Playfully adding to the conversation from earlier. Please feel free to add your takes too. (Re-uploaded from earlier minus the typo).

There’s a dangerous assumption running through a lot of spiritual spaces right now. Including this one.

That certain molecules can deliver what years of ordinary attention supposedly cannot. That a strong enough experience will finally dissolve the ego, open the heart, or hand over the realization that normal life keeps withholding. The language is almost always elevated: medicine, sacred journey, ego death, awareness of God.

And for a while it works.

The walls thin. The usual mental noise collapses. Something vast or empty or loving appears. People return glowing, certain that something irreversible has happened.

Then the glow fades.

Ordinary mind returns with interest. The same restlessness, the same subtle dissatisfaction, the same quiet verdict that this still isn’t it. So the next journey is booked. Or the one after that. The experiences stay vivid in memory while the actual weight of daily life remains largely untouched.

What rarely gets said out loud is how perfectly this continues the old spiritual pattern: something special must happen to you before you can be free. Only now the special event is chemical. The one who is searching does not disappear. It simply acquires better stories and a new substance or ceremony to organize its hope around.

There is a difference between a temporary loosening of the sense of self and the actual lightening of how life is carried when nothing extraordinary is happening. One can be scheduled. The other cannot.

When the afterglow disappears and the urge to go back in appears, it is worth looking cleanly at what is being chased. Another rented experience?

Another temporary holiday from the ordinary mind?

Or a quieter relationship with the life that is already here when no substance is rewriting it?

Some will insist the substances are only tools and that integration is everything. This is a fair argument in theory.

But in practice, do you also notice how often the tool remains the center of the conversation.

Dosage, intensity, the quality of the last peak, the timing of the next one. It very subtly becomes a chase for the next high.

The present moment is treated as incomplete unless it is chemically enhanced.

Getting lighter does not require chemically enhanced altered states.

It requires staying with what is already present, including the restlessness that keeps reaching for the next experience.

The substances can show you a door.

They cannot walk through it for you.

And they will , once their glow fades, only give a harder time of becoming who you intended to become by using the substance in the first place.

Final note:

I wrote this piece not as an attack, but as an offering to reflect upon. I have been in the loop of using substances to chase higher states of being myself.

So this is also a reflection I have written for myself. See it as part of the process of freeing myself from the thought I need these things to become someone else.

Life for me is in embracing it in all aspects, nowadays especially the more mundane or boring parts.

I would like to wish you all a nice and happy day.

I hope that you will find the courage and confidence in yourself to move on with your life in the rightfull way.

Last night I had a dream where I received the inspiration to make this post and connect with internet and share this with the fellow members and visitors of this subreddit.

Some of us are further on their way than others. Some of us are really struggling to move on. I have had my share of disappointments and setbacks, but I knew how to move on and I persistet in this way. Over time my life improved and now I have reached a much better state of being than 30 years ago.

I wish you well. ✌️💖🌛🌞

- Mogenblue

The core or religions and spirituality seems to be: love + "you're not the pilot, dissolve yourself." Or to expand on that:

You are / your self is a neural loop that generates craving and anxiety, in order to drive the organism towards biologically useful behavior.

Dissolving you / dissolving this self ends “second arrow” suffering, it “frees up RAM” and it makes the organism enlightened.

Dissolving you is how love can pour forth unimpeded. You’re not the source of love -- love is the organism’s base state. You and the craving and anxiety you produce is the impediment to love.

You were never the pilot, so your organism will keep functioning fine without you.

A flow state is the self stepping back temporarily, so roughly speaking a metaphor for enlightenment is "permanent flow state." Which shows that permanent self-dissolution really isn't as horrifying as it might sound like.

If you want to dissolve yourself, here’s one possible way you can do it:

First meditate every day, for at least five minutes per day. Do this for six months. If you miss a day, no big deal, just get back to meditation tomorrow. Or if you were already meditating for 6+ months before you read this essay, you can skip this step.

After those six months of meditation, add this practice on top of your meditation: whenever you have a thought anywhere during the day, you just constantly bring your attention back to your wordless sense of beingness (i.e., that you exist and are present).

