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I thought they are the same because the spiritual practices like Neti Neti go after the I. So is the no-self awakening also the awakening to solopsism?

@Someone here The solipsism and Nihilism video, the former is what he took done, that one was very scary and hit pretty badly, nearly killed me. The what is anger part 1 and 2, because I suffered from anger issues, and had issues with his lack of empathy. Either the dark side of meditation, or the one with the paranormal. Just doesn't seem to have those paranormal experiences to talk about them, and I have had those and it's just weird. His spirituality and enlightenment videos and the guided neti neti video. Gave me strong depression that took several months to reverse. Every video of his dating advice, made me very insecure. I guess the moral of the story, is that this stuff's not for most normies

Lol. I can't remember who it was, but someone just said imagine your Child was ill and you went to the hospital and some doctor had adopted these Neo-Advaita teachings, yeah your child is dying but its all good because 'there's nobody there', 'nobody this is happening to' Also, I'd look out for a lot of scandals from these kind of teachers (not saying Jim Newman but in general) where the whole nobody there, nothing happening to noone spiel will be used as the excuse- How can anything with 'no' be the final answer? Sure, there's a time and a place to expose someone to the neti neti approach & what not, but as a parrot answer to every question, I'd say that's the furthest thing from Skilled Teaching. Plus, they never go beyond the 'No' 'Not' 'Nobody' and the truth is far beyond the negatives Imo, its quite a hollow, empty teaching, one you don't want to be stuck in

Okay so you just straight aren't ever going to recognize it then... Vedanta takes randomers who have not had these bizarre experiences and will tell you, "you are not your thoughts", etc (as I mentioned they do that whole neti neti process thing)... Now you will say back to them "but that's duality! I am my thoughts!" And it's like, well okay then guess you'll just have literally no chance of ever understanding it whatsoever... You're just talking about something you have never recognized as if you have recognized it, and because of that you will never recognize it... And that is ultimately why you think you "become" God and start performing magic. You will never "become" what you are. You can only ever possibly recognize what you are, but it is what you already and always were. There will never be such a thing as a level of consciousness, there isn't any tier that is higher or lower than what is rigidly the only one there ever was, which encompasses all there is and ever could be. There isn't space for it to grow into, it is itself and it is whole with nothing outside it, not even nothingness (since nothingness is fundamentally what you are), hence why: nowhere for it to grow into. All things happen WITHIN it, like the swirling images on a screen. All you are ever doing, it is not growing outwards into bigger and bigger pictures but seeing "through" the pictures so to speak. It is more like moving the opposite direction. Except you are already there...... Take this. You're at a cinema, super engrossed in the film, lost in it. Suddenly the movie cuts out. And you suddenly feel yourself in the seat there. You didn't "go to" the seat, or "become more seated". You were already and always there, ALWAYS just as seated and just as present in that chair. But you didn't realize because you were distracted by the movie. Leo would understand what I am saying but he doesn't really bother to post lately.

Dude you can't mention subtle dualities when you don't rn comprehend the thing you're trying to discuss... Example: In Vedanta they have a process they call neti neti, which is where the people are taught to understand they are not the thoughts, not the images, etc... Say a guy came in without having touched realization of Brahman and was like "nah that's BS, that's a duality" it's like, oh okay, guess you'll just never get it ever then... Only the entity referred to universally as "I" can """awaken""", AKA recognize itself. The images, your entire personness, cannot... Example: Imagine an elephant in your mind. Now stop imagining the elephant. Is the elephant now enlightened? Could the image of the elephant recognize it is only an image? Could the image of the elephant start "manifesting" things it desires? Well there you go....... ALL of your person-ness is exactly like that. All just images. Your desire to manifest something, is an idea and that is ALSO an image...

I feel like I´ve reached a plateau in my meditation and I know that it is because I haven´t commited to one specific technique to go deeper. But I find it hard to make a decision and commit to one, cause many resonate and I see the potential of them. But I feel now is the time to commit to one for a longer period of time. So what´s your favourite meditation technique? Zazen, Passage Meditation, Mantras, Breathing, Mindfulness, Satisfaction Meditation, I AM- Meditation, Neti-Neti, Loving Kindness Meditation, etc. You got any tips on how to decide for one?

