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I love paradoxes and enjoy trying to hold two seemingly opposing ideas as both simultaneously true. However I would appreciate anyone else's considered view on this. The 'So Hum' mantra (I am that) seems to point towards the Samadhi experience of seeing everything as one. If I am one with the chair that I am staring at, then I am equally one with this hand. The 'Neti Neti' self inquiry (not this, not this) seems to point towards the true self being not my car, not my thoughts, not my hand. Are these two thoughts opposite of each other? Is it a technical subtlety (ie I am that, but I am not this)? If so can some please illuminate. Is it as simple as both are true? Is it a mistake to take anything spoken or written as true? Is it that I am not this (neti neti), nothing, no-thing, no separation, everything, I am that (so hum)? Thanks.

And to elaborate more. And this is just a hypothesis in the works. But this statement is one that makes sense and holds truth to someone at a certain place in understanding and awakening but not in the same way as one who’s moved past that consciousness of seeing. But for one whose more in concreteness of things potentially can pull said individual into a more clearer seeing of reality as it is and is ising ( ya I just made that word up). Because interestingly enough the implications of what this statement is pointing towards, the word symbol can be replaced with ‘experience or ones experience’ and it leads to a similar awakening. Again until all that’s left is god understanding. Both sound like the Neti Neti route honestly as I’m writing this and are as you may know powerful awakeners to this strange world of not it’s and yet IT/You/I as the leftover or remainder.

@InfinitePotential this is the problem with trying to grasp it with a dualistic mind, you need it to be one or the other, but the truth is you have to experience it yourself without using your mind, to find out what it was if it was neither. otherwise what you said it wasn't becomes another duality defined by what it is. then you will go full circle and realise it is all those things and so you arrive at is is both something and nothing but right now you have an understanding of something, but not what is nothing, only a concept of "it is not this, it is not that (neti-neti)"

