Nobody knows anything

[Breakingthewall]

8 minutes ago, gettoefl said:

One is a construction within experience and the other is the absence of construction. The first is limited because it is made of distinctions while the second is not unlimited in size or scope but it is unbounded and unconstructed because no distinctions are being made at all.

Both are constructions of the energetic system that you are. There is no qualitative difference. The spirituality consider one a mistake and the other true, but this is because the spirituality don't understand nothing . It's a total scam, but the scammers are also scammed 😅

Edited Friday at 05:33 PM by Breakingthewall

[gettoefl]

18 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

Both are constructions of the energetic system that you are. There is no qualitative difference. The spirituality consider one a mistake and the other true, but this is because the spirituality don't understand nothing . It's a total scam, but the scammers are also scammed 😅

I’m not suggesting that one construction is “true” and the other “false.” What I am saying is that one construction brings with it apparent vulnerability and ongoing suffering, and the other reveals invulnerability together with the absence of suffering. Collapsing that difference by calling both “just constructions” indeed explains everything yet at the same time clarifies nothing.

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, gettoefl said:

I’m not suggesting that one construction is “true” and the other “false.” What I am saying is that one construction brings with it apparent vulnerability and ongoing suffering, and the other reveals invulnerability together with the absence of suffering. Collapsing that difference by calling both “just constructions” indeed explains everything yet at the same time clarifies nothing.

As humans, the mind is a reality. Spirituality treats the mind as an error and glorifies what it calls direct perception, tastes, sounds, and so on.

They yearn for an animalistic state, but as humans, that state is not the case. It's a misguided approach; the mind cannot be switched off because it is a reality. The mind is a deep sea; it must be understood and aligned so that it can express its full power.

[gettoefl]

2 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

As humans, the mind is a reality. Spirituality treats the mind as an error and glorifies what it calls direct perception, tastes, sounds, and so on.

They yearn for an animalistic state, but as humans, that state is not the case. It's a misguided approach; the mind cannot be switched off because it is a reality. The mind is a deep sea; it must be understood and aligned so that it can express its full power.

Let me flesh this out a little. I do not believe the issue is whether the mind is real or can be “switched off.” And I agree with you that the mind is certainly part of lived reality, and pretending otherwise is unhelpful. But that’s not the distinction I’m pointing to here.

The distinction I am making concerns the very structure of the mind.

One configuration of mind posits that it is organized around:

• a center that must be preserved
• interpretation as being personal and consequential
• meaning tied to vulnerability

In that configuration, suffering is not an avoidable mistake bur rather it is structurally inevitable.

The second configuration of mind is one that is organized without:

• a defended center
• ownership of meaning
• the assumption of vulnerability

In this configuration, the mind is just as active - perception, sensation, thought all continue - but suffering no longer arises, because there is nothing that can be harmed.

So this isn’t about rejecting the mind in favor of an “animalistic” or sensory state, nor is it about glorifying raw sensation and It’s also not about turning the mind off. It’s about whether the mind is self-referential and defensive, or non-appropriative and open.

Where spirituality critiques the mind, at its best it’s not calling the mind an error. Rather it’s pointing out a particular way the mind relates to itself that generates unnecessary pain. To say “both are just constructions” misses that point. Two constructions can be experientially night-and-day different, even if both arise within the same reality.

So I’m not arguing for less mind or weaker mind. If anything, what I am proposing is a mind that no longer has to spend all its energy defending a vulnerable self which in particular means a mind that’s free to function fully because it isn’t busy protecting an identity.

In summary:

The issue isn’t mind versus no-mind.

It’s vulnerability-based mind versus invulnerable mind.

That difference is not intended to explain everything, but ignoring it simplistically explains suffering away rather than understanding it.

Edited Friday at 10:40 PM by gettoefl

[Terell Kirby]

Lots of knowing going on in here.

You all know Nothing! 

Edited Friday at 10:55 PM by Terell Kirby

[Breakingthewall]

27 minutes ago, gettoefl said:

It’s vulnerability-based mind versus invulnerable mind.

