Pushing through the disguised blessing of nihilism

[movingalways]

An essential part of waking up to realizing the truth of no separation is the coming face to face with the intellectual darkness and emotional vacuity of nihilism or the hands-up-in-the-air-shouting-to-God sense of 'what's the point of it all?'

Those who enter this dark night of the spirit and have come out the other side fully comprehend how potentially devastating this period of spiritual seeking can be. A black void of meaninglessness descends upon one's being and until one receives what I call direct or living wisdom to explain why or how the dark night happens or how it can be walked through, one feels as if they are stuck in the bottom floor of hell.

In a nutshell, the dark night is the death knell of the ego that separates form. I say 'in a nutshell' not to deny the complexity of this most difficult process, but to hopefully provide a nugget of recognition to the reader.

Perhaps you as the reader of this post or of other articles or books have not yet received your nugget of direct or living wisdom of the pointer word 'nonduality', but hopefully you have received the living wisdom that 'this too shall pass' and can hang onto this simple but elegant truth as you walk through the disguised blessing that is 'the valley of the shadow of death.'

[Maisy]

This is all just my opinion based on my little experience but I think any kind of "dark night" experience is simply the natural progression of a "seeker." The "seeker" is a consciousness fully identified with the ego or conditioned mind. A type of manufactured self where consciousness uses memory and the body and habitual thought processes and patterns, and beliefs to create an idea of a self or person. This is all so natural as we walk around and experience life as a physical form. We are fully identified with the physical form as us. Like I'm an old man, I'm an old woman, I'm a young woman or young man, I'm beautiful, I look like a troll, my nose is too big or too small or just right. I am this face and body. Then I am my beliefs and nationality etc. These beliefs are who I am, I like this and not that. I eat meat or don't. All these things we are convinced is who and what we are.

Then as this fully identified state, one pursues spirituality. That will never end well. I think because spirituality is the direct opposite of being identified as all this stuff. The harder one as ego seeks "enlightenment" or whatever they conceptualize as the "goal" the darker it gets. They experience the opposite of what they are seeking. Heaviness and not lightness. Confinement and not freedom. Self centeredness, and not selflessness.

I am that which perceives. I am not the perception. I am not this body, these thoughts, these interpretations, these beliefs. There are no differences between me and anyone else. No one is higher or lower, old or young, enlightened or not enlightened. Consciousness is in a playground. Some identify with mind some don't. Some identify as a body some don't. Some identify with thought and beliefs and some don't. Some seek and some don't.
....

We are the actors of our own movie. Though others are involved. And someone else has written a lot of the story though we can improvise sometimes. Nothing really matters but the universe determines our future based on our present. It looks at what we have chosen to make a part of ourselves now and places us in environments best for that activity.

If one has no use for self centered pursuits, no use for conditioned opinions and beliefs, is seeking nothing at all, there is no reason for a life as a body and person anymore. So one stops incarnating in and as physical forms.

I could be totally wrong about all the above but either way, I like the peace of not seeking or wanting. Not thinking or imagining. Just being empty and silent within. And from that place of selflessness, interacting with life as it is and comes. So when I am noisy within, identified with various ideas and beliefs, sometimes I remember the other way to be and so back and forth I go. But that's ok. Now is what it is. The less I am involved the better! But it's the less of what I never actually was, it was just stuff not me I was identifying with. In the end I end up being more involved. Because the "I" is really me.

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by Maisy

...I am that which perceives. I am not the perception.There are no differences between me and anyone else.... No one is higher or lower, old or young, enlightened or not enlightened.

How'd you get so smart ...what's your back ground? I know, that was blunt.
You could pm me if you felt like it. Thanks

But, whatever Path you've taken, I think would help all here!!!!

[Starman]

Labels that we put on things, like nihilism, are not the things themselves. We become invested in the names which we call things by and assign negative or positive vibes to those things according to the label we give them.

It is my experience that instead of pushing through something it is better to transform that something, if we so desired. We can transform things in many ways, one is how we view and identify those things.

One of my favorite sayings comes from Taoism, and that saying is “nothing in the universe is what we call it here on Earth,” The words we use give us certain feelings and they attract the vibrations which we perceive. In my opinion, everything is useful.

[FallingLeaves]

Originally Posted by Maisy

I could be totally wrong about all the above but either way, I like the peace of not seeking or wanting. Not thinking or imagining. Just being empty and silent within.

unfortunately it takes a lot of doing to get there lol... i finally decided if i've got to do things anyway i might as well do something more interesting than try to get there... yet again... and it can be interesting, to have a little bit of autonomy instead of spending one's energy trying to muffle oneself...

[Maisy]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

I think would help all here!

Hmmm well I'm not even sure it helps me most of the time. Knowing something logically and living it I think are two different things. It's nice to be reminded of things but even there, how "important" is it to us so we push it to a realization or change in what I am? Knowing intellectually I am not the body for example does not help me to "feel" it as real known now experience. To "live" it, Because it feels like it is me most times.

Here's an example. I'm like 12 pounds overweight now. I can lose it. I do it all the time. I get very strict in what I eat and how often and in about 2 or 3 weeks I lose it. I feel great. Then in 2 weeks I am back up 10 pounds. See I know what weight I want to be. I work hard and get there. Then in 2 weeks I am back at a weight I don't like being. Knowing something does not mean I actualize it, live it, be it all the time.

