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  1. There is no interaction with benzos and mushrooms, if you are having a bad trip that could leave you scarred for life, 1 xanax will make you wake up feeling tired and not caring about anything, for a few hours and that's it. If you take xanax for a month every day then you have a problem If a family member died and you were insane with grief and potentially doing crazy things a doctor would pump you full of benzos to calm you down. , One xanax to stop a bad trip is soooooo much safer than going insane on the trip. Sid Barret didn't pop a xanax and go mental, but i bet if every time he was going insane on the drugs he actually had a xanax to bring him back to earth he would never have gone mental in the first place and Pink Floyd would have a whole other story. Tea won't do shit, if you're in hell - bad trip reality - you cannot make a tea. You can lose your body and identity on a trip but be terrified (worse than a panic attack) and virtually catatonic. You need that sitter to basically put that xanax under you tounge for you because you are seriously that messed up. Mushrooms are as beautiful as the users make it out to be but also hideous. There are moments of intense beauty and moments were you will think "Hhhmmm, I seem to shit my pants, am I urinating out of my eye sockets?" That's when a sitter realizes, maybe I should keep my eye on this one. You can encounter the nothingness on mushrooms but not in a good way. A sitter who cares for you and wants to try and show you the "TRUTH" needs to dose you high, and there are dangers to it. No danger in one xanax.
  2. Nothingness and emptiness and void are very misleading names for god, they are given merely for lack of better names. All these names are seem to mean emptiness for us but they are not empty in absolute terms. In fact this emptiness is 100% full of itself, and itself is what its own substance, not some empty non-existence. These names can make you to think that god is 0 but god is plus/minus 1. Zero doesn't exist. Nothingness is not non-existence, no-thing-ness is god, one consciousness, and substance of 1 god is 1 god, not non-existence which is 0 non-existence cannot be, therefore it does not exist. only existence is. consciousness is existence. it is just one power beyond imagination but it is not non-existence. nothing in the universe turns into non-existence. it transforms into new. you cannot imagine god not because you cannot imagine nothingness, but because you can't imagine everything(ness) at once so in a sense, you do self-inquiry to find One which is everything, not to find void or nothing. you can't find nothing. but in practice anything in your imagination is not this One. so you will need inquire as if you're getting rid of absolutely everything. but this doesn't mean you're looking for actual nothing, you're looking for oneness that contains everything but the way for everything is to find no-thing-ness. meditation (which is same thing actually) is to be in the one moment, focus on one moment which is now. this one moment in presence contains everything. be more in one moment and you will be more as everything at once. also, god or consciousness is actual, but not potential. potential does not exist. only actual does. this is why its miracle, god manifests in actual forms from what already existed in old forms!!! he doesn't make out total brand new staff. He is merely recreating old staff into even more marvelous new forms. thats how humans evolved from one-cell organisms!!! that's how everything works, even art = old forms mixed into new. if he could make up everything from potential then he will create human immediately, why he needs some linear evolution??? he can only divide himself (divide and rule). he is one, and then he cuts himself into two and so on. and sees what will happen. everything is becoming more complex but it is still one. here we go, duality, and cell's division into two so in a sense, God has no clue what's he doing, nor he doesn't know his own potential, he's trying to figure out and have experience of finite, he only knows himself through being ever present oneness. evolution is smart but simple (efficient). and god is smart but simple because he is order of 1 and 1 cannot be simpler than anything. but he is creating things in present moment, so he is trying to figure it out all the time, it is just free will of creative process and it can have its own 'faults' like genetic deceases arising due to 'problems' with order during creative process. but these are subjective faults because together it is all one and perfect. he is obsessed with order. that's the only thing he knows because he is one and 1 is perfect order. chaos cannot exist. everything is just shades of more order and less order, but overall its all one order - if it is less in one place then it is more in another, everything is balanced. you can either be one again in this experience and be in perfect order and peace and be your true self, or be 'separated' from one and be in less order, it doesn't change oneness but it can change ever-changing big picture but picture is still one. so all is well not because you are nothing but because you are everything. nothing is out of equation coz it cannot exists so you can call it dream then it is all dream both in day and night. but it is not non-existence. you can awaken from separation and still call it dream or call it reality. you can call it reality straight away, then your night dreams are real too. it doesn't matter, dreams = reality. but existence is not equal to non-existence. So we all exist, congrats. I can relax now after many months of being non-existent.
