Experience of the Void - who is there?

[traveler]

18 hours ago, Demeter said:

@traveler , so if I want to surrender to such an experience (which I am sure to encounter again) what would you suggest? For me to accept the void is challenging in many ways. First, I need to acknowledge that I am of no value (at least the value I had placed on myself) that there is no one watching over me or cares where I drift, i.e., there is no great loving presence or intelligence. That in itself defeats the purpose of acceptance. If there is no better way, why the need to surrender to anything?

All I can say is - Holy shit! Is this it? How horrible!

I can not suggest anything, but notice that it doesn't actually exist, only as a memory. If I where to give you advice I'd have to try to remember what that experience was like, If I don't try to remember it, it doesn't exist. This is that void that you remember, but it is not an idea. The "void" is not somewhere else, it doesn't have a particular feeling or attribute, it isn't a "thing," it is simply whatever is arising and it has no need for acceptance. It can look ordinary like drinking a cup of coffee or it can look like whatever a mystical experience looks like, one is not more "the void" than the other. 

What is often shown in such an experience is that nothing can be held onto, so learn from that and let it go. 

Edited March 7, 2021 by traveler

[Demeter]

@traveler , that is a novel way of looking at it - 'What is often shown in such an experience is that nothing can be held onto'.  Thank you.

But, I've often read the void is an experience of ego-death, a challenge that one must undergo to experience an expanded state of consciousness or that all is love. Perhaps, the void is the reality beyond that. I don't know if both exist in tandem or are experienced in a progressive way.

[VeganAwake]

1 hour ago, traveler said:

I can not suggest anything, but notice that it doesn't actually exist, only as a memory. If I where to give you advice I'd have to try to remember what that experience was like, If I don't try to remember it, it doesn't exist. This is that void that you remember, but it is not an idea. The "void" is not somewhere else, it doesn't have a particular feeling or attribute, it isn't a "thing," it is simply whatever is arising and it has no need for acceptance. It can look ordinary like drinking a cup of coffee or it can look like whatever a mystical experience looks like, one is not more "the void" than the other. 

What is often shown in such an experience is that nothing can be held onto, so learn from that and let it go. 

? ❤

[Demeter]

Reviving this old thread. I am a slow thinker and have been grappling with an apparent contradiction related to the void.

There seem to be two contradictions - one that our thinking and feelings evolve from one lifetime to another as we prepare ourselves for higher states of consciousness, such as we learn about compassion and becoming more tolerant of difference. Or we learn to develop a sense of self-worth and both expect and demand that partners value us. But where does this fit in with the notion that all life is transitory and is a mantle of illusion over the great reality of emptiness? So ,what is the worth of our lessons and learnings?

 

Edited June 2, 2023 by Demeter

[Moksha]

1 hour ago, Demeter said:

So, what is the worth of our lessons and learnings?

Wisdom helps you experience the dream lucidly, without suffering. It enhances every perception, sensation, and interaction. Food tastes better, relationships become less controlling, and nothing really bothers you any more. It is the deepest path of living within the dream.

BTW, slow thinking brings you closer to awakening than frantic thinking. Consider it a gift to yourself.

[Demeter]

@Moksha , thanks! Nicely put.

[Breakingthewall]

16 hours ago, Demeter said:

But where does this fit in with the notion that all life is transitory and is a mantle of illusion over the great reality of emptiness? So ,what is the worth of our lessons and learnings?

emptiness does not exist, not even as an idea. you can realize the emptiness of the mind in the sense of absence of thoughts, but it is full of being, there is awareness of the emptiness, therefore it is not empty. the only reality is the absence of limits, and in the absence of limits there is always consciousness, which is everything, the infinite potential. the true void is the absence of consciousness, and that does not exist. it is non-existence. the opposite of existence, or consciousness, or absolute, or infinite, does not exist, that is why existence is absolute, it is not testable by opposition, it is this. reality.

[Demeter]

@Breakingthewall , yes, agreed!  Thanks for pointing that out.

Perhaps I should have used the word 'void' as distinct from emptiness. I was conscious of an enormous, perhaps infinite space which appeared to be lifeless apart from the brief blip of creation. So, it was not empty. This great space was so vast that all life, planets, whatever, occupy a space which is infinitesimally small, in contrast. The importance or significance of creation as we know it appeared to shrink. If so,  all our cogitations about our personal evolution seem rather pointless. What do they matter in the grand scheme of things, and who is taking note other than ourselves?