I was doing the neti neti method and when the last thing was gone (thoughts) I started vaguely seeing in my imagination something that I actually saw in my childhood during a fever dream and this memory from childhood got completly deleted from my memory but when this experience occured it just clicked in me and I suddenly remembered it and it even felt the same. I can't describe it now, and I think I would'nt be able to put it in words even during the experience. But the thing is that during this state what was really present is fear. I, or better maybe my body felt so much fear that it affected my mind and so I started to become terrified. I tried to surrender to this fear and calm myself down, but about in a minute this experience completly wear off and I was left with the biggest confusion and "what the fuck was that" thought. Did I messed it up? Cuz at some point I tried to describe what I'm experiencing and maybe it ruined it. I really want to point out the fact that I definetly experienced that in my childhood maybe even multiple times and it used to scare me a lot (I was a kid cmon who would put a child through such thing) Elp

You are absolutely certain that u exist, right? Nobody ever doubts his existence, it's impossible. Even to say i don't exist u need to exist first to say that. So u exist. Absolutely so. Now the question becomes 'i exists but as what?' Then neti neti starts. Everything is impermenant, but i remain and observe existence coming and going. Then by observing all phenomena to its subtlest realms u realize what u are can't be found or grasped. It is nothing or not-anything-tangiable. No-self in buddhist's terms. That's the realization of the absolute. Realization of nothingness. And it has no levels or it wouldn't be absolute. There are degrees of insight into the absolute tho.

Guys, how can there be any sort of consciousness of the absolute? How can we become conscious of *actual* nothing? Nothing can't be conscious because when it is it's something. Like in the neti-neti method: not this trip, not this insight, etc, etc. Am I on the right track?

@Ninja_pig It happened to me aswell. You dispell some illusions, then the mind creates negative beliefs out the emptiness of those as if reality is lacking. Thats the trick. But you have to go beyond. Dont just dispell illusions. You have to simultaneiusly ground yourself in presence. The IAM. Other wise you will be floating in the chaos of your mind karma. Which feels like hell. Dont do much spirituality if you are not going all in. Right now im used to pain. The moment is coming soon when I will drop all and trade my false I for the True "I". Remember that as you drop beliefs that ground you, you might also need some new positive beliefs for specific things/situations. Dont just donate. God wants to trade with you. Also, true meditation makes you very passive and its risky if you have many responsabilities. Unless you are rich with nothing else to do. I prefer Self-Inquiry, Neti-Neti and Psychedelics.

I just wanted to post the same thing but decided to go with more simple stuff like dreams. During my neti neti meditation I somehow entered some "realm" cuz I dont have words to describe it (maybe state of consciousness) and it indeed felt like a childhood dream that I had but it got completely deleted from my memory. And for some reason I felt extreme fear throughout the whole process. It all went away the moment I tried to put it into words. After this I thought why the hell would someone or something put a child mind through such thing

The answer is pretty much what many have already said. The phrase I use which is the foundation for all issues or problems in life is everything starts with you. 1. You must first accept yourself in the present moment. Love is acceptance, and hatred is denial. Accept everything about yourself, your physical appearance, your personality, your past, your quirks, EVERYTHING. 2. Recognize (experientially) that you are the creator. You ARE THE APLHA AND OMEGA. 3. If you have trouble recognizing this go look up Leo's Neti Neti Guided Meditation Video as a good start. 4. Once you start to love yourself you will be able to love others in a HEALTHY WAY. As someone mentioned earlier stay away from co-dependent behavior. Seeking medical professional help is always a healthy choice. 5. Choose to act in a way that YOU believe is noble, and if you make mistakes lovingly accept those mistakes and their consequences and move on. Your lack of love for yourself is ALSO an illusion. Had you met yourself in another form you might very well pedestalize the form you are in now. But when you are inside looking out the form doesn't seem so great. Recognize that you may be thinking more highly of others than you aught to.

