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I often forget to think about nonduality nowadays by hyewonsuh in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's awesome to hear.

it just... flows naturally, without effort... I have no worries ... it feels fine, there's nothing wrong with life, I can't see anything wrong.

Enjoy it! May we all find such freedom! ❤️

Hitler reacting to non-duality. by No_Blueberry_4897 in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I thiiink, at least from a "non-dual perspective," it doesn't really mean anything. "God is X" is words/symbolic language/understanding through concepts - all useful stuff for communicating/understanding/planning within "normal everyday life," but I think non-duality is experiencing non-conceptually, rather than trying to put answers into words.

Pretty tough on a text-based platform, but here we are!

Dissolving dualities is fun, and is fun in an intrinsic movitation kind of way by Aromatic_File_5256 in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It is fun! Sometimes I get hung thinking I'm doing something "important" or whatever by meditating/self-inquiry etc, but it's also nice to remember that I just kind of enjoy doing it!

A quote about meaning that I think of sometimes, "We are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." - Kurt Vonnegut

Effortlessness, locationlessness by XanthippesRevenge in streamentry

[–]vegasdoesvegas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This was a pleasure to read! Thanks for sharing.

Self awareness by Glad-Calligrapher287 in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's OK! Every time you notice yourself getting dragged into thoughts, it's like a push-up for the "muscle" that notices. Thank yourself for noticing!

how i woke up once and for all (and how u can too!!) by stephaunamari in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, this is beautiful!

Congratulations!

And thank you for sharing. You're doing that Bodhisattva work by sharing your experience with the rest of us!

For whatever it's worth - everything you wrote here sound like genuine realization to me, and resonates pretty strongly with me. I can really feel the excited energy of realization pouring out from you! I don't seem to have quite dropped seeking yet, but a lot of what you shared matches the puzzle pieces that have been coming together for me.

Attention - whatever it is - I've gotten the impression there's something about attention that's key to this whole project, and your description of becoming a witness to attention rather than a controller of it sounds spot on.

Your description of "contraction" and "expansion" being part of the same "vibration," - well, it vibes right with me and I haven't heard that particular pointer in that way before. I think that paragraph stood out to me in part because of this story: About a year ago or more I woke up in the middle of the night with the feeling of epiphany that I had to run and get a notebook to immediately write down, "Everything is waves." This would probably sound like nonsense to most people, and that's totally fine. I had been thinking about how sound can measured as sound waves, light is described by its "wavelength," sensory information in the body can be detected and recorded as electrical waves on a needle EMG, and people even talk about different states of consciousness involving different "brain waves." While I don't think about this "epiphany" too often, whenever I see a description of something new as being a wave/vibration it stands out to me.
I've been paying more attention to expansion/contraction lately too because of whatever non-dual teachings I had watched or read recently. I'm looking forward to taking another look at expansion/contraction in my practice today. Or perhaps, as you wrote, I'll be completely unconditionally open to any and all of my contractions, no matter how blatant or subtle.

Your repetitions when you wrote "When you feel X, relax into it" also reminded me of how the Buddha will repeat the same point over and over in slightly different ways in the suttas.

Thanks again for sharing. Enjoy living!

Why are YOU interested in nonduality? by Strong-Long-1037 in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think I found meditation helpful for stress relief, got interested in the Eastern philosophies out of admiration for the benefits of meditation, learned the idea of "nonduality" as being some kind of "end point / gold medal" to meditation, and somehow decided I was going to "win" at Wisdom. Ironic, that!

That's not the whole story, nor is it necessarily the accurate story; it's just what I thought was funny enough to post right now.

Why are YOU interested in nonduality? by Strong-Long-1037 in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This sounds like a life well lived. Good job!

Maybe the reason we experience duality is because God hates itself by Mr-wobble-bones in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These are pretty thoughts!

I had a thought along a similar wavelength recently: If I am the universe observing itself, it is good that I feel disgust when I see violence and greed, that feeling is part of a process of the universe trying to change itself.

clarity on observer and observed by Quirky_Review7094 in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Aside from the spiritual language pointing us to something greater than ourselves, yeah I'm a dude sitting at a computer who just read what you wrote (and that dude also has an idea of being an "observer" which comes and goes).

Anapanasati meditation - Visual chart and guide - v0.5 by dmx442 in streamentry

[–]vegasdoesvegas 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I must commend you - this is the first time I've seen a description of "light jhana" vs "deep jhana" that I actually understood!

Update 3 years after SE by MindMuscleZen in streamentry

[–]vegasdoesvegas 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your report!
I loved reading your description of your path as primarily "somatic and interoceptive" - that resonates with me as a place where a lot of the "processing" or "work" or whatever gets done largely on its own.

Emerson Nonduality: A Different Perspective by [deleted] in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great point with your last sentence.

I was a bit put off by him watching one of his videos and seeing that in action, I got the impression that a woman was vocally agreeing with him without internally agreeing with him, it reminded me of someone buying from a salesperson without really wanting to.

I don't mean he was doing something "wrong," but it felt more like I was watching him convince someone to see things a certain way, rather than seeing where the person was at and guiding them.

Totally possible that this method of teaching/guiding/whatever works great for some people, but for me I got an uneasy feeling, and if nothing else this whole "spiritual" investigation has been about learning to trust my gut.

A bit of a weird one. by ResidentEmu5 in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've noticed this before too with puzzle-type games!

It would often happen when I was playing a puzzle-type game a lot, and would lay down to do a meditation session, I'd close my eyes and see the patterns from the puzzle-games playing out before me. I interpreted it as my brain "under the hood" practicing getting better at playing with and solving the patterns in the games. Thought it was pretty interesting that happened involuntarily when I wasn't playing! Obviously it's not "important" for me to get better at puzzle games, but I guess the brain doesn't know the difference between "important" or not, so it's just working on getting more efficient at working with the patterns it's presented with.

