Cepzeu
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Posts posted by Cepzeu
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Entry 5 (30 Dec 2017)
Details of sit:
- I was really tired and only managed to do 10 min of self inquiry. I decided to take a 10 min nap to reduce my level of sleepiness but that turned into a 1.5 hour nap instead (woops).
- BUT I did have some new experiences.
- I became very present to the current moment. I don't know what clicked, maybe it was an absence of thinking about the self inquiry but rather a focus on the awareness of the present moment, but I was aware of thoughts just spewing up rapidly. What was interesting was that my awareness was very clear and I didn't really have a foggy or transient awareness. It was crystal clear and it was the first time that it was easy to be aware of thoughts. In fact, the less I tried, the clearer it became. I want to say it became easier to focus but it wasn't really the case, it was more like my body was dozing off but my awareness much clearer than it has ever been.
The end
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3 hours ago, Nahm said:@Cepzeu that’s sometimes referred to as the copenhagen model, or the ‘collapse’ of reality contingent on observation / measurement, but the only reality is nothing.
Could you please elaborate on the only reality is nothing. (I understand this is the end paradigm, but I'm still working towards it). Does it mean that the visual detection of an object is itself an idea? For example, say 'I'm' meditating and 'I' look at a couch. A couch is seen by ('my') awareness. I should say: a couch enters the field of awareness. Is the awareness of the couch an illusion? (not by me or the body or the mind but by awareness). This is what it sounds like when you say reality is nothing.
Apologies for the language, I realise this stuff is hard to articulate.
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On 28/12/2017 at 5:55 AM, egoless said:@AleksM So my main concern and unanswered question is - what is the proof that brain does not generate the consciousness? How do you know that consciousness is the energy and not the connection of brain neurons made out of matter?
What proof are you looking for?
From a materialist paradigm you could go on to say that things are made of atoms. Even though many experiments have been done and a model of the atom exists, at the end of the day the model is just a model. You have never seen an atom in your life. Even if a million experiments based on the model of the atom function in a way that is in line with the model it is still no proof that an atom exists (I'm not saying that you can't use the model of the atom for practical, every day experiments that yield useful results, I'm saying there is no concrete proof that an atom exists) It's just the best model we have now.
(similar to how Newtonian physics works really well at an every day level but does not prove anything. As soon as we go to quantum physics or relativity, Newtonian physics breaks down).
For all we know, brains (the pink squishy stuff) could possibly exist as a material object. But there is no proof.
Thus matter may not exist, and there is no proof that it does.
Even if you say atoms are made of quarks and quarks are made of etc........ etc. is made of strings you would not have experienced that directly. It would have been told to you.
Therefore you will not get any proof at all. The only truth you can get is direct experience. This is the most accurate reality for you. Direct experience trumps someone else's story of direct experience, or anything written in a textbook or anything you see on the TV or anything an authority tells you. This is why you won't get the truth from anyone on this forum. It will all just be ideas and conversations which are ultimately not it.
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When I first heard about the true self being infinite, I imagined how I was everything I experienced but also all these places around the world and different galaxies etc.
Recently I broke through the distinction that reality is what is happening right now in the present moment. Thus the past and the future are not real.
I have this new understanding which I think is correct conceptually but could someone confirm this please?
When you're experiencing the present moment, everything that you don't see does not exist. is that correct?
For example, if you're sitting in an empty room with 1 door and no windows but you also hear sounds (such as music or conversation) from outside the room, does that mean that the source of that sound (which you can't see) doesn't exist in the now? The possible source of that sound (even if you "know" 100% what it is, say one of your parents talking) is just an idea, right? In fact is it wrong to attribute a source to a sound? Is a sound just a audible phenomenon and a sight just a visual phenomenon and we falsely attribute that they are linked (i.e. a person is visual, voice is audible, but we attribute the voice to coming from them) or is it all combined experience?
Similarly, if there is a couch in front of a wall, and you don't see the wall behind it. Even if you can intuit that there is a wall there, would it actually be truer that you don't know there is a wall there. In fact, to the observer there is nothing behind the couch?
Thanks
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Entry 4 (29 Dec 2017)
Details of sit
- My family was making a lot of noise in the house so it was very difficult to concentrate. I can see now that when you are bombarded with stimuli you mind goes into thinking mode (or at least mine did), and this is why it is difficult to be present in the now outside of a dedicated meditation or self-inquiry sit. We are overstimulated in society.