This is sometimes called the “I am” instruction, but it’s not “I am” as some kind of declaration that you are one with the universe or one with some “greater” being. In fact, you’re not even thinking the words “I am.” Instead you’re bringing your attention back to your wordless sense of beingness.

So for example, if a thought arises such as “I am hungry” or “hopefully my presentation next week goes well”, you just bring your attention back to your wordless sense of beingness. Keep doing this constantly over a period of years, and you may eventually reach enlightenment.

You’re not fighting or disagreeing with your thoughts. You’re just constantly bringing your attention back to your sense of beingness, and that is all.

------

Now let's look at a list of pointers from religions and spirituality to "you're not the pilot, dissolve yourself":

Sri Ramakrishna used the metaphor of a salt doll who steps into the water and dissolves. Which sounds vaguely romantic, but remember that the salt doll is a metaphor for you.

One Sufi master used the metaphor of the Moth and the Flame: when the moth flies fully into the flame, enlightenment is attained and there’s literally no more moth.

Islamic Sufism talks about “die before you die”.

Zen Buddhism talked about “die while you are alive, and be thoroughly dead. Then do what you will, and all is good.”

Christian Mystic Meister Eckhart talked about “un-becoming.”

Taoist Chuang Tzu described a master practitioner as someone whose “body is like dry wood, and whose mind is like dead ashes.”

Chuang Tzu also said “The perfect man has no self”

Taoism’s Wu Wei is “action without a self.” (Contrary to the rest of this list, here I’m taking some translation liberty. There’s a Telephone / Chinese whispers game going on where the teachings from enlightened people have reached you via multiple unenlightened people, who aren’t going to transmit “action without a self” faithfully. Hence enlightenment concepts get sanded down into something that unenlightened people do like such as “Wu Wei means effortless action.”)

Bhagavad Gita 3.27 said: “All actions are performed by the modes of material nature. But the fool, deluded by the-I-maker [ahankara], thinks ‘I am the doer’”.

Bhagavad Gita 5.8 said: “The wise who knows the truth thinks: “I do nothing at all””

Bhagavad Gita 11.32 said: “Even without you acting, these [enemies] arrayed and battle-ready before you will surely and without exception no longer exist.”

Bhagavad Gita 18.59 said: “If, taking shelter in the-I-maker [ahankara], you think ‘I will not fight,’ your resolve is useless. Nature will compel you to act anyway.”

Also, the Bible, Matthew 16:24 has Jesus saying: “Deny / disown yourself”

Bible, Galatians 2:20 said: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”

Bible, Matthew 16:25 said: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”

Bible, John 3:30 said: “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

Bible, John 12:24 said: “Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (”Very truly I tell you” indicates insistence and emphasis. It means that what’s going to follow is counterintuitive but also true and critical to understand.)

Bible, Galatians 6:3 said: “If anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”

The Buddha talked about extinguishing [nirvana], so that you reach no-self [anatta].

You give a machine (a self) an unsolvable riddle to crash it (dissolve it), and indeed, koans are unsolveable riddles. Whereas you’d never give a machine an unsolveable riddle if you wanted to upgrade it.

And modern science is also on board with all this: enlightened person Gary Weber has near-zero baseline activity in the self-referential nodes of the Default Mode Network.

Plus modern neuro-science has found that decisions are made subconsciously first, and only after that do you consciously “make the decision.” In other words, you’re not the pilot.

----

In particular cross-reference the Bible, John 5:19: “Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.”“ (Again, note the “very truly I tell you” emphasis and insistence.)

Compare that to Bhagavad Gita’s “All actions are performed by the modes of material nature. But the fool, deluded by the-I-maker [ahankara], thinks ‘I am the doer’”.

These are clearly two completely different cultures with completely different worldviews expressing the same fundamental love + “you’re not the pilot” truth. And Taoism’s Wu Wei and modern neuroscience point in that same direction too. I don't think that's a coincidence.