The energetic structure that constitutes a human being carries a built-in self. This isn't a silly mistake or a misunderstanding, as the neo-Advaita would say; it's a hyper-complex system maintained in real time by different brain structures, refined from the earliest complex organisms to humans over a period of time beyond our comprehension. This self perceives itself as the receptive center of experience and has an absolute need for self-preservation and acceptance within the human group. All that talk of being invulnerable is fine until the torturer arrives with his briefcase.

According to Zen philosophy, when you see the executioner approaching, you simply feel the pleasure of the sea breeze on your face, because that's what exists now. No, my Zen friend, what exists now is the human system, which is an extremely complex and precise mechanism anticipating events, seeking solutions, and releasing chemicals that prepare you for combat. If instead of a human you were an earthworm, none of this would happen, but it so happens that you aren't. Zen monks strive enormously to be earthworms. It's commendable and worthy of respect. Then they burn themselves alive. It's very practical, but perhaps, let's say, well, not natural. Bit forced. 

Well forgive all that nonsense, what I'm saying is that the mind must break its chains, not just pretend to have broken them. The mind isn't going to disappear; the mind simply is. It can be a mind trapped in its primitive conditioning, or a mind that has stared its primal demons in the face, and instead of erasing them, which is impossible, has danced with them. It has integrated them into its visible vibration and erased the barrier between conscious and unconscious. This undivided mind, sovereign over itself, with all its energies aligned, isn't "invulnerable" because it knows it's consciousness or God or whatever; it's simply not limited, it doesn't clash with itself but flows without friction. Then it recognizes itself as an expression of what it is, and as what it ultimately is. But if the guy with the briefcase comes, suffering occurs, that's inevitable, but can be relativized to some extent, maybe to great extent 

Edited Friday at 11:02 PM by Breakingthewall

[gettoefl]

8 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

The energetic structure that constitutes a human being carries a built-in self. This isn't a silly mistake or a misunderstanding, as the neo-Advaita would say; it's a hyper-complex system maintained in real time by different brain structures, refined from the earliest complex organisms to humans over a period of time beyond our comprehension. This self perceives itself as the receptive center of experience and has an absolute need for self-preservation and acceptance within the human group. All that talk of being invulnerable is fine until the torturer arrives with his briefcase.

According to Zen philosophy, when you see the executioner approaching, you simply feel the pleasure of the sea breeze on your face, because that's what exists now. No, my Zen friend, what exists now is the human system, which is an extremely complex and precise mechanism anticipating events, seeking solutions, and releasing chemicals that prepare you for combat. If instead of a human you were an earthworm, none of this would happen, but it so happens that you aren't. Zen monks strive enormously to be earthworms. It's commendable and worthy of respect. Then they burn themselves alive. It's very practical, but perhaps, let's say, well, not natural. Bit forced. 

Well forgive all that nonsense, what I'm saying is that the mind must break its chains, not just pretend to have broken them. The mind isn't going to disappear; the mind simply is. It can be a mind trapped in its primitive conditioning, or a mind that has stared its primal demons in the face, and instead of erasing them, which is impossible, has danced with them. It has integrated them into its visible vibration and erased the barrier between conscious and unconscious. This undivided mind, sovereign over itself, with all its energies aligned, isn't "invulnerable" because it knows it's consciousness or God or whatever; it's simply not limited, it doesn't clash with itself but flows without friction. Then it recognizes itself as an expression of what it is, and as what it ultimately is. But if the guy with the briefcase comes, suffering occurs, that's inevitable, but can be relativized to some extent, maybe to great extent 

I think we’re actually much closer than it might seem, but we’re talking past each other at one crucial junction.

I in no way deny the biological reality of the human organism or the anticipatory intelligence of the nervous system. Of course the organism prepares, strategizes, and floods itself with chemistry when threat appears. That’s not the debate. Nor is the fact that pain, fear responses, and even extreme suffering can and do arise when the body–mind is harmed. Any spirituality that skips that is either dishonest or dissociated.

Where I think the disagreement lies is here: such responses do not, by themselves, constitute suffering in the sense that I point to. They are necessary functions of an organism. Suffering is what arises when those functions are owned by, interpreted through, and organized around a defended center that takes itself to be fundamentally vulnerable.