Hey guys, finally felt like sharing this after close to 365 days of procrastination (: I genuinely like to write, and even more about these topics. I enjoy the comunity aspect that this forum provides even though we all are at diferent levels of developement, we have shared interests, and I belive it helps us to stay grounded in our " personal-development " reallity frame rather than the reallity of those who are around us and culture itself. I'll mostly write when inspiration strikes me (: Note to whoever bothers to read: This here Is a "short" personal story about my steep but (probably) worth journey of following Actualized.org : Life Purpose, Meaning of life, Mystical experiences, Happiness, Motivation , Apathy and Nihilism. I feel that some of you will resonate. Enjoy! Concise background rant : 21 years old male born in Poland who moved to Spain at 5. Videogames were my life since as long as I can remember. They really sucked me in throughout my life as I really enjoyed them, I developed mastery in some of them, and they also were my way of escaping my upbringing ( bullied in school, feeling shame for being poor ( living in caravans/ in a shack up till 18), alcoholic / mentally unstable / emotionally abussive mother since birth, etc. All I did was school - videogames ( and very often skipping school to play some more ) . I literally barely have memories up till 17 since everything was very routine-like and other stuff I prefered to repress. I used to be deep in victim mentallity and merely reactive towards the world since I felt that the circumstances were stronger than me and also my father used to over-protect me and my brothers by providing everything he could and making my existance as comfortable as possible, which made me even " weaker " Got into personal development at 17 by accident while googling stuff about how to improove social skills to get a social life and ultimately get better with grils sice I had a crush on a chick in my class (actually I was amazed that there was a whole comunity about improoving themselves). Okay. January 2018 I bought the LP course after getting my first real job that I used to save up for my future studies ( having money is cool) . Three videos in, and next thing I know while meditating I get a flash of " go study psychology in university rather than translation". So I freeze the LP course and for couple of months do what's needed to make the switch in my studies since I didn't want to waste any more time. Resistance kicks in because of boring/challenging subjects and I go through a mini crisis. I didn't know if I was just rationalizing my laziness. But I could intuit that it didin't feel right. Shortly after, I had the insight that I wanted to study psychology because it's what's most similar to Personal-development, and I was like " why not study personal develpment directly? " ( also was actually somewhat motivated by a random Tai Lopez video where he was preaching "taking your eduaction in your own hands". Also shortly before that, as I was Journaling, I became aware ( thanks to Leo's theory and his BS detector ) of how little developed Universities actually are, and that the safety ( both the time spent studying and the job they provide later on ) are a complete ilusion. I knew there was no University Major on Personal-development, and that I would have to wing it. I would have to be both the teacher and the student. May 2018 my confident ass accompanied by faith in my half baked LP decide to take my university savings move to Barcelona (opposite extreme of Spain, 1000km away from my family or anyone I knew) to live on my own and get involved in the RSD pick up comunity ( that was the subfield of Personal developent that I chose to focus on after binging for a year or two on pick up theory). Spent around 3k euro on digital programs as I felt it was an investement. It probably was an investment, but . . . As I felt that my horniness/ flawed self-esteem /poor skills with whamen wouldn't let me advance the LP course, and given that pick up provided a clear path for self-actualization with tangible results, it would be the perfect decision. Right? Well, bear with me. As I meditated more and more ( staring at the same wall since 2016, for 20, 30 min daily, up to 60 min for half a year at my peak ) I became more and "numb". The " wins " just felt okay , and the " loses " just felt okay. I was becoming deatached from life. I could feel it was It was building up towards something. Around June 2018 Leo bursted my bubble. The "Understanding Meaning, Value and Purpose" video cracked my reallity ( Highly recommended video, THANKS LEO) I became conscious of how our Meaning-Making Apparatus works, and that my whole life was a house of cards. Everything I belived in was BS from the beggining ! Long story short : We pull meaning out of our Individual / collective asses and hold on to it as if our life depended on it ( Because it does ! So there is nothing to do and nothing to archive. Your problems aren't real. Seriousness doesn't exist. There is no reason to develop yourself. There is no reason to have sex. There is no reason to talk with your family. There is no reason to eat healthy, there is no reason to stay alive rather than killing yourself. There is no good or bad. Whatever you do, is " Okay" ( with capital "O" ) Also, there is no reason WHY NOT to do any of these things. You are left completely groundless with overwhelming and terrific Freedom. It's all up to you. You either create meaning consciously or soak it up unconsciously. Meaninglessness isn't good or bad, it's meaningless. All of this doesn't come across remotely as powerfull by writing it in a sentence as by becoming directly aware of it with your own real-life examples and actually feeling how the whole conceptual framework of your life crumbles down (: Alright. That ah-ha nihilist moment combined with the decision of quitting my old life , confusion about what do I actually want to do with my life, struggle with understanding what I am, existential dread and tons of questioning of my beliefs, escalated into not only a mid-life crisis, but a full blown Dark night of the soul. For months I was consumed by Nihilism and Anomie. Learning how to date lost its meaning and became very shallow. I flunked my expensive RSD program and I didn't care because money lost meaning for me. I had lost my virginity with a hooker because the stigma was gone, and I half assed some psilocybin mushroom trip where I had no major insights. Finding my Life purpose also lost its meaning for me and although I could Intuit that some anwsers were there, I was already chained by resistance and distractions. I felt enormous emotional pain. Loneliness that wouln't go away even around people; a feeling of