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This is a good article that compares Jesus and Buddha. http://www.spiritofthescripture.com/id1869-jesus-and-buddha-a-raw-comparison.html#more-1869 I encourage you to go through the archives as well... The man who runs the website and writes most of the articles is well versed in nonduality, but the main purpose of the site is to interpret the Bible allegorically and esoterically, as it is a roadmap to enlightenment and not supposed to be a religious book

@Rilles The practices are not adding anything, or ‘increasing consciousness’, but relinquishing filters of cognitive dissonance. Practices are periods of time spent without all of the sensory content in typical day to day living, and with attention to the “contentless / emptiness”. If general misunderstandings of duality / nonduality have not been rooted out, then after ‘practice time’, upon returning to ‘the rest of the day’, misunderstanding is retriggered via mental reactions, the “separate I” is mentally reconstructed, and the giddy is gone. Stomach breathing can bridge the practice time into the rest of the day because attention is kept to the breath, allowing thought to come and freely go, revealing thought’s ‘just things’ (Maya / Illusionary) nature. Mental processes resolved, new ‘frequencies of observation’ (access of self) are revealed as being incomprehensible, which is why thinking was preventing access. An example would be the all too easily overlooked simplicity in the power of your attention, prior to focus, prior to thought, prior to verbalization, prior to reaction, etc. Just, attention. Easier to see with love first, and then literal creation of your own reality. So consider there is not a ‘withdrawal’ at play, but the opposite, the ‘adding of things’ (thoughts).

I see you guys are not actually contemplating what ideology is. Ideology is NOT the entire domain of thought! One can think and conceptualize without being ideological about it. Be careful with lumping all thought and speech into ideology, as if there is only nonduality or ideology.