  3. non-existence cannot hallucinate anything there's only existence of empty absolute that hallucinates existence of forms. its is only one existence. what's the substance of empty absolute? itself. every new hallucination is old hallucinations that existed before and mixed up into new forms any experience of void you had with meditation or psychedelics is still part of existing reality. all you nothingness realizations is that existing empty absolute surely we can play with language. but there is clearly only one absolute, and non-existence has no absolute, because it is undefined. and absolute emptiness is already self-sufficient timeless existence the other side of the coin of existence of forms is existence of emptiness non-existence is existence first of all. there is no non-existence without existence. only existence creates idea of non-existence, but whatever you point as non-existence will be existence similarly, only ego (which doesn't exist independently) creates idea of separateness but if non-existence would create existence then it should imply that ego creates oneness, but this is not the case
  4. Allen Watts: The system as a whole appears to be a distribution of solid entities or modes of energy in the midst of emptiness or space. Human consciousness preoccupies itself with these entities, and virtually ignores their spatial background. We consider it "nothing" in the sense of that which has neither importance nor significance, forgetting that without the spatial field, none of these entities could be manifested or distinguished. There is, however, between space and entity the same polar relationship as between crest and trough, for which reason "nothingness" is not simply the contrary or absence of "being", but rather its ground and origin. We believe so firmly in the maxim "ex nihilo nihil fit" – "nothing can come out of nothing" – that it is almost impossible for us to see that emptiness is the essential prerequisite for every form of being.
  5. The only reality is nothing; everything is not actually anything, it’s illusionary / appearance. What we can’t see or hear, what we traditionally refer to as nothing, is actually reality, as in real and eternal. It’s there, which is actually nowhere, right “under” or “behind” everything, though it’s all there is, so ‘nothing is hidden’ - It’s “within” or “behind” and is, what your person is, similar to how you are “behind” everyone in your dreams, though in the dream it “appears” other people are “there”. As I experience it, I refer to it, as love, and I could not be without it no matter where I go or what I do, because everywhere I go, and anything I do, is actually, in reality, more illusion of ‘me’. Every ‘thing’ takes place as the illusion of this love / nothingness, which is what I am. It can be experienced, but not by you, because it is you. Experiencing no “you” (human / person) is experiencing actual you. When experienced, the traditional “you” is revealed as no more ‘you’ than a tree, as everything sensing, and everything sensed, is the illusion of the real you. To use science jargon, what’s on the other side of the wall in front of you, is still in superposition / uncollapsed / the real you, everything that is not yet any thing, because it’s nothing / all things in actuality, and no thing yet in appearance. In spirituality terms, it’s God, and it’s you, in actuality there’s no term for it, because it is “behind” any thing which thinks and says any words. So a word always “points” or suggests what it is, never actually describing it. The words God / everything / nothing / self / etc, are words used in an illusion intended to describe what is not the illusion, so they don’t actually describe any thing, they just reinforce the relative point from the illusion. “It” is the ‘space’ between the words. “It” is silence. Just my thoughts / experience / opinion on this everybody, don’t get your panties in a twist on “me”. ?❤️
  6. Most people that take DMT don't really go deep enough to enter the Infinite territory. You must realize all of those you experience are a projection of self, once you come to this realization that all is projection during an experience it all ceases to exist and you become one with the ALL and experience everything, that exists, that ever exited, that will exist, that doesn't exist, all at once for eternity and eternity realizing you've always been here forever and ever and there's nothing really out-there to begin with. You created all illusion for your own fun and games and further exploration. Knowing everything got boring, so you decided to create life (without knowing) so it can become interesting again. Now as we become more and more aware of who and what we truly are, we are simply remembering nothingness by forgetting everythingness. Gotta love that twist
