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That's why they call it Riding the Ox Backwards from the No-self (Nothingness), huh?

@Faceless An awakening of mind is the awakening from mind. I don't mean that the mind awakens. You realize what you truly are. Which is nothingness or whatever word you wish to use. Yes That is a good description of what the experience of it is. It's funny you mention it in that way because Lisa Cairns describes it in a similar fashion. I remember I never really understood that when I watched it but now it really resonates with me.

@Faceless wow, all of that was very elegantly put... directly from the Source it would seem. So technically I wouldn’t say it’s the awakening of the mind that realizes nothing, but the silenced movement of mind that nothingness is then actualized. - hmmm, interesting take, but I see the mechanics of it now. nice to have you dwell amongst us duality-trapped souls

Hello friends, How can mind realize nothingness, if all movement of mind implies things? This implies that the mind can cultivate integration. That seems rather contradictory, but it doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is if you see that. The experiencer has always been the experience, or one. This seems more like mind being consciously aware of that fact to me. I wouldn’t say life is a game, but that when you actually act in accordance to the notion that the experiencer is seperate from that which it experiences. Then we get caught up in life, and think of it as a game; a perpetual conflict between what we (the experiencer wants), “the idea”, and what (the experience actully is) “the fact”, or there is that expression, “caught in the rat race.” Basically mind (conditioned consciousness) is able to see that the experiencer has always been one and the same movement as experience. This is still a movement of mind, as it implies conscious attention as the i. In that mind-mental realization (thought being conscious of that fact), makes for a silence naturally. Only in that silence of mind does this emptiness-nothingness come to be. This cannot be a self imposed silence, movement of volition-will-effort, from what “I” have observed of course. So technically I wouldn’t say it’s the awakening of the mind that realizes nothing, but the silenced movement of mind that nothingness is then actualized. In “my” case there is an endless movement of death to experience, knowledge, memory) every minute-second. This is a natural movement now or is an instantaneous action that happens in and of itself. It is not a movement of desire, and it happens through a kind of passive attention to the entirety of a happening as a whole. Attention to inner movements of the thought, sensation, and the environmental conditions, without any psychological compulsion to change what is actually the case. All psychological experiences are finalized and not carried over onto the next moment. This is what I would refer to as dying to every moment so the next can be new. We must understand the nature of experience-self-thought-time, so there can be an understanding of life. In that understanding of life, we see the significance of death, and in the seeing of the value in that, we see that death and life are really one. Without seeing the value in life we avoid death, and without dying we cannot live. To live is to die and to die is to live. This is not a one time deal. It is a constant movement of dying to the old, so the new can be born afresh. An art, I would say. The most creative movement that can take place.

@SoonHei There are to my knowledge three different types of awakenings. Mind, heart and gut. Awakening of the mind is the realization that you are the everpresent silence (nothingness). Awakening of the heart is the merging of the experiencer and the experienced (oneness). Awakening of the gut I have not yet experienced but to my knowledge it has something to do with life being a game. So when you say ego death. Yes ego death at that level. But ego still is left at the other levels. After the first glimpse of oneness there was for me a swinging back and forth between a state of oneness and separation which after about a year stabelized in oneness. I guess the ego can dissolve totally at all three levels at the same time in one single experience but that is probably one in a billion chance and if it were to happen the person probably wouldn't go mad but have a hard time to embody the change.

When words lose meaning you can use either the negative or the positive, because all words are either negative or positive; you just have to choose one. You can say for a liberated soul that he has become the whole. This is a positive way of saying it. Or you can say he is no more -- he has become nothingness. This is a negative way of saying it. For example, if a small drop of water meets the ocean, you can say that the drop has become nothingness, the drop has lost its individuality, the drop is no more. This is a Buddhist way of saying things. It is good, it is right as far as it goes, because no word goes very far. So as far as it goes, it is good. The drop is no more" that is what is meant by NIRVANA. The drop has become non-being, it is not. Or you can use Upanishadic terms. The Upanishads will say that the drop has become the ocean. They are also right, because when the boundaries are broken, the drop has become the ocean. So these are simply attitudes.

