Non duality vs duality

[alanantic]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

Sometimes the oldies are the best ones, such as "The Seeker is that which is being sought" and "Who are you, when you are not?" When we get ourselves out of the way something more interesting can come through.

I've heard the problem with "experiences", it's futile to search for more of them, since they're really just a glimpse.

Here's a thought: If our natural state is an egoless Oneness with the universe, isn't this just all a pretension? It's been said that there is the deed, but not a doer. Is our self-realization already pre-planned? Buddha seems to hint at it.

“I was, am and will be enlightened, together with the whole of the great earth and all its sentient beings, simultaneously." -- Buddha

[no1wakesup]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

Non-duality is duality.
What you experience of the outer world is your unconscious filtered through your ego.
You are a number of aspects all affecting each other at any given time. and usually a lot more than two....

Of course. However, the mind doesn't see that and it's not something you can agree with or believe in.. All is nonduality...sure. Yet no one has the experience of non-duality. An experiencer has the experience only because that separate one has already coveted a world of duality. It is this identification which eventually owns that duality (which in turn can now conceptualuze non-duality) and makes it primary.

The biggest misperception that the spiritual aspirant assumes, and really hopes for is the belief that they can some how make enlightenment happen. That's part of the same process which still hopes its separate identity is in tact post liberation.

If a total shift truly unfolds it would be clearly apparent that all the effort taken by the identity in place did absolutely nothing to make IT happen.

Again, its your identification with conditioning which falls out. You still know how to tie your shoes, Its just not personal. You don't lose the ability to assimilate or function in the world

Also, what you refer to as mind I see as unconscious....absolute sleep. The mind has no where to transcend. It doesn't become anything. It's just found out and if awareness expands and endures enough that whole pile of **** collapses all of its own accord.

Lol.

[Ewwerrin]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

You are already your experience of yourself, you haven't been anything else since you were a child and in many ways you always will be.

Who are you, when you are not?

Edit: I misread the last question. And its a good question. Haha. Well, first relative and then absolite. I relatively speaking, I gess I am who I am now and now and now again. And when I am not, or no longer, whatever is left will be now. And here. But absolutely speaking. When I am not... There wont be a me, to answer that question of who will I be. From that perspective it's the weirdest most unknowable question ever. It feels like a paradox and yet I like it. I want to find an answer towards it even tho it seems impossible logically speaking, yet it feels like it is pointing to a higher more transcending or transcendable dimension of perspective or experience. For it feels like I can just shift my perspective to a completely whole new version of myself. Yet it feels impossible and very unsettling. Like, if I had that ability it would be cool, yet, I wonder if I would get lost into an endless abyss? Very concering... And yet I experience that of myself my whole life. A new here and now. Again and again. Maybe this deep forgetting... Is making a new experience possible. In an endless not new existence. I don't know, but that's probably not it when time is part of the forgetting or remembering... Confusing to think beyond it.


Unedited:
Well, I just became not. Now. And now again, in my flawed self contradictory perspective. When the past version of me, is created from the present, to be believed to have dissapeared from my grasp. I create that "past" from my present perspective.

It's better to say, I am just in the present, simply. But the expansion of consciousness, feels like an illusion. Because if I expand my consciousness into self contradictory versions of me, it's not really an expansion of consciousness. More a contraction.

So I see expansion as only ever positive. And yet teachers say we are always expanding. There is no going back or "becoming less" because it will always cancel itself out. And so suffering is unnecessary at a certain point we just embrace the eternal ever expanding perfect bliss and evermore becoming evermore blissfull.

Yet, what I don't understand, is how does our experience of "forgetting" all of this greater nature of who and what we all are, as eternal beings, not contradict it? Why is that seen as something good and "it has a reason, there is a reason for it." I assume it is a great reasoj to discover. But what is it?

Transformation of absolute dark into absolute light, creation in a nutshell?

I dont see that as evermore expanding into bliss. It feels like seeking a greater darkness and expanding into greater light, a duality, and endless illusion and fluctuation and relativity.

And how can God, all knowing, wake up to a greater version of itself, if it already knew what it would wake up into before hand, how is that even called an awakening?

It is these kind of questions that I soooo want to ask and hear the answer to them. But I guess I'm not ready for the answer, because otherwise I woulden't be afraid of the idea that:
"the answer may not even exist! Stay here in the unknowing... Where it is allot more comfortable, because atleast you can still believe and hope that the answer does exist, but if you go looking for it, you may find out, that it doesn't exist at all! And then you will be ruined forever and you will enter eternal suffering!"
It is completely stupid to believe this, because the truth is still truth, wether I know it or not. So if I am not ruined by it now, I wont be when I find out either.
Yet, I still doubt... Maybe, hearing the wrong truth will ruin me.
Then I wanna make my own truth? What do I want to hear? And does this desired truth mean I already contain it?

I want to hear that God does know everything, but that when someone like me discovers the truth, my discovery and perspective of it is unique and new? But then God woulden't be knowing it, if it is new to God. Yet, I never said I wanted it to be new to God, I wanted it to be new to me, perhaps? But then there is a seperation between me and god, I dont want that either. But then perhaps, I never said that God is seperate from me, but that I am seperate from God, perhaps... The seperation just goes one way. Not good either, because I don't even want a perceived seperation, yet I already experienced THAT.

I see the only way to discover value and benefit in the limitation/forgetfulness/contradiction/conflict/doubt/chaos.
And I fail to do so. Because it feels too limitting and dull and bland. Yet, on the other hand, it is sophisticated, subtle, sublime, when learned how to focus the expansion of its realisation. But then that would be just another way of reaching another level, of front back, up down...

