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Yes. That is what I can confirm, and that sequence one can also find in every spiritual tradition. The bold parts of your text are excellent. Welcome home to a home you never left. What was your practice/path? The normal sequence is: 1. Practice (or just Karma/"luck". But I would estimate from what I have seen that for 90% it was practice). Efficient way: Meditation + psychedelics + integration work + many other things. 2. Many Awakenings (some traditions already call these Enlightenments)/ into stabilizing awakened nondual and empty/impersonal Awareness states: Into all these aspects (some aspects of Absolute Reality show up, like emptiness or nondual unity, love, timelessness, Infinity, and so on... But the separate-self is STILL yet not fully seen through). The separate-self gets more and more transcended, ones identity more and more empty and more like Pure Awareness, and then it gets nondual/unity with the whole visual field/manifestation. These Awakenings (field getting nondual and ones identity more and more just empty awareness) are normally caused by the practice that makes accident-prone. And then comes the accident that is called Enlightenment (that can't be willed, since that would be a spearate-self wanting that which is already the case, and by doing that covering it), and for which practice makes accident-prone. Enlightenment tends to happen for most only in very specific Awakened States (nondual/unity AND impersonal/empty). For that, I have written elsewhere (Mahamudra stage 3 (Awakened states of nondual and empty) "One Taste-Yoga" to Mahamudra stage 4 (stabilizing these states without doing anything) "Yoga of Nonmeditation). Bliss: These awakened states are already very blissful without needing external experience for that. 3. (Full/Basis/Great) Enlightenment into the True Nature of Oneself: Infinite Reality = Infinite limitless Impersonal and totally Empty Consciousness CONTAINING Infinite Manifestation, in an infinite Unity/Totality. The essence of every appearance/manifestation is the same Suchness as Infinite Consciousness/Awareness. A deep identity level shift, away from a separate-self to being aware that "one" is and always was the Totality/Infinite Reality/Infinite Impersonal Consciousness. Phase 2 is gradual(!), Phase 3 (Shift of Full Enlightenment) is a sudden and complete understanding into the eternal and immortal nature/essence of all of Reality (limitless) and ones True Self (Awareness/Nothingness containing all manifestation). It can not be mistaken, is sure, doesn't need any external validation (understanding it by being it, and IT is infinite/all there is and can be). It is totally beyond "any further" and beyond any need for any confirmation. It is self-evident. This insight/understanding/realization is "more assured/ultimately assured" (beyond any chance for being shaken again) because anything else can only possibly just be more phenomenal arising (including any sensory-arising like visual arisings, but also including any other (I-)thoughts/concepts/I-feelings/n+1). Why? To quote Ralston: IT IS YOU. Infinite Consciousness containg any possible appearances. Limitless. Infinite. Any limit would appear in IT. Empty. Any arising (tree, thought, I-feeling, anything) appears IN IT. Impersonal (onself can be nothing specific or personal, since one contains it all). And its Pure Awareness (without any location, without any second) itself. Potentially unaware if nothing arises. But always right here, never can not not be here, independent of whatever happens/appears IN IT. It is waking up. Its essence is understanding that the separate-self as independent "anything" DOESN'T exist (just appears as illusion IN THAT), and never existed (was always an illusion), and can/will never exist (even if in another life illusions-arisings will occure again in ones True Being/Reality. The Awakenings (2) are insights/understandings into aspects/properties of the nature of Reality/True Self/Infinite Consciousness. That then evolves, towards nondual/unity awakened states. And THEN the final big shift of full Enligthenment can happen, in which the nature of Infinite Reality/Ones True Identity as Impersonal Infinite Consciousness/Infinite Reality is revealed. 4. Stabiling this Enlightenment, and letting it reorient the character top-down and back again towards love/openness/staying in nondual impersonal Suchness ("BEING the Totality"). Even then still, the separate-self character can still hijack the show (peak, plateau, permanent), but the separate-self-character and its associated suffering has lost its mirage-like seductive power. Its essence (Suchness/Infinite consciousness) is immediately seen when feeling into it. And that holds true for all building blocks of the separate self. So lapsing after Enlightenment is just a hang-over from a long time of illusion , and once noticed any emerging separate-self-arisings can be killed/transcended by just looking into it. Bliss: A lot and growing, since the awakened states now get even more stabilized and are always accessible. When True Nature is known, and if the separate-self-character "hijacks" again the show: Just look into these arisings and realize again their essence as manifestation IN the Infinite Reality/Consciousness that one really is, and return to what one really is. While after (only) Awakening(s) (stage 2), certain elements of the separate-self-character are not seen fully through, or are NOT understood. One of the last stages is a very nebulous empty separate-"something" that is already in nondual unity with everything manifesting. But there is still an "Understander" or "a not yet fully understander" or some "seeker" -arisings there.... Roger Thisdell stage 4 vs. stage 5. Stage 4: stage 5: Maybe that is helpful for some. Please don't beat me. Selling Water by the River