One of my greatest experiences of “infinity” was in the split second before my first two cessations. Experiences people associate with Infinity are far different than cessation though. I’m sure some people have reached cessation through neti neti, but I wouldn’t consider it the most likely option. As far as psychedelics go, 90% of the times I’ve reached cessation, it has been on THC which is kind of ironic seeing how people often see the substance as not having value in serious spiritual pursuits. Specifically, it was a delta-10/delta-8 THC mixture. Daniel Ingram says that it’s incredibly rare to reach cessation through psychedelics however. I think he said maybe a rate of 1 in 1000 people he’s talked to who claimed cessation in a way that was convincing got there from psychedelics as opposed to meditation. It’s probably rather unlikely that these forms of THC would help you reach cessation unless the use of other psychedelics has significantly increased the potency of THC and you’re able to use it consistently without seeing the typical negative effects people see with frequent THC use. It also would probably require a certain synergy with your unique neurochemistry which makes things even less probable. I have heard one other person claim that they have reached cessation on THC, but I’m not sure if he actually did or not due to some ambiguity in his description of the event. I wouldn’t count on a substance to get you to cessation even though it was beneficial for me. Vipassana meditation is probably the best thing from what I’ve seen to increase your chances. Daniel Ingram’s forum https://www.dharmaoverground.org/ has a lot of people who have reached cessation and plenty of people aiming for it there. It might be a good thing to check out if you are quite interested in it. Leo’s comment that cessation is imaginary is correct. Regardless, a 9.5/10 woman riding your dick is also imaginary, but there are certainly valid reasons to enjoy that and things to be gained in a relative sense from such an experience. Cessation is no different other than it has the potential to be exponentially better than the example given of sex with a 9.5/10 woman, and it also has the potential to change your perception permanently to make life far better than it would’ve likely been without reaching cessation. A personal theory of mine is that reaching cessation has a lot to do with how much time you spend in radical states of consciousness while also doing active investigation of such states. I think the main issue with serotonergic psychedelics aiding toward reaching cessation is that people typically cannot spend nearly the amount of hours in psychedelic trips in a sustainable way as much as they could do with meditation. In the couple months leading up to my first cessations, I had almost lost my big toe in a lawn mowing accident. I was off from work due to the injury and was using THC for pain relief as well as some consciousness work since I had nothing better I could do being rather incapacitated on the couch unable to move without assistance. I was also running into reverse tolerance with THC at this time where every week or two I would hit a new threshold on roughly the same relatively low dose of THC which made the trips more and more intense. It was rather common for me to reach states while on THC similar in strength, intensity, and profundity to what I experienced on very high doses of serotonergic psychedelics. Once this became a weekly or even daily thing to be in such states, I think this increased the chance of reaching cessation quite a bit. Whatever practice or substance you use, if you want cessation, I think it all comes down to how regularly you can reach high states of consciousness, and most of the rest is just up to luck. Many have practiced spirituality diligently for an entire lifetime and not reached cessation. I was not trying to reach cessation when it happened. I think I would’ve likely never gotten there without Leo’s teachings. I had hardly any in-depth understanding of Buddhism or Buddhist forms of meditation prior to cessation, so I certainly can’t credit it for getting me there although it does appear to be the system which is most focused on cessation and produces that “state” in more practitioners than other forms of spirituality.

