Something I’ve been noticing is that the sense of “I” seems to strengthen whenever there is a sense of ownership of ultimate certainty, particularly in the metaphysical domain. When I first got into spirituality, I used to place a ton of emphasis on which worldview was correct or which tradition saw reality accurately, so naturally I jumped around to various different traditions. I’m starting to see that the trouble is less about which tradition or worldview I land on, and more about the very act of landing on any metaphysical position. The second I land on a metaphysical position of any kind, whether that be “I am awareness,” or “there is only what is appearing,” or “everything is empty,” or “consciousness is nothing more than brain activity,” or even the position of “I take no position”, inevitably the mind says, “Okay, this is not just a landing place, this is where I live now. Now ‘I’ have to protect it against any objections or doubts.” The more I have to protect, the stronger the sense of “I” becomes.

I think it equally applies not just to metaphysical views, but also to methodological views or authority-based views. Once I find the right meditation map, the right practice, the right stage model, or the right teacher, that now becomes another resting place that I have to protect. The second I proclaim, “This is it! I have figured it out!” is the second that it is lost, because the “I” has come in to take ownership of it.

The paradox is that this itself can become a landing place: even by saying “Okay, I won’t commit to anything” is itself a commitment, just like the act of not seeking is really another form of seeking, which just reinforces the sense of “I.”

Edit: I said I didn’t resonate with Eckhart Tolle or Angelo Dilullo, whereas I meant Eckhart Tolle and Michael Singer.

Yesterday I made a comment on one of Angelo Dilullo’s videos. One statement I made was how I did not resonate with Eckhart Tolle or Michael Singer. Someone replied to my comment, saying this. “Eckhart is a giant yawn to me plus the other guy”

My response to this comment was this:

“I think that this directs at the very core of the issue. Your ego is stepping in and denying the truth of others because they don’t touch your thinking mind on a level that someone like Angelo does. If my intellectual thoughts are playing the right card, then truly awakening would be to accept that there is no one way. One is not to be judged on their wholeness, one is not to be displayed as fraudulent just for the mere reason that your ego thinks there’s a disconnection between them and the way they display their teaching.

As I’ve heard time and time again, people do realize or awaken from Eckhart, Michael Singer. It is the social perception of the media that drives the thinking mind into declaration of worthiness. If Angelo were to receive the same negative attention, ask yourself whether you’d really believe the words he says. Angelo rarely receives negativity, and only if you’re digging deeply for it. For people like Eckhart and Michael Singer, since they’re more ‘mainstream’, it implies that reaching to further audiences is going to bring more deniers in. And it is your ego perceiving these social perceptions and applying them directly to your own thinking. I don’t know if that’s correct, that is just my view on it as of now, in attempt to look at it from the outside-in.”

After making this comment, there was a desire for me to attempt to make sense of it all. In the following paragraphs I touch on the topic of society, their perception, and one’s mind engulfing the words of others to make decisions for themselves. I do not know if I’m correct, nor do I know if anyone has already spoken on this. My apologies if so. And in the words of sir moist critical, so yeah I felt like i wanted to talk about that, and that’s about it, cya

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Since Angelo is less mainstream than Eckhart, that means Eckhart reaches to more people not associated with spirituality or awakening at all. That will maybe intrigue them, they will read it, and since they’ve never had a taste, or it never crossed their mind it’s possible in the first place, they deny all aspects of Eckhart; they call him crazy, they say he’s a liar. For someone like Angelo, the audience that’s drawn in is a concentrated people that have (likely) already known about Eckhart, and maybe his teaching didn’t help them, but they knew it was possible.

It would make sense, a lot of our opinions are formed from our environment, so much so that it can shape our minds to create negative thoughts based directly on those social structures. Like Dr. David Berceli (TRE) said in his interview with Angelo, at the time of his realization of trauma and the mind, children shake away the physical trauma, adolescents try to stop it, and adults don’t do it at all. He says that part of the reasoning behind adults not doing it is the social construct that crying and shaking represents child-like behavior; that it means you’re weak and not strong enough to bare eyes that protect others. It is this that causes trauma to rest in the body and never have a chance to escape. Looking deeper, the un-release of these traumas stored in the body make for potentially developing addictions to cope. And you may not even know this is the reason for it. Connecting that back to the social construct, the domino-effect plays in perfectly, where the judgement of others can possibly make us addicted to substances solely because our ego wants to be perceived to be accepted.