Hi @Leo Gura, I've been watching your videos for years now and I have been reading everything that you are posting on this forum yet I have never participated. Today, I made the decision to change that. I'd like to ask for guidance if that is okay. I have asked you for advice two years ago. That was in the comment section under this video: Back then I was not into nonduality at all and I did not understand the importance of raising my consciousness. I thought my life purpose is to make video games so the concepts that you shared in that video did not resonate with me and confused me. So I asked you for advice on how to deal with that because I knew that you used to be a professional game designer. You said: You also told me to take the life purpose course…which was the last thing I wanted to hear. Obviously, I was not very happy with your reply. So I kept working on my game projects. But I never stopped watching your videos, although I was close to stopping due to the new vision for Actualized.org which did not resonate with me back then. The habit of watching your videos every Sunday was too strong and that's the only thing that made me keep watching them, even though I did not understand what the hell you were talking about. Eventually, I started doing my own research, started becoming more open-minded, bought your booklist and started reading the books listed in the consciousness section, started learning from many other teachers, started having my first psychedelic experiences, started doing the techniques, and one day I finally realized: "Oh my god, this is the most important thing that one could do." I had some profound experiences and glimpses with and without psychedelics. It took me two years to understand the importance of your advice. I finally broadened my horizons and took your life purpose course. (I sold my PS4 to afford it.) Today, I know that I want to become a modern mystic. What could be more important than that? What could be more important than reaching the ultimate levels of consciousness? For me, there is nothing else. But the thing is this: The dream must go on. It was really a painful thing to realize. To realize that I can't keep focusing on this. To realize that I have to go back. Go back where? To the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs in order to fill some holes… I realized that I had worked my way up way too fast thanks to your work and the comfort that comes with living at home with my parents (I'm 19-years-old and a "college student". There is no such thing as college in Germany but I guess it's the equivalent to it). I know that I need to go back down and build a proper foundation. I know that because otherwise, it would not be very strategic. The freedom I have now will not stay for I will not be a student forever and I have no intention of staying with my parents forever either. I learned the importance of having an ultimate outcome from this video: My ultimate outcome is to have a simple but independent lifestyle that gives me the ability to focus on what really matters. And what really matters is raising your consciousness. But no one pays you for sitting in darkness, meditating for months or years to wake up from the dream. So I realized that I need to get to a good place within the dream first before I can continue to try to wake up from it. In other words, I learned the importance of financial freedom. I firmly believe that financial freedom is an important fundament to implement in your life. I have always admired your lifestyle Leo and my goal is to design a similar lifestyle for myself. I really loved the first videos in your LP course. It's more personal than your usual videos. I liked your stories and I could see a lot of similarities between you and me. In one normal Actualized.org video - I do not remember which one it was - you mentioned that you were able to quit your 9 - 5 after five months of starting your internet marketing business. Internet marketing is what I'm getting into lately. I'd like to create a passive income as it is described in this video: One of your replies on this forum was this: I have actually saved that paragraph in my OneNote so it can serve as an inspiration and as a reminder. My teenage years were not completely wasted. I started writing when I was 7. I thought I'm gonna become a novelist. I started making video games when I was 12. I thought I'm gonna become a game designer and eventually become a game director/writer. Then an internship revealed to me that this 9 - 5 thing is not for me and that I need to do my own thing. So at 14, I started getting into digital art. Particularly 3D-Art. I decided I'd have my own game company in order to keep my creative freedom and control. Doing all these things allowed me to learn about work ethic, creating websites, content, project management, team management, being a producer and creator instead of being a consumer, and a lot of other things. So I kept going in that direction until this whole nonduality thing happened. I outgrew a lot of my old interests or skipped many things that I need to go back to and properly implement it in my life. That's when I realized that the video game company is the wrong battle to fight. This is a really powerful question from the strategic motherfucker video which helped me a lot: My teenage years were about exploration. I want to make my early twenties about financial freedom. And my thirties about hardcore nonduality. It's similar to how Om Swami did it. Or how you did it. I am willing to work 18 hours a day, every day even if it's not what I love doing. I'd rather do that for a few years and get my financial freedom instead of a 9 - 5 for 50 years and never get to focus on reaching the highest levels of consciousness that a human being can reach. I want to master the human experience holistically. Not in a "I just want enlightenment and nothing else matters" way. Yes, it's the most important thing to master but there is still health, relationships, and money. Lately, I have been working on my mindset when it comes to money. I have never really cared about money. I care about Truth, art, beauty, consciousness, mastery & excellence. So I had to learn to look at money from a different perspective and the books on your booklist regarding money and the book "The Millionaire Fastlane" helped a lot with that. It taught me that things that I care about are not profitable. You too said that a life purpose is usually not profitable and that passive income can enable one to follow one's life purpose. As I have already mentioned I've been learning about internet marketing and all the different possibilities that exist out there. I'm learning about copywriting, marketing, sales and I'm reading books like "Dotcom Secrets". It's not easy to study this unconscious stuff once you have gone beyond that and found something deeper. I know that what I'm getting into is completely against everything you taught us in this Video: But anything else would not be very strategic. My question to you Leo is this: What have you been doing? You mentioned your internet marketing business often but never went into detail about it. Did you promote other people's products through affiliate marketing? That's how it sounds like in the very first Actualized.org video where you talked about creating all the backlinks. Did you use ClickBank? ClickFunnels? On Gamasutra, you also talked about having employees and customer services. Did you sell physical products? E-Commerce? Dropshipping? Did you work for other businesses? I know it sounds like I'm just trying to find the most lucrative, fastest, and easiest way to make as much money as possible. But that's not it. I'm willing to work hard. But I'm a little bit lost and scared of committing 100% before I have a proper understanding of what I'm getting myself into. And I do not want to commit only 99%. I know what worked for you almost a decade ago would probably not work today. The internet has changed. Besides that, you are not interested in this kind of stuff anymore. That's totally understandable. I don't expect you to go into much detail about your "internet marketing days". I'm not asking you to become my mentor, hold my hand, and lead me to my financial freedom. I will have to walk this path alone. But you as someone who has already been through this, and has already achieved financial freedom, and has designed an awesome lifestyle, do you think you can give advice and point out pitfalls to look out for and avoid? The reason why I went into so much detail and told you about my background is because I really wanted you to understand my situation and where I'm coming from so that you can look at this from my perspective and hopefully give advice accordingly. And maybe because of fear as well… It's the fear of spending money unwisely. I have not much and I don't want to lose everything on Facebook ads or invest in the wrong projects or courses. If you choose to give me advice again, I will not repeat the same mistake. This time I will listen more carefully. If you read all of this: Thank you! If you choose to ignore this: Thank you, anyway. Your work has already impacted me in amazing ways and I'm grateful for that. I hope to contribute to this forum from now on and add value. PS: One last thing...don't you think it's funny that you quit working on BioShock Infinite and at Irrational Games only to become irrational and discover Infinity later on? I think that's awesome. Great events are often foreshadowed.