not being understood & being amazed at how unconsciously others held onto their beliefs, and more extreme levels of confusion by each belief or asumption that I dared to question. I Indulged in addictions, Porn, masturbation, junk food, trash entretainment. . . Sometimes I laid 24 hours in bed for weeks doing barely nothing, besides standing up to pee and grabbing some unhealthy food to eat. (if there is something that I regret from all of this, it's not documenting my thoughts and the shifts in my worldview enough as everything was happening ) Then, after binging on some more Actualized and Byron Katie content something clicked. I learned how to let go. Of everything, any shoulds, regrets, expectations. . . I learned how to Sit and bliss out. Complete acceptance and surrender to the pressent moment without wishing to be anywhere else. I finally became aware of where the main source of happiness comes from. September 2018 I decided to swallow my pride and fly back to my dads home to be become a Squatter ( quite extended practice here in Spain ) so I wouldn't have to pay rent. I seriously considered to just do full time meditation somehow. Interestingly enough I had a chance to join an Ashram in Barcelona since a monk in an orange toga approached me literally at the entry to my house , offering me a free short copy of the Bhagavad Gita, but I after a brief chat I could see that he was clearly lost in dogma, and my desire to join would be corrupted by the desire of grounding myself in some structure/ authority that would tell me what to do rather than having to embrace the paralyzing freedom. First month back was alright. Blessing out doing nothing feels good but it doesn't manifest in cash ( at least directly ). Since im not into Breatharianism or Freeganism, I got a weekend job to get some income, where I'm working till today. After binging on some more of Leo's content, I stumbled across the " You aren't Happy because you don't want to be " video. After that one I really made myself into a lazy slug couch potato. Summarizing : Swallow unconditional happiness ( which screws up your entire motivational system). You don't guilt yourself for anything. You don't reward yourself. I had learned to be Okay with anything, and also, all the rules to live by were gone. No "shoulds" or "shouldn'ts" I was still half-assing meditation, yoga, journaling if I was doing any of these at all, and I was resisting the LP course that had caused me so much struggle. I had some mystical experiences in the past like becoming directly conscious that thoughts come LITERALLY from NOWHERE and had some short lucid dreams here and there, but now after letting go of SO much suddenly for couple of days I started being conscious inside of my dreams sometimes even few times per night; two times I started Astral Proyecting and levitated horizontally out of my body for a short time and flew around my room; that one time I woke up half asleep and had a short no-self experience where I literally lost my sense of self and finally around november I had a two minute samadhi experience where I discovered non symbolic understanding and realized what direct awareness actually means. I became aware of what the fabric of reallity was ( you can call it consciousness, but if you categorize it in any way it dissapears, exactly the same way as if you want to think about silence, any word that you come up with is not it.). I remember looking at the wall for around 20 min doing some neti neti / focusing on Actuallity meditation , and I realized the wall, my body, my perceptions and my thoughts were made exactly out of the same thing! Finally that " all is one " cliche made sense. Cool, but I'm still here, and life is still going on. Yeah, this happened around 7 months ago. Thought it would be a good idea to not " push" myself and just digest the insights. I didn't resist anything, and as you can guess, before I knew I was already caught in distractions / addictions. Since then, even though It's hard for me to suffer unless I go full unconscious mode, I've been stuck in the same rut as from last year since the reallity breakdown of discractions, porn, masturbation, sugar, wheat, junk food and and now also videogames. Resistance has the cuffs on me and the LP course feels like a threat to my ego so I keep sweeping it under the rug after slowly chipping away at it. I rationalize my behaviours because ultimately everything is " Okay ". Right? This is a new challenge. I never had to face addiction . I never had to create Meaning to live by from scratch. (Fun fact , I used to have somewhat arrogant thoughts along the lines of " how can these people be addicted to smoking? Boii, make me addicted to crack-cocaine and I'mma break that sh*t in NO TIME. Lol.) At the beginning when I had quit videogames after 15 years, I did it cold turkey since I had so much motivation to develop my social skills for a reason ( the idea of getting in a relationship was so meaningful ! ) But during the " crisis " I saw that actually, it was meaningful to me because I craved aprooval, both from the girl and from other people for getting such girl. It was ME who created that meaning. Admiting that ALL of my motivation to develop myself was grounded in the desire for girls and aprooval was a tough pill to swallow. So once I realized this, and that family, money, working out for looks , fame, archiving any kind of social status or any other "Social Success" , are no longer sources of motivation and meaning, I'm just left with "doing whatever I want , only for myself". And it's freaking hard and lonely. Developing myself just for myself . I never had to do this before. I was used to allways suck on other peoples meaning and value structures. But now I saw behind the curtains and there is no going back even if I wanted to. Definately subestimated what it takes to be an Autodidact and what it takes to be in charge of your own life . Pretty funny how reallity humbled down my arrogant ass that expected smooth exponential growht lol. Even though I have quite a few ideas about how to break free I'm struggling to pull myself out of the rut even after couple of attempts, and i'm too arrogant in my skill of taking care of myself to ask for help. Any rules I set for myself are weak since I can see they are groundless. Commitments are also shallow since I see how they are groundless. ( I see how I create meaning out of thin air ). Blurry visions that I come up with for my life haven't yet created enough leverage. But yeah, I'll have to humble down again and go for Tony Robbins basic self help, consciously create a structure to live by, and keep chipping away at the LP course. Shoutout to all my fams who are stuck in a rut, and if you aren't , don't worry, you will be ! (:

Hey guys, finally felt like sharing this after close to 365 days of procrastination (: Note to whoever bothers to read: It's a "short" personal story about my steep but (probably) worth journey of following Actualized.org : Life Purpose, Meaning of life, Mystical experiences, Happiness, Motivation , Apathy and Nihilism. I feel that some of you will resonate. Enjoy! Concise background rant : 21 years old male born in Poland who moved to Spain at 5. Videogames were my life since as long as I can remember. They really sucked me in throughout my life as I really enjoyed them, I developed mastery in some of them, and they also were my way of escaping my upbringing ( bullied in school, feeling shame for being poor ( living in caravans/ in a shack up till 18), alcoholic / mentally unstable / emotionally abussive mother since birth, etc. All I did was school - videogames ( and very often skipping school to play some more ) . I literally barely have memories up till 17 since everything was very routine-like and other stuff I prefered to repress. I used to be deep in victim mentallity and merely reactive towards the world since I felt that the circumstances were stronger than me and also my father used to over-protect me and my brothers by providing everything he could and making my existance as comfortable as possible, which made me even " weaker " Got into personal development at 17 by accident while googling stuff about how to improove social skills to get a social life and ultimately get better with grils sice I had a crush on a chick in my class (actually I was amazed that there was a whole comunity about improoving themselves). Okay. January 2018 I bought the LP course after getting my first real job that I used to save up for my future studies ( having money is cool) . Three videos in, and next thing I know while meditating I get a flash of " go study psychology in university rather than translation". So I freeze the LP course and for couple of months do what's needed to make the switch in my studies since I didn't want to waste any more time. Resistance kicks in because of boring/challenging subjects and I go through a mini crisis. I didn't know if I was just rationalizing my laziness. But I could intuit that it didin't feel right. Shortly after, I had the insight that I wanted to study psychology because it's what's most similar to Personal-development, and I was like " why not study personal develpment directly? " ( also was actually somewhat motivated by a random Tai Lopez video where he was preaching "taking your eduaction in your own hands". Also shortly before that, as I was Journaling, I became aware ( thanks to Leo's theory and his BS detector ) of how little developed Universities actually are, and that the safety ( both the time spent studying and the job they provide later on ) are a complete ilusion. I knew there was no University Major on Personal-development, and that I would have to wing it. I would have to be both the teacher and the student. May 2018 my confident ass accompanied by faith in my half baked LP decide to take my university savings move to Barcelona (opposite extreme of Spain, 1000km away from my family or anyone I knew) to live on my own and get involved in the RSD pick up comunity ( that was the subfield of Personal developent that I chose to focus on after binging for a year or two on pick up theory). Spent around 3k euro on digital programs as I felt it was an investement. It probably was an investment, but . . . As I felt that my horniness/ flawed self-esteem /poor skills with whamen wouldn't let me advance the LP course, and given that pick up provided a clear path for self-actualization with tangible results, it would be the perfect decision. Right? Well, bear with me. As I meditated more and more ( staring at the same wall since 2016, for 20, 30 min daily, up to 60 min for half a year at my peak ) I became more and "numb". The " wins " just felt okay , and the " loses " just felt okay. I was becoming deatached from life. I could feel it was It was building up towards something. Around June 2018 Leo bursted my bubble. The "Understanding Meaning, Value and Purpose" video cracked my reallity ( Highly recommended video, THANKS LEO) I became conscious of how our Meaning-Making Apparatus works, and that my whole life was a house of cards. Everything I belived in was BS from the beggining ! Long story short : We pull meaning out of our Individual / collective asses and hold on to it as if our life depended on it ( Because it does ! So there is nothing to do and nothing to archive. Your problems aren't real. Seriousness doesn't exist. There is no reason to develop yourself. There is no reason to have sex. There is no reason to talk with your family. There is no reason to eat healthy, there is no reason to stay alive rather than killing yourself. There is no good or bad. Whatever you do, is " Okay" ( with capital "O" ) Also, there is no reason WHY NOT to do any of these things. You are left completely groundless with overwhelming and terrific Freedom. It's all up to you. You either create meaning consciously or soak it up unconsciously. Meaninglessness isn't good or bad, it's meaningless. All of this doesn't come across remotely as powerfull by writing it in a sentence as by becoming directly aware of it with your own real-life examples and actually feeling how the whole conceptual framework of your life crumbles down (: Alright. That ah-ha nihilist moment combined with the decision of quitting my old life , confusion about what do I actually want to do with my life, struggle with understanding what I am, existential dread and tons of questioning of my beliefs, escalated into not only a mid-life crisis, but a full blown Dark night of the soul. For months I was consumed by Nihilism and Anomie. Learning how to date lost its meaning and became very shallow. I flunked my expensive RSD program and I didn't care because money lost meaning for me. I had lost my virginity with a hooker because the stigma was gone, and I half assed some psilocybin mushroom trip where I had no major insights. Finding my Life purpose also lost its meaning for me and although I could Intuit that some anwsers were there, I was already chained by resistance and distractions. I felt enormous emotional pain. Loneliness that wouln't go away even around people; a feeling of not being understood & being amazed at how unconsciously others held onto their beliefs, and more extreme levels of confusion by each belief or asumption that I dared to question. I Indulged in addictions, Porn, masturbation, junk food, trash entretainment. . . Sometimes I laid 24 hours in bed for weeks doing barely nothing, besides standing up to pee and grabbing some unhealthy food to eat. (if there is something that I regret from all of this, it's not documenting my thoughts and the shifts in my worldview enough as everything was happening ) Then, after binging on some more Actualized and Byron Katie content something clicked. I learned how to let go. Of everything, any shoulds, regrets, expectations. . . I learned how to Sit and bliss out. Complete acceptance and surrender to the pressent moment without wishing to be anywhere else. I finally became aware of where the main source of happiness comes from. September 2018 I decided to swallow my pride and fly back to my dads home to be become a Squatter ( quite extended practice here in Spain ) so I wouldn't have to pay rent. I seriously considered to just do full time meditation somehow. Interestingly enough I had a chance to join an Ashram in Barcelona since a monk in an orange toga approached me literally at the entry to my house , offering me a free short copy of the Bhagavad Gita, but I after a brief chat I could see that he was clearly lost in dogma, and my desire to join would be corrupted by the desire of grounding myself in some structure/ authority that would tell me what to do rather than having to embrace the paralyzing freedom. First month back was alright. Blessing out doing nothing feels good but it doesn't manifest in cash ( at least directly ). Since im not into Breatharianism or Freeganism, I got a weekend job to get some income, where I'm working till today. After binging on some more of Leo's content, I stumbled across the " You aren't Happy because you don't want to be " video. After that one I really made myself into a lazy slug couch potato. Summarizing : Swallow unconditional happiness ( which screws up your entire motivational system). You don't guilt yourself for anything. You don't reward yourself. I had learned to be Okay with anything, and also, all the rules to live by were gone. No "shoulds" or "shouldn'ts" I was still half-assing meditation, yoga, journaling if I was doing any of these at all, and I was resisting the LP course that had caused me so much struggle. I had some mystical experiences in the past like becoming directly conscious that thoughts come LITERALLY from NOWHERE and had some short lucid dreams here and there, but now after letting go of SO much suddenly for couple of days I started being conscious inside of my dreams sometimes even few times per night; two times I started Astral Proyecting and levitated horizontally out of my body for a short time and flew around my room; that one time I woke up half asleep and had a short no-self experience where I literally lost my sense of self and finally around november I had a two minute samadhi experience where I discovered non symbolic understanding and realized what direct awareness actually means. I became aware of what the fabric of reallity was ( you can call it consciousness, but if you categorize it in any way it dissapears, exactly the same way as if you want to think about silence, any word that you come up with is not it.). I remember looking at the wall for around 20 min doing some neti neti / focusing on Actuallity meditation , and I realized the wall, my body, my perceptions and my thoughts were made exactly out of the same thing! Finally that " all is one " cliche made sense. Cool, but I'm still here, and life is still going on. Yeah, this happened around 7 months ago. Thought it would be a good idea to not " push" myself and just digest the insights. I didn't resist anything, and as you can guess, before I knew I was already caught in distractions / addictions. Since then, even though It's hard for me to suffer unless I go full unconscious mode, I've been stuck in the same rut as from last year since the reallity breakdown of discractions, porn, masturbation, sugar, wheat, junk food and and now also videogames. Resistance has the cuffs on me and the LP course feels like a threat to my ego so I keep sweeping it under the rug after slowly chipping away at it. I rationalize my behaviours because ultimately everything is " Okay ". Right? This is a new challenge. I never had to face addiction . I never had to create Meaning to live by from scratch. (Fun fact , I used to have somewhat arrogant thoughts along the lines of " how can these people be addicted to smoking? Boii, make me addicted to crack-cocaine and I'mma break that sh*t in NO TIME. Lol.) At the beginning when I had quit videogames after 15 years, I did it cold turkey since I had so much motivation to develop my social skills for a reason ( the idea of getting in a relationship was so meaningful ! ) But during the " crisis " I saw that actually, it was meaningful to me because I craved aprooval, both from the girl and from other people for getting such girl. It was ME who created that meaning. Admiting that ALL of my motivation to develop myself was grounded in the desire for girls and aprooval was a tough pill to swallow. So once I realized this, and that family, money, working out for looks , fame, archiving any kind of social status or any other "Social Success" , are no longer sources of motivation and meaning, I'm just left with "doing whatever I want , only for myself". And it's freaking hard and lonely. Developing myself just for myself . I never had to do this before. I was used to allways suck on other peoples meaning and value structures. But now I saw behind the curtains and there is no going back even if I wanted to. Definately subestimated what it takes to be an Autodidact and what it takes to be in charge of your own life . Pretty funny how reallity humbled down my arrogant ass that expected smooth exponential growht lol. Even though I have quite a few ideas about how to break free I'm struggling to pull myself out of the rut even after couple of attempts, and i'm too arrogant in my skill of taking care of myself to ask for help. Any rules I set for myself are weak since I can see they are groundless. Commitments are also shallow since I see how they are groundless. ( I see how I create meaning out of thin air ). Blurry visions that I come up with for my life haven't yet created enough leverage. But yeah, I'll have to humble down again and go for Tony Robbins basic self help, consciously create a structure to live by, and keep chipping away at the LP course. Shoutout to all my fams who are stuck in a rut, and if you aren't , don't worry, you will be ! (:

That which is permanent is real. Only awareness is real. I think that we use those "non real" stuff to find what is real. As you said, we can reach it by negation (neti neti) or by quieting the mind to transcend everything that is impermanent. But I am not sure about anything right now.

I thought it would be a good idea to listen to leo's neti neti guided meditation video while tripping. I dont have much experience and wanted to ask if you guys have tried it or know something about listening to it or any such things. Or should i just meditate with some music on and take it easy Thanks in advance✌️

@theking00 You can test techniques in case you are open and still testing. Otherwise, if you like self-inquiry you could buy a book or watch the neti-neti video from Leo in case it is that. I only tested self-inquiry for two or 1 and a half months. It was too much in the current situation and I switched techniques. Yet, it was extremely powerful. I was stuck in analysis constantly. How long do you do self-inquiry? I did it for an hour and the meditation sessions themselves where quite pleasant. Yet, I tried to maintain it daily, which just hindered a clear thought process.

I am currently visiting a meditation course by former students of Sri Chinmoy. Turns out he was a famous spiritual teacher, who accomplished a million things in his lifetime and has students all around the world, including my hometown. His way of reaching enlightenment is through the heart chakra. Im not very well read on spirituality so I asked for a practical explanation and the teachers told me it is basically the practice of concentrating on your chest area, whether that be by focusing on your lungs while breathing or visualising stuff like a candle burning in the chest. I asked them about the Neti neti method and explained Leo's self-enquiry and they told me that that is the way of the mind and according to Sri Chinmoy the fastest way to enlightenment is through the heart chakra and that it takes ages through the way of the mind. They also told me that I should pick one route, because doing different things will get me nowhere. I am confused. Does anyone have expirience with focusing on their chest as a practice? How do I know which practice will work fastest for me? The students of Sri Chinmoy who I have met are spiritual and happy, but they are not enlightened even tho they have been following Sri Chinmoy's teachings for about 20 years.