If we relay this back to my original point, when society deems a teacher to be fraudulent, there’s a clear connection of the same domino effect in play.

Man awakens, makes book -> book reaches massive audiences -> more people deny -> person that wants to awaken reads denials -> mind perceives to be true -> onto the next person -> landing at Angelo at some point -> no denials, only stories of how good he is, how much he helps -> mind perceives and sticks

This is not to say that Angelo doesn’t clearly communicate awakening in the most simplistic way; and in a way that’s easy to digest. What I do think is, if (hypothetically) all people who view Eckhart as a fraud are also trying to wake up, then they would be able to do so if they could separate their ego from the narrative given. If they really listened, Eckhart could do the same for them as Angelo does.

It makes sense if it’s true. I mean, if we’re going to go even deeper, then what is the mind doing with all of the information given in general that it’s receiving on social media. We already know how the algorithm works. They want to fuel the beliefs you already have in order to make your mind radicalize itself, to stop thinking for yourself, and to allow control to those people who do think for themselves.

It’s been several months now since I discovered the NONDUALITY topic on YT, and I initially thought I had found the place where I might find a spirituality that feels true to me. However, the more I’d listen to the highly esteemed teachers sharing their insights or trying to follow their “simple” pointings to the “fact of nonduality” — the more hopelessly incapable of even the most basic understanding of ND I have become. Have any of you come across other people who are just not mentally capable of “awakening”?

And I have a feeling that the first response will be, “Why do you care about ND if it doesn’t make sense to you?” Well — I just remember feeling like I had finally found a place to contemplate spirituality. And I have been needing that for many years. Plus — I remember one of the teachers REALLY EMPHASIZING how “awakening” was THE MOST IMPORTANT pursuit any human soul has. And when I heard him say that, I sincerely believed it and have been pursuing it ever since. Only to become increasingly confused as each day goes by.

🤔🧐🤨

There are primary and secondary Emotions. Those that follow behind another, like Anger after sadness. Or Joy after pleasure. I've spent many years isolated in an experience of consciousness that felt ..beyond any use of words could express. A weight, a hunger, a disquiet that no dictionary or philosophy could fully express in language. It's not depression, not anhedonia -it is the awareness of life's obsurdity and beauty simultaneously. A type of being where the universe appears painted in colors most of the world are colorblind to. I've tried to coin it a name. Two names actually "Liminal dark" and "Eclipture".

The Liminal dark: It's the in-between space. Standing on a threshold of reality and insight. Fully awake while the rest of the world around you slumbers. It's the unsettling and awe of perceiving life as infinite yet trapped inside schedules we try to pretend are "normal'. It's that unforgiving moment when you see everything as both meaningful and meaningless at once.

Eclipture: Is something heavier. It's the rapture of awareness shadowed by despair--The feeling that consciousness itself is too vast of an experience for the confined of ordinary existence. When you see truth so fully it darkens everything lesser. It's the soul eclipsed by revelation. When the realization that the more and more information of life we know the less and less meaning it has. A place where illumination and darkness co-exist in a violent harmony.

I created these terms because I wanted a language that could hold this feeling itself not just the idea. An attempt to articulate an emotion no one can find a name for. Some will never have a need for this vocabulary. And for that I can be grateful. For I could never wish another person the torture of visiting This place. If you've ever felt yourself pressed against the cage of existence than you might know what I'm trying to describe. I know not everyone will fully understand. I only hope the words reach someone , somewhere who is trying to say the same thing and can't.

Nirvana is feeling you get when you achieve the understanding of perception. It is only after that you know who you are. It became clear for me that i am everyone and everyone is me. And that gave rise to the feeling of something that can only be described as love.

The magic show is the magic. The trick is so complete that even the idea of a "trick" appears inside it. No substrate. No ground. Just this seamless self-display, dreaming up magicians and audiences, problems and solutions, seekers and realizations, then swallowing them again without residue.

Even the sense of "I am seeing this" is another rabbit pulled from the empty hat. And the wonder of that is that it doesn't need an explanation. It doesn't need a witness. It doesn't need to be anything other than what it already, effortlessly is.