Well, it's very simple. All that nihilism really boils down to is that being is meaningless. Which is what nonduality reveals. That's all. But the ego-mind don't want to accept that. To the ego-mind it seems negative or depressing or chaotic. You gotta be very careful though. Meaninglessness does not mean what you think it means! You don't need to dive deep into nihilism per se. You just need to become conscious that ego-mind constructs all meaning for the purpose of its survival. Once you become deeply conscious of this, life will cease to have meaning for you (at least for a while) and it will feel like a deep depressing nihilism as you realize that all your life motivations were predicated upon lies and illusions of the deepest sort. But keep pushing past that, surrender all your illusions, and you will eventually get to pure being, liberation, divinity. This is what they call the dark night of the soul. It's really more accurate to call it: the final death-throes of the ego.

It does. One vs two is a distinction, a duality. Nonduality is both one and two. All distinctions are embraced at once, creating one unified field containing an infinite number of distinctions. Oneness and many-ness are in fact identical. Notice that a carton of eggs is both one and many at the same time. There is no contradiction because number is a relative projection of your mind. You're the one deciding whether you see the carton as 1 carton or a dozen eggs.

I repeatedly stated that there are many facets and levels of depth to nonduality, and also all kinds of mystical and non-ordinary states of consciousness. But this is actually a case for using more psychedelics, not less. It's precisely because there are so many facets and various kinds of states and levels of depth that without psychedelics you will almost never explore even a small percentage of them. There is also a confusion happening here between stages of development vs states of consciousness. They not the same thing. Also, NDEs are not permanent. By definition, an NDE is a near death EXPERIENCE. And I've never conflated NDEs with awakening. They are very different things. I have repeatedly told you guys that this entire field is much more nuanced and complex than most people assume. And therefore, psychedelics are a great tool to explore this vast landscape and see what's up. The only problem is that people don't want to do it. They want one simple solution rather than doing 100s of trips and dealing with all the questions they will raise in your mind. No one is suggesting that you trip once and close your mind down. Just the opposite. You trip more and more, with each trip your mind opens more and more. It's sort of like you're being told, "Hey, go travel to Africa, there's cool stuff to see there." and you say, "No way, it's too dangerous!" or you say, "I've been to Africa once and seen everything there is to see." Both attitudes are deeply misguided. You could trip 100 times and still not see everything there is to see. People who have tripped less than 50 times, I can't even take them seriously. They have a massive lack of experience. So before you ask people for advice on psychedelics, first ask them, how many times have you tripped, and on how many different substances and at which dosages and under which conditions? That will shut most people up as it would be embarrassing for them to admit their lack of experience. Before you even think of hanging up the phone, answer it 100 times. You never know who's calling. Whatever excuses you have for not doing psychedelics, that's just what they are, excuses. Are there dangers? Of course! Exploration of any kind is dangerous. If you want to be safe, stay in the middle of mindless herd. Exploration is for daring souls. The mindless herd will always whine and complain about why exploration is evil. Don't ask a sheep for advice on how to be a lion.

No, it is not beyond. It is just that. But there are many facets to that insight and many degrees of depth to it. I merely said that enlightenment teachers do not understand that 5-MeO can go there as directly as it does. If there was a pill you could take which would give you the level of consciousness of a Zen master with 40 years of daily practice, 5-MeO would take you there in 15 minutes and possibly even give you a deeper insight into that than that Zen master has had. Of course, the difference is, after 60 minutes, you'd be back to normal. Whereas the Zen master is stabilized in his insight. The purpose of 5-MeO is to give you a very deep glimpse of total nonduality. To show you how little you know and how worthwhile it is to pursue.

This seems to suggest I am a blank screen and external stimuli enter to color the blank screen with images, sounds etc. This feels like a degree of separation. An anolgy closer to nonduality would be there is a blank screen from which pixels arise. The screen and pixels are one. Rupert Spira uses screen analogies a lot.