@Conrad I will share the contents of my conversation with a Master. Master :- The Absolute (Paramatma) is not aware of anything. The state of Awareness comes later, with the knowledge of the 'I Am' .. This very principle that does not know that 'It is', is my Self Nisargadatta Maharaj Me :- Do you agree with this ? Master :-What is there to disagree with? The Absolute need not be aware of It. It is What Is! Me:- I am confused.when Rupert spira and some others say awareness is aware of itself. N Maharaj says by knowing what you are not you know what you are. Absolute is beyond being,non being,no-thingness,conciousness,unconsciousness ? Master :- Yes. Consciousness is conscious of itself, but to be aware of itself, it needs awareness. Likewise, awareness is aware of itself, but to be conscious of itself, it needs consciousness. The Absolute is the state beyond consciousness and awareness. To know is to be. (I couldn't understand this). It is the mind or consciousness responsible to know something, but it can only know itself, that you are not in reality. By knowing what you are not, you come to know and be what you are. The 'Neti, Neti' in the Upanishads declares it. You are not what you know yourself to be.(This I can Understand) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I couldn't understand but I am sure you can. Thank you.

@Mu_ I actually thought that you represented it quite good, it gave me a deeper understanding of neti-neti, thats exactly how it feels in order when you are performing it, the biggest problem is when you will reach a grounding of absolutely so, to say neti-neti too, for example, i've only managed to get to a feeling of "i", which i've now cancelled out and are back to ungrounded ground so as a seeker, how do i get to the next ground which like you said is based on my psychologically factors as a human, where i think ground is next

This is my theory, its important sometimes for a student to understand something as "absolutely so" for a while, since the benefits that come with this, is that a much higher ingraining effect on the psyche can take place. Most if not all psychies to begin with are believing a "absolutely so" that is generally not fully benefiting them, and having them acclimate, change and then live from a new vantage point for a period of time can be very healing in letting them let go of their previous harming tendencies, and mind sets that are more fixed and limiting. Neti Neti is one of these and is also not false nor true, which is yet another developing and enveloping perspective that can come in "development". Which if we want to continue with the theme that I've started, "development", a word that for most minds triggers an idea of time and a taking placeness over a experiential length of some sort, is a Nowness thing that only appears to take place in a experience of time (another awaking perspective). However this "Nowness" and "Time Experience" and "Developments that take place" are both true and not reducing of the other, since again all thats being shared about here is of Source/God and Source/God is all there is, it is those things and doesn't reduce those things to "only god exists" and "those other understandings/perspectives/life experiences" aren't real. (another awakened understanding and something a lot of people on this forum are stuck in).

This is sort of a variation on my thoughts in yesterday's post about the difference between mockery and spiritual teachings. You are the dog crap on your shoe. You are the janitor. You are the President. You are your body. You are dead. You are alive. You are beautiful. You are ugly. You are a banana. You are Big Bird. You are the color yellow. You are the color purple. You are colorless. Don't you have to do this sort of thing at the same time as you say "not this, not this" ? Because you ARE, you ARE it all. Isn't that nihilsm when we say neti neti and don't also bask in the beauty of everything and infinite abundance?

What about seeing a woman, and not adding thinking (particles, etc)...? You might call this actually seeing a woman. Right now you’re seeing your conceptions. (Overthinking) “Particle” is a thought. Unless of course, you are about to make a case that you are actually seeing particles. I doubt that. I think you are seeing women. There’s really no such things as “particles”. It’s entirely wholly conceptual. Perhaps “sex drive” was utilized as a distraction from experiencing emotions more deeply, and you are allowing more emotional exploration now, and feeling some relief from that relentless thinking with the little head so to speak. Also, Neti Neti is your practice dude. Find the true self within. Stop believing the thoughts which suggest you have realized things which you have not yet realized. Thoughts about are tricksters, surface level activity doing a cheap hollow impression of the deeper richer experience to be had. (Ego does not care for ignorance. Authenticity thrives in awareness of it)

From my own intuition, I get the feeling Sadghuru is somewhere between stage yellow and stage turquoise actually. He seems to be able to bring enlightenment in a way that adapts to the different stages and personalities on a regular basis. His videos focus on different issues in society -- such as the success oriented type of stage orange in his video about calming down with studies, or more of stage green issues in some of his videos where they take things too seriously about changing the world, and lacking a sense of humor. Though, he seems to be lacking the ability to make the major alliances to actually begin to get to stage turquoise that much. What is it with all of you resorting to insults at this question? How is the person even going to learn the lessons of this guy with insults in the first place? I thought one of Leo's books (Neti-neti probably) involved the difference between trying to communicate someone or manipulating someone. If you are trying to change a person while trying to speak to them, that's not communicating, that's manipulating. It's best to know that you can't change anybody, the person changes themselves. When typing a stage, don't just tell what it is, also say why. How are they even supposed to get it? You think we have memory shifting machines to just send our knowledge to another person? How are you even going to reach stage Green at this rate with that lack of empathy? Next time, actually explain the reasoning behind your insults. It's more educational that way.