- I listened to the music that was playing in the other room and asked "What is being experienced?" and felt how every time I heard a familiar word sound, my mind reacted by trying to form a meaning out of a string of words. Mind was encouraged to look at the content of the words rather than the reality of the sounds. I thought about some imaginary song in a language that I don't speak and if I would just hear the sounds as they are or if my mind would try and jump to meaning even if I didn't understand the words. Might try this out later.
- Other than these two points it was a really crap sit, I couldn't concentrate at all. I spent the whole day on a construction site so was nodding off and my body was fidgeting all over the place. Lesson: find a quiet spot, sit upright, be in a position where you won't be distracted, do sits when you are awake and not drowsy.
- Time-wise, I lasted for 25 min before looking at my stopwatch, but kept sitting for another 10 min. Total of 35 min.
- Lesson: It is very important to do the actual practice and make it into a habit rather than overloading on theory. Leo's video details finding a quiet spot etc. in his video and I thought "yeah I know all that" but made all these mistakes today anyway.
The end
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Also, God does not act, "it" just is. Since we are God we don't act and therefore don't have free will. "We" just exist
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20 minutes ago, Angelo John Gage said:@Cepzeu An illusion or thought cannot act upon a thought.
If we are God, then we have free will. If we are not God, then we do not. Rocks don't have free will; neither does the moon. Plants don't have free will. Trees don't have free will.
Yet God inhabits these things if he is everything; but these things are different than us, and God can "act" through us, which is really us if we are God, and we have free will to act.
The ego is basically a survival mechanism which has become self aware and tried to convince us we are the ego; in other words, we Gods have got sucked into our own software that we forget we were driving the vehicle.
Different from us? You mean a human body? What makes you think you are the human body or mind?
Thoughts exist, the ego does not. The ego is an idea (just like a thought). The ego is just a label for thoughts that we have which we attribute as being us rather than just more phenomena in the field of awareness. Keep this following point in mind: thoughts exist, the ego is just a thought, it itself does not exist just like the content of thoughts does not exist.
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32 minutes ago, Angelo John Gage said:If the "truth" is that everything is a paradox, then we should have free will and no free will simultaneously which fits my description perfectly; that it is 50/50;
our free will comes from the ability to decide, regardless of what these thoughts are, when we are AWARE... when we are not aware of what we are doing, it is if we have no free will as we are acting instinctual and on a lower level of consciousness. It takes effort, focus, and awareness to have free will; but even so, it is not "free" because it is partially constrained by the events and circumstances built upon your karma.
So when I speak of free will, I am not saying that there is nothing influencing us from our past or thoughts that come in or out of our head; its what we decide to do in the moment, regardless of all the information.
There are many times in our lives we get carried away by emotions and do things we can't believe we did; but then there are times we knew precisely what we did and willed it to be so.
Careful with that thought. Paradoxes only exist because our minds may not be able to resolve them at our current level of understanding or experience. Reality has no paradoxes in it.
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Entry 3 (28 Dec 2017)
Began my first self-inquiry sit. Set timer for 35 min and sat upright with legs slightly folded on the couch.
Details of sit:
- calmed my breathing and became present to the now
- began with eyes closed (I think leaving out visual, non-thought phenomena will help me concentrate on the direct experience. Keeping my eyes open floods me with even more visual stimuli which distracts me from achieving direct experience imo).
- started to feel my body and the experience of contact between skin and couch, skin and skin, discomfort. Noticed that rather than converging on a point the sensations occurred in a field of awareness.
- with my eyes closed it became easy to see thoughts as other 'things' that were being perceived. They didn't occur anywhere rather the thinking voice was perceived as a random occurrence with no particular location. The content of the thoughts was concepts of what nothingness could be.
- when your eyes are closed everything is black but you are actually not looking at the black. I tried to look at the actual blackness and the blackness was seen as a black void of nothing with no end in sight.
- I felt my heart become very tight and then my arms, my legs, and my right hip began to feel very very dense. It felt quite uncomfortable but not painful.
- it was windy and a loud bang distracted me and made me open my eyes. I continued with the sit with eyes open. I looked at another couch and tried to shift the focus in my eyes (you know when you make yourself cross-eyed and you lose focus on what you were looking at before - like when you try to look at your nose). I realised there was nothing between me and the couch. I though there may be air molecules there but realised molecules don't exist in my direct experience and are simply a concept.
- I ended the sit before my timer rang, I had 9 minutes left so sat for 25 min.
