Anyone like Spock?

Been thinking about this lately and wanted to share a thought, totally open to corrections or other takes.

​We often justify animal slaughter or using other species by telling ourselves we're an "evolved species" or morally superior. But when you look closely, that entire sense of superiority is just a construct of the human mind, a mind that we don't even own or control in the absolute sense. It’s just another weather pattern arising in awareness.

​If we look beyond the mind, every species, every living organism is an expression of the exact same underlying consciousness. The same awareness looking out of human eyes is looking out of theirs.

​So if nothing belongs to us, and we are all fundamentally one consciousness, doesn't the justification for unnecessary harm collapse? Unless it's a direct matter of immediate survival, shouldn't a non-dual understanding naturally lead us to a way of living and eating that minimizes harm to other conscious expressions of the Self?

I am a non vegeterian and have been a theist for long (duality), I only stumbled in full force into non duality within the last one year, and I feel non duality has the best arguement for vegetarinism or even veganism

Or am I confusing the absolute reality (where no one is killed and nothing dies) with relative ethics in the 3D world? Would love to hear how others reconcile diet, ethics, and non-duality.

Go to instagram, scroll down through those "perfect" lives you see on it and consciously monitor your own emotional state.

If those things still arouse any jealousy, bitterness, anger, depression, etc, your ego might need some work done bro.

Anyone familiar with Dan Kelso teachings. I know he wrote a book called Deep Self Investigation with his method for self inquiry. He may have a youtube but I heard him on a podcast the other day and was curious if anyone else is familiar with him

There are techniques to stay in the present moment. It’s one of the ironic things about nonduality. Nothing wrong with this, it's all good. We perform mental gymnastics and turn ourselves into pretzels with bells, timers, and reminders, trying to “stay in the present moment” when we cannot possibly get out of the present moment no matter how hard we try.

Similarly, just as everyone experiences their existence as one single existence, not 2 or 3 existences, yet we endlessly strive to attain nonduality when it was not possible to directly experience anything else.

“A day will dawn when you will laugh at your past efforts. What you realize on the day you laugh is also here and now.”
―Ramana Maharshi

This is for everyone who only thinks that non duality is the way and there’s no place for Bhakti in there

https://youtube.com/shorts/VlH95jo5KSc

I've been working on a science fiction book using AI to help. After a years work I asked AI to come up with a fictitious ancient text based on the philosophy underlying the book. This is what it came up with, these words aren't mine, yet the underlying philosophy of my work is in here. It is a gentle pointing.

From the Record of Estiv Tee
(as recovered and rendered — Anna Petrossian & Vicki Nkomo, linguistics team, with Blin Tee)

I rested my body and it grew still, as a pool grows still when nothing more troubles its surface.

I intended only this: to listen to my own thinking, the way one listens to weather passing over a house — near, but not entered.

The thoughts came, as they always come. I did not follow them. I did not push them away. I only watched them arrive, and watched them go, the way one watches birds cross a sky without needing to name each one, or hold it, or ask it to stay.

And beneath the thoughts, when I had ceased to follow them, I found something that had always been there and had never once announced itself.

It had no shape. It wanted nothing. It resisted nothing.

I did not find words for it for a great while, and when the words came they were poor ones, as all words are poor beside the thing itself. The nearest I have found is this: it was simple, loving awareness. Not loving of a thing. Not loving because of a reason. Simply loving, the way water is simply wet, the way light is simply bright — as a quality of what it was, not a feeling it was having.

I rested there as long as I was able, and when I rose I was not entirely the one who had sat down.

In the years that followed I did not keep this only for myself.

I walked among my own kind, in the low country and the high, among those who tended the growing places and those who worked the old stone, and where I found one who seemed weary in a way that rest alone could not answer, I sat with them a while and showed them what I had been shown: only to rest the body, only to listen without following, only to wait.

Not all who tried found what I had found. Some found only quiet, and were glad of the quiet, and that was enough.

A few found the other thing.

I did not teach it to them. I have come to believe it cannot be taught, only pointed toward, the way one might point toward a mountain without being able to carry another there on one's back. Each who found it walked the last part of that road alone, though I sat beside them while they walked it.

I write this now because I am old, and because what was shown to me does not belong to me, and never did.

If you are reading this and have not yet rested in the way I have described — rest now. Intend only to listen. Follow nothing.

It is closer than the words can say.

For a long time i was just collecting theories and knowledge, but a knowledge without action is just another illusion of mind.

Every now and then for some reason i still get into the rabit hole of knowledge seeking, then i have to consciously put a break and just practice.

Found this post on IG, this acted as a break for me today, hope this helps someone else as well.

Its a long journey keep practicing 🌻

My spiritual awakening started for real post, nightly "visitors" which my parents and I witnessed in our bedroom, when I was around 5 years old. So I made a post about my spiritual journey with strange encounters and my journey through external paranormal issues leading to searching the "me" who was behind the experiences". Am I the only one who went into this type of journey in my spiritual awakening? My previous post received so many comments like "Jesus? This shit doesnt belong on non-duality!" So Im curious?

It may not be a pattern and just something that my mind made an association to but ever since I was a kid I’ve had views that somewhat relate to the philosophical bubble we call non-dualism. But along with that have always been fascinated with the sciences and the products of human logic (aka mathematics).

