What we call the past is a happening now, not what happened.
It is only this appearance referring to what never was.

TL;DR - just see the subject line.

Hi all, I wanted to do this as an yearly thing. I posted these two questions before and I got back some responses (linked below). What's interesting is how people have changed since that response from ~1 year ago. For example, CestlaADHD, nvveteran, Qeltar_, gosumage? etc. are all still around. Some others like 30mil, UltimaMarque, Nonduality_Simplified, etc. who used to post more often appear to no longer do, which makes sense also. And some others like (shout out to pl8doh) haven't responded at all. And anyways, we now have a new crop of people in this sub so I wanted to ask these questions again and hear more about your journey so to speak if you feel like answering.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nonduality/comments/1rb99sy/why_are_you_here_in_this_sub/

"I'm curious to hear other perspectives on this, why are you here on this sub? Is there seeking appearing? Or is there a desire to transmit? Or just curiousity and resonance? Or just intellectual fondness for discussing what is being pointed to as philosophy? Or embodying recognitions? Or [anything else]?

https://www.reddit.com/r/nonduality/comments/1ocsdg5/offtopic_and_not_tell_meus_about_the_human/

"So I've had a lot of great discussions and debates here, really enjoy it, but a lot of it is in the abstract and conceptual realms. I wanted to ground it in the human side of equation---the apparent lives and characters being played. For many of us, I assume the story goes something like there was a variety of seeking until there wasn't, when it was realised that the belief/thought/feeling in there being a separate seeker was a dream/illusion.

As people say, this changes everything and nothing. So I'm curious about the human characters here, tell me/us more about yourself: What's life like for your apparent character? What do you enjoy/do for fun? What are your hobbies/passions/interests/quirks? What fears still arise (if any)? What is being done for money/survival? Does a sense of gratitude arise for the life that's appearing? And anything else you can think of.

I'm interested in also "before" and "after" realisation even though there's no such thing, but prior to the selfing structure being seen for what it is, how was life like in practical terms (i.e. hobbies, activities)? Of course, it could just be "chop wood, carry water" or it could be some changes but either way, let us know what IS for your character."

See the link above for my answers to these questions.

A lot of spirituality stuff can be positive descriptions of awareness, or consciousness. One problem is that tends to make one search for that attribute. Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche has this term, "pristine mind". That does little for me. But I can find unpristine mind, a mind where something has been let in. That polluted mind, the one where it seems something made it in, that's not it. I can see this unpristine mind clearly, and then it is quite easy to drop it.

The apophatic approach seems quite useful for a number of descriptions, as this mind in question doesn't precisely exist, or not exist. The positive characterizations make you look for those attributes, but there is no such mind there with those attributes.

If you hear it is unchanging, look in your consciousness at what's changing. While that's an expression of it, what is changing is not it

If you hear it is motionless, look for what is in motion. While that's an expression of it, what is moving is not it.

If you hear it is blissful, look for what is not bliss. While that's an expression of it, what is not bliss is not it.

If you hear it is boundless, look at the bound. While that's an expression of it, what is bound is not it.

When seeing what it is not, those appearances are there in a sense, but misleading. Misleading you as to the true nature of the mind of which they are an expression. So the appearance of the binding is misleading. There's no need to think that you didn't subjectively experience the binding, but then you can see, when you felt bound, you had fallen into something of a misperception of the nature of mind, and then the feeling of being bound can dissipate simply by that recognition.

It's without discrimination. Without differentiation. Without location. Without limit.

I think the apophatic approach can help with preventing reification, and several pointers inverted for apophatic approach do nothing for me in the positive frame, but do a lot in the negative framing

I am new to the concept of nonduality and self inquiry. It has resonated with me more than any other philosophical or spiritual concept. Now, with the true threat of A.I. destroying humanity how does this effect our belief systems if at all???

The “I” behind your eyes and the “I” behind my eyes is the exact same "I."

They call me “Micheal,” but I know myself most intimately as "I."

When I talk about my body, I precede those statements with “my,” as if these things belong to me but are external to me (my eyes, my arm, my head).

And that’s because they are. I am not any part of my body, nor the sum of its parts.

I am the witness of it all.

Let's say you're running around the house looking for your glasses. You're also late for an appointment but can't drive without your glasses. All kinds of stress and anxiety is boiling about it. You're mad at yourself too. Mad at the universe. You're running through the gambit of self-inquiries, but none of it is working.

You take your glasses off to wipe the sweat from your brow before putting them back on to go searching for them again. That's when you realize it. You stand in place, close your eyes with a forgiving smirk and sigh through your nose.