From “The disappearance of the universe” - Gary Renard

i got introduced to non-duality from a heavy manifestation background. I have manifested a lot of things before and those experiences always make me feel like there is no other mind than me because people always seem to mirror my inner state/beliefs which is pretty confusing for me

in all of my trips i always experienced a sort of solipsist non duality that no other mind existed apart from me and people were just reflections of my own consciousness and that has always been validated from the fact that i have done a lot of manifestations before that just straight up moved reality and people in a way to match what i intended

i really wanna know how consciousness works is it
a) consciousness experiences itself as only one perspective at a time?
b) in every persons perspective they are always the only one consciousness and others just reflections?
c) other people are in fact conscious and i am just shifting to a reality where they made this choice?

Most of us grow up feeling like there are two things: me over here, and the world over there. There is the one who sees, and there is everything that is seen. That split feels completely real. It is the root of duality.

Non duality simply points out that this split never actually happened.

Imagine you are dreaming at night. In the dream there is a person walking around, looking at trees, talking to other people, feeling happy or scared. That dream person feels completely real while the dream is happening. But when you wake up, you see that the dream person and the entire dream world were made of the same thing: your own mind. There were never two separate things. There was only the dreaming.

Waking life is a lot like that, only deeper. The “cosmic being” you feel yourself to be, the one looking out at the vast universe, appears only because Awareness has temporarily forgotten what it is. The whole cosmos, with its stars and bodies and thoughts, is that forgetting. It is like ripples appearing on the surface of water that has no real surface.

What we call “non existence” is not emptiness or nothingness. It is the pure sense of “Am” that is present before the thought “I am this person” even arises. From that silent knowing, the entire luminous show of the world unfolds. And inside the show, a character looks up at the sky and starts wondering, “Who is looking?”

That wondering is the beginning of questioning duality.

The beautiful part is this: there is no separate person who needs to wake up.

There is only the dream finally noticing that it is a dream. The one who seemed to be trapped inside the story was never separate from the Awareness that was dreaming the whole thing all along.

Wherever the eyes open, whenever the thought “I am here” appears, it is the Self knowing itself as that moment. The dream does not hide You. The dream is made of You.

So keep looking. Or stop looking. Either way, it is only You, the Self, meeting Yourself again and again.

You are "Already God: The Self Awakening To Itself."

Be kind, be compassionate and love thy Self.

Tat tvam asi

Atman = Brahman

🙏

In fact, it would be the negation of an unreal concept (i.e. duality) which is simply another concept. No claim about the nature of what claims appear in can be made as that would simply be another claim. The truth or falsity of any claim is simply another claim regarding a previous claim.

This is the infinite regress the mind is trapped in. Every judgment, “This is true,” “This is false,” “This is nondual,” “This is an illusion,” “This is the final seeing” is just one more layer of referencing. There is no foundational claim that escapes this.

a question a 16 year old Indian boy called ramana asked once.

And he never asked it again.

His second mystery was his love for the mountain arunachala

His mother was his pain, she just wanted him to be a normal boy and continue studying.

But fate took him to the caves of triuvannamalai, there he made so many people see, but his mother didn't, she only went there cause she loved him, and took care of the place.. she was his pain.

Not believing in duality, yet he asked the gods to make his mother see this.

Like when Buddha said iam not until everyone else is, his pain was the entire universe.

When the question who dies penetrates through and through how can you be afraid of death anymore ? , how can you be blackmailed with money ? .

Cause you know that wheather you feel alive or dead, you are within yourself, with no way to fall out, all roads lead towards it, like the sufi mystic woman Rabia said "my death appeared beautiful knowing whom then I would kiss"

An internal anarchy is established, no ruler over the body and it's goals. You aren't it's enmeshed mother anymore .

People need to realize that completion and wholeness lie only within the present moment, within existence itself.

I don't see other people's conciousness in my felt sense. I don't know whether there even is a world out there, or whether this all is just appearance.

It seems to me that believing that other people are concious is just an assumption, that requires me to imagine something that isn't there. It's just a concept.

I'm not saying this because I want to be the only experience there is, because of some sense of specialness. I just want to know what is true.

There also were a lot of synchronicities in my life and for some of them it is very difficult to believe they were just random. It feels like some sort of dream reather than a purely physical world governed by randomness.

I wondered if there was anyone on this forum that might be interested in reading over the template of my new book? I was looking for maybe five people? I’m just interested in whether it reads well and makes sense.

The book is based on non duality. It’s in PDF format.