In other words, the issue isn’t that the human system reacts. The issue here is whether there is an inner structure that says “this is happening to me, and therefore something essential is at stake.” That structure is not the same as biology. It’s a configuration of meaning, identification, and self-reference layered on top of it.

When I use the word “invulnerable,” I don’t mean immune to pain, torture, or death. I mean invulnerable in a more specific sense: nothing that happens is taken to confirm or threaten an identity that must be preserved. The organism can still recoil, resist, and cry out but there is no inner fracture arising where experience gets converted to existential damage.

This is how your briefcase example above, while rhetorically powerful, doesn’t quite land. Yes, pain is at hand. Yes, fear is felt. But those alone don’t prove the necessity of suffering as such. They only prove the necessity of sensation and response. Suffering requires an additional move, and that is known as appropriation.

And this is also where I with respect push back on your Zen caricature. Zen's goal isn’t to turn humans into earthworms or even deny anticipatory intelligence. At its zenith, pardon the pun, it’s pointing to a mind that functions without clinging to the products of its own activity. Perception, anticipation, even resistance can and do still occur, yet without being folded into the story of “me versus what is.”

So when spirituality critiques the mind, it’s not saying the mind needs to vanish, nor that one's conditioning can be erased. It’s pointing to whether the mind is self-defending and self-confirming, or can be transparent to its own activity. The former inevitably converts threat into suffering. The latter does not, even though pain may still arise.

In this sense, I agree with you: the mind has to break its chains rather than pretend they are not there. But those chains aren’t biology, anticipation, or even fear. They’re the root assumption that there is a central entity that must be protected for life to be acceptable.

I repeat that I’m not seeking less mind, weaker mind, or a return to raw sensation. I’m arguing for a mind that no longer has to protect itself from its own experience. That is by no means unnatural, forced, or dissociative. It is simply a different internal organization of the same human system.

Pain may still happen. Even extreme pain. Yet suffering is not structurally inevitable. That's the work.

[Breakingthewall]

6 hours ago, gettoefl said:

In this sense, I agree with you: the mind has to break its chains rather than pretend they are not there. But those chains aren’t biology, anticipation, or even fear. They’re the root assumption that there is a central entity that must be protected for life to be acceptable.

I repeat that I’m not seeking less mind, weaker mind, or a return to raw sensation. I’m arguing for a mind that no longer has to protect itself from its own experience. That is by no means unnatural, forced, or dissociative. It is simply a different internal organization of the same human system.

What you're talking about here is the transcendence of the social matrix, the inherited tribal conditioning that comes by default in the human structure. It's what's called liberation. This conditioning makes the self identify with what it is for the group. It's an essential line of software for making the human group act as a unit. Without it, we would be weak prey; with it, we are galactic conquerors (well, according to Elon Musk, but maybe is some point could be). The difference is absolute, and this conditioning is not an "illusion" or a mistake, its written in our genes with red iron. 

It is more powerful than the instinct for survival. The individual will give their life for the tribe without hesitation, if they are fully integrated. The problem (or the good fortune, depending on how you see it) is that we no longer live in tribes, and this primal impulse to identify with the group finds no coherent foothold, thus leading to what we might call emotional illness. A profound underlying imbalance, inherited over thousands of generations, crudely corrected with monolithic pillars of religion, nation, and social class, until recently. And today with the more volatile and hedonistic pillars of success, well-being, sensory enjoyment, ideal couple and the essential pillar of addiction. It is a structure that works, that propels the collective toward greater expansion, which is always the driving force of life, but it plunges the individual into a very complicated state. False, superficial out of vital necessity, broken inside, fragmented in their psyche, full of red lines impossible to cross. If people would look their reality in the face... well, luckily they lack the capacity to do so, or they would collapse.

What you propose, and what spirituality in general proposes, is the breaking of that conditioning, the individual's escape from the matrix, which implies being without attachments. The problem with this is that the programming is real, not illusory as those book sellers with beatific smiles claim.