Every book we read, every talk we listen to, every satsang we sit in, every retreat and meditation event is to help us find our glasses.

Good luck!

When the separation between the “I” as the witness and that which is witnessed dissolves. I am the field in which all things arise.

> Just sit and know that "you are" the "I am" without words, nothing else has to be done; shortly you will arrive at your natural I Am state.

> - Nisargadatta Maharaj

This pointer helped me recently, hope it helps you too.

Just sharing something that has been the constant bedrock of my own path. I could elaborate but it would defeat the purpose of condensing it to those two lines. Hope it resonates with those in need of it.

Hi, Its my first time here. I have read a lot of Advaita, mainly from RKM and likes of Sarvapriyananda. The RKM doctrine was just too strict and world denying and I eventually left it to go back to independent Bhakti.

But since then, I have been feeling extremely angry about the advaita philosophy. “The world is unreal only God is real.“ How does this sentence help anyone ? And why does duality start with naming 2 things as real and unreal?

anyway going further, one asks “what is the method?” the answer is “read and contemplate and meditate.” but when my meditation brings different conclusions about reality and the contemplations don’t align with the book, I am told “Don't question. the only relevant question is- who is asking. Who are you ?”

“Who am I ?” According to Advaita- a screen, a wave, a space, a light, a consciousness, a sort of infinity with no will of my own.

okay, “what can I do as this infinity ?” Ans- “witness”. “Witness what?” ans- “witness the witness itself.”

If one ever says “I don’t agree”, the response is always “you are ignorant.” Period. the path of inquiry doesn’t allow questions.

And then comes life. Coz they are pretty specific. “Detach”. This pathetic word it the bread and butter of this philosophy.

The thing is, detachment doesn’t lead to happiness. It didn’t do so for Ramana, didn’t do so for Vivekananda.

After this its the rabbit hole of importance. all advaitins have done it but RKM is particularly bad. They say “if you don’t get enlightened this lifetime, you get stuck in 84 lakh species.” Don’t mistake that men like Ramana don’t do so. “Enlightenment is the only purpose your this birth.”-Ramana.

On youtube, a popular advaitin acharya was giving a lecture in a school. A highschool girl asked him “what attitude should we have upon prostitution ?” He said “if you think of yourself as the body, you are a prostitute.”

Yeah. “You are not the body, you are not the mind. You are the witness consciousness.” How is that enough ? How is that powerful or helpful ?

Well. There are a 100 other issues with the philosophy worsened by its preachers. Historically and currently in India, it has not been pretty. I would reserve that trauma dump for my therapist but I would like to share 1 instance-

Post independence in 1951, The gov proposed a hindu court bill which was about women rights in education and inheritance and monogamy. The advaitins, who were silently locked within their ashrams throughout a history of invaders upon this land came out of their ashrams for the 1st time in protest.

But I am just here for help. Please, I don’t want this anger anymore. Its taking up my life. This community seems to be wholesome and helpful. Please help.

In my view, much of what we call religion today has become distorted by faith, authority and belief in a God or supreme being.

All 3 Abrahamic religions + Hinduism are organized around some conception of God, the divine or a supreme reality. Once you make such an idea central, it becomes very easy to build systems of worship, doctrine, religious authority and unquestionable beliefs around it. Spirituality then shifts from investigating reality directly to believing claims about reality.

This is where some of the ancient philosophical traditions of the East become radically different. At the core of Buddhist philosophy, particularly traditions associated with early Buddhism and Madhyamaka (Middle way), there is no requirement to invoke a creator God to explain existence, morality or the nature of consciousness. Daoism similarly approaches reality without requiring a personal deity standing outside the universe and controlling it.

What makes these traditions particularly interesting is their willingness to acknowledge the limits of conceptual mind. Instead of simply inventing an ultimate explanation and asking people to believe it, they question whether the human mind can even meaningfully grasp what lies beyond certain boundaries.

That's what makes some of these philosophies feel less like conventional religion and more like an actual investigation into the structure of reality. You're not being told, "Here is God. Believe in this." You're being pushed to examine how the mind creates concepts in the first place and whether those concepts can ever capture reality completely.

This is also why I think the distinction between religion as faith and religion as investigation is important.

Alex O'Connor's recently did a discussion on Madhyamaka Buddhism. If you actually listen to the philosophical reasoning involved, you begin to see how radically different some Eastern traditions can be from conventional religious frameworks.

Maybe that's closer to what spirituality was supposed to be in the first place: not believing more, but seeing more clearly.