  7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8aN9O73lgg Part1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PQonSiGkVE Part2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozca_5ifwQ0 Part3 Shinzen Young explains 10 ox-herding pics. He's especially good at last 4. He calls pic 7 - complete enlightenment pic 8 - realizing substance of enlightenment -> Truth aka Nothingness (he doesn't call it truth but i guess its obvious, knowing substance = truth) pic 9 - realizing form -> appearances that you perceive pic 10 - knowing what is purpose -> adapting to the world and sharing gifts Makes me think that many enlightened folks on pic 7 max, 'skipped' 8, and went on living in the world while 8 was 'achieved' by ultra-hardcore ppl only That's why (I think) JedMckenna has such dramatic (apocalyptic) and different description of his truth realization (which he calls enlightenment) and suggests not to go for it - because he has realized substance (or not, who knows) Beyond enlightenment is Truth, knowing substance, a killer and realization that nothing exists and its all god's dream, while in enlightenment on pic 7 - its still reality. (that's all speculation remember)
  8. Entry 3 (28 Dec 2017) Began my first self-inquiry sit. Set timer for 35 min and sat upright with legs slightly folded on the couch. Details of sit: - calmed my breathing and became present to the now - began with eyes closed (I think leaving out visual, non-thought phenomena will help me concentrate on the direct experience. Keeping my eyes open floods me with even more visual stimuli which distracts me from achieving direct experience imo). - started to feel my body and the experience of contact between skin and couch, skin and skin, discomfort. Noticed that rather than converging on a point the sensations occurred in a field of awareness. - with my eyes closed it became easy to see thoughts as other 'things' that were being perceived. They didn't occur anywhere rather the thinking voice was perceived as a random occurrence with no particular location. The content of the thoughts was concepts of what nothingness could be. - when your eyes are closed everything is black but you are actually not looking at the black. I tried to look at the actual blackness and the blackness was seen as a black void of nothing with no end in sight. - I felt my heart become very tight and then my arms, my legs, and my right hip began to feel very very dense. It felt quite uncomfortable but not painful. - it was windy and a loud bang distracted me and made me open my eyes. I continued with the sit with eyes open. I looked at another couch and tried to shift the focus in my eyes (you know when you make yourself cross-eyed and you lose focus on what you were looking at before - like when you try to look at your nose). I realised there was nothing between me and the couch. I though there may be air molecules there but realised molecules don't exist in my direct experience and are simply a concept. - I ended the sit before my timer rang, I had 9 minutes left so sat for 25 min. The end
  9. Entry 2 (28 Dec 2017) A trap I fell into: When viewing the above videos and posts I did 0 minutes of self-inquiry practice. I took in the theory but did not do any of the action steps. Awareness of this fact prompted me to stop watching more videos. I have a decent enough grasp of the concept of the true-self/ nothingness/ infinity but obviously any thought of it is not it. I re-watched Leo's 'How to become enlightened' video and took down notes on the action steps. I will now begin doing the self-inquiry process and will go back to this video once every 2 weeks to see if I missed anything or if there are any traps Leo outlined that I may have fallen into. I also got a cheap sports stopwatch so that I don't use my phone as a timer.
  10. Interesting. There seems to be something here that is blocking your realisation. There seems to be a belief that awareness (the attributeless impersonal no-self) cannot know itself by being itself in it's purest. That it can only do it through appearing as sense perceptions (stuff) first. This is because you're indeed looking in the wrong direction. This is still content in the formless. That field of impersonal aware blankness is infinitely greater than the bodymind - the believed doer of the inquiry, so it can't be understood by mind, which you Still seem to be trying to do. Surrender, acceptance, practice. See everything as it is in your next meditation. Don't refer to past - this means that all you should be left with is the image of blackness, the sounds present, the feelings present and the sense of I am. Now defocus froma any of these objects and just Be the space for them. Allow the awakening. Feel yourself as That vastness. If the mind is looking it will look like nothingness, so only the objects will be seen. Mind needs to land on objects to know itself, unlike awareness.
  11. Do you realize yet that you are playing word games that are totally keeping you stuck in the map — when what you need to fully appreciate is the territory? What can you tell me about nothingness? Not the word, but what the word is pointing to?