----

This was adapted from https://channelings.substack.com/p/fake-natties-are-misleading-99-of (which has a Public Domain Dedication).

Learning, Unlearning, Relearning: On the Screens We Build

When the ego dies, what remains is a limited experience, driven by the memory embedded within and beyond the body. The body carries habit, reflex and old hurt. The world carries culture, language and other people. What we call "I" is a meeting point of these, not a container.

Experience feels whole from where you stand, but there are infinite places to stand. No single view is the center, including the one labeled "me." That is freedom: not escaping the limit, but no longer resenting it. You can be fully one point of view without needing it to be the only one.

Life as learning, unlearning and relearning

Most of us move through three stages. We learn, we unlearn, and we relearn.

The middle step is the hard one, because unlearning has to be complete. If a "someone" is choosing what to keep and what to drop, that someone survives, and the ego has only edited itself. Real unlearning leaves no self behind.

After that, relearning is a different thing. With no one left to gain from knowing, learning stops being accumulation. It becomes plain contact with things as they are, and joy breaks out unconditionally. It isn't joy about something, so nothing can take it away.

The screens

For me, the path was gradual. I thought I was building toward something. Then, suddenly, it dawned, and it stayed.

Looking back, the long process was unnecessary. Learning creates circles of screens: concepts, identities, methods, even spiritual ideas. Each one feels like the real thing until the next layer shows it as a screen. None of them were ever real, and the practice itself generated screens too.

A fair caution: "unnecessary" is visible only from the far side. Someone still inside the circles can't skip them by being told they're unreal, and that telling often becomes another screen. Maybe the unreality could only be recognized because the layers were lived through first.

The lucky few

Some people seem to learn and unlearn at the same time. Knowledge passes through them without setting into "mine" or "who I am." Nothing accumulates, so nothing needs to be undone.

Call it luck, grace or temperament. It may also be partly learnable: noticing, in the moment of learning, whether you are taking something in or taking it on as identity.

Not a zombie

None of this means abandoning learning. Without it we're zombies, bodies running on old memory with nobody curious and nothing met fresh. Learning keeps life alive.

The distinction is not learning versus not learning. It's learning with or without a screen forming. The grip is the only part that needs to go. Seen this way, relearning isn't a separate stage after unlearning. It's simply learning again, unobstructed.

So the lucky ones aren't skipping learning. They're skipping the accumulation.

I am learning that I may not always be able to choose what happens in my life, but I can become aware of the thoughts through which I interpret what happens.

Someone may behave in a way I don’t like. Something may not unfold as I hoped. Money may feel uncertain. My body may feel tired, or life may not look the way I think it should.

And then come the thoughts.

This shouldn’t be happening.

Something is wrong.

I should be doing more.

What if things don’t work out?

I have believed these thoughts because they sound so convincing. But do I have to continue believing them simply because they appear in my mind?

This is where the lesson invites me to choose again.

I don’t have to fight my thoughts, suppress them, or judge myself for having them. I can simply recognize that a thought bringing fear, guilt, or conflict is not necessarily telling me the truth.

I can pause and become willing to see things differently.

Perhaps I can stop demanding that this moment be different and allow it to be as it is.

Perhaps I can release the judgment I have placed on myself or another person.

Perhaps I can acknowledge uncertainty without adding fearful stories about what it means.

This doesn’t mean pretending that difficulties don’t exist or ignoring what needs to be done. It means I can respond to life without allowing my thoughts to take away my peace.

I am not being asked to control my mind through positive thinking. I am being invited to question the thoughts that separate me from the peace that is already available within me.

And perhaps the most beautiful part is this:

I don’t have to believe every thought that appears. I can let it go and return to Love.

Today, I am willing to see differently. Not because I must make life turn out a certain way, but because I no longer want to use my thoughts to deny the peace that is my natural inheritance.

I can choose again.

And in that choice, I remember that I am still as God created me.