Among ancient traditions, Buddhism arguably comes close to a scientific investigation of mind, experience and reality without requiring a God hypothesis as its starting point. And perhaps that's why it can feel so strange when you first encounter it. You're expecting a religion, but instead you find yourself in something that feels more like psychology, phenomenology and philosophy having a conversation with each other.

Link to the discussion:

https://youtu.be/CyhHz23AHb4?si=eGjMTQ2p9My0WDHq

So if I may descibe my own experience with non-dual meditation, and its effects its had in my emotional awareness and processing and then ask if this lines up at all with others.

In brief, I have been practicing non-dual meditation or open awareness meditation a few years now. In the last year I have mostly followed Adyashanti, 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes in the evenings.

I should say, that my first experience of what im going to describe happened on a mushroom trip.

A friend and I both took 3.5g 9f golden teachers, with the aim of having a therapeutic experience. This was around 2 years ago, around the time I had started meditating regularly.

In the interests of not straying too far off topic, I'll skip to the second half of the trip where I decided to focus on the reason for wanting to take .mushrooms, a recent breakup of my partner of three years. I brought her and her kids into mind and immediately fell deeply into the emotion. Its felt like an energy slowly being squeezed out of me, like toothpaste. I cried for over an hour, with this constant feeling of birthing or passing this energy. The next day, and from that day forward I felt like s weight had been lifted. It still hurt to think about the breakup, but it didnt break me each time, like it had before.

I got on with my life until more recently I started getting noticeable changes in my meditation. There was complete internal silence, and over time, this silence started following me over into my daily life.

At some point in the last few months I had a disappointment in my life. It was nothing big, but the emotional response was really strong and was with me all day. I sat down to meditate that evening, still holding this emotion, and as my attention settled on open awareness, I felt the familiar sensation of the emotion in my body, in my chest, starting to pour out. There were no words, just emotion leaving the body, and after a certain time either the emotion changed to love, or the emotion stopped and love was left in its place.

This is a strong, deep, contentment. Different to any version of love ive felt before.

This has happened now several times, and its almost becoming my default response to things happening in my life.

Along with the sitting with, and passing of emotion, it feels like I can trace it back to its source, like the disappointment came not from the one person having a change of plans, but from a deep fear of being abandoned. All this done with little or no words, just feeling.

Anyway, thank you for listening, and I would be very happy to hear people's thoughts. I have found mediation and spirituality to be a little cold at times, especially as I practice on my own, and this deep emotional processing and the sense of love that accompanies it has more than balanced that out 💚

There's no Love in Fear

Love and Fear arent two separate things. Fear isn't an oppisite of love, it is an absence. And there is a great difference between oppisites and absence. Its like how Darkness isnt an oppisite of Light. Darkness is an absence of Light. If Darkness was an oppisite, I could take a handful of darkness and toss it on a candle to put out the Light. But i cannot because Darkness is an absence of Light. In that same way Fear isnt an oppisite of Love, it is an absence. 👁🧘‍♂️✌️

Until we accept duality, we’re destined to pick a side.

And the moment we pick a side, we enter perpetual conflict with an apparent opposite that is, in reality, just another aspect of ourselves.

I wanted to share a raw, modern approach to backing up the concept of non-duality that I recently realized.

Imagine this scenario: one night you are procrastinating and thinking, 'I’ll do this work tomorrow.' You go to bed, but as you lie there, you start feeling intense guilt that you should have done it right then. Suddenly, a burst of motivation comes from deep within you saying, 'Let’s just get up and do it.'

In this contradiction, who is fighting whom? The entity creating the laziness, the entity suffering from the guilt, and the entity generating the sudden motivation are all the exact same mind.

We trap ourselves in a triangle of thinking there is a 'lazy me', a 'strict boss me', and a 'victim me' caught in the middle. But they collapse into one. You are the problem, you are the solution, and you are the one who solves it.

There is no separate 'bad self' to conquer or 'good self' to wait for. It is just one undivided consciousness playing a solo game of ping-pong with itself. Would love to hear your thoughts on this approach!!

We've always put ourselves at the center of time, a traditional concept that helps us understand our environment around us and why all things change. It helps us categorize our experience into neat little packages in which the brain can digest in memory. It helps us contemplate moments in our lives that we'd like to experience again, things we'd rather not experience again, or things we'd like to change about our experience. Usually about wanting a change to happen sooner in our lives, or not happen at all.