So, if you let go of the attachment to success, a partner, sex, whatever it may be, your system automatically grabs onto another attachment: "pure consciousness," "absolute love," "God imagining," "fun reincarnations with 70 virgins," or whatever. Because cheap spirituality sells you the idea that transcendence is easy, that it's just a change of perspective. This is because cheap sells, but nobody buys expensive things, and in this case, the product is extremely expensive. You have to let go of everything and be left with nothing. Not your money and other things, but your mental attachments, which are genetic programming from when humans were monkeys that couldn't speak. Obviously, this isn't easy; it's not a product that sells. Nobody is going to listen to it, much less understand it. 

It's important to understand that attachment isn't a mental construct. It's imprinted in your cells, in every breath and every micro-movement. It's part of who you are. If some guru tells you, "You are not that, you are the divine," blah blah, they're already leading you down a false path of roses. They're a con artist seeking influence. Yes,  it is what you are, but what happens is that what is, manifested reality, is dynamic, constantly changing. Nothing is fixed; everything moves, and change can occur and be absolute. It simply needs to be initiated in a non-evasive way. But spirituality sells escapism; it's just another addiction, like Netflix and cocaine.

There is no method for liberation.
Methods are precisely how the system perpetuates itself.
What changes is not a belief, but the exhaustion of avoidance.

Edited yesterday at 02:26 PM by Breakingthewall

[gettoefl]

1 hour ago, Breakingthewall said:

What you're talking about here is the transcendence of the social matrix, the inherited tribal conditioning that comes by default in the human structure. It's what's called liberation. This conditioning makes the self identify with what it is for the group. It's an essential line of software for making the human group act as a unit. Without it, we would be weak prey; with it, we are galactic conquerors (well, according to Elon Musk, but maybe is some point could be). The difference is absolute, and this conditioning is not an "illusion" or a mistake, its written in our genes with red iron. 

It is more powerful than the instinct for survival. The individual will give their life for the tribe without hesitation, if they are fully integrated. The problem (or the good fortune, depending on how you see it) is that we no longer live in tribes, and this primal impulse to identify with the group finds no coherent foothold, thus leading to what we might call emotional illness. A profound underlying imbalance, inherited over thousands of generations, crudely corrected with monolithic pillars of religion, nation, and social class, until recently. And today with the more volatile and hedonistic pillars of success, well-being, sensory enjoyment, ideal couple and the essential pillar of addiction. It is a structure that works, that propels the collective toward greater expansion, which is always the driving force of life, but it plunges the individual into a very complicated state. False, superficial out of vital necessity, broken inside, fragmented in their psyche, full of red lines impossible to cross. If people would look their reality in the face... well, luckily they lack the capacity to do so, or they would collapse.

What you propose, and what spirituality in general proposes, is the breaking of that conditioning, the individual's escape from the matrix, which implies being without attachments. The problem with this is that the programming is real, not illusory as those book sellers with beatific smiles claim.

So, if you let go of the attachment to success, a partner, sex, whatever it may be, your system automatically grabs onto another attachment: "pure consciousness," "absolute love," "God imagining," "fun reincarnations with 70 virgins," or whatever. Because cheap spirituality sells you the idea that transcendence is easy, that it's just a change of perspective. This is because cheap sells, but nobody buys expensive things, and in this case, the product is extremely expensive. You have to let go of everything and be left with nothing. Not your money and other things, but your mental attachments, which are genetic programming from when humans were monkeys that couldn't speak. Obviously, this isn't easy; it's not a product that sells. Nobody is going to listen to it, much less understand it. 

It's important to understand that attachment isn't a mental construct. It's imprinted in your cells, in every breath and every micro-movement. It's part of who you are. If some guru tells you, "You are not that, you are the divine," blah blah, they're already leading you down a false path of roses. They're a con artist seeking influence. Yes,  it is what you are, but what happens is that what is, manifested reality, is dynamic, constantly changing. Nothing is fixed; everything moves, and change can occur and be absolute. It simply needs to be initiated in a non-evasive way. But spirituality sells escapism; it's just another addiction, like Netflix and cocaine.

There is no method for liberation.
Methods are precisely how the system perpetuates itself.
What changes is not a belief, but the exhaustion of avoidance.