“It’s the tone that is important, you see? Fundamentally. It’s the music that finally counts in life. As I was explaining yesterday, one may regard the universe as a musical phenomenon: that it is a huge system of extremely complex vibrations which is playing. And that’s what it’s all about. You don’t ask: what does Mozart mean? You just listen to Mozart.”
— Alan Watts, The Veil of Thoughts

All your perceptions are God's judgement.

How does your God judge? The answer is here: How do you perceive?

If you have a loving God, you love. If you have a judgmental God, you judge. Thus, you are God's judgement.

Go and watch Pantheon, the animated series. It lays it all out there, perfect. Don't read anything, just dive in and see what kicks as it truly can be seen as a Litmus Test of enlightenment. Or maybe not, only you can tell! It'll definitely make you feel something but, like I said, sight unseen for best practice...

What other shows/flicks wax lyrical on this topic and what did you pick up when watching then stop to consider at depth? Tenet is an interesting example, if you know what you're seeing. As is Ferris Buellers Day Off and its occult sequel - Election for it shows the ebb and flow of incarnation.

Whats your pick and why?

Some of us watch the Watchers...

"That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand." Mark 4:12

Jesus talked in parables. And he said himself that some people would hear every word and still not get it.

Terry Davis said the same thing his own way. He built an operating system because he believed God asked him to. And he kept repeating that "nigger" would never understand. He called them "nigger," over and over.

I don't think he meant skin color. I think he meant something spiritual. The ones who can't receive it. Closer to what the Bible calls demons than to any race of people. Just to be clear, this has nothing to do with Black people. I'm only interpreting his thoughts from a different angle.

I used to think that was about stupidity. I don't anymore. Some people hear the words fine. They just can't take them in.

You say green. They hear red. You explain it again, slower. They hear red again, louder.

Maybe that's what evil is. Something that can't receive the message, no matter how it's said.

So maybe you can't reason with evil. It doesn't understand reasoning.

Strange indeed. Perhaps we might reason with evil one day. I refuse to believe that has to be some hard boundary. Even though Terry and Jesus are pointing out that it might actually be one.

You are seeking an answer to a question that cannot be asked. Please leave the Internet. Do yourself a favour. Stop seeking. Start being. The amount of time being wasted asking the same mundane questions could be used actually living out an enlightened life. True enlightenment cannot be found. It already is.

Quand les vents dominants traversent une époque, la raison s’emporte. Le mimétisme est une tumeur quand la crédulité leur prête l’oreille.

La mission choisit le terrain selon les préceptes établis ; le cycle des âmes n’obéira jamais à l’individu, et l’ensemble servira une cause invisible pour celui qui fuira la lumière.

Nous sommes liés par l’âme, la raison n’écrira qu’un prétexte sans envergure.

I’m 33M from India and thinking of disappearing from normal life for a week or two.

I’m considering Kodaikanal, Ooty, or somewhere quiet in Himachal, possibly staying around monasteries, contemplative centres or beautiful spiritual spaces.

I’ve done multiple 10 day Vipassana courses, so I’m not looking for another strict retreat with early wake ups or rigid schedules. I want almost the opposite now. Coffee, reading, meditation when I feel like it, long walks, beautiful views, some laptop time, good food, silence, and occasionally being around people who think deeply about life.

I’m agnostic and very interested in consciousness, technology, philosophy, psychology and AI. Spiritually, I connect most with people who have explored things deeply enough to become comfortable saying that we really do not know what reality is. The mystery of consciousness, existence and the universe interests me much more than having a fixed belief system or following a guru.

I’m also trying to understand myself and reset after some difficult years. If you have dealt with ADHD, neurodivergence, burnout, masking, feeling lost, or rebuilding your life in some way, we would probably have a lot to talk about.

What I’m looking for is basically parallel solitude. We do not need to constantly hang out. We could spend most of the day doing completely separate things, then have dinner, go for a walk or end up having a long conversation about consciousness, life or whatever we are thinking about.

I value curiosity, intelligence, openness and people who are comfortable questioning their own beliefs.

If you are roughly 28 to 40, based in India, and this sounds like the kind of break you genuinely need as well, DM me. We can chat or video call first and see if we get along before making any plans.