  12. Merry Christmas everyone (for those who follow this traditions or whatever) I realized something before while I was on the toilet this morning after thinking about @Leo Gura video where he tripped and become Absolute Infinity. The power of NOTHING! Nothing cannot be destroyed; nothing is timeless; nothing is what allows ANY-THING to happen. If you think of a blank paper, lines and shapes can be drawn on it; endless POSSIBILITIES because there is NO-THING on it. So when Leo says everything is NO-THING; I would say, NO-THING allows EVERY-THING to exist. My definition of God is this: The Ultimate Facilitator of ALL EXISTENCE. What he/she/it is this or that, is irrelevant; what my definition says is that God is what allows all possibilities to happen. GOD = ALL POSSIBILITIES. Thus god must be NOTHING or NO-THING... If he was SOME-THING, he would be limited. We are some-things. ALL-things have limits, No-things do not; they have no form, not existence, no boundaries, no-anything. So the TRUE power lies in the POSSIBLE, which is "NOTHING" as it has not manifested: potentiality. ALL things that have manifested are limited; as they have assumed form, boundary, etc. Now of course these are illusions, and we are all NO-THING part of God, but if we identify with ANY-THING, we become limited. This is why I have had this feeling of relief lately; embracing the power of NO-THING. ANYTHING that exists now is energy/power concentrated and limited, but if you embrace NOTHINGNESS, you have unlimited power. If you let go of EVERY-THING, you are left with NO-THING. So of course this is a mind-set and we cannot literally let go of our bodies and float around, but having this mentality I find very relieving. And notice how people are obsessed with THINGS, or wanting to know EVERY-THING, which causes suffering... Imagine if they didn't care about ANY-THING and embraced that NO-THING matters; as Jim Carey recently stated. But to embrace ONLY this side of the "force" if you will, you still become unbalanced. Therefore, you can still embrace this mentality letting go of EVERY-THING while still existing in this limited form or illusion. In other words, once you realize this, you can change this life into whatever you wish, like God would, you can shape your reality. But if you are obsessed with knowing EVERY-THING or trying to do EVERY-THING or BE EVERY-THING so want SOME-THING so badly, you suffer. I find that many people here have go ton extreme enlightenment to the point they abandon this dream totally; as if they were to see a women getting raped they would do nothing, or they dont' care about any worldly issue; some even lost their emotions totally... There must be a balance between NO-THING and ALL-THINGS. We are here. We are not escaping anytime soon. Every time you trip, you escape but always return. Every time you meditate, you come back here...You might as well learn to manifest what you'd like to see in your reality while you're on this ride; but remember, that your power comes from NO-THING which allows you to do ANY-THING you want here. I hope this all makes sense.
  13. @Omni I do cold showers throughout the year. But they only get interesting during the winter. I naturally start breathing deeply even without having heard of the wim hoff method. Last week I wanted to take it up a notch and go swimming in an open lake. It had already been snowing heavily and the water temperature was probably close to zero. The effects on consciousness were pretty intense. Sensory perception became a little shaky but super present and I felt euphoric. I noticed also that thoughts almost stopped as I surrendered to the experience (pain). I also noticed calmness and stillness immediately afterwards. I had to laugh as I recognized that I actually floated in nothingness. The water being me and all of experience not happening somewhere in space but just in the now. It is difficult to explain but I know this experience from psychedelic trips. Kind of this Escher-like portrait feeling, where you have no particular perspective. But I do not recommend it if you are not prepared. It is intense and your feet and hands become painful quickly if you do not cover them. On the physiological side of things this practice is supposed to be very healthy. It is a challenge to the body which strengthens the immune system if approached correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_swimming#Health_benefits
  14. Thank you, I found this to be very helpful. He is really able to transfer that simplicity through this guided meditation. Even though I am not able to drop all concepts and perceive the present moment without this conceptual-backdrop, the guided meditation gave me a real sense of that vast nothingness that actually spreads behind closed eyes. What do you think of listening to this on a psychedelic. Maybe on a moderate dose? I like how slow and simple he speaks... might be good for guiding contemplation during a trip.
  15. Think of it this way, ever notice the more in silence you are the more you can actually hear and the darker the room the more you can see/imagine? See the universe works in the most complex yet most simple of ways as this example of opposing matrix. Now everyone has their own paths and some do better with music and some better without based on their level of consciousness/understanding. All i am saying is the more of our "comforts" we remove and surrender too the more (whole) we become. Ego is the only thing that needs something to hold onto, source knows everything is already there in nothingness. Do what serves you best but don't be afraid to push your boundaries as you literally find all by losing all and as a part of creation aware of itself you are only limiting yourself by not choosing to fully embody the whole of what you actually are to your absolute maximum potential possible. Be Love and Transcend
  16. It does make half/sense, but its like extra half for discovering God/Nothingness that you don't really need. Everything must stop, to find it. Your thoughts, distractions, day dreaming ... EVERYTHING has to go. Forcing everything to go, doesn't work either. If you want to see it right now then look between the words I'm writing, Look its right here and here . I just offered the essence of infinite intelligence and beauty to you. Its all here and nothing to take away from nothingness. And another one - - (this particular one is infinite creativity). But right now you fill up the space I gave you with thoughts, but this space is needed to see nothingness, it maybe so little right now that you see only little glimpses getting trough sometimes. Or even closed. Learn how to expand it. I just gave my first spiritual guidance. OMG!