@hundreth I really appreciate that you went out of your way to find the sources which you were referencing. However, I do want to note that Leo is still more or less right about his assessments of JP. JP MAY talk about eastern religions and myths, but he always finds a way to sneak his agenda into them, westernizing them without realizing it. For example, he talks about ying and yang quite a lot. Every single time he will proclaim that "it symbolizes order and chaos!" No. No it doesn't. Ok, maybe you COULD interpret it that way, but the origins of Taoism don't give a shit about hard dualities like "order" and "chaos." The whole point of the symbol is to point to the fact that "all is one." It tries to convey that seemingly opposite things are one and the same. The symbol is a glaring signpost for nonduality. JP, however, relentlessly uses it as "proof" that "even the eastern people agree with me about order and chaos!" Man, I really used to like that guy (followed him for a solid year before he got famous) but as I've started to grow and develop myself, It's becoming more and more clear to me that JP is stuck in his own paradigm. Again, he MAY find sources from halfway across the world, but he will warp their meanings to fit the overwhelmingly western map that he wants to see.

Uh oh. Make sure you're not just regurgitating nonduality jargon Leo's told you. If you've had profound awakenings of your own, awesome. But I can see some ego doing the talking here Don't make the mistake of proclaiming outright that existence is "not real." You don't actually know this. It's real and unreal superimposed upon each other at the same time. If you experience this directly, you might find it delightfully simple. But that in itself is complexity. Remember, we're talking about literal infinity here! OF COURSE it's complex. And OF COURSE it's simple. It HAS to be both! Try not to settle on definitive conclusions about reality, that's a telltale sign of delusion.

Ok, so I feel a little destabilized. Maybe you can help me resolve the confusion somehow. So let's say you work as a cashier at a supermarket and you have all these metaphysical concepts in your head (that Leo keeps talking about), like god is nothingness and all that. You go to work and the mind keeps repeating: This product doesn't actually exist etc. Sometimes maybe the ego gets into a fearful state and you need to take a pause because the mind needs some cooling. Is the problem here too much inquiry/contemplation and too little meditation? Leo said somewhere that most people need a few years of meditation before they are able to do even 5 minutes of inquiry, because their mind is so rampant. I am 21,tried to cut back the inquiry/contemplation to focus on mindfulness meditation and emotional mastery as I have frequent anxiety attacks, but as I'm working from home all day, my mind naturally tends to go towards existential questioning, which most of the time freaks the ego out and can't focus on work. What should one do in this case? Is avoiding spirituality for a while but keeping a meditation practice the way to go for a while until the mind becomes more equanimous? Or am I just resisting feelings too much? Or am I not going out enough and just lost in the mind all day, losing touch with what is actually in front of me? I calm down a whole lot when I hang out with people or when I have a dog nearby that reminds me that I take things way too seriously, or when I workout at the gym and not think about nonduality for a while. As a personal assessement of my case in the spiral dynamics, I suppose I'm halfway into Green but needing to focus a lot on Orange as there is not nearly enough integration done there. I was much more loving, calm, easygoing, at peace with life and generally flowing, not taking any problem too seriously and comfortable with confusion before having all these spiritual concepts in the mind. Even my meditation was much more powerful before having a lot of nondual concepts making the mind restless. I don't really know what I'm doing wrong. Any help would be appreciated.

Because when you finally realize it, you'll say, "OMG! It's NOTHING!!!" There are many words for it that we use: Nothingness Formless Everything The ALL Oneness Nonduality Absolute Emptiness Void Mu True Self No-self God Brahman Infinity Absolute Infinity Apeiron Etc.

Almost all colleges are a blend of blue, orange and green by definition ESPECIALLY in the west (I'm tempted to say ALL COLLEGES but I will just say "almost all" for now because there's no way for me to know for sure). The whole idea of rising in spiral dynamics stages is that your relative levels of consciousness are also rising. A stage yellow person sees more of the deep sameness in everything than a stage orange person, for example. Everyone in the west is so damn paradigm locked into duality that even people on this forum who've been exposed to nonduality struggle to realize it. People who've never heard of it (almost everyone you'll ever meet), therefore, have almost NO CHANCE at even realizing that they've locked themselves into falsehood. No matter what college you go to, the dualistic paradigm will be assumed and unchallenged. No matter what college you go to, consciousness will be assumed to be a byproduct of the brain, that we are our bodies, that we are born and that we die. Self development or self actualization will never be prioritized, being a functional member of society will always be number one. And as we've discussed, society these days is absolutely blinded to self development... so training yourself to be a good society member might be the exact opposite of what you want as a Truth seeker...