 

I largely resonate with your description of the social matrix, and I think naming it explicitly is one of the few honest moves left. And certainly the human self is not a philosophical error. It is an astoundingly effective evolutionary construction, forged to bind individuals into coherent, self-sacrificing collectives. It is deeply engraved in our nervous systems, reinforced hormonally, both affectively, and symbolically. Calling this an “illusion” is sloppy at best and evasive at worst.

Where you and I still diverge is what liberation actually consists of, and therefore what is meant by “breaking conditioning.”

You describe transcendence as the breaking of attachment structures that are cellular, genetic, and therefore real. I concur with your insistence that this cannot be done by belief, reframing, or spiritual cosplay. However I suggest there is a subtle misidentification happening when attachment itself is treated as the chain that must be broken.

Attachment is not the core issue here. Compulsion is. More precisely: the unconscious identification with attachment.

The organism will by nature attach. It will always orient, prefer, avoid, bond, and protect. That’s not something that disappears and nor should it. Liberation refers not to the erasure of such dynamics but to the collapse of the structure that takes them to define what one truly is.

This is where the “nothing left” framing both points in the right direction and then overshoots.

Sure, liberation is expensive. And yes it involves the exhaustion of avoidance rather than its transcendence. But what is exhausted is not attachment per se; it is the need for attachment to function as one's self-definition. When that need collapses, attachment remains but without the existential pressure that once made it compulsory.

That difference is key.

You wrote: if you drop success, sex, relationship, meaning then the system grabs “God,” “pure consciousness,” or some metaphysical substitute. I agree. That is exactly what the self does since it must have something to aim at. But that substitution will take place provided the self-structure remains intact.

What you find collapses in genuine liberation is not content, but centrality. The organism keeps functioning. Preferences remain. Pain still hurts. Fear still mobilizes. Social instincts still fire. But there is no longer a psychological center that asserts: “This has to go a certain way for me to be on track.”

And this is where I propose your claim “there is no method” is both true and misleading.

There is no method that the self can use to free itself, because any method becomes self-reinforcement. Perfect. This does not mean nothing happens. What happens in this case is a progressive failure of avoidance strategies (emotional, cognitive, spiritual), until the system can no longer maintain the fiction of internal division.

I don't call this a technique. But it is definitely a process.

And it doesn’t look like bliss, detachment, or saintliness. It is more akin to radical psychological transparency, where fear is felt as fear, attachment as attachment, grief as grief, all the while without being recruited into a narrative of identity management.

This is the reason cheap spirituality is so addictive. It offers relief without disintegration. It soothes the system while preserving the core structure intact. Netflix and chill with incense anyone?

But the alternative is not annihilation or being “left with nothing” in the nihilistic sense. What endures is a functioning organism without an internal civil war and without the constant friction of defending an identity against its own experience.

So when I continue to claim that suffering is not structurally inevitable, I’m not denying genetics, evolution, or conditioning. I’m pointing to something more exact: Pain is inevitable. Reaction is inevitable. Attachment is inevitable. But suffering demands identification, namely the conversion of experience into a threat to what one takes oneself to be.

When that conversion stops, nothing magical happens. The world doesn’t become a theme park. The briefcase still lurks. But experience no longer fractures the system internally.

This is not escapism. It’s not transcendence as fantasy. It’s not becoming an earthworm. It’s just a human system that no longer has to protect itself from itself. And, yes indeed,  that only happens when avoidance is utterly exhausted. On that, you and I see eye to eye.

Edited yesterday at 04:17 PM by gettoefl

[Yimpa]

[Breakingthewall]

21 hours ago, gettoefl said:

What you find collapses in genuine liberation is not content, but centrality. The organism keeps functioning. Preferences remain. Pain still hurts. Fear still mobilizes. Social instincts still fire. But there is no longer a psychological center that asserts: “This has to go a certain way for me to be on track.”

It's an interesting perspective, but from my point of view, the center never disappears, nor do preferences. The change is (to repeat myself once more) from a closed energetic framework to an open one. In a closed framework, the center is absolute, and the facets of the self are energetic whips that vibrate continuously in the foreground or background, causing movement, like a cow propelled by electric shocks that tell it where to go. If you manage (if the self/center manages) to open the energetic framework, the configuration changes completely. It's an absolute mutation, not a change of perspective, a realization, or "the fall of illusion."