It's the same thing with knowing spiritual truths. Knowing is not being or actualizing them into a change in what I am from moment to moment. Sometimes I am in charge, other times I am also in charge but thoughts have a lot more influence. One week, hey eat that cookie, nope I'm getting skinny! Easy. Other week, hey eat that cooke...sure why not! It's not that there are different me's. It's sometimes I am ignoring thoughts and subconscious impulses and other times I am just following them, letting them dictate what I do and who I am.

The way I see it is we are merged with this body and it's mind. Two become one in a sense while we are in this incarnation. And it's not like I have to battle this other self. My sense is it is about awareness. This other self that is based on the body and it's conditioned mind, the one we all identify with more or less as us, is a given. This is what is supposed to happen. We identify then experience all this suffering of various kinds. The way to be completely free of it takes awareness which takes energy and focus and interest, perhaps grace. But I think the point is this whole thing is purposely set up so we identify, cause and create mischief and suffer in various ways due to this identification, and after many lives we seek the way to change and be free of all of that, and that takes an increase in awareness. Awareness I think is like a muscle in the body. The more you use it the stronger it becomes. To transcend a subconscious impulse, or thought means to be able to not be identifying with it in the moment it is present and that takes a higher self awareness that is not always present.

So you get moments of lucidity, clarity, where you are above or have transcended the false self and false ideas, but just as quickly you are back to the normal you, being opinionated and annoyed with various things. Back identified with the person, body and one's conditioned thinking and thoughts.

From seeing how some religious and spiritual leaders act behind the scenes, living it is not easy or common. Knowing it is very common. Anyone can read a lot of books and study themselves and see what's what. But then that leap from the knowing to the being is the hard and rare part. All I have had is some brief moments of seeing or transcendence as I think most have from time to time. Then back to experiencing (and being) normal conditioned being. Well not the "normal" I was when younger. I think I read where you mentioned some stuff about your younger days! Yea I am better than that person but I have a long ways to go to live and be and do and experience what I know.

[Maisy]

Originally Posted by FallingLeaves

unfortunately it takes a lot of doing to get there lol... i finally decided if i've got to do things anyway i might as well do something more interesting than try to get there... yet again... and it can be interesting, to have a little bit of autonomy instead of spending one's energy trying to muffle oneself...

Yes autonomy from the talking in our heads. Put it to bed sometimes.

It's a terrible thing to try to put into words. I doubt the true meaning is ever communicated well. Like I might say there is no where to get to. There is just an experience of the now. We always are having an experience of now. Usually the experience of now includes reacting with thoughts, interpretations etc. Resistances of various kinds, dislike etc. wanting. Projecting opinions inward and outward. But a lot of times we are involved in some activity, like watching tv, surfing the net, reading social media, whatever where we are not paying attention to our thoughts at all. We are distracted in some activity that takes us out of "ourselves."

We actually "transcend" thought all the time. But then there are times we project this conditioned person inward or outward and create certain realities in the now which are probably not great experiences all the time. So sometimes we experience conflict and various unpleasant thoughts and experiences. But just noticing we are focusing our attention on those thoughts and don't have to be stops it. If we don't notice whatever right, it's normal life. We are having an experience of now and sometimes learning stuff. Stuff about ourselves. We just experience and sometimes learn or see something new, sometimes become aware of more, it's really not doing anything or getting anywhere. It's just whatever is present or happening now.

We have an experience of now. That's all we do and all we have ever done. And the now and experience is always changing. So as a witness to the changing nows we learn stuff. Some experiences feel better than others, so the ones that feel good we seek to have more of and to have less of the bad experiences. It's just natural.

In this now, wanting something, seeking something, makes now about conflict. So any thought about such things I'd dismiss. Don't seek anything. There's noting really to change anyway. There is just now. A perception. If thoughts are present saying this or that needs to be changed or different, that's just optional non-sense. Just "let it be" as the Beatle song says. Why have an opinion about what somebody else said or thought for example. It's what they said, that's all. Next moment they will say something else. Just listen. Why add a reaction or interpretation? The silence between their words is just as interesting and the silence of your own self.

Do in the now whatever makes you and others happy and experiencing or feeling love! I think it ends up in the same place as those following some spiritual practice. I think because love is what we are. This becomes projected, love, our true self, when we stop focusing our attention on things that are not love or ourselves.

[movingalways]

All we can do is say what we've experienced and the wisdom we have gained from that experience, whatever that might be. Perhaps it might support or inspire another, perhaps not.

The quest is an individual as is each sand on the beach.

[Unseeking Seeker]

The highs and lows we go through, interpreted by identity as expansion and contraction, in my view, they continue until the identity itself gets exhausted and then upon surrendering, accepting, melding with flow of life, just drops away. Reworded, the object within the dream wishes to awake but it has no real existence, being but a thought projection of the dreamer (subject). So it ceases reacting to whatever unfolds, dwells is silence & stillness, bilocating between the manifest and unmanifest until it disappears, whereupon light of true Self bursts forth, which was always there, behind the screen of illusions.