The end
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Entry 2 (28 Dec 2017)
A trap I fell into:
When viewing the above videos and posts I did 0 minutes of self-inquiry practice. I took in the theory but did not do any of the action steps. Awareness of this fact prompted me to stop watching more videos.
I have a decent enough grasp of the concept of the true-self/ nothingness/ infinity but obviously any thought of it is not it.
I re-watched Leo's 'How to become enlightened' video and took down notes on the action steps.
I will now begin doing the self-inquiry process and will go back to this video once every 2 weeks to see if I missed anything or if there are any traps Leo outlined that I may have fallen into. I also got a cheap sports stopwatch so that I don't use my phone as a timer.
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Entry 1 (28 Dec 2017)
The last 2 weeks:
I began reviewing Leo's videos on enlightenment. Here:
This post reminded me of the basic theory and concepts, the potential traps I might fall into and the general method for enlightenment practice.
I also viewed username's post Enlightenment is 4 realz. Here:
The Q&A's added to my conceptual understanding and removed some of my fears about becoming enlightened.
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Hello fellow actualizers!
I have recently considered starting the journey towards enlightenment more seriously. My aim with this journal is to document my journey for a number of reasons.
- I hope that as I advance with my self-inquiry I can look back on this journal to see where I fell into traps with my method. These insights may help others on their journey.
- As I document my progress, those more advanced than I may see potential traps that I am entering and could warn me beforehand.
- This journal may help me stay consistent with my practice by holding me accountable to updating it regularly.
My background regarding this work:
I stumbled upon Leo's videos in early 2016 and began self-help work beginning from a deep deficiency. Basically a newbie exactly outlined in Leo's '3 levels of personal development work' video. I studied from Leo as well as Elliot Hulse, RSD, and a number of other teachers. One day in the first quarter of 2017 I remember I was procrastinating and started watching Leo's more advanced content (enlightenment, true self etc.). This stuff made no sense to me and I thought that Leo was starting a cult or something (xD). I had seen these videos before but made an attempt to be more open minded this time. After sitting on my couch for ~2 h reflecting on what Leo described the realisation that I might not be the body or the mind came to me. This was the first stepping stone towards this work. In one day all of Leo's newbie videos lost their appeal and the more advanced stuff became very clear and I understood what was being said. I sensed that there was something much deeper to pursue than the surface level stuff. Fast forward to today I believe I have progressed far into the advanced stages of personal development. I have witnessed a radical turning inwards of my self-help effort and am actively trying to minimise my life to focus on meditation, enlightenment, life purpose, learning, and slow, deliberate practice.
Stay tuned:
The next few entries will outline a few things that happened recently which convinced me enough to pursue enlightenment as well as some of the traps I have already fallen in to. After that I will begin documenting my self-inquiry process and any insights or experiences that occur.
Feel free to comment and ask questions, I will attempt to answer as many as I can. If there are a significant number of questions between journal entries I may start a companion thread for Q&A's. Also feel free to pm me.
Enjoy!
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On 20/12/2017 at 9:38 PM, Privet said:It's not about being feminine, it's about not being ashamed of being feminine.
Being feminine is a consequence of that acceptance, you stop filtering and caring about your feminine behaviour.
That's actually one of the causes why early pickup artists looked so disgusting and fake. They tried to mimic behaviour of popular guys without knowing reasons of that behaviour.
Accepting femininity and trying to act feminine is not the same.
^This. It's about being so comfortable in your masculinity that you are free to act however you want (including being more feminine at times) rather than trying to act feminine out of desperate need. The prior doesn't need the approval of his masculinity from others, the latter needs success with women to approve his masculinity so uses 'acting feminine' as a technique.
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I recently heard this song on the radio and thought it was kinda nice. As I was watching the music video I saw things Leo discusses in his videos that pertain to higher consciousness/enlightenment/ spirituality such as
- reality being groundless
- strange loops
- objects breathing as described in trip reports
- floral-ish/kaleidoscope patterns as described in trip reports
- blue lotus
It was interesting to me how having been made aware of these themes through Leo's videos I saw the video in a completely different light to someone who may not have been exposed to them and simply thinks the video is cool/colourful/crazy/made by a crazy person.
What are your thoughts on it?
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15 hours ago, CruellerSloth said:I wondered when this topic would come up here. It's the biggest contradiction in this whole field IMO.