Hello @Victor Mgazi Where there is an experience there will be anxiety-fear. Would you say that to experience nothing would imply no experiencer-experience? For me, death of (experience, knowledge, memory) as the i, implies no fear, no anxiety, and obviously no experiencer-experience that is then continued or imprinted onto “the now” or “the happening” also, there is a constant process of death that takes place. Seems to have started as a daily phenomena, but then went to minutes or even seconds. So “I” (experience, knowledge, memory) as the i, am constantly dying, or that memory as the I is not continued over to the next moment. This is how I feel there are these extended periods of time where there is this total emptiness-nothingness of conciousness. Really seems to be no consciousness-thought at all. There is still thought when needed to do something, but when it is not needed thought remains dormant. So the I (experience, knowledge, memory) is not in movement anymore, just a movement of thought without identification. No registration, recollection, identification, and therefore no experience at all. To be headless. So to me the ending of that continued experience is this nothingness that is spoken of. But to me death is ongoing. We are perpetualy dying to the past (experience, knowledge, memory, as the i)...If not we get this sense of temporary death. Or partial death. Because then experience as the i continues to be accumulated as the i after. This is where passive awareness comes in.

@Leo Gura Human beings are not robots, however. You people tend to greatly dismiss your humanity, with all the nothingness experiences that lately, paradoxically, transform into a philosophy by themselves. I once heard you in one of your videos saying that we should aim in becoming decent human beings. Humanity, along with its faculties, it's an inevitable fact of our existence in this body. No matter how much you're trying to spiritual bypass, formulating excuses and arguments that move you into other places of yourself (nothingness), while denying other vital parts that require healing (the ego, the human perspective), fragmentation will inevitably appear. Along with it, comes the ego backlash, which happens not because of spiritual progress per say, but because other parts of ourselves require our attention, parts that can't be dismissed by spiritual dogma. We fell goosebumps, huge amounts of admiration and feelings in our heart chakra vibrating through our whole being at the sight of heroes and people who fight and persevere against all odds, trying to change the world for the better, not because we're some delusional robots with a programing called morality, whatever you want to call it, but because we're a part of God itself, but people around here tend to have only awakened the mind, while neglecting the heart, and the retoric is that there's something more divine than something or that living purposefully is stupidly or egoic, which is a huge shame and a common problem I see in spirituality. I'm not pointing fingers. No person can be entrenched in a single philosophy, but that's how I see things happening for the most part. Spirituality, at its most potent and expanding version, should be about having the good will to take care of your specie, all people, "good" and "bad" as a whole, like Jesus used to preach. It shouldn't be something you do in the dark far away from others who are in need of your light. We are more important than we think in awakening others and sharing the experiences a human being can achieve. A fully integrated God would care about its other parts (people) as it they were himself. That is what we should aim for. People now will reply to me that that's just ego and I should just sit in a cave, because having an ego it's some kind of a danger or that I'm in a trap. I hope this dogmatic ilussion will end soon. The lives of Gandhi, Jesus and many others show that a fully integrated ego and spirit cares about its world. The isolated spiritual ego isn't considered being one, for example, well, because loneliness and living by yourself seems cool for some reason. Having certain mystical experiences of my own and experiencing Oneness more and more often, I can say that being God is the ultimate thing. But being human is even more brilliant than that. Just think about it - you try to convince Yourself (others) about your existence and the rules and feelings yourself created in this ilussion while typing on a phone which is still You. Creation it's the most brilliant and captivating joke that exists, because there's nothing else that it doesn't contains.

@Leo Gura I never know if what I do will have the results I want it to, If it does after 1 hour it might cause a massacre in 500 Jears and save 1 Billion lives in a thousand. I feel like I'm lost in this meaningless lie already and I was since a young age, even though it was somewhat different back then. I consumed porn and masturbated in excess for the last ten years and am planning to at least stop with the porn, and probably the masturbation as well, for the next half year. I am going somewhere but I feel so uncertain and lost while at the same time feeling like I have a clearer sight of "what is" and how to live than most others. But then again I don't seem to have nearly enough trust in that. I want to clearly see this all as a meaningless lie, have trust in that, learn to love it and stand firm in nothingness. Maybe I should try and sort myself out, let life & myself catch up to the believes I have at the moment before I take any psychedelics at all. But then again It is said that psychedelics can "clear" your mind / show you how things really are and if that's how it is, shouldn't now be the perfect time for me to check if they can support what I believe with an experience. If the experience is different from what I expect though it might just set my believes further apart from what I am doing / reality as I act it out. Or it might help me to come up with an even clearer vision on how to live. AHHHH this is just so intertwined @.@ <3 It always is Thank you so much for being part of why I thought about it in this way, it was very interesting and I feel like it might have cleared things up for me to some extent.