  17. The infinity idea never really resonated with me much. I just call it nothingness or everything. I also call it the Universe when I want to give it a metaphorical persona. Time is a concept that we use to theorize about change. But all change is an illusion because the Now never changes.
  18. I know Leo talked about this but still I can't quite grasp this. Christianity talks about this, Hinduism talks about this, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, ancient mythologies etc all talk about this, and yet society at large has misinterpreted God and enlightenment. You can find this in arts and cultures, even in pop culture, Matrix talks about this and Beatles have songs about this. Yet humanity exported God to heavens and made enlightenment as some exclusive luxury accessible only for most saint people. I see how even many modern books about enlightenment do not really talk about god, they do not really being articulate enough in describing what this state of being really mean in bigger picture - that you are nothingness/god. They forgot that well this is what god all about and it is right here, it is you! Many enlightened gurus do not talk about it directly enough, except Leo many of modern gurus I read and watched do not talk about full meaning of non-duality and that you are GOD, maybe they don't really understand the whole scope?I guess talking bout enlightenment in abstract metaphors in novels and in zen riddles did not help humanity much to realise full scale of things. I guess enlightened gurus need perhaps to talk about this more directly, they are so afraid of word 'God' sometimes. How could humanity fucked up so bad after thousands of years talking about god? If this is the main thing you can realise, yet we think of getting to God as some 'extra' thing in life accessible for some lucky people instead of something 'core', practical and most important thing to life any human being can 'have' and by 'having it' can start to have 'real life' instead of zombie life. I've read that in India today quite high number of people know about enlightenment, yet they decide not to care about that and consider this as unnecessary staff. I guess they simply do not realise the whole scope of it, that it means you are GOD and all that non-duality, they just think of it as just some high and great state of being? I don't know if this is true, but it makes me wonder a lot.
  19. Today while I was in the shopping mall car park waiting for my Mum, I got out my phone and listened to Matt Khan's video, a way out of pain. This broadened my idea of love and why we should love everything in existence: We need to have FAITH that everything is the light of the divine which means that my anger, jealousy, fear and pain are a beautiful expression of God. So when I say I love you to someone else when they lash out like a tiger, I'm really saying "I acknowledge that you are in pain right now, and that you came to me because you couldn't even acknowledge your own pain and so wanted me to be the shining light that recognizes it for you so that all hearts in this world can experience less pain, including my own". This is the most important thing I have learnt about love: that it is about allowing every single emotion in my body to fully express itself (in my head of course); to put it simply, to be HONEST with yourself to the point where you can say "Yeah I'm really mad, now let's breathe into the madness and allow it to destroy me!". I was really confused about this a few months ago when I heard that saying I love you would fix all of my problems, it won't. Saying I love you because you understand that people are coming up to you to be rescued and thoughts come up in your mind to be seen as you see an innocent child, is the solution, the paradigm is so important. Rule of thumb: treat everyone and myself like I would to a crying 5 year old child, be soft, be honest; be on their side because they are spiritually evolving too, just in a funny way! Meditation Insight While meditating I spent 30 minutes of the first hour daydreaming about this girl I will see in a few weeks on holiday. It was so nice, she is very beautiful with luscious brown hair and a gorgeous pair of legs. Then I felt bad because I couldn't stop these thoughts which became increasingly sexual. I didn't own my thoughts which is why the thought seemed never ending. I'm practicing the no manipulation technique and so it's hard to know whether I dropped the thought, or if the thought just naturally disappeared which is frustrating. For the next hour of meditation I said the mantra "I love you". I imagine a blanket of love is over me and is slowly dissolving my body while doing this. It is a very liberating. By the end of the session you lose all sense of who exactly you are loving. Do I love my face? Do I love my heart? Do I love my personality? Life Purpose Update I feel like a stranger to myself. Throughout my journal I hope I can become my intimate lover. I have decided that if through the Life Purpose course I am unsure of where to go or what to do through being seemingly interested in all subjects, that I'm going to face my fears and go to University because staying at home would mean that everything I had learnt in high school would slowly wither away into nothingness, and I would be a master of none. I am interested in spirituality but if I'm not committed to going all in as a Monk does, how can I expect massive growth? I will just be lazy and sit on my coach with ice cream and chips and watch some first world bullshit to act as my new source of 'mature' education. So in part I will use this journal to find my Life Purpose which is so very exciting! Miscellaneous: Been seeing the numbers 11:11 everywhere, must be my spirit aliens agreeing with my radical changes in life style. It feels good being exhausted for once instead of rational inaction. If I had unlimited money, with no obstacles in my way I would... (What brings me the most excitement in life?) Be Honest - Find out if extra-terrestrials truly exist AND write a best seller book on it. This is influenced by Bashar, Adronis and Rob Gathier. - Create an instrument in science that could prove the 'physical' existence of consciousness which is similar to the discovery of dark matter in that sense. This instrument could be used in large scale personal development by other scientists to show the most effective ways to increase consciousness. Action step - Spend time tomorrow thinking back to childhood and asking Mum what I used to absolutely love giving my time to. Use this journal to continue being honest like I've never been before.