@Dlenger1 The intellectual questions are a good beginning point, but ultimately you have to graduate from that to basically just sitting in silence with a calm mind and focusing intensely on "the seer" or consciousness itself. Just sit and kinda stare at consciousness itself. The problem with asking too many questions is that the mind then gets in the mood of giving verbal answers, which is never going to be enough. The Neti Neti method is helpful here. Anything you identify as yourself, you must negate by realizing that that thing or property cannot be the True Self. What you're really looking for is formlessness. "The seer" is formlessness. So any from you think you are cannot be it. And you have to be very careful about not thinking "I am formlessness" because that is still form! This is supposed to be frustrating process and it takes intense concentration to break through. You will not break through if you do this process without intensity and consistency. 20 minutes of inquiry is just not going to produce enough intensity for a breakthrough. It's very important to schedule some long periods of time for nothing but inquiry. Like a solid week of full-time 12-hours-per-day inquiry. That is how people break through in practice. You must concentrate on it like an obsessive psychopath.

I’m a newbie to enlightenment and meditation and over the past few days Iv’e been using the Neti Neti. And now Iv’e associated myself with this constant awareness. However, isn’t awareness caused by brain, which means that I’m the brain, right? I feel that my biggest obstacle is my constant association with the brain. I mean everytime I self-inquire, I associate the brain as a thought or feeling but the fact that I have a brain and it feels like it’s the only constant Iv’e had from birth and if my brain is destroyed then I die. My brain controls my body, my brain experiences life, my brain is the centre of all experience, my brain is me, right? I’m so confused and I need help! On a similar note, wouldn’t my body be apart of me not a separate experience from me. In other words, my legs are apart of me because I can control them.

These are all random notes I made from an a state of no-self. When searching for the self you might believe it's emptiness inside of your skull. You may look at you hand and believe you're a hand. You may even believe that you are the Nothingness in the air, between objects. You might think you can focus on this awareness as being somewhere in the air as a point of focus. You will then look back to an object in Actuality instead of trying to find awareness in the air. Now, put your attention on the empty, sentient subject or perciever which is God or Actuality. You are God, there is no other way to explain it. To find God you have to play the game of hide-and-seek (spiritual seekers). Why are you hiding from your no-self (God) and not seeking? To find this god play the game of hide-and-seek (neti-neti method) God is this sentient emptiness of awareness, who is father like and watching his children - Jesus is the son of God, which is a metaphor to explain the small self (ego, son) and the true self being God (holy father). Is Holy supposed to be a joke? Whole; Full; complete Hole: A hollow space in something solid (Emptiness inside the self) The word holy is a word that is supposed to refer to Whole and Hole as being two totally different words but the exact same or One because despite them being spelt differently they are pronouced identically and there is irony in that holy is spelled differently from both words and this word holy seems seperate from Whole and Hole but it isn't because it's still the same pronunciation which made the sound. Can you see that holy is both seprate from Whole and Hole Holy represents the unification or oneness of Emptiness and Fullness. Beautiful metaphors: Waves come in, Wave come out. Sun day, Moon night Sun smile, clouds cry God can see with clarity (abscene of a mind-conciousness) the outside world (trees, grass) and the inside world (person percieving reality - self) as it is neither. Hide-and-Seek meditation I am not The body or body sensations (feeling of being a mind is body sensation) The human mind or thoughts (mind creates perceptions into conciousness aka God) e.g. the thought it exists as pink brain producing it's own conciousness The object (hand, table, orange) Emptiness of space between objects - Air Subject (perciever - ego) The sharp mind focus (highly focused, lowly conciousness) Mind Conciousness Meditation frustrations Meditaters get annoyed when they can't see that they are this empty, sentient awareness. The meditator doesn't realise they need to release any sensation of what they think one-by-one in a game of hide-and-seek, the game is to slip out of the stream of possible self sensations (seek-by-stripping) it could be: feelings or sensations, thoughts (Perceptions taking place in conciousness or God's mind) God's mind is not an object or idea of god. It's the empty, concious, sentient being. Your mind just created an idea of God as an image now (not actually God) - Decontextulisation. When you play Hide-and-Seek still focus on Actuality, what are Actual perceptions (not mind created perceptions aka thoughts and images) What we are doing with all this meditation work is trying to get objective reality to exist without the subject (the self) and to do this you need to be focused on real perceptions in reality (cars, hats, furniture) but you also need to realise that the despite there being this concious mind perceiving the world, there is a conciousness above it which can be accessed by seeing the subject with absolute clarity. If there is no subject then you need to strip every single one when in a ego conciousness until you become the no-subject. God is the non-objective subject. A self (person) is an objective subject. The problem with reality is that you shift between God experiencing existence and the mind experiencing existence. Strip EVERY single possibility of what you could be until you run out of objective subjects and you become the non-objective subject. Can you see how you cannot find the non-objective subject you have to become it. It's a seeing through being and to be it, you have to not be everything else in an egoic conciousness because if you are not in a non-dual conciousness then you are being something which isn't the no-self. You need to fall into this state of conciousness. This state cannot be located therefore it needs to be unlocated. The proccees of finding a no-self is normally done backwards and thus nobdy gets results. You can't find something if it isn't there, you just need to unfind the thing you thought you found.