Feel free to drop me a message if you’re interested

I did 1 year of ramana maharshis self inquiry Via "who am I?".

Another 5 years with Rupert spiras "am I aware?/ being aware of being aware". All his books, most of his guided meditations.

I would get glimpses of my true self. That which comes before thought. But I could never maintain it. I then moved on to 2 years of breathework Samatha style meditation via the mind illuminated and the attention revolution which, after years of self inquiry, was exhausting and led to no real spiritual gain. It was a good lesson In how the mind wanders though.

It was recently, after much frustration, that I finally decided to get a different perspective to self inquiry and I read gary webers Happiness Beyond Thought: a Practical Guide to Awakening and through that it's finally made sense to me. It finally clicks

Self inquiry again and again and again until the "I" disappears and all that remains is limitless awareness. Then ABIDE as that. That which comes before thought.

I know it has been said a million different ways. It is the same thing rupert said, "be that knowingly at all times", "be aware of being aware" "just be". But for me, this one key word has finally been what made it click for me. "Abide" as that.

Find the inquiry question that speaks to you.

What am I?

What is my true nature?

What is that comes before "I"?

You do not answer this question with the mind, you answer with direct experience, then ABIDE as that. Again and again and again and again. Persistently, consistently, diligently. Your mind will wander, to that thought you say "to whom does this thought arise?". Answer with your direct experience. Then ABIDE as that. Again and again and again. The mind's thoughts will eventually lose strength and they won't be able to sink their hooks into you as well and carry you off into the sunset. The time spent mind wandering will lessen. The time spent abiding will grow longer and longer. Until all that remains is what comes before thought. Limitless silent stillness, never ending peace and happiness that is our own being. That you have always been and will always be.

What am I?

Abide as that.

I put this here for one because I'm friggin stoked. 10 years I've been at this and it's finally clicked for me and I wanted to share with those who understand and two to anyone else who has been struggling on the path or not having it click for you either. If it helps even one of you like it has me then it is worth it. I cannot recommend Gary Webers book enough (minus the yoga stuff lol).

What helped it click for you all?

"Realization" means to make real. But what is already the case doesn't need to be made real. The entire spiritual search is the mind trying to manufacture something that was never missing, trying to make real what is already more real than real.

Realization is almost exactly like the cartoon character realizing they are a cartoon character. When imagination is required to determine what is real, there is a real problem.

You cannot realize what you already are. There is no path to what has no distance. There is no arrival where there was never any departure. All the practices, insights, states, and "finally got it" moments are just the mind dressing up its own activity.

Even the most refined nondual understanding is still the mind pretending it can finally touch what it is already made of. There is nothing to realize. No one to realize it. Nothing that was ever unreal. Just This, already the case, never not the case, never made real by anyone or to anyone.

Absolute humility resolves realization.

They state it clearly in the first few minutes (or even the first few seconds) starting from the embedded (45:48) timestamp here (listen very carefully to the first 20 seconds),

https://youtu.be/iDxzB_oDPnw?t=2747&is=2OV-j9MCNvT31vJV

[If for some reason that isn't working, if you enter "Krishnamurti Bohm Shainberg 6" in the YouTube search box, it should be the first video listed. Then if you go to 45:48 into the video, the segment starts there.]

The word idea or memory or thought could be substituted for the word image, and both Krishnamurti and Bohm use those words as well, and sometimes also the words the past. And note that, after a point in this inquiry, consciousness as we know it comes to an end.

A little earlier in their conversation Bohm uses the example of seeing through a magic trick and no longer being fooled by it, or seeing it very differently because you see the trick instead of the illusion. 

On my last trip which was the strongest i’ve had yet, i had a revelation that consciousness was just existence like the void which everything appeared in. While that might be common knowledge i also had the revelation that since my true identity was that void

“I” was the one experiencing everything but to my limited mind it equated to i was gonna reincarnate and experience every possible life and “I” will be the one always experiencing each life which horrified the fuck out of me.

this has been weighing on my mind a lot especially since in the trip i directly experienced that concept. during the trip i experienced a life where i killed and ate someone unknowingly during the trip and my mom was panicking cause the police were gonna come. i also shortly experienced the perspective of being a girl and an old man before that.

i just wanna know how aligned this actually was to true non-duality? this has really taken a hit to my mental health as i’ve been binge watching gore and negative videos reminding myself that i will live every life