Yes. Just to reiterate, my point is not something as naive as "thoughts are untrue" or "nothingness is the truest state." I'm saying there is a clarity of perception you can achieve (truth/enlightenment/self-realization), which prevents you from being metaphysically "tricked" by thoughts or any other experience ever again in terms of perception. It's not a specific state. It's a realization of what reality is and how it fundamentally works, that goes into all other states and exists in all other states, because it is absolutely true. I think the point that might be confusing you is the idea that experience cannot be thought of, which I still agree with. These posts might expand on that point more clearly:

My understanding is that God is not a thing. (Aka God is nothingness) So living as God means you become nothing.

Hm, since we were only two people this perspective did not come up. We did not think much about possible, impossible, limited, limitless specifically we thought more just about Infinity and Truth. Actually, no. We have concluded that somethings are in fact Impossible. Can consciousness Imagine Nothingness? What the fuck does that mean? Can 0 exist?

Since Truth must be infinite (Infinity) you would have to be aware of infinity, All there is. You cannot do this because it is infinite. If you were in the Godhead for five minutes, you know "five Minutes" of the Truth, but you weren't aware of the Total because that is Impossible. You would just have to be everything forever. It is like the "number" 0, while theoretically possible, it does not exist because Nothingness cannot exist, there just is Everything and always has. Since there are an infinite amount of truths (our individual perspectives) all of them are neither true nor false. The moment we attempt to characterize Truth we already limit it, and it is beyond any limit and beyond any understanding. Words cannot do it Justice. Either you are Truth or you arent. ? Late night discussions i had with a friend...

Spiritual Autolysis - Journal Entry #37 - Sun Aug 20th '23 - 4:23 PM Ben: Hi God, how are you?? God: I am good, how are you? Ben: I'm good, thanks.. how do I get in touch with the energy fields of the universe? God: You feel them. They are like currents flowing within and through everything, everywhere. You don't think about this or conceptualize it, you just feel it. Ben: But how though? How do I feel such a thing? God: You quiet your mind. Ben: And how do I do that.. God: By meditating. By going out into the woods, without your phone, no distractions. You can focus on your breathing if that is helpful, or focus on the speck on a tree. This is how you attain samadhi, by focusing on one thing for so long, everything else disappears.. and all that is left is the nothingness of the universe, the ox, Enlightenment. Ben: Okay, thank you.

Exactly. you drop the ego and let it fall into nothingness, without more stories. total surrender to the now, and the now opens, and reveals itself as existence, deep, now, existing. total. it is difficult to maintain. the mind says: I have to interpret this, let's see... then existence, right? But what it does? How? and you're out.

Okay. But why are you trying to dissolve the Mind? There are only states of Mind. Such as the one you are in now. So if you want to dissolve that state, just sit in meditation or take a psychedelic. Okay- well it is not relative. It is an Absolute. It is no different then the Absolute of Infinity or of Nothingness, or of no self. It is a facet of awakening. It's just that this one will be the hardest for God to come to grip with about itself. Because then it has to give up the idea of separation.

reality develops, it creates itself out of nothing, it is a true work of art. Imagine the empty nothingness, a seed that contains all the rules of this universe explodes. and from there, combinations, movement, testing, development, and at one point something like the human brain exists. pretty impressive right? when before there were only a few atoms combining. it is infinity creating wonders, beauty, art. the problem is that it seems that this universe has some baselines in which every ying has its yang. every dream has its part of nightmare. every creation implies its destruction. Detachment is a must to appreciate the art.

