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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to take you through enlightenment guided inquiry it's going to be a guided visualization using the neti neti method from advised Vedanta which can be very effective at creating enlightenment experiences this is not a newbie introductory episode about enlightenment if you want that I have plenty of those go check those out on my website or my channel this here is for people who actually want to have an enlightenment experience and this is a very powerful method this method is called neti neti comes from Advaita Vedanta very old method what neti neti basically means it means not this not that it's sort of a process of elimination for getting towards enlightenment now on the other hand I should tell you if you are new to this concept of enlightenment maybe you do actually want to sit through and just do this right now without getting a lot of introductory information about it because in a sense the more conceptual knowledge and understanding you have about enlightenment the more difficult it is for these kinds of exercises to be effective it could be really effective for you just to come into this totally cold totally clueless and you might have an enlightened experience right now so set aside 30 or 40 minutes make sure you have time to do this visualization I'm going to take you through right this can be a very powerful method that you can use with me or you can learn it and use it by yourself I personally do this myself and it can get you some great results so what are we talking about here basically we want to discover what exactly it is that you are that's all enlightenment is it's the discovery of your true self what are you exactly the big problem here as you can already see is that you already know who you are at least you think you do but the situation is so bad and there's so much ignorance here that there's not even a possibility for you to consider that you might be something other than what you already know yourself to be it's not just a belief for you that you know who you are it's not just a feeling it's not just an emotion it's not just a conviction or a theory it's truth you know exactly who you are I'm talking to you right now I'm pointing to you right now that thing that's sitting there listening to me that creature that human being that you believe that you are the body and the mind and the brain and whatever else you might believe that you are that for you isn't just a belief that for you is a fact of reality in fact it's such a brute fact for you that it might be the most indubitable fact about reality that you have I could probably get you to doubt anything that you think you know about life and reality except the fact that you are this thing sitting there right there and yet that's exactly my mission so to speak is to get you to start to doubt that and to create some possibility that you could be other than what you thought you've been your entire life that's very difficult to do because it requires a degree of openness that most human beings cannot stomach and their imagination can't even fathom nevertheless that's we're going to attempt to do so I hope you can remain open-minded with me now notice that I'm not here trying to convince you of some belief system or some religious ideology or some physical cosmology or something like this I'm not really trying to get to change your beliefs what I'm trying to get you to do is I'm trying to get you to have a direct experience of your true nature and this is possible it's possible to have a direct experience so you believing me isn't what we're after and it's not going to help it's very important to understand this what you need to do is to actually hear my words read between the lines and have a direct experience of what I'm referring to because the words I'm using have no connection to the experience itself they're just guides they're just aids all right so be very wise here and read between the lines of what I'm saying if you're open to that then let's begin let's just for the sake of shits and giggles let's do a thought experiment you like thought experiments just take the rest of this episode than the rest of the next half-hour the next hour and just let's play around let's play around with your mind let's play around with your beliefs right so what I want you to do is I want you to just kind of to set aside some of the firm beliefs that you have about how life works how reality is just set those aside I'm not saying you have to forget about them forever I know you hold them very precious and dear I know you think they're so true and right that you can't let them go even for a minute but you know what it won't kill you just let them go set them aside for like 60 to 30 minutes it won't kill you I promise unless you do a thought experiment I want you to open your mind to the radical possibility that you are not a body or a mind or a brain that you are not an object that you are not a thing that you are not a soul that you are not a spirit or any other thing that really you might imagine yourself to be open your mind to the possibility that you are not your DNA and that you are not the neurons in your brain and that you are not chemical electrical signals firing through the brain or are your software in the brain none of this stuff open your mind to the possibility like really that you are none of these things not only that but open your mind to the possibility that you are not an experience at all you're not an experience you're not a thought you're not a feeling you're not an emotion you're not a belief and you're not an intuition and you're not a sense now what does this leave us with doesn't leave us with much because when I say experience the way I define experience is everything I mean everything that's ever happened to you in your entire life from the moment you were born through till today all the decades that have passed everything that's ever happened to you all those things we might call those experiences there were sights and sounds and tastes and feelings and emotions and memories and beliefs and ideas all this