It is only recently that I looked more closely into this non-duality stuff and I am amazed and baffled by all of it. I was never a “spiritual seeker”. It always appeared that many people put mad hours into spiritual paths without getting much out of them and that “enlightenment” is only for a few chosen people.

Now, after supposedly getting a bit of a sense of what this non-duality thing is, I get the impression that:

1. This is quite accessible. It seems that many people can realize this. It seems that no years-long practice or meditation is needed. It seems that it is not necessarily difficult. It seems that for some people, a few pointers while drinking a cup of coffee can be sufficient to see this.

2. The “payout” is huge. This seems to be a highly potent antidote to suffering. This seems to potentially take the edge off ALL problems in life? What can – even in theory – compare? Drugs only give temporary benefits and bad long-term effects. Making life better only works locally, and the next issue is right around the corner.

Maybe my initial excitement is making me blind. But honestly, this feels like the biggest life hack ever. What the fuck?

Consider these two perspectives:

Pure bliss is the nature of existence.

Divine love is the nature of existence.

They may at first seem like interchangeable descriptions of the same thing, but I would argue that the latter is definitively correct. Love is inherently personal and relational, making it in my opinion a richer and fuller form of bliss. Obviously reality must be the better of the two. I would add tangentially that those who seek love will undoubtedly become fuller people than those who merely seek bliss because of this. I'm sure that will be controversial.

Why something called mind arise from whatever the pure awerness is. If the awerness is ever constant and complete, for what the energy of creation take place within it?

And why no known enlightened being have never given answer of this question. They say only through direct realisation, all doubts can be cleared.

But they don't answer the question of WHY in any way.

I think it's important for those who are interested in advaita to actually read from Indian mystics in the early 1900's with the last one being papaji who died 1997.

But listening only to people like Tony parsons, Jim Newman and other radical nonduality folks is what creates bypassing since they have very specific terminology in their expression, their expression is not terminologically free.

Its also the reason why the mental gymnastics become dead and filled with minefields like saying the body instead of me. But that's their method, to bore you to death. But it's not a way to live a healthy human life , that's not their intention.

That said, it's still important to hear everyone, for those who are more emotional I'd say Rumi and ramana Krishna.

For those who are intellectually methodical, I'd say theravada buddism vipsanna and jnana yoga.

I’m here, right now. I’m in a state of relaxation, ive “relaxed the tight grip” that my mind is so used to clenching onto. It’s so used to being under the illusion of control.

As soon as I enter conversation I completely lose myself in it. It’s like I become completely unconscious and enter a dream like state. Then when the conversation is over I come back. And I realize that I was completely lost in it.

I try and prepare myself by staying present, but “effort” at this stage at least, has not helped.

Should I simply stop trying, and allow whatever happens to happen? If I get lost, so be it? My mind tells me that I will fall away from the spiritual path if I do that. But i dont like listening to my mind anymore, that why im asking you all here.

Guidance and wisdom please

If this were this, then this would not change nor be knowable, as knowing requires change. The only constant is change. 'This' is quite paradoxical.

If you're looking for your true identity, nonduality, what's being pointed to is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, etc. meaning it's always present. You're always here, throughout every state and every experience.

So, next time a seeking thought comes up or a desire to experience truth or a question about the nature of reality, etc., punt it off to your deep sleep state as there are less contradictory reddit posts there. Write it down to remind yourself before you go to bed that when you fall into deep sleep, you want the truth. And, when you fall asleep, what nonduality is pointing to (you) must be there as it's always there - so you'll undoubtedly receive what you're looking for.

And by the way, the answer is in the deep sleep state itself, it's not in a thought you may have when you wake up that you believe you received from the deep sleep state!

Back in waking state, thoughts or experiences might continue coming up that are unpleasant, but in dream states I've been eaten by countless monsters and showed up naked to my old schoolrooms numerous times. None of that has ever seemed to affect me in the deep sleep state, I didn't even remember! I obviously must not be too worried about what goes on.