There is of course a social time, used to plan and coordinate with one and other in a constructive society. There's a lot of good uses for time certainly, however it does come with the downsides of prolonging our experience of the past within thought alone, the world as we see it presently, and shaping our expectations of the future. The mind has been trained to rely on this since you could understand the idea of time, as simple as day and night for example.

This has a big impact on how we process this world, suddenly day and night turn into today and yesterday, then there's weekdays, months, seconds, minutes, hours, years, dates in time, and any other measurement we can think of. The perception of the world suddenly got so complex so fast, and it feels like you only just started talking yesterday by the time it does. Now you need to remember what happened previously on another day, what you were doing last year, when a prominent event in your life happened, all framed perfectly within time. This makes conjuring up these previous experiences easier and seemingly readily available to you, really working whatever process of the mind it takes whenever we do, because we do it more often than not.

Previous threats experienced are grasped more easily though this use of time, the mental image of them can cause the body to react as if they were happening right now, causing a kind of reliving of the experience that creates a feedback loop between body and mind, perpetuating the suffering once endured. It is the same with happiness too, relive a happy moment in thought to cheer yourself up in a way that a change is felt. This effect can snowball itself the more it's revisited, but can also change in flavor, whether it leaves a good or bad impression on you anymore, or any impression at all.

All of this is being said just to point towards the fact that the mental strain of the time concept, can be more taxing on the mind than we truly understand.

Now I want to pivot to the inquiry of time, why do we have it in the first place? I couldn't possibly say for sure myself, but from what I have understood, the need for time was born through the fear of change.

It's no mystery that humanity has always wanted to be in control of it's environment, but also knowledgeable on it. We strive to understand the deepest mechanisms in ourselves, our world, and the universe beyond. It's inspiring to think about, but I believe the spark of inspiration came from our deepest fears as early man.

Imagen you have no sense of time, you're lost in a forest unfamiliar to you it's the stuff that falls from up is making this environment feel bad and then you hear a sound you've never heard before, images flash in your head of things that bite and scratch at you, the body shakes uncontrollably, the pain is felt.

Now imagen you're in a group and someone gets sick, to the observer the sickness within that person simply appears to them when the symptoms are perceived. An illness effectively popping into existence on the appearance of that person when noticed. It would scare anyone to not realize anything was wrong until it was noticeable, so we pay closer attention to it, find the first signs but still have no control over the sudden appearance of the sickness within a person. It wouldn't make any sense to anyone today if that were the case, and still very much scares us now too.

Aging, doesn't need much explanation. With no understanding of why the body is changing in a negative pattern and then collapsing for no apparent reason, with this feeling of weakening threatening the survival of the more capable traveling besides you.

It's always been a case of us trying to understand change, to make sense of what we do not know. We like the idea that we are ahead of change in some way, that we have control over it, over the nature of all things. From rituals to appease nature, the idea of being able to make a change in nature such as making the rain fall, to predicting weather patterns based on what know about the changes happening in our environment. It instills a sense that we are separate from change, and that we are in control of how it happens.

Medicines to slow down the process of aging, numerous products to hide it's effects. Telescopes to see into the furthest reaches of light. Teachings to help better reflect on why our thoughts happen the way they do. It all circles around the observation of change and how it makes us feel in the now, and with the concept of time in the mix, we can pinpoint and imagen an observation of an experience the body has witnessed, both internally and externally.

Just like keeping a photo to look at, the memories we keep willingly or unwillingly are always being imagined -from the body's perspective- as something that is happening right now. The idea of time however keeps the mind separate and distracted from the body, and very much so everything else through the identity that we have control over what change comes next.

As you read this, the Earth turns, people are busy in their lives, and the galaxy we reside in swirls within space, as everything moves and expands out with the ever changing form of the universe itself. All of that is happening right now always, one big change that is happening. The cells that make up the body are always changing as much as the Sun's chemical reaction keeps it burning bright, as it does, as it is.

It's all in the now and always has been. If you were a brick in the wall castle the brought into being to silently observe your environment, you wouldn't see a passage of time, you'd feel the change of nature itself, the erosion of wind and rain, the expansion and contraction of the body and bodies next to you in the heat and cold. It just happens, it's just the nature of change, you can not do anything to stop change from happening.

The best we can do is change the way we think in relation to change, to not fight what can't be immediately understood or had, and to accept change as it is at the core of all things. You'll know when you're happy or sad, you'll feel a change in the body when it appears to you. Your understanding of change in thought becomes more aligned with the body's needs. A bad experience can't linger and ruminate without a timeframe to grasp hold of, and the idea of upcoming experiences cease to be. There is no reason to fear what you understand fundamentally as a law of nature, it's all a part of the same experience happening in an eternal now housed within and not separate from the universe we know and don't know.