kind of stuff right I'm calling all of that experience so what I'm asking you to do is to open your mind to the radical possibility that you are not in experience and I'm being serious here I'm not around can you do that can you just open your mind for even just a minute to the possibility that you are not an experience and therefore that you are not an object because a knob is an experience you experience objects you're not a body or a brain or a mind because those are all experiences and you're not a soul because that's also an experience whatever you call soul this is the hardest part of enlightenment work is just getting to this stage right here where I'm trying to get you to I'm kind of belaboring the point but don't mistake how important this is I wouldn't just belabor it for no reason I want you to actually consider that anything you've experienced in your entire life is not actually what you are I don't want you to believe that I just want you to be open to the possibility that that might be the case there's a difference I'm actually going to guide you through a visualization here which will demonstrate this to you so you don't need to believe it but you do need to be open to it because if your mind is closed to it then we can't go anywhere you see your mind is already made up and then this whole conversation is useless seriously you are not an experience or an object or anything you've ever felt in your entire life if you can open your mind to that possibility then now we can begin the search this is where inquiry begins there's no inquiry until you get to this point it's very important that you grasp that inquiry is not what you do beforehand is what you do after you've gotten to this point so I hope you're ready and let's begin the guided visualization this will take 30 to 40 minutes so set aside the time make sure that you have some time and room to relax and to be with me here fully present go ahead and relax your body and breathe in some nice deep breaths as you get present and really focused on every word that I'm saying you can go ahead and close your eyes and just sit there comfortably alert and take a couple of nice deep breaths in with me good as you're focusing on your breathing with your eyes closed go ahead and just notice your whole body relaxing and all the tension melting away and then your breathing just let it be natural don't try to manipulate or control it and just sit there very comfortably and just listen to me talking to you I'm going to explain some things and I'm going to start to guide you through some of the things that I want you to experience for yourself keep your mind open very very open but also be grounded in what's going on directly in your experience because I'm not going to ask you just to believe things but to experience them what we want to do what we're really interested in here is answering the question what exactly are you and where exactly are you located if you are a thing what thing exactly are you if you turn out to be an experience what experience exactly are you and where is this thing or this experience located exactly now this might seem obvious might be so obvious that you've never questioned it in your entire life but what I want you to do is I want you to actually look with me from scratch at this issue don't take anything for granted here be very mindful of any assumptions you might have even assumptions that you've never been cognizant of before in your entire life I want you to question every single assumption about yourself and your existence that you've ever taken for granted even including the possibility that you exist or that you exist as a thing or that you exist as an experience let's not take anything for granted here we're actually going to look and we're going to see what is actually literally true and we're going to be very exact and very precise and very literal with the way that we look and observe our experience to see what's true we're not going to let our mind escape and be wishy-washy or vague because this is an important question right is it important to know what you are have you ever noticed that everything in your awareness changes think about this think to the very beginning of your life and just kind of scan through your life from the earliest memories you have when you were a child three or four or five years old or however old you were and think through all the stuff that happened to you as a kid as a teenager and then as an adult and all the way to the present day now what you immediately notice is that every thing in your experience has changed hasn't it notice what happened during the course of your whole life really all that happened was experience we're going to call everything that happened to you and experience there were sights there were sounds tastes and smells feelings physical touches differences in temperature there were all sorts of thoughts and ideas and beliefs and imaginations there was an internal dialogue in your head all of this recalling experience but I want you to notice that all of it has changed nothing has stay constant has it we're going to take a much deeper look into this so don't just believe me on it but be open to the possibility and it certainly seems reasonable that everything has changed even your body has changed what your body is now is not what it was when you were six years old or when you were ten years old or when you were fifteen years old very different all the cells in your body just from science we know all the cells in your body have changed too so that's interesting it's interesting that all these things have changed and yet we think that were a thing and we think that we know who we are also notice that all your beliefs and I mean not all your beliefs but many of your beliefs have changed the things you know have changed your knowledge has changed drat drastically over the decades so just notice that now what I want to suggest to you and we're just going to kind of take us as a premise it could be wrong but we'll just take it as a premise is that the following list of things is all that you've ever had a reality sight sound taste smell touch or feeling and