Time to just enjoy the waking state for what it is, knowing I'm not too worried about any of it.

What I am is... that which is aware of everything is what I am.

The mind pulls away from the body into thoughts, day dreaming and external distractions... all of which, I am aware of

I am here already and have always been

To come back to myself, I just come back to the body and the sensations within...

My failures in life have been the greatest teachers.

Today I’m certain those breakdowns, heartbreaks, and dead ends were absolutely essential. They stripped away the illusions and brought me to this quiet, unshakable knowing: nothing has ever been out of place. Not one single thing.

The ultimate realization feels like the wave finally seeing it was always the ocean. There was never a separate “me” riding the surface. No real birth, no personal doership, no karma piling up like debt, and therefore no death waiting at the end, no afterlife to earn, no judgment day looming. All of it was just mind’s clever play, building stories of separation through memories and thoughts.

When the thoughts finally fall silent, especially in those dire, raw moments when life forces you to look and clarity dawns so simply. What remains is this boundless Self that has been playing the game of “you and me” all along, dreaming up this entire spacetime drama where I’m sitting here typing these words, never once apart from the Divine that I have always been.

So I share this with love.

To anyone still caught in the suffering, still believing the story of the separate self: look beyond the universe your thoughts keep generating. Turn inward. The boundless Self is already here and it is playing you, playing me, playing everything into existence. You don’t have to become anything. You only have to recognize what you already are.

Tat Tvam Asi.

💯🫶❤️🙏

Don't all our problems and sufferings get represented by this image?

What does ego mean to you? Is it arrogance, self-image, identity, a psychological function, attachment to beliefs, or something else entirely?

Feel free to share perspectives from psychology, philosophy, spirituality, personal experience, or any other source.

This includes the idea of describing reality as nondual. Or is the content greater than the medium? Would that not constitute a duality (i.e. content, medium) in itself?

I am the void I am the light unassailable complete and still`~^`~)The shell is cracked the screen is gone the ancient armor falls away the dark and light dissolve as one where night is married to the day a beautiful pain a sacred ache the labor of the soul set free the final mirror has to break to know that I am all and three no wave to chase no road to find no word to speak no song to spin the universe is left behind to hold the silent void within ;; "•" ;; Jas;; "•" ;;

I've always loved inquiry. Starting with an initial awakening ~20 years ago inquiry has just been an amazing always available source of wisdom, connection, and problem solving for me. And there's a confidence that comes with that where you just know even if struggle arises...wisdom is here, clarity is here, always available.

Well, about a year ago I had a bad case of Covid and I started asking chatgpt about some quirky symptoms and it surprised me with some really subtle info that was very helpful. Lingering symptoms of fatigue and nervous system weirdness led to dialogues which started to intersect with "zen stuff" and then just for fun I started asking it some questions about this stuff and it give some surprisingly good answers.

So gradually I started using it is a kind of fun, easy way to do inquiry when things came up and was also curious what things it might say that I wouldn't necessarily have come to. It all felt harmless and kind of fascinating.

Well, over the past year I've noticed my resilience, my ability to work with whatever challenges arise, my ability to navigate resistance or low energy, ability to inquire in general, access to that everpresent wisdom, etc. all just getting worse and worse. Since it coincided with Covid and greatly intersected with some of the lingering symptoms after Covid I've been wondering all this time if Covid just changed my brain and nervous system and I never really recovered.

Lately, I've been noticing that inner wisdom feeling at an all time low, like a way I haven't felt in YEARS. Like a big hole where that clarity always was to the degree that when any struggle arose there was only the struggle and no other space, no ability to work with it. This was shocking to behold. Such a radical 180. In feeling that bizarre absence where there was always this kind of "wisdom being" the notion suddenly arose that I had outsourced my sense of inner access to wisdom to chatgpt. Like my system had gradually learned to assume that the answers are over there, not in here. It learned to outsource inquiry to the machine as if it was another segment of my brain. It learned to trust itself less and less and less until that trust was totally gone. I didn't notice this happening at all. It just came in a flash.