Love the idea about 50% free will. Then you could see life as a rail track with MANY different ways and points where you can decide which way you want to go. So you have somewhat of a free will, but also some degree of determinism.
What determines the 'ways' and 'points' that are open to you? Can the thought of becoming an astronaut exits if you have never heard of what an astronaut is or have never been exposed to the idea of being in space? My point is that the thoughts that you have arise from past experience. Thoughts lead to actions. Even the action of not pursuing or acting on a thought arose from a thought (or another sporadic biochemical reflex). Your past experiences, current situation, and future actions based on the thoughts that arise in the now are not controlled by you.
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When you 'choose' to not identify with thoughts is that just an action stemming from a thought that occurs after you have noticed the thought in question? For example:
Thought 1: "I should eat that cheeseburger"
(thought 1 is perceived by awareness)
Thought 2: "Oh cool I just managed to be aware of that thought, I can choose not to go through with it"
The question is whether you chose to think thought 2 (which in the case of no free will is not true) or did the thought arise sporadically due to your experiences and knowledge that being aware of thoughts and not pursuing them may be important.
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The word 'moving' leads to the confusion I believe. Like @Nahm said it's an illusion. Reality doesn't move through time, it simply exists. You say that we can observe things moving and changing but (from what I understand) for something to change it must fave been some other way compared to how it is in the now. The thing is that 'that-some-other-way' that it was doesn't actually exist because the past is an illusion (The reference frame that we remember from the past, doesn't actually exist). Nothing is knowable. If you throw an apple you can think that it might fly to a certain destination but you can't know because the future hasn't happened yet (i.e any idea of where it might fly to is an illusion). Time is also an illusion because the future and the past don't exist in the now. You could sort of think about it like things happen in 1 ms frames but even that is wrong. Reality "progresses" or "refreshes" at an infinitely fast rate.
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Have you checked your blood pressure? Should be at, or below, 120/80 mmHg. Have you talked to a doctor about it? Do you have a family history of blood vessel diseases? Loss of elasticity in brain vessels coupled with high blood pressure can increase intracranial pressure. Be careful with attributing this pressure with following actualized.org or meditating, it could be a huge number of things. You could have a growing brain tumor. Have it checked by a doctor before you ask strangers on an online forum.
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I was recently dealing with this as well, there were a bunch of things I had to do and I had to force myself to do them otherwise I would slip into procrastination and time-wasting addictions. Here is what helped me:
1. Be very clear with your top 3 goals. Not so much about how you will accomplish something but what it is you want to accomplish and why. I found that a lot of the time I was simply dabbling in a bunch of random activities without focus which led to me to moving nowhere.
2. Minimise your lifestyle drastically (see Leo's video Lifestyle Minimalism). This helps remove distractions, if your mind is all over the place it will be difficult to focus on the same thought/goal for any longer than a minute. This again led me to think about a bunch of different things and procrastinate, not achieving any of them (this is why it's important to focus on a small number of goals such as 3).
3. Try and practice awareness throughout the day. What I do is a set an alarm on my phone every 2 hours that's quite faint but still audible. When I hear it, it reminds me to stop what I'm doing and become present to the moment - very helpful for beating procrastination e.g. mindlessly scrolling through social media feeds.
The above things will help to move past your first 3 sticking points, you are partly addicted and have little self control because you are not clear about you goals (this is important). This overwhelms your mind with other less important distractions and you end up addicted to being distracted. Bringing in the awareness aspect will help you catch yourself when you unconsciously begin doing your habits. The problem is not that your addictions are bigger than the goals, it's that you are exposed to them more frequently throughout the day by things such as phone notifications and distractions lying around the house.
About your 4th point, you will not know if what you want to do is really what you want to do by thinking about it. The best thing I found for myself is to actually do it and then see if it was something I liked doing or not. Often times, even if I didn't particularly enjoy doing it the act of doing it to see if I did actually want to do it was far more satisfying than sitting and thinking about it.
Once you focus on what you want (and keep it firmly in your mind, by reminding yourself of it often), and take steps to start doing it (even by doing it for 1 minute as an exercise for starting an activity) the discipline will come naturally. Forcing discipline is very unlikely to work!
My 2 cents, hope they help. I have some of Leo's video's that this is combined from but I don't think sharing them will help you much, it may cause you to stay where you are, in a state of non-focus. If you really want I can say them, just reply in the below post but ask yourself if you really need them.
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Across the site (in some of the Infinite Insights and parts of the Blueprint) you mention to avoid all wheat and other grains, as well as beans.
