Nobody knows anything

[Breakingthewall]

46 minutes ago, gettoefl said:

 

I agree with you that the fully integrated, frictionless self acts, chooses, and experiences reality, and that boundaries can dissolve so it moves without internal conflict. My point is nuanced: even in this state, the self will still experience reality as something it must harmonize with or preserve itself within. Integration alone will not automatically release the self’s sense that reality answers to it in some way. Will continues, movement continues and life continues, but the subtle epistemic assertion that “this is about me” still endures.

The distinction is all about how centrality is experienced. One perspective preserves a harmonious, boundary-dissolved self that still functions as the reference point for meaning. The other allows the sense of central authority to quietly fall away: the self continues to engage fully, but now will not judge, interpret, or claims reality as its own. Function remains intact, yet that existential foundation of authorship, that gnawing premise that “today has to go the way I want”, is no longer.

In my opinion, how the self interpret reality is irrelevant. It's just an interpretation. The point is for the self to stop closing itself off, which leads to an opening to the totality. Then the self recognizes its nature because it is open to its nature. It's not a question of whether it's the one who decides or not; it's a question of being open to what is, something that wasn't happening before.

When the self is open to its nature, it realizes that before, when it was closed off, it was in a prison of madness. Human beings adapt to everything and tolerate that level of existence, but it's awful. In this opening, the self recognizes itself as total reality. It's not that it knows, at a definitional level, what total reality is, but rather that it is open to it all the time. It is total reality, in the form of the self.

This doesn't imply that it knows anything about the mechanic of the relationship of form; it knows that it is, and what it is, for the simple reason that it is that. The mind empties itself effortlessly because the totality fills everything. The mind can continue deducing, but it does so knowing that it is creating geometry. Reality is not geometric, it is total, it cannot be mentally articulated.

But articulating things correctly is important, because there are mental configurations that create closure. If you believe in a creator god with a purpose, you're establishing an absolute limit and closing yourself off. You have to intuitively perceive what's closing you off and dismantle it. If you want the total openness, of course. Maybe you want anything else, anyone has it's choices 

[Mellowmarsh]

Nobody knows what the experience of being conscious is. We know we’re having the experience of consciousness. But, nobody, no one knows what Consciousness is, and why it disappears during the death of body / brain. 
 

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Mellowmarsh

[gettoefl]

1 hour ago, Breakingthewall said:

In my opinion, how the self interpret reality is irrelevant. It's just an interpretation. The point is for the self to stop closing itself off, which leads to an opening to the totality. Then the self recognizes its nature because it is open to its nature. It's not a question of whether it's the one who decides or not; it's a question of being open to what is, something that wasn't happening before.

When the self is open to its nature, it realizes that before, when it was closed off, it was in a prison of madness. Human beings adapt to everything and tolerate that level of existence, but it's awful. In this opening, the self recognizes itself as total reality. It's not that it knows, at a definitional level, what total reality is, but rather that it is open to it all the time. It is total reality, in the form of the self.

This doesn't imply that it knows anything about the mechanic of the relationship of form; it knows that it is, and what it is, for the simple reason that it is that. The mind empties itself effortlessly because the totality fills everything. The mind can continue deducing, but it does so knowing that it is creating geometry. Reality is not geometric, it is total, it cannot be mentally articulated.

But articulating things correctly is important, because there are mental configurations that create closure. If you believe in a creator god with a purpose, you're establishing an absolute limit and closing yourself off. You have to intuitively perceive what's closing you off and dismantle it. If you want the total openness, of course. Maybe you want anything else, anyone has it's choices 

I agree that openness is a decisive shift, and that a closed self is a form of quiet madness that most people normalize. Where I still differ is in treating interpretation as irrelevant once openness occurs. Interpretation does not cease simply because the system is open; what changes is what purpose interpretation is serving. An open self can still implicitly interpret reality as “what I now am”, namely as something that confirms its identity as totality. That move is extremely subtle, but it keeps a center in place, even if that center is expansive, fluid, and luminous.

Saying “the self is total reality in the form of the self” is precisely where I think a residual split hides. It sounds non-dual, but it still installs the self as the reference point through which totality is known, owned, or instantiated. Openness, in the deeper sense that I’m pointing to, is not the self recognizing itself as totality. Rather it is the quiet loss of the need to recognize anything at all. Totality does not need to be occupied by a self, even in an open form.

I also observe that death and threat are still doing important work in your framing. The self opens so it will no longer be under threat, no longer anxious, no longer imprisoned. That motivation assumes a center that must be safeguarded, even if now through openness rather than defense. What I’m pointing to is a shift where openness is no longer needed for the self, not to save it, complete it, or dissolve its fear, but happens seamlessly because the self is no longer the axis around which experience is organized.

So yes, articulation does matter. This isn't primarily to dismantle belief systems about gods, purposes, or metaphysics. It matters because certain articulations quietly reinforce a center that says, “I am what this life is about now, just without any friction.” The difference I’m teasing out isn’t between closed and open, or ignorant and enlightened; it’s between an open self that accomplishes merging with reality, and the end of the very need for any self to stand in that position at all.

Edited 2 hours ago by gettoefl