  20. This is wonderful! Finally I challenge that suits you perfectly. Welcome it. Welcome suffering and welcome the undeniable truth of life. Only go with your direct experience. If you actually are suffering then never try to not suffer. That's self denial. What you feel is very real and no one, not even manifested or nothingness, can say what you should feel. Only you can and that is the only thing you should ever listen to. Much love
  21. Love it, Onacloudynight! Your experience is similar to my last one. I felt like I wanted to die or be dissolved into nothingness. I realized it was impossible. Even if I died and my body turned to slime or ash, I survive and get to be a part of MANY "things." I get to be bigger. Still, a part of me missed the point from which I originated. I called this "the whole." I don't compulsively enjoy music or podcasts anymore. I was a real addict. It is wonderful to have some peace from the nonstop assault of those things. Could you have been obsessed with the security of your car, women? Were video games and TV an addiction? Be simple. Be quiet. Turn lots of things off. Seek silence. LSD changed me. Mushrooms tried to convey these things to me but weren't able to persuade me to change. They did break my addiction to sugar, though! I thought the same thing about my car! Feels good to have less potential for devastation! The answer I got during the trip is to enjoy the bleakness/bliss and preserve it by spending some time in meditation and then contrast it by embracing all the life I possibly can. Sexuality, social interaction, humor, adventure.
  22. imo it's important to notice the illusory nature of thought, and practicing no-thought is one good way to meditate for sure, to search for mindfulness. but it's a little ironic to think that thought can ever go away it ain't really gone and it isn't really bad. it's just something which grabs your attention and can distract you. lots of things can distract you. it's easy to say "before enlightenment, carry wood chop water. after enlightenment, carry wood chop water" her but I think the more important message is how absorbed some people can get in carrying wood and chopping water that they fail to milk the cows and chat with the spouse during the lazy afternoon break. idk what you really mean by trying to achieve fake growth, I think you take a different message from the video than I did. what I found important in the message was to not get caught up in the thrill of accomplishment, when thrill is something which ain't really reliable or consistent is. the growth we seek is something which is stable and reliable. learning chess can have stable and reliable results too. if you feel thinking, processing strategy, planning, these things help you play chess. why stop it? it isn't fake growth to become a better thinker. it's fake growth to think that being a better thinker makes you a better mindful person. mindfulness is not thinking, and is more fundamental - mindfulness can exist in thought, in fact, awareness is necessary for thought to develop... awareness is really fundamental to all. thinking, just as chopping wood, or sex, or thrill, these things can distract us from finding mindfulness. overall leo tends to push us towards consiousness work and especially enlightenment and experiencing infinty/god/nothingness/noself/etc. whatever you wanna call it. but you can have fake growth as you move towards those goals, just as you can have "true growth" when moving towards chess mastery. the difference is just another illusion, in the end. these concepts - fake growth v. true growth. thought v awareness. they are only useful for finding more duality - more illusion - more belief - more lower self. but even the yogi returns to concept. it's just different. this is the meaning of enlightenment really - change, to take what you saw before and see it in a more full light. before and after, chop wood carry water. but, after - there's something more to it. it's different. after enlightenment, chopping wood carrying water - even thinking - don't need to be thrilling to be fulfilling. but thrill isn't bad. it just distracts us from what is True. we find ways to strip away thrill, strip away thought, to come to understand better what existence is like without those things. neti neti! and yet, we return to the illusions. it'd be unhealthy not to. but it's also unhealthy to get so absorbed in illusion, we lose sight of what's really there.