@winterknight yeah i see where i went wrong .. when asked who is the one asking saying i is the one who is everything or coming up with a written answer is just the activity of the mind which i didn't realise i was witness to so it was a fake finishing using words, i didn't actually experience it in my direct experience i have gone deeper though since i've taken myself off this belief track and understood the importance of holding the "i" but its really difficult when there is nothing in me that represents me , the only way i can express it was , it was like smoke inside my body, except the smoke was not in the material world then there was this kinda world started to form after i focused more where i was in a constant state of experiencing things, detached from what ever was happening in my body. but i still have doubts, so its as you said i will continue until i'm sure, plus i've kinda started enjoy doing it, do most people normally do self-inquiry with their eyes open or closed? before this i was doing a neti neti style self-inquiry but then i realised the limitations of it if you don't know what to think is you next, its like a methodical approach. whilst this time, i just hold onto what i feel is I and just inquiring into where it is, what is it, and whom. the neti neti style i did with my eyes open and normal self-inquiry i do with my eyes closed.

AWAKENING AND HEALING https://non-duality.rupertspira.com/introduction "Enlightenment is the recognition that our true nature – the essential experience of ‘being aware’ or Awareness itself – does not share the limits or destiny of the body." - this is what I meant by Awakening in the post above. It might seem like a one time thing, but in my experience the recognition takes practice. We tend to recognize, only to forget and recognize again. As we recognize again and again, it becomes a) much more frequent b) intuitively known. It is the abandoning of seeking. This recognition can be practiced by e.g. Neti-Neti (negating everything). "This understanding is then gradually integrated into every part of daily life." - this is what I meant by Healing in the post above. It involves recognizing who we are, and exploring the part of the ego that needs to be healed (emotion, tension in the body, thought...). While in the Awakening we negate everything right away and turn to Awareness as much possible, in Healing we recognize Awareness, but also turn to the experience in order to heal it. This healing can be practiced by e.g. Noting (as described by Shinzen Young)

@tedens Oh I was sober doing this well I was on modafinil cramming in information for an exam haha. But basically 2cb showed me that I get sucked into a lot of traps. And when I smoked weed It kind of put a couple more pieces into it and then doing neti neti put even more pieces into it. But at the same time there was no pieces it was more it took pieces away from the puzzle but by doing that it was putting the pieces in you feel me ?

@Mu_ I mean I started with lucid dreaming cos thats cool then i started meditating and then came across leos channel then I started doing neti neti. I recently got serious about it because there is existence so what do I do here whats worth pursuing?( and yes i know you cant pursue enlighetenment haha) I mean psychedelics and enlightenment are at the top imo because theyre kind of literally the ultimate thing.. And yeah friendships and relationships and chasing cheese is fun lol but it all ends so.. I see enlighetnment as priority because its the only thing that can really make me unconditionally happy. How about you?

so on my way home today I was doing neti neti and just asking myself what am I and looking i kept looking and looking and I would find something and then I would ask so who is aware of that that cant be me if im aware of it.. After taking 2cb I see the traps that I get into for example I would try to explain what i am but then after 2cb I see how thats not it( neti ) haha. everything i look for is not it. Like its gotten to the point where i know i dont know. but then even deeper than that i say i dont know thinking thats it when its not. so then what am i. and even asking the question it implies a self in the I. But ofcourse that cant be me its a word. And im percieving the word. But who is percieving? all of this thinking is a bunch of thoughts which is occouring to me.. but then where is this me? I got into the trap of talking about it and thinking about it and i get confused with believing that the thoughts or words are it but theyre not.... And saying that theyre not is another idea and not it..... Its just going round and round in circles. My thoughts are getting so tangled.... There are traps upon traps upon traps upon traps upon traps...Whats really strange is that my mind shuts up a bit when I do neti neti or just comes up with ridicoulus answers like am an interdimensional being that flies to space or saying this is stupid or I am everything or i am nothing or i dont know what i am but its all not it. This is so fucking ridicoulus haha. Idk if its possible to grasp what I am using my mind. And omggg even saying this is contradictory. Thoughts? I just dont fucking know looool can anyone relate?

You mean goddess Kali? Actually it personifies the neti neti method. Ruthless destruction of all illusion until only Truth remains.

Indeed, but with enough neti neti you will become conscious of that which you are and That which you cannot say is not that. Neti neti is just a practice to eventually make you conscious of that which you truly are: God.