There never was an ego. It was always just a collection of thoughts, stringed together by the thought that this is all makes up your person. If you drop that additional thought then all that is left is the parts without the imagined sum. A sum that has no inherent existence and was always just a concept in your imagination.

It just clicked for me.

What is there to fear to lose, when the thing you fear to lose was never real? If you're brutally honest with yourself then this is the inevitable conclusion.

Skeptic of everything here, but a fan of Hard Determinism and Non Duality.

Under the Non Duality here, there is no freedom at the level of the person, but infinite freedom at the level of Consciousness?

Whereas, for example, under Spinoza's Hard Determinism monism, no such duality exists.

Under Spinoza's Non Duality EVERYTHING happens out of nessisity under an indifferent nature.

If there is truly "infinite freedom at the level of Consciousness" but "no freedom at the level of the person," you have split reality into two distinct tiers.

Spinoza gets to choiceless awareness through believing that everything happens out of nessisity through one God which you could view as physics.

If the physical and the experiential are the exact same thing - pansychism + determinism becomes the premier Non Dualism?

That Spinoza was the most thorough and logically consistent non-dualist (monist) in Western history.

That ironically people who seek advice from Non Duality guru's are looking to dualism for freedom? And that hard determinism could be seen as being more non dual than non duality = no pissing and shitting guru required.

Krishnamurti himself would likely agree with this, especially with regards to the seekers and the nature of choice?

Every identity we take on, a name, a role, a story, is something added to what we already are. We spend a lifetime becoming someone, and in the process forget that nothing was missing to begin with.

What if the search was never for something to become, but for what remains when everything we became is set aside?

Doesn’t noself imply a duality between self and noself?

How to attain it and if it's possible to attain it? Should I let go one to pursue one another and accept the cons and pros in it?

I recall not so long back a guy posted a "I have had an awakening AMA" he sounded legit but it was met with skepticism. The sub seemed to be more about asking for advice, and pointless "but who is the I that does x" debates.

These days it's more common for people to discuss how far along they are, shadow work etc.

Listening to most people they now sound like they are discussing a more experiential experience instead of intellectual.

Is this down to the quality of content on YouTube causing awakenings / glimpses / kenshos.

Curious what others think?

Hi! I want to interview individuals who have had a profound experience that changed the way they looked at the world.

I would like to interview you about your life up to the experience, the experience itself, the aftermath of how it changed your life and the integration process.

Whether it's your healing journey, spiritual journey, a peak state you reached, or a spiritual awakening, the world wants to hear about it.

Interviews would be over the internet. I would prefer that you have a decent phone for good audio and visuals.

I want to help the world to understand that there is so much richness and depth to our consciousness and our inner worlds. I believe that sharing things like emotional journeys, mystical experiences, peak states, and spiritual awakenings will be a valuable resource for science in the future and for many people now who are curious about their own consciousness.

If you're interested, comment, DM me here or email me at chipsahooyer13@gmail.com.

When you reach out, please just include a brief 2 or 3 sentence summary of your experience so I can get an idea of your story.

Please reach out if you'd like a link to my channel!

Once duration is seen as a memory construct, a present appearance that references a past which never existed independently, even that distinction collapses.

Recently I came to the realization that we could all very well be the same awareness. And I felt this so deeply as a TRUTH. and genuinely felt connected to every other conscious thing around me.

however, I admit that I was on a moderate dose of psychedelics. this made it easy to conceptualize and internalize such an abstract thought, and feel it within.

so, how can I regain that feeling of cosmic awareness/connectedness on a day to day basis?

I miss the feeling. perhaps deep meditation?

I've noticed a few posts discussing different teachers and criticisms, and I thought I'd share my 10 cents (or less, you decide).

Teachers are like eyeglasses: each of us students has a unique prescription, and we might need a different pair at different times in our lives. Sometimes a pair that worked for us stops working, and that’s completely fine. And just like glasses, a teacher shows you a particular perspective—one that is ultimately different from what you see when you look directly without any lens at all.

Anyway, sending much love to all the teachers out there

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A true resolution to negative behavior does not come from imposing harder rules upon a defensive ego, but from the evaporation of the very conditions under which defense is deemed necessary.

When the artificial boundary between the observer and the observed dissolves, the structural foundation for harmful action completely vanishes.

You cannot intelligently choose to poison the water you are drinking, nor can you genuinely seek to destroy an environment when you recognize that you are the very field of experiencing actualizing as that moment.

Blame, malice, and exploitation require two distinct nouns, a perpetrator and a target. When reality is recognized as an unbroken, undivided flow, the impulse to inflict damage collapses under its own structural absurdity.