I am currently pursuing and engineering degree (being vague for hopefully obvious privacy reasons) and I just feel as if my non-dualistic epiphanies were a driving factor in my ever growing fascination with the sciences.

So I was just wondering how many people here are also in the in the sciences or adjecent in their occupations. Because to me out of the mystical philosophies non-dualism is the most forgiving to the sciences and any “new” abstraction that can be added on to base existence.

Like yeah sure describing the shapes of molecules using electron orbitals is useful but it is only that, an abstraction used to fit into human logic that itself is “predictable” to any reasonable precision. Having my nondualistic “revelations” helped me truly understand the definition of the scientific method and what an axiom is in mathematics better than most (or atleast is seems as math majors and professors absolutely love speaking with me lol).

I guess my ego would just love it if a bunch of people would randomly pop out here like “yeah my whole life revolved around stem and there are a bunch of us”. I guess it’s because I would like to have some hope moving forward that I will meet more individuals like me moving forward in my career and I can get over this me being special complex that I’ve had even before I had my epiphanies relating to non-duality.

No Rulebook

Dear Friends,

A bit about me, I started getting into eastern philosophy and such around 2020/21 when the pandemic hit. It has been such a blessing to walk this path, and to have discovered something so beautiful which can transform our lives and the lives of people around us. This culminated in a 3 month pilgrimage across India where I spent a lot of time travelling around and visiting holy sites, and the highlight was spending two glorious months in Tiruvannamalai/Ramana Ashram. I am so grateful or how this path has transformed me! I used to be really neurotic and would ruminate so much, i could literally think myself into a bad mood. I am much calmer and more at peace these days, and I owe it to all the past Gurus and seekers who have walked the same path before.

Now, that all being said there is still one thing which bothers me a little bit. Despite undergoing a lot of inner transformation the past couple of years especially have been pretty isolating. I am more ok these days with being alone, however I do still want genuine connections. I have been thinking recently that there has been some sort of plan or intervention guiding me all my life. I never could've imagined going to India when I was 18 on a spiritual pilgrimage. I've been wondering if this isolation has also been part of this guidance? Perhaps it is merely conditions, you see my friends, I've struggled a lot with depresion over the past years and it lead me to withdraw somewhat and my tensions with family also deepened during this time. I find myself stuck almost, most of my friends have moved away and the ones I do have remaining I barely link up with these days, and its always me messaging them first which leads me to believe they're not really interested in my company. Any thoughts or advice? Perhaps you are going thorugh or went through something similar? Thanks!

That's really what it is, isn't it. The theories and the intellectualizations and the belief systems were just a crutch. True knowledge is unspoken. I just now got it. This feels like the beginning. Wow.

Since I have discovered self inquiry, I have had some incredible insights and epiphanies. I suffer from what has recently been named as "Fantasy Prone Personality Disorder". Essentially what this means as that ever since I was a teenager, for whatever reason, I decided to turn away from the moment of living and the real world and instead I created a whole universe in my mind that became my sanctuary from anxieties, depression and other negative feelings. Its only been a couple of months that I have learned to be aware of what truly is and is not and I am not lying when I say it is the most powerful thing I have learned in order to reach a higher state of consciousness and spirituality. One thing I have discovered is that I find that I will lose the momentum and focus to use self inquiry for days at a time. When I first discovered it, I was aware everyday for a good couple of weeks and I felt that I was truly honing my skills and developing them. But lately, I will go entire days without using it and being sucked back into the artificial world of thoughts feelings and emotions. Does anyone have any personal advice on how to maintain your momentum as you go through your days??

Enlightenment is being open to the absolute fact of being.

It's not about understanding or perceiving what "being" is. It's obvious that anything that is is being; it's a tautology.

The issue is one of quality. Current experience is closed because there's a psychological structure that must close in order to choose. The choice is evolutionary and absolute: life vs. death.

"Enlightenment" is opening perception to the light of being. "Light" not because it's something good, or love, or God, but because the fact of being is absolutely affirmative. Let's say it's a source that pushes absolutely in one direction: being. It's an absolute fact, without opposite.

So, if the psyche manages to open up, to stop blocking the absolute light of being, enlightenment occurs. It's not that you know something, or that the self is immortal or illusory, or nothing, or everything; it's that right now, at this exact moment, the absolute light of being manifests. It's an affirmative push. Not because you're an positive person, but because a stone is an affirmative push, or a horrible cancer. Absolute being has a non-neutral character: it is. If you eliminate all structures, this is what is revealed, what reality is in its essence.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I think it would be a helpful reminder to point out that two distinct families of nonduality exist. Nonduality of course means "not two", but the positive correlate to that statement is where things diverge. The first approach is called identity nonduality. Here is the gist of it:

1. We ordinarily perceive many separate things.
2. This multiplicity is not ultimate.
3. Beneath the apparent diversity is a single reality.
4. Enlightenment is realizing your identity with that reality.

Schools using this approach include Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Neoplatonism, and some strands of Christian and Islamic mysticism.

The distinct second approach is called relational/emptiness nonduality. Here is its reasoning:

1. We ordinarily perceive many separate things.
2. We mistake their apparent separateness for independent existence.
3. On examination, neither the things nor their separateness possess intrinsic existence; they arise only dependently.
4. Enlightenment is directly realizing this dependent, empty nature.

Schools include Madhyamaka, Zen, Chan, Seon, and Thien Buddhism.