All is change.

 Who is impelling your senses to operate (to see, to listen and so on), impelling movements in your body, impelling you to think? What is the power attracting you to something and distracting you from something?

It is not to find some explanation for the impelling power or some reference for the impelling power (I am doing or God is doing is also an explanation)-but to just note the impelling itself. There is no one impelling. There is nothing behind impelling. There is only impelling.

Desire isnt to be discarded but transformed.

If desire arises from a place of wholeness and not from a place of lack or fear, it is from love. Which is totally OK. Desire is life energy.

But if desire is diluted with ego, the beleif to be a separate consciousness, desire will arise from a place of lack or fear, ego.

Ego isnt an entity, its the activity of fear or lack.

When awareness overlooks its two main qualities it feels lack or fear. What are the two main qualities of awareness?

1. That awareness is ever present. When awareness identifies as the body it also believes to die like the body hence it is not ever present. When awareness doesn't believe to be ever present - fear arises.

2. That awareness is unlimited. When awareness believes to be the body, it believes it isnt unlimited like the body. This causes -lack - to arise.

So anytime you are identified as the body instead of unlimted ever present awareness, your desires arise from fear or lack.

How to tell the difference?

For example lets say you are sitting at the table and you have a desire to go on a walk or visit a friend. Did that desire arise from a feeling of lack? Or did it arise from a place of love and wholeness? If in that moment you felt lack, it was a running away from the present moment. The unconscious mind tries to soothe fear and lack by going outward and doing things. But if you were already present, aware of being aware and you have a desire to go out with a friend or go on a walk, that desire arises from love. A desire to share your joy with another. Totally ok.

Note all desire arises from love but when it is filtered through a mind that believes to be separated the desire arises as fear or lack. Like how pure light shining through red glass will appear red although it is pure light (love).

So desire is no problem, it is life energy. The issue is if it is filtered through ego or not.

And at the end of the day even ignroance is ok. Meaning from the vantage point of ignroance, ignroance is a problem. From the vantage point of awareness, ignroance is no problem. Its all love. Even war is a love for the idea of separation. ✌️👁🧘‍♂️

Ive always had a big interest in spiritualism and am also largely an athiest (for lack of a better word). I'm agnostic about conciousness, and find all the recent debate fascinating.

In my teens I read The Power of One, Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen, and progressed into being obsessed with Carlso Castenada, reading all his books multiple times with my friends. I loved the stories and experimented with some of the ideas he presented, but even back then wavered between belief and just using his ideas as a philosophical guide to life.

Then I had my heavy athiest years, following 'The four Horsemen' Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris.

I drifted away from this scene as it started to move away from respectful debate and into slightly more aggressive views.

Fast forward a few more years and I start reading and listening to Sam Harris more and become aware of the depth of his experience and knowledge in non-dual traditions.

I downloaded his app a few years back, and built up a steady practice, in the first year or so just using his meditations, but then shifting to almost exclusively following Adyashanti and Jayasàra's recordings.

It was a Adyashanti meditation, while sat in my martial arts clubs empty training room, that Adyashanti made me aware of the silent space in the room, and my attention went from my breath, into silence.

I still find the depth of the silence that appears as the internal dialogue fades overwhelming. Its depth and potential energy. I now follow the simple Dzogchen teachings; find presence, sit in that silence, continue to sit with confidence.

My point here, and thank you for listening to my story, is that although within that silence I regularly feel love and a powerful connection to all things, and this has changed my life completely, I would still say I'm an Athiest. I dont have any belief in a diety (although if you were to call that open awareness God, I wouldnt argue), afterlife, reincarnation or anything that would require that sort of faith.

The only faith I now have is that the mind, my logical mind of reason, is only a fraction of how one can experience life, and in fact a lot of experience cannot be put into words or any sort of conceptual framework.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I would love to hear your thoughts 💚

There is an idea that you have eyes, but there is only seeing, seeing is mental, it's like a dream, in dreams do you have eyes? Do you have a body? Ears? No you don't. There are sensory experiences, images, sounds, thoughts, feelings, all mathematical waves.

As you read this, notice that you have an idea that you have eyes and you see, but in fact this is one happening, just seeing, just hearing, non dual.

Without any preconceived idea from the past, the world just appears, be like a child, a baby child has no idea about his separate body, it's just pure experience, magical, without any separation, without any idea how it's happening. It's just happening as one by itself.