@30secs your intellectual knowledge about nonduality doesn't matter. live it every second instead. remember, it's not about knowing.

my girlfriend is religious, completely clueless about nonduality..is it better to find someone who understand this field.

Martin Ball wrote amazing book :Entheogenic Liberation: Unraveling the Enigma of Nonduality with 5-MeO-DMT Energetic Therapy This book is also very good in -depth guide to properly using psychedelics in general, and how to avoid delusional miss- interpretations of one's trips.

Yes, but he also drank quite a bit of ayahausca. I've discussed this issue with him in private at length. His consciousness of nonduality seems legit. As in: permanent nondual awareness. But he admits, and I agree, that his awakening was rather unusual and unique to him. Not a typical result.

Linkėjimai iš Škotijos I am about to do tripping with my buddy soon who has never tried LSD (altough tried some mushrooms). Only a year ago he resisted the idea, but recently after realizing the depths and significance of nonduality, he himself told me that he feels ready and wants to try it with me. Since he has strong understanding in awareness I know it's going to be easy with him. I was thinking about what we could do while tripping, but then realized that no matter what we think of doing, it boils down to the INTENTION (exploring nondual nature of consciousness) and then surrendering, surrendering, surrendering to the experience. And the way this exploration of consciousness would manifest is really out of our mind control, altough depends on the awareness of the moment of tripping itself. I find it best to just set the intention and flow seeing where it takes it. I've done quite few trips, both with friends and solo, so what I'm thinking with my friend is to just flow in the authentic direction of my trip, doing the usual - meditating, listening guided meditations, exploring objects and talking. Do the trip for YOU first and foremost, and as already mentioned by someone in the thread, this will be an example for others who are tripping with you. Listening to this while peaking can be one hell of an insightful and enlightening moments for your friends (if they are open to it):

I am not enlightened and I haven't had not even one little awakening experience. But from all the videos / books / posts I've seen / read, my conceptual understanding of the nature of reality is: I. Reality is not physical, it's experiential. II. Experiences occur inside intelligent empty awareness (God / consciousness / nothingness). Nothingness is what creates experience and perceives it. III. Experiences are not separate from nothingness, they are made out of it. IV. There is only one thing that exists. All 'individual consciousnesses' are interconnected and inseparable. Reality is indivisible. So, that's my basic understanding of nonduality (please correct me if I'm wrong or missing something). I don't want to seem arrogant, but the reason I've created this thread is that I'm frustrated by seeing posts the authors of which (it seems to me) severely misunderstand non-duality (things like "Leo is a narcissistic psychopath, he thinks he is God!"). It seems like a very simple thing. Why do people so often misunderstand it, or maybe I misunderstand it myself?

@SoonHei What is the limit to which this illusion of yours will continue attempting to convince you it’s real? How honest are you in terms of “your path”? How far would you go to know The Truth? - Will you go beyond where anyone has gone? Wouldn’t you obviously need to, to realize nonduality? ” is it possible that there is a "reality" outside of this one” Consider, you just asked that question, a question about the nature of Self & Illusion, and quite easily accepted an answer from your own maya, which of course, this response is as well.

@11modal11 Who are you asking all these questions to, while “you’re enlightened and nondual”? How is it you still believe in objective answers, in nonduality?

@Chrissy j Yes, consciousness is basically the same as hyper-lucidity. You become so lucid you realize there is no difference between difference and sameness. You become conscious that the metaphysical distinctions underlying your entire sense of reality are all meaningless: self vs world, life vs death, real vs unreal, something vs nothing. All of these distinctions collapse and you are left in pure nonduality. Reality becomes indistinct. Your identity collapses to zero and expands to infinity simultaneously. At this level of lucidity, life as you know it is over. You have awoken from "life". You realize that your entire "life" was just a dream. You have died and awoken to realize that death is impossible because you are God. You are suspended in an infinite eternal state of Nirvana. You have achieved actual immortality. You realize that your true identity is an infinity singularity, which includes inside it every living creature that has ever existed or will exist. You are so lucid that you have 100% omniscient understanding of all of reality. You realize that you have created yourself using infinite intelligence and that nothing exists but yourself. This degree of consciousness cannot be imagined or believed. It is extremely radical. It defies all scientific or rational explanation.