You don't know until it happens. Awakening is not knowing that you are god and stuff, it is letting yourself go into nothingness, completely opening your heart and mind to the unfathomable emptiness of existence, to the now, letting go of any human greed, such as the need to know, and settle in the now, that is the infinity. is, as has always been said, the end of suffering. It's obvious, if reality is infinite, what is the difference between less deep or more deep? It's only one Depth, the infinite. And infinity=nothing. When you let go your need of understanding you understand everything,

I feel there is misconception when people talk about addiction. We are assuming that the sober dualistic compressed state of consciousness is the only possible state of consciousness that a human reside in, unless the times he/she is using a chemical or meditating. This has been proven to be false in my experience. if I can go deeper into this, I would like to say some things: (this is not aimed to your reply but just in general, maybe some to @Bazooka Jesus) I wholeheartedly disagree when people recriminate that 'chasing' this high states of consciousness is a symptom or an action of addiction. What we are (our True Nature) is constantly seeking absolute dissolution, absolute power, absolute boundlessness. Now, some people might be pursuing this limitless expansion through unconscious means: Through material achievements (becoming rich, becoming successful in business, becoming the start of your sports team...etc) Through praise to their ego (social media, fame, etc...) Through trying to 'change' the world or reach people in a special way. All of this are examples of the intrinsic human nature: "Is never enough". And it will never be enough through material means. Because subconsciously each being is trying to aim and 'include' the total Singularity. When a PUA is trying to fuck the 70th girl, that's their inner nature trying to become limitless by including more and more, but you can not fuck Infinite girls. And you can not get infinite millions And you can not get infinite fame. And you can not get infinite business success. Is only when one realizes that trying to get to infinity by material beings will never end, that one start to investigate tools and basically just focus the whole goal of their life to be and produce this states more and more habitually, making their whole focus of life that. When you touch the explosiveness, light, absolute beauty and power that becoming boundless is, the idea of going to grab a drug and get high doesn't even occur to you. It would be like enjoying a 100$ bistec while getting a blowjob and having the idea of going to eat candy under a bridge while playing Pokemon. That would be kind of the comparison between what blissful and ecstatic states of consciousness the human system is capable of connecting to, vs what a chemical is capable of. Because I have tried most of the most addictive drugs in the planet and nothing touches the states of consciousness that I´m talking about. I know that everybody that touches that becomes an 'addict' for life. But that is another kind of addiction. Is a natural addiction. The natural seeking of Nothingness to become Nothing. Of the limitless to dissolve all bounds. Is the natural state of our being. So of course every being is subconsciously seeking that. And is important to seek that consciously because if you do it unconsciously (through material means) you will burn up the planet, hurt people, do a mess in the world. The planet or humans can not be used as your infinity toy to stretch for you. You knowing how to make yourself explode into boundlessness is the only way to to go. Namastèeeee ?

Buddhism does believe in God, the Nothingness they refer to, the Void is God. They just leave out the love aspect. Christianity makes sense with the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is the Divine Feminine, The Father is the Masculine, and the Jesus represents YOU, which means YOU are Jesus when you awaken to Oneness you reach the State called Christ Consciousness which is just Oneness. It must be a sober baseline persistent state though. Hinduism is not wrong....EVERYTHING is GOD. Saying Everything is God is the same as ONENESS. So the issue isn't the religions the issue is not properly interpreting the religions.

Good shit! Is truly shocking to realize how the mind has constructed all the questions. Actual nothingness (not ideas of no-self, but actual non-localization) is extremely addictive, absolutely ?

Yeah, sometimes i'm like "isn't it my time to be buried and disappear forever in nothingness yet" haha.

“You are not you--you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream--your dream, a creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever—for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better! Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago—centuries, ages, eons, ago!—for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane—like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell—mouths mercy and invented hell—mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites a poor, abused slave to worship him! You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks—in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier. It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream—a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought—a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!” Satan, The Mysterious Stranger

