. The only true fact is that thought-stories are not reality. And this is confirmed by direct observation. This doesn't have to be framed as a statement or belief either because it is directly perceived once the nature of thought is inquired a little bit into. Because we cannot see thought, it is a little bit confusing about what is going on with thought. Thought is a little bit slick, but with awareness you can grasp its true nature. The problem with thought is that it makes fantasy appear to be reality.

@Anna1 A concept is a thought-story, a meaning. It is the way that non-statement meanings are referred to in Western Philosophy, especially post-Kant. A statement is a meaning, belief, or thought-story that can be true or false (or fall into that illusory dichotomy prima facie). Concepts are usually not true or false. Concepts often correlate with words as opposed to sentences. Statements often correlate with complete sentences, although it is not necessary that they do. So we have concepts and statements as types of thoughts. These are paradigms that come from the Western end of Philosophy.

I gotta watch that one again. I've already watched it 3 times. It is amazing.

You're right. Great video on point.

I've come to the conclusion that even the higher self is an illusion. It is based on the perspective that we should maximize human life. That might be good, but it is not the absolute perspective. The absolute perspective has no interest in body-mind perspectives. But even if you were a monk living in a cave, you would still need to provide for the body-mind, so you might as well do that adequately and not deficiently. And so I can see why life purpose is a good thing to pursue. As long as you don't get too imbalanced doing it. Videos that allude to higher self. All great. Watch them all.

@Hero in progress I agree with everything except these two: There is no doer the body moves and functions in the world through the intelligence of The Self only. the nature of consciousness is not only formless & infinite but has inherent intelligence. There is no intelligence there. That's a thought-story. It is just Nature playing itself out. Reality has no rhyme or reason. It just is. The Self has no distinction, no intelligence. Intelligence is a human distinction, a monkey-mind projection. The Self is no monkey.

Realize that all your beliefs about reality are false and illusory. Start to inquire into each and every belief you have about what is real. This will lead you to realize that the egoic self and the external world are both illusory. The body-mind is illusory. All of this is thought-story. Though-story is never real. Reality contains thought stories just like a bookstore contains fiction books. But nobody would ever confuse the fiction books for the non-fiction books. The mind has you so hooked into its matrix of thoughts. Enlightenment is finding a loose string and then pulling the old, frayed linen apart by the seams. What you're left with is everything exactly the way it was before, but without the warped paradigm overlaying the Truth. The ego wants you to think that warped paradigm is the true paradigm. That's our problem -- egoic self-deception.

@Anna1 Making a distinction between experiencer and experienced is also concept. I'm not saying you did that, but it's kinda hard not to want to do this. Most people do this.

Just curious. How is my Atman related to your Atman? If this is True, is my awareness the same as your awareness? If not, how do you explain the discrepancy?

Start to study enlightenment.

You are both and neither and even this sentence has to eat itself.

@Anna1 I appreciate your answers and I know language makes it look like our positions are firmer than they really are. The nature of discourse itself is a give and take, a dualistic act. Like 2 monkeys sqwaking at each other!

@Anna1 Ok. Yes. But You still imply an answer though. Don't imply an answer. That would be truly neutral.

@Anna1 Even this is a position though. You are advocating a view not just remaining on-ice about it. To say there is no possible answer is an answer. The true skeptic would laugh at this kind of trap. Watch

Highly recommended. Listen to the audiobook on Audible.

@Ramu The tricky thing for me is why does reality need to know itself and trap me thereby, and then I have to claw-back to come home into reality fully again. This seems to be the meaning of life. But why does reality impose that self-realization need on itself? It's like reality unfolded, and then it needed to unfold itself again for each human being on Earth who has self-realized.

@Dodo This is so true. Everybody wants to have the last word to win. Need to be right. Need to solve the problem. Need to make the last intelligent point. Need to be the one to put the issue to bed. See? That makes me right. Now my ego gets to feel good for 5 minutes too.

Here's another great video on point. Watch.