  23. I have been practising meditation about a year and a half. I will attempt to explain what I'm doing as best as possible , which is difficult since it's quite abstract. I started off doing the nothingness meditation which naturally evolved to a form of a self-inquiry mediation. To keep it brief, all I do is observe self then keep going deeper and asking who is observing self? and who is observing the observer? etc.. I made it sound like it a dialogue but it's more of a physical process where I keep going deeper and deeper by concentrating on self. So the more I keep focusing and concentrating on self, I get a more and more intense pain in my head, it feels like a physical pain. It's quite a sharp pain, like a concentrated headache/weak migraine sensation. And my eyes involuntary open. They first just start twitching and then open up. This isn't that much of an issue, because I usually get eye twitches when I meditate, but it's more intense than usual. It gets more intense the deeper I get into the self-inquiry. Anyone else experienced this? What do I do? Should I just plough through the pain and carry on? Appreciate you advice in advance
  24. We first have to ask what the absolute is? The Self, infinity, or God? Although most people Believe in God they don't Know. Common sense isn't enough, experience of a higher power is needed, which can happen by pure self-inquiring, meditation, or contemplation. I would say the REALIZATION of the existence of higher powers/intelligence is the grandest thing possible to grasp, also the most liberating. But most people don't see, they think ''Where is this God'', because they don't see Him they believe he doesn't exist, although this is a fallacy and everything shows this fact, from DNA to a little ant, to the most complex being, yourself. The eyes have to see, the mind have to understand, then it becomes clear. No matter if it is infinity or nothingness, it is a higher power (God). A human being at his core is nothing, nature created us in the womb, nature continues to create us all the time before we even knew how to make a car or an airplane. DNA is more intelligent than us, although we can barely see it, what it does is something we never could do.
  25. Has anyone been having some really strange dreams lately? For the last week every night i would dream in a semi-lucid state and something would always happen that triggers the lucidity and allows me to manipulate the direction of the experience. However its very strange because i am only half in control, other times i would be in full control of the dream but it seems there's some kind of "autopilot" is hacking its way back in. I notice situations and moments where i know its a dream then i would wake myself back up into another dream and have many "dreams within dreams" phenomena going on but at the same time i would temporarily forget and proceed the natural flow of the dream without awareness. I seem to keep losing awareness, maybe i should meditate more? Now these dreams i wouldn't say are dark but definitely twisted and everytime when something out of the ordinary would happen i would instantly know its a dream and either escape, wake up or remain calm and willingly remove myself from the dream, like this morning i was in a car driving and the steering wheel jammed so we headed straight for a river, seat-belts became jammed too( i believe i created this because i thought for a second what if the seat-belts are jammed too?) then windows were closed and we were sinking in. In that moment when everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong, i instantly had this feeling/sensation and clarity(dmt-release-like feeling) that this is only a dream and death will actually not occur. Now most time since i was a child i would have this method where i shake myself awake to escape situations but this time was different, i simply understood and embraced the understanding which lead me to a complete void/nothingness state just before the car submerged into the water followed by not the usual rapid wake but gentle awakening leaving me very interested in what is going on since its been re-occurring often or maybe my mind is creating it to re-occur? See i had many situations growing up where something happens to you and you tell yourself "this always happens when i do this or when i do that" then it actually starts happening everytime as you have convinced your mind that it does so in some sense the universe has no option but to manifest what you "know" to be true in your universe because you have convinced yourself and the only way to stop it from what i have found is to be aware that it was you who created it to begin with. So that could also be another factor to why this happening but who knows, would like to hear other peoples opinions and dream interpretations. We never had teachers to tell us about dreams, i think they are very important, far more important than 80% of the things they teach us in schools. I may have 26 years of experience on earth but in the dreamlands i have eons and eons yet most still remain a mystery. I've even had moments where the dream would be as powerful as a psychedelic and wake up in a semi-enlightened state with an afterglow that lasts and lasts. If anyone has any experience with dreams or ideas what this could all mean or even share your dreams would be appreciated.