LSD Trip 005 February 12th 2022 Imagine taking your most potent hit of acid and then when you're at your peak the world starts going into chaos and there's riots and shit outside. That's what I experienced. Like I was going for it hard in this trip. My Intentions were: So those were the intentions, basically self inquiry. Dosage: 100mcg Rectal administration. Definitely my favorite ROA because I don't get much body load. Putting one whole tab in rectally that's not cut up is A LOT easier to do because it's a nice big piece. Dropped at 10:28am 26 min. Nothing noticeable yet 30 minutes Very awkward and vibratory come-up. Very hungry, tired and a hint of nausea. 34 mins Visuals inbound. 1 hour in, feeling very conscious. Time to start doing the work. Seriously What if I'm God? What if I'm just a field of awareness that needed to create a body and an environment to fool that it is not itself? >So I just sat on the couch and tried to do some self inquiry, the best I could. YOOOOO Your mind is going to come with every excuse in the book to distract you from looking at truth, especially the absolute. If I was just a field of awareness in the room with nobody it wouldn't make any sense. Which is why I created the body. The body grounds my field of awareness in a context so I can fool myself that I am a "perceiver". And as long as "I perceive" I will have a body to back it up. What can I put my Awareness on to prove that I exist? I have no face. I created eyes as an excuse to "see". I'm so stoned that when I close my eyes, I hallucinate like I'm a camera in a different part of the world. Like I'm over at an assembly line of people or I'm literally just a drone flying somewhere. I need 5meo lol. >At this point I am thinking that it's pointless to try to get to the truth using LSD when I can just use 5meo, because I have access to it. This is literally the best stage of consciousness I've had in weeks and I'm just fucking chillin here on the bed... I'm SO DISTRACTED. I don't think I've been this bored while high. There is nothing that my mind doesn't do that is outside of my control. >Yet at the same time I control nothing... What is the substance of substance? What is the substance of substance of substance of....... >So there I was, staring at my reflection in the mirror, doing self-inquiry. Closing one eye, poking the the other eyeball as I observe my vision shift. Also thinking about how ugly I appear to be in that moment, you know, in a loving way, just chilling really, loving the moment. >Then out of nowhere, the ringing from the silence that was in my ears got louder, it got really REALLY loud. I heard it coming from somewhere. I opened the window of the bathroom I was standing in, I realize that I'm hearing honking, SO much honking. I thought some building was on fire. It was complete chaos. I had NO IDEA what was going on. I step outside and I see these people speeding down the streets with their loud as fuck horns and honking the horns of the cars. I swear someone had a war horn or something. Shit was loud as FUCK. The entire neighbourhood was screaming loud. It was really distressing. Instantly, the whole world was chaos, and I was basically in fight or flight mode, WHILE peaking on a very potent dose of LSD. I was like “YOO WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!?!” I was thinking like there's like a group of terrorists, extremists something. I was also laughing at the chaos. I asked people that were in the house what the fuck was that, and they didn't know! I felt like I was in the middle of WW3 or some shit lol. Like I was genuinely concerned if I needed to defend myself and the house. I only found out several hours later that it was this thing called “the freedom Convoy” that's been happening all across Canada. Dude what the fuck. I had ZERO idea of what this was. >So this basically threw my LSD trip off the rails. I eventually just gave up and used my LSD state to think about survival. This has basically been my fallback intentions anytime I can't focus on the more metaphysical stuff. >Side note, when you close one eye and poke your eye, (touching your eyelid, not the eyeball itself.) and your vision shifts that is literally changing reality as it absolutely is, isn't it? Using a perception to change a perception? It's like how a taking a psychedelic is a perception that changes reality, which is nothing but perceptions. So in this case instead of consuming a psychedelic, it is your finger poking your eyeball. Reality is the device that contains stories. The social matrix is a system to create a homeostasis around the loudest stories. Without the story of the freedom convoy, I would be very worried about what the fuck this group was up to. >Thinking about how I imagine everything in reality. I'm going to imagine the rest of my life. I'm going to imagine what it feels like to create myself. (Align with my life purpose) That is the gift I give myself. To be able for the first time, survive as this "being of consciousness" in this "given reality" to discover his place in the world that HE FUCKING IMAGINED. >We are the Director, the Producer, and the Viewer. We come into this world to create attachments, to grasp onto something, otherwise, it wouldn't mean anything if we realized we were just grasping sand. Here's a decent question: What would I have to do to fool myself that I am not GOD? Why you need to track your time: You need to sacrifice a bit of your time to keep track of the rest of it. If you can spend 10% of your time to make sure you're spending the other 90% really well, you're good. That's like 1-2 hours a day planning. That's plenty of time. >For many this is obvious, but for me this hit different. To construct a life purpose, you must know first how to deconstruct it. You must be the knower that you are the one that constructs all meaning, purpose and value. I really need to train my consciousness more. I need to set aside time to Meditate. My ability to focus is shit, and it's causing problems. Here's an interesting insight. States of consciousness. Creativity is a state of Consciousness. Inspiration is a state of consciousness. Motivation is a state of consciousness The mode when the ideas are flowing to you effortlessly IS a state of consciousness. Dude what the fuck! Success is LITERALLY just a state of consciousness. Feeling like you're going to be successful is a state of consciousness. Feeling like you're on the path is a state of consciousness. Being focused is a state of consciousness. Your state of consciousness determines your life. Having the motivation to turn your life around is a state of consciousness. And all of these states of consciousness can be induced manually. Being unfocused as I am is the gift I give myself. Because when I can figure out how to focus THIS DUDE, I'll know a lot about how I can train others. I want to write a really inspiring piece of poetry. Just like Prince EA. https://youtu.be/ja-n5qUNRi8 To have motivation, I need to put myself in the grip of life, I need to put myself in touch with death. I need to CAPTURE that state of consciousness. The one that doubts themselves the most can teach themselves to doubt themselves the least. How can I get myself into the state of consciousness so that I FEEL like I'm on the path. While knowing that I'm not fooling myself. A state of consciousness where you KNOW that you are giving it your all, where you are pushing yourself to constantly grow yourself. Stay in that state of consciousness long enough and you'll manifest the success you want. One of the greatest joys in life is to create something beautiful. One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is to make your life a work of art. At the end of the day I proceeded to have a 5 hour conversation with my good friend, making plans to move out, talking about a bunch of motivational shit. >The following morning... So I had mega broken sleep for the entire night. I was basically trying to sleep while half high. So THAT was interesting. I kept constantly thinking about the ramifications of the conversation I had, and I think because I was still on acid, I actually programmed in some of that drive because this morning I am realizing just how real it's going to get when we are living together. I laid in bed for a significantly shorter amount of time and I got up, made my bed and got myself dressed and ready to work. I'll need to practice self inquiry sober for awhile before I get into doing it again on psychedelics. Gotta crack open the neti neti book. I need to practice the Enlightenment guides a lot more as well. But I'm also just going to see what 5meo can do for me as well. Sometime this year...