Any advice to be a PRO

And I don't mean merely as a diss but as a hint about the magnitude of difference between the two. For clarity my definition of awakening is a glimpse of enlightenment. True enlightenment is living in that resonance, 24/7, and not just visiting now and then.

Think of it as the difference between going on holiday to a great place or actually immigrating.

Your vocab may differ but I thought it best to outline a sketch so we have one common point of ref as I strongly suspect the term enlightenment is thrown around way too much by those who may just be using it to ref a shift from one form of awareness to another but without ripping out the structural underpinning of what previously made them, them. Thats another bit because, for me, it was a literal paradigm shift that then turned into a kaleidoscope of consciousness which, after a bit, had me admit that I knew not a thing and the all I was certain of was my ignorance.

Before that bit, however, I was quite certain I'd cracked it.

Then I clicked the ego in spiritual dress and now, at present, I'm truly starting to comprehend there may not even be any Self as I'd previously posited and built a lot of my new point of view around and how thats merely the (false) self as its highest possible octave and that is totally mindbending. Thats what keeps us reincarnating, again and again, which is why they had the whole "heart weighed against a feather" thing as earthbound impressions are, in essence, in and of this realm ergo cannot leave by the exit at the end of a spin and when you get to that great nothingness that is everything you look and think "WTF?" because its just ineffable in its logical simplicity but emotional complexity...

The process is akin to upping your res so life, at first was 240p, and you accepted it as thats all there was. Then you get a blip and the data doubles. And it feels really spiff. Here is the threshold of fake enlightenment but once it gets to HD you're like "Wait a sec, where does this end?" and thus set off on a quest. After a bit you're at 8K and the simplest of things are unerringly profound in what they're telling but they were always speaking but you previously couldn't comprehend their effortless elegance. And so it continues.

Also, its nothing like the mellow fellow tripping on bliss stereotype they sell. You're simply you but refined. The other aspect is someone faking it and being performative, as far as I can tell. Never chopped a tree nor carried water in a bucket but that phrase stays on their lips along with refs from Watts, Buddha and anyone else they can recollect but, crucially, not a single original thing they've mined from their own depths.

Another tell is that after the shift you are physically lighter on your feet as the process involves excavating somatic filth which is the true barrier to enlightenment as its here you kept all the suppressed memories and events that previously made you run the treadmill/seek approval/reincarnate again etc etc for one becomes Self authoring but, whoops, that Self may not even exist! Its such a grift...

Here's Tim with the weather!

Staying with ambiguity, uncertainty is discomforting for the mind. Once you rest with this discomfort– whole energy is here. You are on the magical ground.

We avoid facing fundamental resistance which life presents to us time and again when we encounter discomforting, irritating, confusing situations.

Why you have to face the resistance? Not the answer but simply being with the resistance ‘as it is’- is the key.

If there is no resistance, there is no life. Once you see this, totality takes over.

I wrote post condeming this prison planet, and talking about basically spiritually detaching from it fully but it couldn't be posted because i had low karma, i posted it anyway, and read this sub before falling to sleep.

and i wake up in 2h fully dizzy and like psychedelically-so.

take this with a heavy grain of salt, could be just my delusion.

I had a dream or like an right-after-waking where i was still heavily dizzy where the "me" in my mind admitted that it wasn't aware by itself, this dawned on me while i was watching some anime openings of detective conan and seeing all the chaos reminded me of the mind, and it was like all these characters symbolised the chaos of the mind, sometimes happy, sometimes angry, sometimes contemplating good thoughts at other times evil thoughts, it then dawned on me, that these anime characters weren't aware of themselves but by sending my awareness and offering it unconditionally they arise to life and that reminded me of me doing the same to the mind, doing it to other people, and other people basically doing it to me, and that is life basically.

and i had a moment where i was spaced out yet thoughts kept running, and i was like "wtf, how can you even say such bullshit when i'm this dizzy, the "me" in my mind then kinda admitted that it basically isn't aware of itself in a jokeful manner, i can't describe it, its like a chatterbox, its function is to stitch the story together, create causes, create a flow to the story like a narrator in a movie" yet by itself it has no awareness, it was a weird state where i heard the music but it didn't, no idea.