21 hours ago, gettoefl said:

There is no method that the self can use to free itself, because any method becomes self-reinforcement. Perfect. This does not mean nothing happens. What happens in this case is a progressive failure of avoidance strategies (emotional, cognitive, spiritual), until the system can no longer maintain the fiction of internal division.

There has to be an absolute will for liberation, not a will to seek a better situation. If it's the latter, you fall into religious spirituality. Of course, you'll believe it's not religion but awakening, etc., but you'll remain on the emotional rollercoaster with the electric shocks of the cow making you dream of a bright future, here or in the next life. 

The issue isn't the method, but understanding the objective. The objective is to break free from the energetic prison in which you live.

Who lives in an energetic prison? The self. It is the self that is liberated, not God, nor consciousness, nor the soul; it is the self, the center constructed by the human energetic structure. And by liberating itself, the self becomes a direct interface between form and the totality . The self perceives itself as the totality manifested all time, because the opaque emotional barrier against which all flow bounced has dissolved; therefore, the flow is now unlimited.

This does not imply that the self knows there is reincarnation or anything like that; it knows that it is, and is the unlimited manifested. Therefore, death is only a phase change, something within its domain as a totality 

21 hours ago, gettoefl said:

Attachment is inevitable. But suffering demands identification, namely the conversion of experience into a threat to what one takes oneself to be.

What disappear is the constant suffering by default, the rumination and the anxiety, but obviously, as a human being, your mechanisms remain intact. If your daughter is gang-raped and then burned alive, you'll suffer. Or, without being so dramatic, if your car breaks down and it costs 3k to fix. 

21 hours ago, gettoefl said:

And it doesn’t look like bliss, detachment, or saintliness.

It looks like freedom , openess , security, happiness , appreciation of the beauty everywhere, understanding of the dynamics of relation, perception of the unlimited vitality of the reality 

Edited 6 hours ago by Breakingthewall

[gettoefl]

46 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

It's an interesting perspective, but from my point of view, the center never disappears, nor do preferences. The change is (to repeat myself once more) from a closed energetic framework to an open one. In a closed framework, the center is absolute, and the facets of the self are energetic whips that vibrate continuously in the foreground or background, causing movement, like a cow propelled by electric shocks that tell it where to go. If you manage (if the self/center manages) to open the energetic framework, the configuration changes completely. It's an absolute mutation, not a change of perspective, a realization, or "the fall of illusion."

There has to be an absolute will for liberation, not a will to seek a better situation. If it's the latter, you fall into religious spirituality. Of course, you'll believe it's not religion but awakening, etc., but you'll remain on the emotional rollercoaster with the electric shocks of the cow making you dream of a bright future, here or in the next life. 

The issue isn't the method, but understanding the objective. The objective is to break free from the energetic prison in which you live.

Who lives in an energetic prison? The self. It is the self that is liberated, not God, nor consciousness, nor the soul; it is the self, the center constructed by the human energetic structure. And by liberating itself, the self becomes a direct interface between form and the totality . The self perceives itself as the totality manifested all time, because the opaque emotional barrier against which all flow bounced has dissolved; therefore, the flow is now unlimited.

This does not imply that the self knows there is reincarnation or anything like that; it knows that it is, and is the unlimited manifested. Therefore, death is only a phase change, something within its domain as a totality 

What disappear is the constant suffering by default, the rumination and the anxiety, but obviously, as a human being, your mechanisms remain intact. If your daughter is gang-raped and then burned alive, you'll suffer. Or, without being so dramatic, if your car breaks down and it costs 3k to fix. 

It looks like freedom , openess , security, happiness , appreciation of the beauty everywhere, and understanding of the dynamics of relation. 

I think we’ve converged closer than it might appear. The disagreement squarely hinges on what we both mean by “the center” and then what exactly changes.

When I claim that centrality collapses, I’m not by any means claiming that a functional center disappears, nor that preferences vanish, nor that the organism stops organizing experience around a locus. That would be biologically incoherent. What I’m pointing to here is the collapse of existential centrality, not operational centrality.

You above describe the shift beautifully as a move from a closed energetic framework to an open one. I agree with that description almost entirely. Where I’d sharpen it is in the following: what opens is not the system around the center, but the claim that the center makes about itself.