Okay, so no amount of reading or mental masturbation gets me even an inch closer. That's kind of what I was afraid of, and also probably what i already knew when I asked. So it's literally waiting for the grace of god to strike you. A human is incapable of getting there on their own. Aside from DMT and psychedelics, is there anything else we can do to increase the probability of that lightning strike? It sounds like any form of meditation is about 0.00001% as effective and that seems like the second-best option. (For even an initial experience of enlightenment, not necessarily all the way.) Do you have any theory on how DMT gets a person there? Does the psychedelic state just make someone radically more open to the truth? I'm now thinking of it almost like some kind of "luck boost" potion in an RPG that increases your % chance of finding rare gear (or in this case, enlightenment) while it's active. Does anything besides DMT give even a measurable buff in this regard? Not even do nothing meditation, neti neti, etc?

As many know, nobody ever really comes back from a serious DMT breakthrough. Even though the memory of the heaviest breakthrough ever is so faded that I can only recall about 3 seconds of it, hazily, I still try to understand what happened. I remember the euphoric afterglow... I remember knowing I am not more important than a single grain of sand, but also not less important than an entire solar system. I remember understanding right aftef that spiritual practices are a waste of life, as everyone is equal and their entire lifetime of spirituality/good deeds erased when they die. I remember speaking to Shiva (I was VERY heavily materialistic, had zero spiritual leaning, and in fact Hindu characters have always looked frightening to me). I thought it was a woman. I know now it's a man... I remember Googling "monist religions" (yes the ego death was SO intense from the 5 tab acid DMT combo that I became religious) and then finding Advaita Vedanta for the first time. I remember reading a lot about it then. I remember the dissociation and awful derealization that began after further usage. ... But I remember it was very "we" are one. I have tripped so much, on LSD alone (rather than the acid DMT combos I became religious due to) I had similar abstract realizations of repetition, and of "slithers of being", like I am slither #1948127 in some infinite honeycomb. My own being split into various characters. All had their own personalities and spoke among themselves in the voice of the Friends characters. They were all distinct aspects of me... I had a programmable synth. You program a beat into each square and it plays them in order. I had an abstract acid thought that my entire existence is like that. Where I am programmed into squares like this and I in fact die every single moment. A clown jester PROVED my inherent emptiness to me. It did not just tell me. It pointed at the formless me in the foreground and I was pulled far back. Back behind even my ego. Back behind even the thought of "I", an experiential neti-neti process where I was left as literal nothing... But I also remember the ego deaths where the sense of any locale died and my consciousness became sizeless and all encompassing. ... But back to the main trips where I did heavy acid trips with the DMT smoked on the peak... I have forever been trying to understand those experiences since. There was certainly oneness and unity. But a "we". "We are existence itself, we are eternal" etc. Rather than "I" am. "We" are literally one... When sober I cannot comprehend that simultaneous separation ("we") and the absolute total unity ("are one" - literally) that accompanied. Maybe it's not comprehensible... Laughing with what was at the time stupendously obvious to the point it was hilarious: "I know, they (other living beings) don't even realize they're us!!!" Stifling fits of laughter...