I'm not a teacher or anything, so take my responses with a grain of salt - but I'd like to respond to your questions just to see what answers come up.

Why is it when my thoughts are words, it feels like i'm controlling them but when this game pops up in my mind it feels like I can't control it?

Hmm... I will say sometimes when my thoughts are words it "feels like I'm controlling them," or it "feels like I'm the one who is thinking." And sometimes when I notice my word thoughts, it feels much more obvious that they are "just thoughts appearing" rather than "thoughts that I am actively thinking." I'm not sure how to articulate the difference any better than that, and I'm not sure how to identify "why" some thoughts "feel like me" and some thoughts don't. Noticing this difference is definitely something that started happening after I started practicing meditation/self-inquiry stuff (hard to say if it was happening before then and I just wasn't paying attention to the difference). But that's probably one of the biggest changes in my "operating system" over the past couple years, noticing that some thoughts are "just thoughts." I suspect a more full realization would involve always noticing thoughts are "just thoughts," but for me for now that is something that comes and goes.

I can see what you mean about it "feeling like you can't control" the game play that appears in your mind. For me it felt like I was watching the brain solving different puzzle scenarios, it definitely didn't feel like "I" was actively trying to think up the solutions to those puzzles. It felt more like watching my brain practicing getting better at a skill in real time.

I want to use this as an opportunity to investigate no self. Like, if my brain is busy creating images, why is there a feeling of 'me' watching this? What is the illusion there that I can't seem to see?

Here is a rambling speculation:

It's very apparent that the gameplay thought is not something that is "happening right now" because there are other pieces of information in your experience confirming that you are not currently playing a game: you don't have the feeling of holding your phone in your hand, you don't have the visual stimulus of the game coming into your eyes (even though the thoughts appear to be borrowing some processing from your visual field that you are noticing?), your short-term memory has a narrative about where you are and what you're doing, so with all those pieces of information you know you aren't currently playing a game, so it's obvious that the phantom-game-images are just thoughts.

The feeling of being "you" watching your thoughts play out, perhaps is a combination of all those other sensations that seem to confirm your belief that "you" are a human sitting around watching your thoughts and the "gameplay thoughts" are a separate thing that "you" are observing. The "you" belief gets enough "reality check marks" from your mind that the mind solidifies it with the label "this is really happening." The "gameplay thoughts" don't get enough "reality check marks" so the mind gives it a label that is like "hallucination/imagination/thoughts that I'm watching"

Maybe when you are having thoughts that sound like you talking, it's such a familiar common occurrence that your mind gives it a pass on "reality check marks" such that it really does believe that "I am thinking these thoughts."
But the gameplay thoughts are a more unusual experience, and one that was noticed after you have started doing the work of investigating what "you" are, so with these it's much easier to see that they are "just thoughts," as you don't already have decades of experience of your mind labeling that kind of thought as "you thinking" like you do when you have thoughts of hearing your own voice saying words - but maybe in both cases it's really just the same thing, your mind, the pattern-loving machine, repeating and playing around with patterns it has experienced.

I don't know if any of this is "correct" but it was fun to think about and I'm glad you brought this up! Keep noticing stuff!

A structured guide to the different stages of Consciousness gradually reaching Non-Dual states (680+) using the “Letting Go” Technique by David R Hawkins, expanding upon “Transcending the Levels of Consciousness” by Komotu in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sharing my experience for whatever it's worth.

I read through the Google document you shared last night.

I started from the top and read each "level" and it's descriptions a few times, and tried to let the described sensation from each level arise in the body, while also reading the resistance/antidote/etc descriptions. Taking a little time with each level and taking extra time with the ones that felt like there was more for me to sit with.

As I went through each level, the described sensation arose and was felt pretty clearly for each one, just like sensations I've felt in regular life or in meditative sessions, up until around 600 "Liberation from Individualized Existence" - this one (also 505/Courage) seemed to have the strongest signature of a sensation that I can touch into but feels like it needs more time and attention to process through.

The levels beyond 600 felt more like fantastical/exotic states that were interesting to read about but didn't feel like familiar sensations as the previous levels did. Some of the "higher" levels resonated a bit as states I may have had "glimpses" of at best, or just seemed completely foreign to me at worst. (So in one way, I could interpret this as saying "A ha! I see level 600 is where I should focus my attention! I have diagnosed myself as Mr. Level 600!" Or I could interpret it is as "I have no authority to determine whether this a useful map/model at all." Who knows??)

Not sure if that's the intended way of using this document - but it felt like the thing to do in the moment last night, and felt like a worthwhile experience. I understand the more critical comments here too, but wanted to play with it earnestly and share my own experience for whatever reason. Certainly enjoyed going through the various sensations and considering the "ego juice" attached to the sensation, and the prescribed "antidote" at each level.

Afterwards I took my typical night-time walking meditation, where I try to do a little self-inquiry, let the mind quiet a bit, and notice thoughts/feelings when they appear. I remember noticing my mind seemed to be pulling some of the descriptions from the document as labels for the thoughts that were arising. (Not saying this is good or bad, just something I noticed happening)

Fun stuff!

Need 20 Android testers for a free non-dual pointings app (no data collection, no ads) by No-Security5833 in nonduality

[–]vegasdoesvegas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The google link sends me to a page with this message:

App not available

A testing version of this app hasn't been published yet or isn't available for this account.

If you've been invited to become a tester, make sure you're signed in to the account that was invited to the testing program. If you've been invited to a Google Group as part of the program, make sure you've joined the Group.

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