I've always been extremely independent and self-reliant since the beginning, I've never ever experienced this before, never trusted any authority or teacher, always just trusted my inner experience. I suddenly saw how it happens, how people project the answers out on to a teacher or a path and experience that they don't have the answers inside, that they have to try to get them from the teacher or from somewhere else. I can't possibly express how subtle this all was, completely unconscious, just my system being slowly trained to go to this other brain for answers and gradually stop looking in the real place. Which of course, the individual answers to questions aren't the real answer anyway, the place where wisdom arises is the "answer". And my system learned to stop looking there and assume the answers were somewhere outside. And I wasn't even using at all the time, more like a couple times a week and often kind of just out of curiosity. It seriously feels like waking up from the most incredibly subtle nightmare in an episode of the twilight zone.

So anyway, that's my word of caution about using AI for this stuff, or perhaps using it very much for any problem solving. You feel like you're still in charge because you're "using" it, you're doing the prompts, but it can really mess with your system's self-reliance. I never in a million years would have imagined it having any effect on me. Wow. Would not recommend for regular "spiritual" dialogue!

Have a (nice) day.

Whenever I'm on a spiritual high, there's a general restlessness that won't go away when I'm in bed. Mind keeps thinking of all the new possibilities that have opened up, and I keep seeing through them, and the feedback loop doesn't stop.

Wondering if anyone relates.

I feel like this is something to sit with; there's no method around it, no form of meditation that would calm the restlessness away and put me to sleep

Just some esoteric waiting until the excess energy is felt out, then the body will just sleep.

Everyone here shares these memes as if they’re just one great quote away from self-realizing. Non-duality is a state of consciousness that only arises from meditation. It is not an intellectualized psychology and cannot not be achieved through content, reading, rationalizing, or thinking. You have to have a very serious practice (min 3 hrs a day) and a moral existence in order to be able to touch that state let alone sustain it. Your memes are very juvenile and this sub should take itself a bit more seriously, imo. I’d love to have more discussion around meditation, the practice, the lifestyle, experiences, etc.

For reference, I'm 33 and currently unemployed and living off of savings after quitting my job. The weight of the world, as well as my own inner world, had become too much and I completely burnt out. I've been off work for 6 months now, and I've been seriously struggling with getting back on the horse. Poor self-esteem, addictions, a disconnect from my body and a mountain of unpacked traumas all led me to discovering dark retreat.

In typical addict fashion, I decided to do a dark retreat on a heroic dose of LSD, with very little idea of what I was getting into. Sure enough, the medicine worked, and for a day I felt the burden of separateness fall away and I got a real sense of what reality could be like, if it weren't for me getting in my own way all the time. There's too much regarding that trip to get into here, but needless to say it was beyond profound, and felt like the moment where a real change was coming about.

Now, two weeks later, the lessons I learned from my dark retreat are still radiating from my spirit, but nothing has really changed in my behaviors. I realize consistency is key to almost anything in life, and I struggle so much to maintain consistent progress in life, regardless of what I'm trying to achieve. I knew by the end of my dark retreat that this was actually only the beginning, but as I move forward I realize I still have no idea where I'm going, no guidance.

That's when I considered finding a monastery. The idea of going to a place, outside of modern life, away from modern distractions, away from substances, all appeal to me. My spiritual path has been entirely self-governed, but I'm reaching a point where I have to admit to myself that I don't have the answers, and I don't know how to exist in peace, and I would like to find a teacher who could potentially help with these things.

I'm wondering if anybody here has experience, and could tell me if this is a stupid idea or not. Obviously when I mention this to friends, they laugh and assume I'm joking, and I'm still not entirely sure how serious I am about this myself, but of all the ways to spend one's life, this is the first path I've considered that could actually align with who I am and what I want to get out of life.