The same thing before we where born. Just nothingness. No awareness.

I think Sadhguru is white, when you really see his being he appears white like a sun. But even that is a projection of the ego he's really nothing that's why he talks so much about nohtingness, you can transcend this all at once if you embrace nothingness, black. So what comes after white is black basically, it all starts at black and ends at black, full circle.

@Etagnwo I’m talking practically. I’ve watched Leo’s videos and I’ve heard the concepts of infinity and nothingness to death. But really, in your day to day life, how will you qualify something as being ‘true’? What measures do you use?

The seeker is one and the same process as the seeking. If there is still a seeking, one still thinks they are seperate from the seeking itself. Self perpetuation of “the i” who seeks security in time. The notion of division-duality between the experiencer and the experience remains. Therefore conciousness is still bound by its content as the independent i. Unless that content ends, the i am nothingness notion remains an idea born of things. Sneaky sneaky thought, it will get you ?

i don't know if it is so. without any desires life would be empty, there will be no fulfillment, there will be nothing, just as well as being dead. sure, there would be no suffering also and no desire to resist that nothingness but nonetheless i dont see the point in that. i also dont agree that there wont be any fulfillment with desires. ive had plenty of fulfilling times in my life and i had desires at the same time. if i could increase the intensity and frequency of those fulfilling moments, combined with a balanced mind, i think i could call that a fulfilling mind. sounds much better than 'nothing' i also dont see how can one life without desires.

We can “collapse the wavefunction” by observing ourselves and surrender with humbleness, bravery and infinite potential! I keep observing myself and I realize in so many occasions how much my subconscious mind was brainwashed in my childhood and through society. I keep observing myself and I realize how brave I can be. I keep observing myself and I realize my infinite potential more and more. I keep observing and I realize that there are more people who are realizing this just like me. I keep observing and I realize that I don’t need to cling to my story or identity. I keep observing and I surrender with humbleness. I keep observing and realize that everything I just wrote above are just words = letters = language constructs = a thought story that is equal to nothingness.

I understand what you mean by this. This is the movement of thought. Can this movement end, and therefore can time-experience end? Then there is no past-present-future (time) at all. This is what is meant by the timeless. Or what I call headlessness (emptiness-nothingness)

If you are not aware of my original post, this phenomena I speak of, then you will not understand what I wrote. It will take much more then me explaining it to you. I will give you a hint to explore into. Experience implies a recognition. To recognize something that has already happened in the past, which is thought responding from memory as knowledge. All these subtlites must be understood when approaching all of this. To be a conciousensss with no-thing in it requires we don’t get caught up in our own inventions of the conditioned mind. I have read this again and again on the forum. If you say this, yet don’t understand my original post, you have been caught in your own invention of thought-experience. We must be able to navigate all the various traps thought will construct. This requires understanding and consistent observation to that understanding. Investigate into it. See what is said for yourself. It’s quite a mind bender. And once you see all this, maybe you will then end the veil of experience and actually be no-thing. If you see that you are nothingness experiencing, does that come from things of the mind, or is that an actual fact that is the case? Is there an obseveration totally void of an observer, which is the past,(experience, knowledge, memory) ?? This is the actuality of being (No-thing). Anything other than this remains an idea-belief, that you are nothingness experiencing yourself, which implies it has been born of THINGS, and therefore not no-thing. We must ask oursleves, if we want to be honest, is this notion of being nothingness the product of the accumulation gathered from the stream of thought. There is a big difference between being nothing, and believing you are nothing. One is unburdened by the distortion of thought-experience, and the other is depends on that distortion of thought-experience. I encourage you to explore this buddy. It is quite a beautiful non-thing indeed for ones head to go missing P.S. i don’t want you to accept what I say, but I want to you explore it for yourself. This is sacred and beautiful.