Real vs unreal is a duality. Nonduality = all distinctions collapse into a unity. At this ultimate, Absolute level of consciousness, there is literally no difference between anything. There is not even a difference between real and unreal. Practically, you should make a distinction in your mind between level of consciousness vs level of development. Enlightenment work is about raising your level of consciousness. Personal development is about raising your level of development and changing your life around. Both are very important.

Good afternoon everyone, my name is Trent and I am seventeen years old. I am currently working on a book which has a main theme of nonduality, being one, and the corruption caused by the ego. The setting is a Lord of the Rings/Skyrim like world, yet all many of my own ideas. Some background about me before I share my excerpt; I have struggled with bipolar depression since I was about fourteen years old and it has been both a blessing and a curse. Throughout the struggles and suffering, especially around the time my grandmother who I was very close with passed away, I was at my worst which included suicidal attempts. During this time I became fascinated by the mind and conscious and my curiosity led to me looking deeper into it. It was about this time I found Leo's videos and they altered my perception of what reality is, and they have vastly helped me grow by recognizing many of my own evils and my mistaken view of fragmenting myself from reality rather than accepting the wholeness which we are. The excerpt from my book I will share is about a demon named Aviramus telling his story to a man named Archen. I will not share the complete context so that my ideas are not stolen and that it leaves what you read open to interpretation. I am more than happy to hear your thoughts and perceptions on my writing as well as improvements I can make. What I wrote I have experienced myself. Is this what it means to be enlightened, or am I mistaken? Is the experience which I have had similar to any of yours? Without further ado, here it is. "I was ever so weary after the battle which had lasted days, how many I cannot remember. Even with two Antipodes I was still mortal, so I ordered my undead to guard me while I rested. I collapsed, surrendering to my dreams. I had never been one to dream often, but the Antipode of Ignorance allowed my subconscious to roam free. In my dream I was in a black room which went back in every direction beyond my vision, chained by my legs and arms so that I was raised above the ground, vulnerable as a blind deaf man in battle. I saw the ghosts of all my brethren which I had brought back in undeath surround me, screaming at me, cursing me to damnation. ‘Why would you slay and exploit us, Aviramus? You wish to save us, but perhaps it is you who needs to be saved.’ ‘You claim to be enlightened and our liberator, but if you were whom you claim to be you would not murder your brethren to gain power.’ ‘Ostracizing yourself on Grandeyus you scrutinized and judged us, but at least we did not give ourselves up to the temptations of the Dark Creator!’ Their curses made me tremble and ache with guilt and pain, the very feelings deep within me which I had dreaded confronting for so long now confronted me, and there was no deliverance.” Tears fell from Aviramus’ eyes, plummeting to the ground scalding where they landed. His breathing became heavy and his jaws clenched, he felt horrified simply recalling the corpse of memories from long ago. The King’s gaze returned to Archen, and he reluctantly continued his story. “As the shadows within my nightmare continued to attack me, I looked at them carefully and realized they were not the literal spirits of my brothers, but phantoms created by my ego to break my mind so that I would succumb to him. All the guilt and anguish which had burdened me for so long, I realized it was all within my mind. I broke the chains with newfound strength and roared into the infinity that is my mind, refuting my ego which had plagued me for so long. ‘Crawl out of your corner, fiend! You wish for my downfall, so come and finish it once and for all!’ All the ghosts of my brethren recoiled and hissed, fleeing into the darkness. For what very well could have been an eternity, the silence was ever so loud… anxiety consumed me, for I did not know what would ascend from the depths. Silence…silence…silence. At last, I could barely begin to make out a silhouette creeping from the murky depths, getting closer and closer. The being was identical to me yet did not consist of flesh but rather blackness, blackness so intensely ebon that the surrounding darkness appeared light. The only things which were not black were his eyes, smoldering scarlet, so imbued with hatred that it could be tasted, a taste which cannot be described with words. It stared at me silently for a moment, before speaking to me. ‘Confusion, blindness… deluded by desultory fantasies of saving those whom you merely think you care about- why do you burden yourself with such trifle endeavors? They are of no benefit to us, nay, they are helpless, ignorant. They are not