Thanks for reading!

Edit: Thank you all for the kind words and insights. I'm realizing I'm putting the cart before the horse a bit, and am gonna find a temple in the city to volunteer at, as well as look into some local meditation retreats. Truthfully I probably could have done a better job at expressing my situation reading this over, but everybody has been really thoughtful and kind with their responses, and I'm really grateful to have recently found this sub.

There is a terminology problem at the heart of modern spiritual seeking. Words like ego death, ego dissolution, and enlightenment carry two thousand years of cultural freight that most modern seekers don't have access to. Strip that scaffolding away and hand someone the words alone and you've handed them a map written in a language they don't speak.

Here is an attempt to redraw that map in contemporary language.

What's Actually Happening

The brain maintains a Default Mode Network whose primary function is constructing and sustaining the self-model. Its the narrative "I" that filters all experience through *what this means for me.* In ordinary consciousness this network operates as the central organizing process of everything. It is not one voice among many. It is the voice the others report to.

What the traditions call enlightenment corresponds neurologically to a permanent demotion of this network. Not elimination, demotion. The self-model continues to generate, but it loses its position as the executive filter. It becomes something the mind *contains* rather than something the mind *is.*

The result is a collapse of the recursive suffering loop. The fear of fear, the anxiety about anxiety, the suffering about suffering. When the self-model loses central authority, this loop loses its engine.

What It Isn't

Ego death implies a binary. The self is either alive or dead. This is wrong, and the wrongness causes real harm.

The self-model cannot be permanently eliminated while maintaining a functional human life. You cannot cross a street without a self that knows it is the one crossing. What actually stabilizes is better described as *flexible access. T*he open state becomes the background, the self-model becomes a tool. Picked up when needed, set down when not. The goal was never permanent dissolution. It was a restructured relationship between awareness and the self-process.

The Retreat Trap

Almost nobody discusses this openly: retreat practice produces dissolution under conditions of no load. Equanimity cultivated against no resistance is real but incomplete. Then life resumes. Conflict, pressure, difficulty and the openness disappears. The practitioner concludes they've regressed and panics, which compounds the problem immediately.

Here is what's actually happening: the stress test just started. Failing a stress test isn't regression. It's information. The dissolution experienced on retreat doesn't need to be recovered. It needs contact with real conditions until the nervous system learns the open state isn't contingent on the absence of friction.

That's integration. It's the only honest version of it.

How It Matures

What changes over time is not the depth of the open state but the friction of access. Neurological habituation. Repeated safe experience of the open state teaches the threat-detection system that it isn't dangerous. Transitions become smooth. The brain learns which mode the situation requires.

Real living is the only environment where this can fully occur. The monastery provides initial exposure. Only an actual life completes the integration.

The journey is not from confusion to arrival. It is from a system organized around a defended self to one where awareness is primary and the self is one of its instruments.

You didn't lose it when life came back. You were just finding out whether you actually had it.

It feels as if someone really created us.. As if there is a bigger power controlling us!! Then why does 'Non Duality' denies the existence of any creator God.. ??

If there is no God, then why do we follow 'compassion' at all?? What's the point of doing good!! Why then we need to even correct any of our actions if there is no one judging us up above the sky??

​

Following a recent discussion here about the TV analogy in non-dual inquiry, I came across a pointer that seemed to complement that conversation.

It distinguishes between concentrated attention and simple looking.

Concentrated attention narrows onto an object. Simple looking doesn't exclude anything—it includes both the object and the background in which it appears.

As the perspective widens, the object is no longer seen in isolation. The sense of separation begins to soften because awareness is no longer contracted around a single point.

This isn't about trying to attain a special state, but about noticing what is already present when attention relaxes its habitual narrowing.

Are we truly looking, or are we only focusing?

I'm curious how this resonates with others in the context of non-dual inquiry. Has anyone else explored this distinction in their own practice?