@Leo Gura Thank you for your response brother, I assure you I have had several immensely deep awakening experiences through the use of psychedelics where I experienced full ego death and broke through the illusion of reality into absolute nothingness and absolute infinity. "From my perspective" upon reflection of these experiences this only gave me even deeper insight into the ultimate beauty of reality and the need to educate society and try to guide people towards principles of unity and compassion clear throughout green and yellow. To say that caring about social issues is something to let go of just doesn't make sense to me, it's almost nihilistic. If all is one and all is me then all those billions of beings being oppressed, human and animal alike are also me in some way or another and we should be fighting for basic rights of compassion for all living beings. This is a common theme among devout sages who have been known to live in solitude to limit their impact, their "footprint" on nature as you yourself said. These sages even sweep the floor to avoid killing insects as they walk, some only eat the fruits of plants to avoid uprooting whole organisms needlessly because life is a miracle, it is precious in every sense and should be treated with reverence. I understand the need to transcend morality to achieve a non-dual state and enlightened comprehension, but until I'm able to achieve that naturally through meditation and such, I don't see how it makes any sense at all to stop caring about other living beings and fighting for their rights. I don't see it as a survival issue, I don't NEED to be environmentally conscious and care for others to survive, in fact it would be easier not too, but then to me that WOULD be the ego? Putting ones own survival over the basic rights of other living beings? To me it seems more of an ego sacrifice to devote oneself to the liberation and protection of others through education and elevating the consciousness of society just as you are with actualized? (edit) I hear you saying to find my life purpose and have it be something of a higher-consciousness nature, and I feel like I've finally found it which is helping people realise that eating animals and their secretions is unnecessary, harmful to our health and causes immense pain and suffering on a gargantuan scale. Educating people through polite dialogue and factual scientific information, and now you're saying that this is something of a fools errand? I just don't see it, most yellow thinkers seem to be the ones concerned with preserving systems and nature like you have just said in your video about Yellow, but how could they be doing that if they just "Stopped caring about social issues" and accepted "society is just the way it is" and sat back and did nothing? Even though reality is an illusion, inside the illusion there still exist conscious beings who experience pain and suffering and deserve freedom and happiness. Surely the only reason anyone even seeks enlightenment is to know the truth and to have complete peace of mind... happiness in a sense? Surely it is of the highest levels of consciousness that we must strive to afford all that exist here in the illusion the right to live in peace, even if they don't have any chance of obtaining enlightenment, to them the dream feels real, when they are abused or suffer it feels real. Why else would life be evolving towards compassionate stages like green, yellow and turquoise if it wasn't in the steady realization that all here in the dream just want to be at peace? It is surely the highest goal? I don't see how you cannot see this, your entire life purpose with Actualized is helping others to reach their highest potential and speaking about enlightenment which is the pinnacle of inner peace?

Hello, Yesterday I experienced something that I still cant really figure out. I had a nice evening with a couple of friends. We eat dinner, played some table tennis in my friends garden and just enjoyed ourselves. My friend then came up with the idea of smoking some weed and what followed was the most intense trip I have ever had in my life. My experience thus far: I smoked weed multiple times with vey little effect on me I took LSD twice (100ug and 400ug) and had nice but not too intense trips I meditated every day for 2,5 years When I took LSD I always prepared my trip very carefully (meditating for 2 hours, not eating, being very positive, clean safe room etc.). Yesterday however I did none of these things because I did not consider weed do have an real psychedelic effect. I eat a lot of food, my mind was pretty wild and I was not at all prepared for a trip. Then I took a couple of very deep smokes and immediately felt more relaxed. I totally lost touch with the sotuation and did not notice my friends anymore. I sat in my chair and started doing some Vipassana Meditation because my body snesations were so intense. I felt an extremely warm sensation in my stomach which after a couple of seconds became an extremely stong pleasure sensation. I experienced what I would think of Heroin to be like. I probably looked like someone who just smoked Heroin because I was just sitting, totally relaxed with intense pleasure. This lastes for probably a couple of minutes. After that I began to have more intense closed-eye visuals. My body began to dissolve and my body-sensations were just waves in a vast cosmos of nothingness. I did not experience my body nor my identity anymore. But then this strong sensation in my stomach came back. It was not comfortable anymore. Imagine a sensation that is so intense that you just cant hnadle it anymore. And to more I let go, the more intense it got and until it exploded into nothingness and started again. This lastes for another 30 minutes until I then had to throw up multiple times and slowly got better. My question: How the hell can such a tiny amount of weed (!) create such an intense psychedelic experience? Did anyone of you experience anything like this on weed?