like us and they never shall be. Your quest is in vain, no one can be saved, not unless we save ourself. We were damned from the start when you gave into the deceptions of Father. He does not love us and he never did! He made a mistake sundering man and we both know it, do not deny it, for we are one. I would not say these things if we did not believe them. We are better than all, our power unmatched. Let us seize the remaining Antipodes and overthrow the Shade, and then we can overthrow Father, yes, we can show him the mistake which he made and then we can recreate the world in our own image, a place of eternal sanctuary. There shall be no suffering, no misery, no anguish! Why can you not listen to reason? Why do you not understand, despite all the obvious evidence?’ I felt astonished, mind-blown. These were all my deepest, darkest desires, the things which I had pushed away and ran from for so long incarnate. But I had pushed them away for a reason, had I not? This was the lower consciousness part of me which had chained me down for so long. Now was the time to break these chains. ‘Put your selfishness aside! You say we, but these desires are not mine. They are yours and yours alone. I can tell that your sole purpose is to survive and why would it not be? Corrupting me from within all your existence, poisoning the mind. You are but my subconscious which has festered into a being, but you are not real. You are nothing! Attempting to fragment me from the rest of reality, deceiving me from the truth. You cast aside our brethren as if they do not matter, but why can you not realize we are all one? It is you who does not understand despite all the obvious evidence!’ ‘Deception… you speak as if you are the victim, ah the irony! You speak of being one, but you refuse to accept me. You demonize me but forget a very important piece of information. You were the one who was fragmented and locked away! You were the evil of a man which Father saw as unworthy! No matter what you do, your blood will always be that of a demon, the shard of the soul which Father did not want to corrupt his precious world! You have opened my eyes Aviramus. You are the only deceiver here, you are the one who has chained me down. Now is the time for me to break these chains.’ ‘Then let the chains be broken!’ I roared. I pounced upon the shadow and the floor which had been beneath us shattered, as we fell into eternal darkness sealed in each others grasp. Our eyes were locked, and in his eyes I saw myself and all the things which I had hated about myself and the world. ‘Do you see the things which have haunted us? Do you now see what I tried to save us from?’ ‘Nay,’ I replied. ‘I only see a being who could not become one, a broken shadow who put himself above the rest.’ ‘Then let us separate forever, and leave this reality of damnation!’ It shrieked. Simultaneously we seized each others necks and mercilessly snapped them. The last thing I remember was seeing both our bodies separated from our heads falling into infinity. My point of view was no longer from my eyes, but from far above. The barriers of language make what I then felt difficult to explain, but I will try my best. There was no I. All the things in reality; every human, demon, tree and stone, all the water and fire, animals and insects, the stars and the suns, bliss and sorrow, were all that there was, is and ever will be. I awoke where I had been when slumber consumed me, and looked around with new awareness. I was no longer me, rather I felt as if I was all. My love for everything had increased infinitely, for finally I had realized we were and are all one. Finally, I was enlightened. Archen, many perceive enlightenment to be the absence of emotions. These people have been deceived by higher powers who tell them that wisdom comes from suppressing their natural feelings, and they say these things because this makes them easier to control. True enlightenment is a level of awareness which allows you to acknowledge your emotions for what they are. Pleasure, pain, and neutrality all are impermanent, and subject to inevitably fading away - if you choose to let them. However, many people do not see it that way. When they allow themselves to be strangled by the tendrils of emotion, they drown in it and feel as if that current feeling is all that there is. Look at your brother. He has become so consumed by hate that he no longer realizes it is all in his mind, but rather thinks it is all there is, and he believes that by slaughtering everyone they will be liberated from his self-conjured reality of never ending agony. True enlightenment is obtained when one realizes this, and becomes disenchanted to these emotions, realizing they do not have to be controlled by them, and in turn become dispassionate. They are then released from the chains of their ego which have grown over time, and they have finalized their place in this life. They no longer wish for conflict or support certain factions, for they know that everyone is one being, and by hurting others, they are hurting themselves. They realize they are no longer a fish in the ocean, but the ocean itself."