I agree and I know what you mean. God is all that there is, so we can't point to anything he is not; therefore pantheism. It's a paradox because we can certainly know God by pointing to what he isn't such as the Neti Neti method, or Apophatic theology in Christian tradition. I guess, I am learning it is all a matter of preference of how we prefer to speak about it.

neti neti?

I think no-self is when you become nothingness, and understand that everything "you" is a changing appearance just like all appearances, with no static thing to actually grasp whatsoever. It's like an experiential form of neti-neti to literal nothingness. I think you described something like an out of body experience, lost boundary between self and other.

This is the result of getting high on DMT and experiencing the death of the self/other divide, right? I did not find that compelling in hindsight (can't think during the trip, only after in hindsight). What I found certain and compelling was "emptiness". The inherent literal nothingness of isolated awareness. Becoming nothingness was certainly no drug trip delusion... Either I became nothing observing me, or there was nothing where I'd have expected a little observer substance to reside. DMT induced neti-neti until I was literal nothingness... When the subject and object divide collapsed, it was more like a dream in that there was still observed objects but I understood keenly that all of it was mind. I wasn't separate from what I was seeing. That's not the same as what is often implied regarding no subject and object.

So far, I know you can get ego death by contemplating the following: What is death? What is a self? What is ego? I would pretty much just want a guided contemplation though these. @The0Self yeah upping the dose is for sure something I'll need. Definetly need more experience in the trenches. It's probably more straightforward than I think. Especially if I can do a full neti neti routine going off by heart.

There are helpful steps you can take to prepare for awakening, including those you are already doing (meditation, pondering spiritual writings, etc.). The eastern mystics used the Neti neti method. The path to awakening is unique for each of us. Do whatever brings spaciousness to your life, and frees you from your thoughts. What I meant was not to get so caught up in preparing that you clutter your mind with a long to do list, rather than learning to let go of the mind. Awakening is simply the direct realization of who you are, and it is entirely free from thoughts. Preparation is important, but awakening happens when Consciousness is ready to make it happen. Enjoy the journey ?