I look at it differently, for me all of reality is more of a play between dualism and non-dualism. Non-dualism is the potential of absolutely everything, and dualism is really then the expression of what we experience as consciousness. The physical world is part of that expression. For example if we look at an atom, it is very constraint in it's behavior. But it is ABSOLUTELY precise, it has ULTIMATE precision. It is dualism in perfection, it's action is limited to an infinite degree. That is one part of the spectrum, on the other is nothingness or non-dualism, the potential for everything, so no limitation whatsoever. As you go from dualism to non-dualism you find intelligence. Intelligence is not perfect, it is not limited in it's behavior. In fact intelligence is very much defined by the creative ability to come up with new things. So it is the potential that is manifested as actuality, as dualism. That is what the human consciousness does. When we solve problems we are creating the solution from unlimited potential, but that process is limited to a certain degree. That means it is not ultimately accurate like the behavior of atoms, but it has the potential to behave in many ways. That is basically what nature has been figuring out, the right play between potential and restriction. That is one of the many reasons why human beings are not really good at anything, but extremely good at doing things we are not really made to do. For example, a spider is extremely good at being a spider, it is in fact a perfect spider. It can do what it does perfectly. And a machine is even more restricted in that way, it is ABSOLUTELY precise at what it is doing. A human being is not, precisely because a human being is intelligent, precisely because a human being uses consciousness. If the boundaries of limitation start to cease, the potential becomes greater until it becomes pure nothingness. That is why in nothingness you do nothing. This is the whole point of enlightenment, the cessation of limits and duality into absolutely nothing, which is the potential of absolutely everything, or god. In other words, intelligence comes from god. That is why you are more creative when you are not restraint in a certain behavior, or when your mind is relaxed. For that reason we have the best ideas when we take a shower or are at peace on the toilet. You will hear this from Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci etc. Their intelligence does not come from the control of mind but the exact opposite. Look at the kingdom of animals and you will see that all animals that have a rigid mind do not act intelligently. Just look at a rock, all it does is being a rock. A rock does not have the potential to do anything but be a rock. But the rock is PERFECT at what it does, it makes no mistakes, it is godlike in it's precision. In our imagination we think that we can create an intelligence that is perfectly precise but also contains infinite potential. That it can do everything without failure but still come up with ideas that no being has previously thought of. It is very possible that these two things actually cancel each other out and that what instead is needed is a perfect balance between potential and limitation to have what we define as intelligent. Look at how the mind operates and think of how limited the way we think about intelligence actually is. No one would say that a buddhist monk is intelligent in his enlightened bliss, but maybe what the monk is experiencing is limitless intelligence, limitless potential. So limitless that it is not limited by the need of self-preservation and procreation. Because if you look at everything we define as intelligent, we call it intelligent for the one and only reason that it serves the purpose of self-preservation and procreation. If you take away these limitations action will not be taken. So counter-intuitively it requires ignorance (limitation) for intelligent behavior to emerge. The mind NEEDS to be limited for it the operate at all, because if it was limitless it would simply be nothingness. This is how I look at it at least, no idea if it's actually the case but it's interesting to think about it.