What are your reasons for this?
My review of the research into nutrition points to plant-based (e.g. Mediterranean) and vegan diets being optimal for humans while having minimal environmental impact. I do agree that consumption of refined carbohydrates as well as gluten by those who are gluten sensitive is not optimal for good health but I'm not sure why grains (and legumes) should be excluded altogether when they form a large portion of the aforementioned diets.
I'm wanting to know your reasons because there may be something I'm missing and you haven't come out with a video regarding this specific topic in the past so I have few details to go off from.
The only reason I can think you might say this is because of the presence of GMO grains in the US; and while GMO's themselves are not inherently bad for your health they do enable farmers to increase herbicide usage leading to the GMO grains transmitting a higher herbicide load to the consumer.
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4 hours ago, Quantum Mike said:it might be easier to try to not understand it. you can only be it, because that is who you are when you become aware of how you mentally construct reality for yourself.
no-thing means ungraspable by a verbal mind. reality is "NO PARTICULAR CONCEPTUALLY UNDERSTANDABLE THING"
This is a good point. By trying to understand it, we may get caught in a trap of thinking that there is something to understand. However this something doesn't exist (hence you can only be it). This combines with @Erlend K's point that there is actually no true self. Could it be that we are over-complicating it by trying to find what the true-self is, when instead we should realise/experience what the "true self" isn't (the true self not being the egoic self, or any thing else for that matter).
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Firstly, since we cannot point directly to the true self - since it is a no-thing, these are just analogies for a beginner trying to understand no-self.
I am not saying the big bang is the true self, in fact I refer to the true self being the consciousness/awareness/void that, as Anna1 mentioned, permeates everything, including the orb, and including everything the orb is, was or ever will be. True self is not the orb, it's the no-thing inside which the orb exists. It is the no-thing in which the whole universe exists.
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Hi everyone, I'm new to the forum but have been following Actualized.org for about two years. Here I describe a possible analogy for the enlightened self with a short into in brackets below:
(I believe I experienced non-egoic consciousness/ had an enlightenment experience recently. There was huge shift in perspective for me and suddenly all of Leo's videos on the true self/ enlightenment made a lot of sense. The experience made me want to delve deeper into this area and this post is simply a request for Leo or others who have experienced this to determine if this analogy I'm about to share fits in with our understanding of what the true self actually is . The analogy is simply for me and others to understand the true self better (given that this analogy I share fits in with our understanding).
The analogy:
The true self is the nothingness that existed before the big bang.
Imagine a white orb on a black background. According to our current understanding of the universe, all that existed came from this extremely dense "thing" that exploded and gave rise to the universe. Given that the true self is nothing, and everything occurs within the true self, and the true self is infinite, could the nothingness that encapsulates everything in the universe (at this point condensed into the orb) be the true self or even an analogy to the true self?
A secondary explanation may help: for those that have experienced a phenomenon in videogames where you glitch and fall through the map into a void, could this empty, infinite void be analogous to the true self?
in Spirituality, Consciousness, Awakening, Mysticism, Meditation, God
Posted
I always found that quote funny as in
A: there is nothing hidden from you, it's right in front of you.
B: nothing is hidden, so you have to go on a journey to find it, eventually realising (A).
Ok, when you say even what I am seeing doesn't exist does that mean the visual phenomena that is experienced doesn't exist at all or that the visual phenomena exists but the "objects" depicted don't exist. The latter makes more sense to me in the following way (referring to objects in a video game as you described):
(assume for the sake of this analogy that visual phenomena are occurring for a perceiver located in the alleyway looking at the building with the shadow)
So a visual phenomena of the surface of the building and the surface of the ground would enter awareness but, in reality, since no visual phenomena "behind" the building exists there is actually nothing there. So the building and ground are a 2D visual phenomena that is backed by nothing, a hologram. But also there is nothing between the two buildings in the alley, we might call it a gap of air. So the true self is the nothing that backs everything. Meaning the buildings and road don't exist, they are made literally of nothing.
(ignore the clouds and the horizon, its the best image I could find to support this analogy).
A similar analogy is that there is an infinite black void of pure darkness and a flashlight is aimed into it and "objects" or visual phenomena appear but they are actually backed by nothing and everything the flashlight doesn't shine on doesn't exist in the now. You are the nothing that is all the phenomena and the infinite void.
That's what I'm getting at from a very literal point of view, does it make sense @Leo Gura?
This is a great point!