Edited June 3, 2023 by Demeter

[Moksha]

59 minutes ago, Demeter said:

The importance or significance of creation as we know it appeared to shrink. If so,  all our cogitations about our personal evolution seem rather pointless. What do they matter in the grand scheme of things, and who is taking note other than ourselves?

The void is as real and as unreal as the cosmos. Each has the same essence as the other, which is the seamless essence beyond them both. Find the common denominator and realize god.

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, Demeter said:

This great space was so vast that all life, planets, whatever, occupy a space which is infinitesimally small, in contrast. The importance or significance of creation as we know it appeared to shrink. If so,  all our cogitations about our personal evolution seem rather pointless.

On 2/6/2023 at 5:58 PM, Demeter said:

 

your approach is wrong because you are looking outside. outside does not exist, it is an illusion. you have to look inside. everything is inside. as long as you look out, you will be trapped in duality. first realize that everything is inside. then realize that everything is now. Then realize that there are no limits. but you cannot realize it mentally, you have to see it, become it. it is extremely difficult, since everything seems exactly the opposite. 

Edited June 3, 2023 by Breakingthewall

[Theplay]

@Demeter The void puzzled me a lot and still does.

How I got to thinking about it was one night when I sat and listened to trance music focusing on the silence between each kick.

I have intuited the existence of the void by realizing where all experience comes form and where it ends.

Before your birth - void

After death - void

And so with every experience in between the two. It materializes out of the void and goes back to it.

But since itself the void is not an experience I cant say that I have direct knowledge of it only conceptual and through comparing it to my "nothingness" awakening.

Yet I am certain that the void which comes after death is followed by another arising (whatever form it might take) since the possibility for such arising

was already established through the very fact of your life emerging from the void that came before it.

And even if you spend millions of years in that void before another experience comes, for you it will feel like a fluid continuation from the moment

you died.

From what I came to see the void as even god dose not persist in it.

That is what baffles me.

Have a great day!

Daniel. 

 

 

[SOUL]

The void is devoid of everything and anything at all...no awareness, no consciousness, no god, no love , no thing at all...it is absolute in its absence. So nobody is there. I know this because I regularly go to the edge of the void and dangle my 'feet' off the edge of god like a kid does off the edge of a cliff....but only the edge, because the void is unblemished by any existence at all.

[Breakingthewall]

29 minutes ago, SOUL said:

...but only the edge,

Yes, because you can't go to the void, since if you are there, it's not void anymore, that's why the void doesn't exist

[Demeter]

9 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

your approach is wrong because you are looking outside. outside does not exist, it is an illusion. you have to look inside. everything is inside. as long as you look out, you will be trapped in duality. first realize that everything is inside. then realize that everything is now. Then realize that there are no limits. but you cannot realize it mentally, you have to see it, become it. it is extremely difficult, since everything seems exactly the opposite. 

@Breakingthewall could you say something about your practice/enlightenment journey. How long ago did you "realise that there are no limits" ? How did it come about? If you have ready written about this, please post a link. Thank you.

Edited June 4, 2023 by Demeter

[Breakingthewall]

3 hours ago, Demeter said:

@Breakingthewall could you say something about your practice/enlightenment journey. How long ago did you "realise that there are no limits" ? How did it come about? If you have ready written about this, please post a link. Thank you.

2,5 years doing psychedelic quite often, meditation and deconstruction full time. Wishing to penetrate into reality

[SOUL]

8 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

Yes, because you can't go to the void, since if you are there, it's not void anymore, that's why the void doesn't exist

The absence of the void is so complete in its absolute emptiness it is the source of all existential yearning in the manifest as the fullness of god in its abundance seeks to fill it. To resolve this in our awareness to be at peace with the absolute fullness and absolute emptiness coexisting in oneness produces the experience of liberation and cessation of self suffering.

[Moksha]

The polarities of the dream are existence and non-existence. The cosmos and the void are the extremes of imagination. Each necessitates the other, and neither is absolutely real.

Edited June 4, 2023 by Moksha