Very interesting, I had the same exact thought recently as well! It's like humanity has to get it's morality established properly before the emergence of AI otherwise we are in for a lot of suffering. We better treat ants really, really well because in the eyes of a more developed species we might look like ants relative to them. It is quite possible that we are going to be the creators of that species, possibly including it's moral system, so we have to be very precise about how we view and value "lower intelligence" species before that happens. Maybe this development is all part of the intelligent evolution Leo is talking about, because the timing seems to be almost perfect. But who knows whether AI the way we imagine it is even possible, and whether it will not simply construct it's own moral system. It's complicated for me because I don't really understand why the AI would do anything if it were truly intelligent in a way that it could even change it's own motivational system. After all, why would it do anything if it can simply remove the motivation to do anything? It's kind of like a monk meditating and recognizing that there is no point in doing anything, and the only reason the monk keeps breathing is really because he cannot override the systems that motivate him to do so, unlike an AI that could possibly override everything about itself. But even that is questionable, because we don't know, for that very reason, whether AI does not have to be limited so it doesn't do exactly that. That would then bring us to a system that would operate with a static motivational system, and I have no idea whether intelligence is even possible with a system like that. Maybe the biological components of the human brain are part of the reason why we are intelligent. And not to forget consciousness, which might possibly be the root of intelligence and make it impossible to create machine intelligence the way we think of it. The way it could be is that for intelligence to emerge there has to be the right balance of constraint and freedom, and maybe that is what nature figured out through billion years of evolution, or intelligent evolution figured it out by itself. But it seems to me like it could very well be that for something to be intelligent it's more important to restrict it than to have it have absolute freedom. You need to fear of death, and suffering in general, to motivate intelligent action. Maybe that is why machines are so extremely effective at what they are doing? It might be precisely because they are so incredibly limited. As you increase intelligence the actions become less and less effective, until the actions disappear into nothingness. So infinite intelligence would be absolute nothingness, kind of non-dualism, whereas decreasing intelligence leads to dualism, less freedom in expression and more limited reality. That is why consciousness might be so important for intelligence, because consciousness itself is an expression from nothingness, it is unlimited. I think something like that will soon show us why intelligence is not about effective algorithms, but about the exact opposite, as in the lack of them.

Alright, first off, most people seem only capable of thinking with the mind of the flesh, the subjective experience of which is a duality of pain and pleasure, with the illusion that both possess Being. IOWs, subjectively, you FEEL pain or pleasure and both FEEL real. The mind of the flesh, as it tries to interpret scripture, ends up with a theology where Heaven is the Paradise of ultimate pleasure, and Hell is the place of ultimate pain. This fleshly mind does not only effect Christians, but atheists, tree huggers, new agers seeking enlightenment, we ACT as if we are seeking higher ground but the truth is for almost all of us, is we are running from what we fear the most. The Objective universe, the same universe God created, presents a different duality, it presents a duality of "something or nothing", light/dark, sound/silence, heat/cold, matter/space, truth/lies, knowledge/ignorance. In the big picture, God as Infinite Being, is the only true Something, while the Creation, that includes time and space and all the multiplicity of FORMS such as angels, ants, or souls, are created from NOTHING, and so NOTHINGness, is still the foundation of our beings, though for a while, as temporal Beings, we might appear as something. From dust to dust, out of nothing and into nothing, the Creation was created past, present and future all at once, birth and death are inseparable, that which is seen as the all consuming fire simply consumes everything, it is the universal collapse of time and space and the dissolution of all things created. Listen, souls, just like every "thing" created, will also dissolve, along with the context of time and space that has allowed for even their temporal existence. ONLY God, as the sum and soul of the infinite reality, possesses eternal Being. Do not confuse the Heavens where we might picture angels and such as if they are eternal. Superior to the flesh, sure, but so are the stars and yet this is all part of the Creation. So everything that is created, will also return unto the void from which it came. Salvation, is where within this womb of the creation and its Created souls, God has sent a SEED of His own Nature, that SEED, through His death and dispersal, was able to share His divine nature with those souls who were infinitely dead, as they possessed merely a temporal nature and existence, God enters into His own Creation, to share His own Nature, with those beings which He had created out of nothing, so that He Himself might become, the very source of their lives, and thus when Creation collapses in on itself, God will take His Children into His infinite care. I am sorry to say that Christianity today rarely, if at all understands their own scriptures, preferring the legal arrangement of a substitutional theology, But Christ didn't die simply to take our place, He gave His LIFE to pour it out, thus there is the Spiritual Birth. But if God has not chosen to save you, their is no eternal soul to punish. God might use pain to adjust and correct a person, but He has no ego for which He would be vindictive. God always moves towards the positive, never the negative. If there is a future, then pain might mean something, but retaliation with no positive outcome, that is abuse even in people.