So Satan is the false self that believes itself into existence through believing in the impressions given by the sensate world, such as all forms, instead of seeking refuge in nothing (itSelf) where it is self-supporting and so may exit the survival simulation (matrix). Something comes from nothing because Satan seeks to escape God in form and so become a false version of Him to himself. This is why idol worship is a Satanic practice and a blasphemy against God. Synchronicities, correlations, coincidences, cause and effect relationships, materialistic and relative truths, and insights that come to us in form are messages left by God, and these can be noticed by opening our minds to the possibility that we may not know certain things even though they are obvious, that there might be more to be learned and discovered, which opens the door so to speak to the spirit (rest of the) world. Meditation instructions are reformed manifestations of formed insights, designed to correlate your mind with a more similar direction to the one that produced them in the teacher, a form of brainwashing. Things said to be worth opening our minds to the possibility of are the impermanence of self and form, which in time may lead to us developing openness to the possibility that self cannot be found in form, leading us to decreasingly seek ourselves in it (neti neti), leading us to a pointer that it is unsatisfactory. However, if here a seeker forgets their openness, which is felt as severance from God, they experience dark night phenomena aka dukkha nanas, feel trapped in a prison of forms they can't cling to and don't like enough anymore, and pine for lost innocence (ignorance), leading them to fall for the pretty constellations form may take (peak experiences) and so unconsciously reinvest hope in form. This creates an A&P dark night cycle, and they are now a stuck tape loop until enough insight into impermanence at last leads them to enough disillusionment with form that they give up enough hope in form (reasoned hope) while maintaining enough open-mindedness (reasonless hope (faith)), thereby allowing them to relax under all conditions, so that the repeated reobservations no longer send them escaping into A&P's but to a grounded equaminity. As the cycles repeat and increase in severity, so must their equanimity (and, assuming they remember what they've learned, it does). Once this equanimity is perfected for the duration of the cessation, it leads to true non-doing/non-grasping/non-surviving: that's fruition/path. All form is a thought and a lie, without a thought about any sensation, it does not exist. Form and formless will not be merged until the seeker becomes an Arahant, and as such, one must seek to discern forms, lest they wrongly assume their repression (ignorance) to be acceptance (equanimity), the root of most enlightenment delusions. A method I've been experimenting with is to cultivate unconditional faith in the possibility that I may discover something new and true (the correct application of this technique takes the form of perfected self-esteem, feeling of excitement like I'm a kid again, engagement with right action that is righter and more creative than the mechanical (fear driven) self can conceptualize of - let alone experience - as well as surprising myself with how much fun i'm having and how abnormally effective I am, essentially a powerful flowstate) and directionalize (concentrate) this openness at myself (NOT my "sense of self"/"the I"/"awareness"/"the ego"; myself). Leo says to stop treating philosophy as a pointless armchair game and instead open your mind to the possibility that existential questions do have answers. This is like that. Closed minded attitude --> relying on reasons --> limitations on whats possible --> lame vision --> hopelessness --> mechanical lazy unmagical meditations / mechanical lazy uninspired life --> lack of vigour/excitement/engagement --> weaker flow states or can't get into one often --> apathy and despair, or worse, being an atheist (?).

This is exactly why Christians identify deeply with Jesus as the character of God and say that He is the truth, the way, and the life. That is the value is saying I am Christian because it clarifies what God means to an individual. And that is an important distinction you need to make for yourself. What is God? How does a person act and do when he is aligned with Truth? There is a need for that message to be communicated to someone who does not know God or may know someone who believes in God, but does weird crap like start a suicide cult. God is also identified and distinguished by what He is NOT. like the Neti-Neti method. This is probably why humans can't get away from Good and Evil, even if it is tied to Ego. For example, I could discuss with someone on the street what God is. We both may have an experience of what we perceive as "God" and yet receive two different messages. To Mark Chapman, 'God' spoke to him to kill John Lennon. To me, 'God' says to love someone is to love myself. Which message is 'right'? or another way to put it 'whole' The problem is that the word 'God' can mean different things to people and can create a lot of confusion. The only way to know what is true is to connect to direct experience because Truth is self-evident and deeper than what is captured through the scientific method. I believe Jesus to be the Son of God because his words and actions speaks to the deep humanity in me. But I only came to this conclusion by having personal revelations of God's Love and noticing that Jesus embodied these characteristics to the highest degree. You can still connect to Truth without all of the religions, but it is certainly a great pointer or fast track to Truth within yourself, which I do agree with others is in the Present Moment.

Although I am more of a Buddhist slant than Hindu/Advaita (emptiness vs fullness, you know the drill Same thing anyway), I agree wholeheartedly with your stance here, and with the general push against solipsism. People are quick to take individual perception as belonging to God, who then becomes centered as themselves. Ergo, everyone is their imagination except themselves, since they are God. But God (or Self, or consciousness, or reality, or whatever term we want) is not bound by this stupid duality of One Real vs the Imagined, or One vs Many viewpoints. The Absolute transcends self and other, here and there, this or that. Neti neti. Believing that our body/perception alone is real is one step along the path for some, but definitely not the end.