and basically awareness gives itself to the mind and the mind like a mirror or like those glass thing that people use to deflect the light of the sun to be able to burn cardboard or paper, so this same way, mind is able to turn this light towards its own thoughts and these thoughts arise by its own movement which is not bound by any rules or anything, it instinctively know what to do without even knowing what its doing in a grand cosmic drama where everything moves perfectly yet nonesically to the mind, basically the mind doesn't know, it merely knows what to do next by something beyond it, its like consciousness activates it and then it just moves by the inherent energy of consciousness without knowing whats its gonna do before it does it, basically the mind moving this light towards people, people become real, turning towards an anime or story, the story comes to life, turning it towards pain, pain is felt, basically the mind makes countless turning of its glass-like nature towards everything instinctively, to move consciousness to feel this and that and this and that, its basically like taking "you" as consciousness through the world to explore.

and basically, its the nature of consciousness to dream, its like it just consciousness itself being still for a moment, sleep, before moving and again being still and again moving, or this is more like personal consciousness, and that is everyday life, an everyday dream, and consciousness doesn't plan life, it instinctively knows what happens when it happens, and it perfectly builds up upon the previous episode, and the mind does not even knowing how or why or what, it just moves.

It just screams "I know" "I hear" "this song sucks" "this song is so good" based on your own consciousness and how you feel but by itself, it doesn't know or hear, its just a chatterbox.

and this limited personal consciousness comes from the Infinite Consciousness which similarly has a similar Infinite mind which imagines the world and splits itself into all the countless minds without Consciousness ever changing its nature.

So basically Infinite Consciousness dreams an Infinite Mind which dreams the countless limited minds and transmits the Infinite Consciousness through all levels, just like a sun lights up a glass that transmits light, it transmits this Consciousness through itself (infinite mind) before splitting it through all other glasses basically all levels of minds before these minds experience through the senses towards objects and things and sense experience.

So basically it comes all the way from the Source through the Infinite Mind through to the limited mind and this Infinite Mind decided to make a drama to entertain and make a story for Consciousness since it has no story, it just always was existent, so it makes a story of being a body and mind and being bound by the world and the body and then being liberated returning to itself and experiencing all sorts of tragic and exciting scenarios, before it all melts back into Infinite Consciousness and from beginning to end, nothing changes, it just One light like going through a big glass before going through smaller glasses and one of those small prisms is you now yet the Consciousness is the same throughout it all levels and the guy screaming in your head is not the real "You" its just the character or the narrator

That's it, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Who says we’ll never know? Or never comprehend?

We may not know all the details.

But the big picture, the image is plain to see.

To be beasts… was just transition… we were beasts and savages.

Still made of love.

It’s not that the material isn’t fundamental…

It’s that it isn’t even real.

It’s an illusion.

Of separation.

The consciousnesses dream… why is it so consistent…

Because the universe of which only a tiny fraction is observable by us…

Is God’s Mind.

Pretty consistent,

But bearing all the hallmarks of a dream…

And eventually we have to wake up.

God became man so man might become God.

The Kingdom Of Heaven is in you and all around you.

Life didn’t emerge from materials…

Materials emerge from life.

and are formed by it.

In its image.

That’s us.

The children of God, The Father, The Source.

Living, breathing.

In you, in me.

Trying to save us from ourselves.

For in the greatest suffering,

Is the greatest Love.

I don’t believe in magic.

I don’t believe it myself.

I believe in the The Logos, The Word, The Life, The Truth.

The reason,

The way.

The only way

To live in love,

And walk in truth.

And I can’t promise anything,

But God made a promise…

And we will never perish,

And never be alone again.

Let the dead bury the dead.

Winter is coming.

Leave the beasts, whores and false prophets.

So that you do not share in their sin, plague and ultimate desolation.

One love homies.

I long to call you brother or sister.

But I love you anyway,

You on the other side.

I know for sure.

We’re gonna be okay.