In the closed framework, the center is not merely active; it is authoritative. It dictates meaning, threat, urgency, and value as if these were intrinsic to reality rather than relational outputs. That’s what gives rise to the “energetic whips” you describe. These shocks don’t come from having a center; they come from the center being unconsciously taken as what one is.

In the open framework, meanwhile, the center absolutely continues to function. It orients, evaluates, protects, and anticipates. But it no longer occupies the role of ontological referee. It is no longer the place where reality needs to justify itself. That’s the sense I allude to in which centrality collapses; I don't mean structurally, but existentially.

This is why I hesitate to say “the self liberates itself,” even though I understand perfectly what you mean. From the inside, it undeniably feels that way. What actually dissolves is the self’s monopoly on interpretation. The self remains as interface, yes no doubt, but no longer as supreme governor of what is allowed to be.

On the topic of will: I agree completely that this isn’t about seeking a better situation. That’s just another modulation of the prison. But I’m cautious with the phrase “absolute will for liberation,” because it risks smuggling in the very structure that later claims victory.

What I see instead is not will overcoming the system, but will exhausting itself. A point where every strategy, improvement, transcendence, integration, dominance, surrender etc., has been tried and found insufficient. Liberation will not come from a stronger push, but from the system running out of ways to protect its internal division.

Therefore I would reframe the objective slightly. It is not about “breaking free from the energetic prison” in the heroic sense. It is the complete collapse of the necessity for the prison to exist at all. The bars don’t get smashed; they stop being required.

On the topic of suffering, we are in alignment. Of course acute suffering remains. Of course a parent will be devastated by the loss of a child. To deny that would be callous. The distinction I am making is a little narrower: what now disappears is suffering as default, in other words the background contraction that turns every experience into a referendum on one’s existential legitimacy.

Pain still happens. Grief still happens. Fear still mobilizes. But they are no longer metabolized as evidence that something has gone fundamentally wrong with what one is.

Lastly, when you describe the post-collapse landscape as freedom, openness, security, happiness, appreciation etc. I do agree but with this caveat. These are not states to be achieved, nor guarantees, nor permanent moods. They’re better framed as by-products of reduced internal friction. When the system stops fighting itself, energy gets freed up for contact, clarity, and responsiveness.

So I don’t think we’re arguing here about whether the self exists, or whether the mind is real, or whether biology matters. On all those, I think we align.

The outstanding question is simpler and sharper: Is the self a functional center within experience, or the authority experience must answer to?

When that question resolves itself experientially, the framework opens up, not because the self has become infinite, but because it no longer needs to be defended as finite. 

Edited 5 hours ago by gettoefl

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, gettoefl said:

The outstanding question is simpler and sharper: Is the self a functional center within experience, or the authority experience must answer to?

The self is not the cause of experience; there can be experience without the self. Experience is reality in a dual state. In the universe that we know, this is called life. Life is the emergence of a self-preserving universe with its own particular laws within a larger universe, without violating the laws of the larger universe, but creating its own internal laws. This generates duality, and within duality, there is an exchange of information between the two realities. This exchange is experience.

For example, a cell is experience at a very basic level, a sardine is already a complex experience, a monkey is already an experience that self-registers with a proto-self, and in the human case there is an essential phase leap. Just as there is an essential phase leap from the hyper-complex RNA that self-replicates but is not alive, not separate from the primordial universe, to the self-preserving cell, in humans another one occurs.

A new living entity appears in symbiosis with the animal organism, but free from its genetic limitations: the mind. The mind has no limits; it is an entirely different phase from the experience of a chimpanzee, which is completely limited by genetics. The mind interconnects with other minds, records experience, creating a timeline, and creates a symbology that is interconnected with the emotional system, fostering unlimited expansive possibilities.

It's ironic that spirituality in general rejects the mind, considering it an error, an illusion, maya, a misunderstanding that must be resolved by flattening experience through meditative repression, glorifying the senses, and demonizing abstractions. In short, Buddhism, the embryo of all modern spirituality, is an extremely myopic system in my opinion. The mind is totality in its most refined, complex, and magnificent expression.