It's just an idea, so don't worry. There isn't a thing which can lack consciousness. This is a contradiction. Furthermore, "nothing", or "nothingness", is very conscious and alive, by necessity. Anything that exists or is experienced is enmeshed in a conscious experience. Everything is as conscious as you are, unless you imagine it isn't. This is a human bias to interpret "nothingness" as some soulless void. Your ego is simply co-opting whatever you experienced and misinterpreting it into some ideology. Consciousness is capable of all sorts of wacky and ephemeral states, but they are not now. You are neurotically clinging to those states. There is nothing special about that state, it is equally as valid as what you experience now. Can consciousness imagine everyone as a robot? Probably. Can consciousness UNIMAGINE all of that and turn everyone into a real person? Yes! Of course! You were doing exactly that before. But, NOW, your ego is stepping in and saying "But...it's not real!! Stop imagining that! You're not allowed to imagine people anymore, remember what you saw?? Stop imagining! Stop connecting with people!! Wahhhh" You can intuitively feel that reality is not dumb enough to limit itself to just some mindless robots, but the intellectual ego in you clings to the ideology, and so resistance is created inside of you. You are just trying to live some intellectual theory you crafted from some experience you had. You have not thoroughly explored all the possibilities. Mental resistance always just comes from ego in the end. That's a big indicator.

That infinite Void was nothing but your own Consciousness as God. There is nothing outside of Consciousness and you are IT. The discussion here is not about a void of nothingness- it is about free will and whether something "over there" controls you. It does not. It does not because you ARE Oneness itself. You are IT. Reality cannot go anywhere because it has nowhere to go.

I would pick No Boundary. On first glance, the other one seems rather dogmatic, clinging to the Buddhist "nothingness." It looks like someone who had their first awakening wrote it, kind of rudimentary, if that makes sense. You could find many books talking about nothingness, and so it lacks uniqueness as well. Or you could go for both, why not.

@Osaid I found "God is Nothingness" for free and "No Boundary" in my language that I could buy. What do you think, which is better?

Would it help to be recognising or clarifying terms for example: the reductionist process is seeking to concentrate one’s experience back into a singularity which people describe as the empty space, void, bliss and nothingness which is one in the same as ‘awareness’ unto itself. As opposed to the expansionist process of awareness decentrating itself out into distinctions or attributes. Things that it ‘does’ but are not it itself. so we’re looking at a principal and attribute. Awareness or infinity and what it does to know itself ( consciousness). The word Consciousness means ‘with knowing’ so the godhead is somewhere between awareness and consciousness where an ability to split into two by making distinctions ( a single idea that becomes the dream of relativity that expands out into the stories that justify its existence through imagination. while the relative or dream is made of consciousness, consciousness is also the projection of the awareness, through the godhead into the dream to have an immersive experience to know itself by becoming everything that it is not ( or by creating things in order to know itself by its attributes or what it is capable of doing) because it cannot and never will have the ability to see itself. when a person chases enlightenment they find emptiness. They go back and forth from the state or sometimes get stuck in that cycle but getting over that means realising the exploration of the dream and all the possibilities because in the emptiness there are no possibilities only potential. Consciousness work is the exploration of infinite possibility and infinite states. Reaching beyond the human state is what some would refer to as raising consciousness, expanding consciousness or ascension? This is a further stage beyond realizing awareness as infinity or the Self. It’s moving on to the exploration of infinity as conscious states within the relative ( by relative im not condensing that to just the earth or our perception of physicality but I include all possible realms that can be explored) so you’re exploring different states of knowing on a spectrum that concentrate back to the godhead? You’re exploring the godhead or the construction of the dream. You’ve already become infinity itself as the absolute so knowing that requires exploring its attributes ( consciousness) ?

The hardest part about accepting that I'm god is to accept the true nature of god which is infinite cruelty, evil and despair. I will and have already subjected trillions of beings to immense suffering. I have and will continue to bring into existence beings who never wished to exist for no reason at all other than this sick identity game of being infinite. I don't know what's going to happen to this character, the character is innocent but the controller of the character isn't. If I end up in the streets starving to death, maybe I deserve it because after all I have created this rotten and corrupt world. My will is done 24/7 and it's tragic. If god was truly good and selfless, he would lay down his imagination forever, remove the infinite love and bliss and sleep in nothingness forever. Now that's truly selfless. It is my wish and my desire. Absolute non existence. Is there anything more selfless than that, renouncing infinite pleasure and just be nothingness forever?