It is like I am considering endless opportunities and I can't find any way that is the right way. For the desire is there, yet my ability to realise it, know it, know what it really is, seems to be forever a work in progress. Like it took me trillions to the power of trillions to the power of trillions to the power of trillions to the power of trillions of mega mega mega peta years, just to get to this point. And it feels like all of that amounts to nothing and I need infinite more to really realise what I want and know it.

And yet then it would be ended and complete and finished and done and dead and boring. Like you say, there is no ultimate. Then why am I eternally evermore looking for it and on the lookout for it?

It feels like there is just positive and negative. And I can enjoy believing that it exist. And keep looking. With hope. Or suffering the disbelieve and despair and hopelessness and endless infinite eternal everlasting failure. And trying to find the balance. And unity between both. For I see they are two aspects of the same one thing, they co-exist and co-create. Yet I cannot (yet (hopefully)) realise the whole. As one whole thing and what it is and what it means and why and all of that.

Originally Posted by alanantic

I've heard the problem with "experiences", it's futile to search for more of them, since they're really just a glimpse.

They're a lot more than that.

Originally Posted by alanantic

Here's a thought: If our natural state is an egoless Oneness with the universe, isn't this just all a pretension? It's been said that there is the deed, but not a doer. Is our self-realization already pre-planned? Buddha seems to hint at it.

“I was, am and will be enlightened, together with the whole of the great earth and all its sentient beings, simultaneously." -- Buddha

We can't experience Oneness without ego, and Oneness doesn't mean anything without separation - Oneness only exists in relation to individuality.

The trouble is that we take a very linear perception of a time that isn't supposed to exist - if there is no time then what happens to Spiritual development, Karna, Past Lives and a few other things?

I read an interesting article where God had a quantum realisation, that things had to be the way they are so that God could come to be God.

Originally Posted by no1wakesup

Of course. However, the mind doesn't see that and it's not something you can agree with or believe in.. All is nonduality...sure. Yet no one has the experience of non-duality. An experiencer has the experience only because that separate one has already coveted a world of duality. It is this identification which eventually owns that duality (which in turn can now conceptualuze non-duality) and makes it primary.

Non-Duality IS Duality, there is no such things as non-Duality.

Originally Posted by no1wakesup

The biggest misperception that the spiritual aspirant assumes, and really hopes for is the belief that they can some how make enlightenment happen. That's part of the same process which still hopes its separate identity is in tact post liberation.

That's all a part of the ego and a perception of themselves. I think most Spiritual people look for a change in what they identify with, away from the 'human' towards their definition of what a Spiritual being should be. The only trouble is that the process is very human, not Spiritual.

Originally Posted by no1wakesup

If a total shift truly unfolds it would be clearly apparent that all the effort taken by the identity in place did absolutely nothing to make IT happen.

The identity was the prime mover, the motivator.

Originally Posted by no1wakesup

Again, its your identification with conditioning which falls out. You still know how to tie your shoes, Its just not personal. You don't lose the ability to assimilate or function in the world

It's more of what people identify with/attach to, and it becomes a personality disorder.

Also, what you refer to as mind I see as unconscious....absolute sleep. The mind has no where to transcend. It doesn't become anything. It's just found out and if awareness expands and endures enough that whole pile of **** collapses all of its own accord.

Lol.[/quote] I didn't mention mind though. What many people don't realise is that the unconscious still processes when we are asleep, and it's 90-95% of the total.

Originally Posted by Ewwerrin

Edit: I misread the last question. And its a good question. Haha. Well, first relative and then absolite.

You're thinking too much, that's not who you are.

Originally Posted by Ewwerrin

Well, I just became not. Now. And now again, in my flawed self contradictory perspective. When the past version of me, is created from the present, to be believed to have dissapeared from my grasp. I create that "past" from my present perspective.

It's a mixture of past and present.

Originally Posted by Ewwerrin

It's better to say, I am just in the present, simply.

Not if your present creates your past as you say, that makes you both in the present and in the past.

Originally Posted by Ewwerrin

And how can God, all knowing, wake up to a greater version of itself, if it already knew what it would wake up into before hand, how is that even called an awakening?

We are Atman and by extension Brahman.

Originally Posted by Ewwerrin

It is these kind of questions that I soooo want to ask and hear the answer to them. But I guess I'm not ready for the answer, because otherwise I woulden't be afraid of the idea that:

You are the answer looking for the question.

Originally Posted by Ewwerrin

It is completely stupid to believe this, because the truth is still truth, wether I know it or not. So if I am not ruined by it now, I wont be when I find out either.

You decide what the truth is or isn't.
[/quote]

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

You decide what the truth is or isn't.

Thank you Greenslade. I'm always seeking greater clarity of mind, or as some would say, faith seeking understanding.

Your own clarity of thought is very welcome here.

[Ewwerrin]

Yeah I agree. Greenslade, you have a nice clarity. I appreciate it aswell. Thanks for sharing.

[no1wakesup]

Greenslade,

The idea of duality or non duality only exists in the minds conditioning. No different than the conditioning of linear time as it become the measurement of perceived space between me and other. There is no "experiencer" beyond any conceptual relationship. It is the selfless state so no one is there for any of this to belong too.

"The identity was the prime mover, the motivator"

That never happened. That identity is part of the me and my story. That's something the mind needs to assume or believe in so that the "spiritual path" maintains the traveler in place to reach a destination it calls enlightenment.

[no1wakesup]

Originally Posted by eputkonen

Nonduality is all there is. Duality is an illusion of thought/mind. When there is no thought, where is duality?

It is like the old snake and rope analogy. No matter if the mind projects a snake on the rope or not...it is just rope and has always been rope.

The mind projects duality, but it is always nonduality.

Yes. Well put.