The mind gives rise to the self, the center that receives, desires, suffers, analyzes, and registers. It is no more "divine" than the no-self of a tuna; it is simply another phase of complexity in the unlimited expansion of the coherence of what is.

Something essential to the matter of "enlightenment," openess, or whatever you wish to call it. Experience is not the foundation of reality; it is a manifestation of it. This is counterintuitive since, as humans, we see a conscious creator as essential, but this is not the case. Reality is without a doer. The doer is reality itself, and it is not planned nor does it seek a purpose; rather, it is the expansion of total coherence that occurs given its limitlessness.

All manifestation is relationship, and all relationship is change. The static is not, it does not exist; existence is coherent, synchronous change in all directions. What appears is the consequence of the expansive thrust of the absence of limits, of not being contained, pushing toward the limitation necessary for form to exist.

 

 

[Madyar]

it is way harder for humans to admit they don't know it is closely tied to their identity, also there is a real tight boundary between the knowns and unknowns in which if you persist moving beyond you simply pop out because the current form cannot hold that barrier. it is a real case... 

[gettoefl]

3 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

The self is not the cause of experience; there can be experience without the self. Experience is reality in a dual state. In the universe that we know, this is called life. Life is the emergence of a self-preserving universe with its own particular laws within a larger universe, without violating the laws of the larger universe, but creating its own internal laws. This generates duality, and within duality, there is an exchange of information between the two realities. This exchange is experience.

For example, a cell is experience at a very basic level, a sardine is already a complex experience, a monkey is already an experience that self-registers with a proto-self, and in the human case there is an essential phase leap. Just as there is an essential phase leap from the hyper-complex RNA that self-replicates but is not alive, not separate from the primordial universe, to the self-preserving cell, in humans another one occurs.

A new living entity appears in symbiosis with the animal organism, but free from its genetic limitations: the mind. The mind has no limits; it is an entirely different phase from the experience of a chimpanzee, which is completely limited by genetics. The mind interconnects with other minds, records experience, creating a timeline, and creates a symbology that is interconnected with the emotional system, fostering unlimited expansive possibilities.

It's ironic that spirituality in general rejects the mind, considering it an error, an illusion, maya, a misunderstanding that must be resolved by flattening experience through meditative repression, glorifying the senses, and demonizing abstractions. In short, Buddhism, the embryo of all modern spirituality, is an extremely myopic system in my opinion. The mind is totality in its most refined, complex, and magnificent expression.

The mind gives rise to the self, the center that receives, desires, suffers, analyzes, and registers. It is no more "divine" than the no-self of a tuna; it is simply another phase of complexity in the unlimited expansion of the coherence of what is.

Something essential to the matter of "enlightenment," openess, or whatever you wish to call it. Experience is not the foundation of reality; it is a manifestation of it. This is counterintuitive since, as humans, we see a conscious creator as essential, but this is not the case. Reality is without a doer. The doer is reality itself, and it is not planned nor does it seek a purpose; rather, it is the expansion of total coherence that occurs given its limitlessness.

All manifestation is relationship, and all relationship is change. The static is not, it does not exist; existence is coherent, synchronous change in all directions. What appears is the consequence of the expansive thrust of the absence of limits, of not being contained, pushing toward the limitation necessary for form to exist.

 

 

 

 

Where we still differ is what actually resolves in liberation. You describe an absolute mutation in which the self remains central but becomes open, integrated, and unlimited in its interface with the totality. From my perspective, what collapses is not the self’s structure or function, but its claim to authorship and authority, which refers to the silent assumption that experience must validate, protect, or define “me” for things to be on track. The center certainly continues to operate, but it no longer legislates meaning or stands as the reference point reality must answer to.

Relatedly, I’m cautious about framing liberation as the self liberating itself through absolute will. What seems decisive isn’t a stronger or purer will, but the exhaustion of all self-based strategies, including integration, transcendence, or openness, that still assume a central authority. When that authority falls away, the self doesn’t disappear, but it is no longer the one to whom life is addressed. Pain, fear, and preference arise, yet they no longer organize experience around a threatened identity. That distinction, between an open central self and the loss of central authority altogether, is where I see our views meaningfully diverge.