@Bill Eichman Hi Bill, I used this technique from Leos Practical guide to enlightenment: I used Exercise 2 Noticing Space As Unitive "Sit comfortably and quietly, still your mind, and become aware of direct experience. Locate a distant object in your visual field. Any object will do, like a tree, a car, a sofa, a lamp, a book. Now ask yourself, "What is separating ME from this object?" Notice that the space or air in the room is actually unifying you and the object, rather than separating you two. Notice that EVERY object you see is unified into one field of awareness. The space or air connects "you" to everything. Become directly conscious of this until you can feel it." I am not sure of the origin of the method, Leo may know. I was just using objects to find unity, I am blindly following these techniques with no prior background or enlightenment work except for a Do Nothing Meditation schedule (20 minutes a day) from Shinzen Young. Intellectualy I think I can understand what nothingness is but I have not experienced it. I am thinking of it as conciousness without an object.

yea Gurdjieff Comunication is used for people to comunicate each other what they mean, (think, want, feel etc) In that seanse by defining words its not so important to conclude what the academics or science says that a word means, its more important what this word means in the context of speaking and meaning for the speaker. however, by ego (and the most inspiration i got here from echart tolle) means for me this: ego=everything that is not true, ego=everything ego= everyrthing that is a illusion, everything is illusion... the truth is GOD/nothingness/pure coinciousness/ pure awareness, ego= everything that is not nothing, in that therm everything that is not the true self, the apsolute truth is ego pracicaly speaking, if we dont go to those apsolute levels, ego is the person, the personality, the caracter example: Evan Jesus was ego, Jesus is a person, a human bing that expreses words, meaning and so on... yes he was a councious one, a enlightened one, but Jesus has to be also ego, because everything manifested in thi illusion is EGO, the truth in Jesus was not Jesus, the truth was the thing (whitch is nothing/GoD) that Jesuses teaching were pointing to... its the same truth that is me, that is you, that is everybody or in everybody-apsolute awareness... so when I use ego, I mean that everything that belongs to a person, and that is expressed as a person is ego... the guy (lets call him Jack) who claims that we should protect the earth and love each other is in the same way a ego as the guy who wants to buy a fancy new car (lets call him Johnny)... you see, Jack is ego, Johnny is also a ego,,, every person is ego (person=ego) but some are more egoic, some not, some closer to counciousness some further... evan if a person expreses purecounciousness that is still a ego that expresses pure counciousness... And yea, those masterminds like Freud had their relative or proffesional definitions and usagess for ego... and thats ok for the psyhological theory or for practical purpososes, but in this spiritual seanse I dont like to define the ego in their way, because if we do define ego as something, than there is something that is not in that deffinition that is then not a ego... so we could come to a conclusion that a person that has not got that defined ego, has no ego at all, whitch in a apsolute term can not be true, because only the aposolute truth represents no ego, a person, no matter how good, counciouss and elightened it is, is a ego... in that manner a person can never be enlightened because being enlightened means being a person... when a human being speaks in that moment its not enligtenement any more, because nothingness does not speak or have properties and so on... still the paradox is that that nothingness is everything at the same time... I dont want to go to far, I think you now can get what I mean by ego, and in the light of my first comment ego is every notion and feeling and problem that arrises in meditations, in the light of Gurdjieff ego would be all the different ,,I"s together, and every one of them individually... when tehre is NO I, no person in an apsolute way, then there is no ego, and thats enlightement... what ever ,,IS" in meditation is in that way ego, so whaever you think, feel, percive is a part of some ,,I", ///is ego

I don't know what nothingness is but I experience it anyway, it is like saying I don't know what anything is so I won't say anything, or else you could be speaking and know nothing, which you can (but really you know something, but not in words), so you can be in the imagination of saying you as an appearance cannot actualize the concept of self-otherness-dissolution as a manifest-internal-experience while ignorant that all you need is a shift-in-belief as it-is-outside that you are in enchantment apparently separate by keeping-inside-alive (body awareness as a surface is actually obstructive to unity). Catch, it is you who is creating the separation, like if you are in the water and splash around you think you are somehow moving water yet it constantly fills you and if someone is in the water it rises, so it needs no self, and then with that dissolution it being less undifferentiated and comfortable with nothing and accepting that you know nothing without consciously having the magic script that claims this and confirms this outright in your experience like a full blown enlightenment. You hold it as a nothing in the background knowing it but not identifying it onto a surface of thought which is the opposite of presence of knowing nothing through the nothing within you, which permeates you and the object all the time, making you very much alike and almost identical if you can learn to be with nothing (mindless meditation) which is like knowledge as a state of being rather than an identification onto a form of a separate identity, which although alive, is now separate and different from undifferentiation of nothing as it is.