There is no such thing as an ego. there are limited states of consciousness. consciousness limits itself to create the appearance of a dual experience. the ego is the infinite mind, not a bubble in the void, since obviously there is no other mind, only the infinite mind, as the attribute "infinite" expresses. If you eliminate the limitations, which are apparent, mental, the "ego" and the infinite mind are equalized, they are the same. So, there is no ego floating in a vacuum. there is no vacuum. emptiness is a limited state of consciousness. limited because it excludes the full. infinity is everything, not nothingness. it's completely obvious. What is the mystery of "I am"? absence of limits, that is, infinity. Conceptually, the nature of reality is very simple. It is explained in two words: no limit. On a practical level, it is difficult to remove those limits and realize your true infinite nature, since the limits imposed by the mind exist. it involves cheating the game, but once you learn how to do it, it's child's play. easy

Imagine that they lock you in a cell and tell you that in one week you will be subjected to the most horrible tortures for another whole week. Wouldn't there be psychological suffering? of course. any of those enlightened would suffer, and it is completely normal and legitimate. it is a natural process. You, as a human, have a self-protection device that impels you to escape from those situations. it does so through a sensation that we perceive as suffering. there is no problem with that, it is something natural. And not all spiritual traditions preach the end of suffering, only one does: the Buddhist. Buddhism is an anti-life religion. consider life as a curse from which we must escape, stop the wheel of reincarnations, and thus escape from what they fear so much: the suffering. it is a negative religion. focuses on nothingness, flees from everything.(btw, I don't say that because Leo preach against Buddhism, it's a logical conclusion, reading a bit about it) Yes, there are some cases of teachers who have a more complete understanding, but in general it is fear and negativity, the desire to flee from suffering. many say: I am enlightened. from their homes in rich countries with full medical attention, and all their needs covered. you have to accept suffering, it is part of what it is to be human. wanting to erase it is castrating your humanity, fear. We could be deeply awake and suffer same time, accepting or suffering without problem.

It's been a year now since I started my consciousness work, and I feel like I am slowly growing every day always learning something new about myself, how to live, how to do spirituality, and many more things. Along with many topics that I daily contemplate, there is often the one of Death that I never really stop thinking about. Even before starting with spirituality I never really thought of death as a bad thing; then following @Leo Gura's teachings and contemplating everything he says, I understood that death is not a tragic event. But little I knew (and still know) how threatening it is to me (or better, to my Ego) to die. I have never had an NDE or not even an Ego-Death / Ego-Dissolution with psychedelics or meditation/yoga. But in the last year, I had four powerful death realizations (if it is appropriate to call them that). The first one (I took a weed edible) was a year ago, and the other ones (while sober, one of them in a dream) happened in the past two months, and they were all basically the same. I was either lying down or sitting, and thinking/contemplating about Death, and then it just happened. I don't know how to describe it precisely, but it was like a visualization I had: a feeling of darkness and nothingness. It was like my Ego saw its own death; in the moment of the realization, I died, but not completely because I still had thoughts, and I felt really scared. Except for the last one, the one that I remember more vividly, which was a dream. I was in a house with other people, we started seeing lightning striking and destroying buildings around us. In the beginning, I thought that nothing would happen to me, but then as more buildings were falling, I understood that I would have died. At that moment I saw my life stop right in front of me, and then darkness. I understood I finally died. I was not scared, and I remember thinking: "So this is what it feels like to die?". It was a feeling I know I have already felt, somehow, somewhere, sometime. Then I thought that if I am dead I am not supposed to have thoughts, then I woke up. I don't know how to interpret these experiences, especially the dream. I am also quite fascinated by how strong my imagination/visualization could get, even by being sober. I would love to hear your opinion and ideas about it, and let me know if you ever had a similar experience (also without psychedelics).

I've had fairly similar experiences when I use LSD for years now and use it to grow faster. Thought I'd share a bit about it in case it might work for you too.. During my trips, I focus on how my mind works out these energies so that I could (crudely) replicate it when sober. This is just an expected extension of my "trip"; I sit down and work on those emotions as if I were on the acid and can process them around 0.5x as efficiently, with the rate decreasing as time goes by. It's emotionally tough yes but very effective. If the thoughts get too twisted, I focus on nothingness - that tends to untangle those energies over time. Either way like others have said the emotions do tend to settle down on their own so it's not something to be too worried about.