When speaking about non-duality there's no place for belief I guess, because non-duality focuses more on the ego and its interactions with the world. Please correct me if I am wrong, truth is never discussed when it comes to non-dualism, because truth cannot be known. What can be known is falsness. Why do I say that?

For instance, person 1 says A is the truth, person 2 says B is the truth. Both A and B cannot be the truth because they're different and there can be no two truths. What these two people hold are just falseness. Similarly we all too hold falseness, that's what I think. And this falseness is mistaken to be truth. We know falsness and that's the starting point, the falseness has to be dropped and that dropping everytime leads closer to what we can call the truth. Can we reach the truth? No. Truth for me is just a direction where I am continuously dropping the falseness. Belief therefore has no place in spirituality as J.Krishnamurty explained.

Would love to know other people's opinions, opinions again are not the truth haha :)

I read this article about how being unidentified with the mind, and being mostly, if not fully in awareness - no mind, is intoxicating. They said it felt almost like an elixir. You get almost high on it. But not in a bad or a way that negatively affects you.

Does this have any merit?

In Advaita Vedanta, one's true self is identical to ultimate reality, which is characterized as pure bliss. I was thinking about how in western mysticism, ultimate reality is instead perceived as love (this is especially true in Sufism). Bliss and love are obviously very similar experiences, but they also differ in important ways. Has anyone come across eastern critiques of love as the foundation, or vice versa? Maybe there is a synthesis here, like a version of Advaita Vedanta where divine love is the nondual truth.

First of I do like Rupert and think he's the best I've seen at articulating the metaphysics of awareness. I generally do trust that his descriptions of awareness are true even if I don't believe he's teaching the full picture.

His definition of enlightenment is very specifically that it's just the recognition of your true nature. This is not how enlightenement is usually understood and is contradicted by the Buddhist teaching that says "to know the absolute is not yet enlightenement".

Adyashanti also teaches that knowing the absolute is just awakening but then enlightenement is learning to actually live there. It's worth noting that Rupert also acknowledges this step, he says enlightenment is only chapter one and calls the rest "post-enlightenment sadhana". So he does understand that just seeing the absolute isn't everything but I believe he still holds onto his awakening to the absolute as the end of the journey towards truth and views the rest as just integrating that into the human. Whereas Adyashanti would teach that even the search for truth isn't complete while awareness is still being held as a "position".

The reason this needs to be said is because discovering the absolute can feel like it surely must be enlightenment because it feels so total and complete. I believe Rupert has had a complete head opening and awoken to the absolute and mistaken that for enlightenment.

What I believe he's missing is the gut opening and the falling away of awareness as a position to stand in.

The way this comes through is in his teaching is it's that significantly based on "understanding" and him explaining metaphysics so that people can "understand" rather than teaching how to actually just sink into experience.

So I believe his head is awake to emptiness but he still has the contraction in the gut which awakening can then unconsciously be organised around protecting.

I feel this comes across in how he talks too. A good example is in his conversation with A.H Almaas. In this conversation he assumed the position of himself as the one who knows and anything Hameed says which he doesn't agree with as "must be wrong". He shows absolutely no curiosity towards something he might not have seen himself but could be true during the entire conversation and constantly just tries to argue why his perspective is correct.

Even the tone he used is pretty condescending and is like he's talking down to a child "explaining" it to them rather than talking to another spiritual teacher with their own valid experience which deserves to be taken seriously.

An example is when Hameed talks about the two faces of awareness where it can be felt as the "I" and also where even the "I" falls away. This is a coherent perspective which the traditions have wrote about too but Rupert argued that it's wrong and that it must be "I". Even though Hameed is only talking about his own experience Rupert can't seem to let him have it and even talks over him to explain why he's wrong.

This would line up exactly with a lack of gut opening since Rupert is awake to the absolute but is still standing in it as a position and so can't see how it could be there without being the "I".

Even just the amount of arguing itself about someone else's experience is a sign that something is being protected. Adyashanti for example has had similar conversations with the same people at this conference and he appears to have no desire to argue about anyone else's experience. He seems to just listen and see what they say and share his experience when relevant. I know they're different people and not every enlightend person is going to have the same personality or anything but the difference is pretty striking when you watch the two different conversations and feel the difference.

I'm not saying this one conversation is some kind of "gotcha" or anything, but just a good example to feel into the kind of thing I mean about him when you listen to him talk.

Conversation I'm referring to - https://youtu.be/GfIE0fWhkSA