thought that's it your entire reality from the moment you were born till today has been composed of only those six things basically in various combinations and of course in a lot of complex ways they were changing but this is basically the six channels that you're dealing with as a human being and all this returning experience now what we're going to do is we're going to go through and check each of these channels of experience and we're going to see do you exist in any one of these channels so let's take first a channel called sight and the question is are you a sight are you a visual experience so by visual experience I basically mean colors and shapes that's all that site is composed of colors and shapes nothing else so right now if your eyes have been closed this whole time what I want you to do is I want you just to put your awareness on the fact that you only see darkness because your eyes are closed and what I want you to do now is I want you to open your eyes so go ahead and open them and look around you now what you have is you see colors and you see shapes doesn't matter what they are you could be looking at what we would call your body or other physical objects in the room around you and all that's fine so now notice that you have all these colors and now go ahead and close your eyes again and notice that every single color has changed if you you can open your eyes again and notice that again it wit from darkness again to colors all sorts of different colors and shapes and go ahead and close your eyes again and notice that all the colors and shapes have all completely changed not one of them has stayed the same and have all turned to some kind of dark color maybe a reddish tint color if you're looking at some lights with your eyes lids closed and that all the shapes are gone too so what does this tell us it tells us that you cannot be a sight why because sites change all the time you change site just by blinking your eyes you change site so by definition you can't be a color or a shape because they're always in flux you see and what she wore is you are a constant notice that basically from the moment you were born and you were conscious to the moment you are now the the constant there was you so experience was changing but there was a constant the constant is you so we're looking for what that constant is right so what we've discovered here is that the constant is not colors or shapes now that's pretty interesting because notice that your body when you look at yourself in the mirror you tend to think of like well I am my body but let's be very clear about that you can't be the color of your body and you can't be the shape of your body or any other visual aspect of your body because it can change not only that but of course your body the way it looks has to completely change from when you were 6 years old to where you are now all of it has changed so that can't be fundamentally what you are you see good let's go onto the next channel which is sound maybe what you are is a sound instead let's take a look are you a sound the sound channel is pretty easy to deal with because most people don't really think there a sound seems rather silly you don't really believe you're a sound but let's just take a look and again put your attention on the fact that sounds are constantly changing the sound is I'm talking to you right now every single second I'm saying new sounds and these sounds are changing and whatever sounds you experienced today are different from the sounds you experienced yesterday and different from the sounds you experienced ten years ago has there been a constant sound from the moment you were conscious at birth to today take a look what you should discover is no there hasn't been sound always changes so just by very simple logic we can say that you can't be a sound because we could put you in a totally soundproof chamber and you would still exist right you don't believe you would die if your ears were blocked with wax or if you were born deaf you're not dead you're still alive you're still you basically so you can't be a sound now let's check the channel of taste this one's pretty easy because human beings have a very poor sense of taste compared to sound insight but let's take a look for sake comprehensiveness notice right now that whatever taste you have in your mouth you don't actually believe that that's you do you not only that but notice that that taste has changed it's always different the taste in your mouth is different after you brush your teeth after you've drank some coffee after you've kissed your spouse after you chew some gum every single day your taste changes so you can't actually literally be a taste can you most people don't really believe their tastes anyways that's kind of silly so we're done with that channel let's move on to smell the channel of smell are you a smell human beings have an even poorer sense of smell than taste mostly so this one's also easy to deal with but let's take a look whatever you're smelling right now is that you literally is the smell you of course most people would say no that's rather silly how could I be a smell but just to be very comprehensive also notice that whatever smell you have now is not the smell you had yesterday or the day before or 10 years ago or when you were born smells are always changing there's really no such thing as a constant smell so what you are cannot be a smell because what you are is constant and a smell is never constant okay let's move on to the next channel which is touch are you a touch now this one's a little trickier so we're going to break it up into first let's consider outer touch what I'm going to call outer touch these are all the touches that sort of take place outside your body so if you put your hand on a cold can of Coca Cola or if you put your hand near a fire those are like sensations you feel outside your body on the surface of your skin is what we're calling outer touch are you an outer touch are you a pressure on your skin so like the feeling of being cut by a knife or poked by a needle or if you're sitting on your chair or on your sofa right now then there's some sensation on your butt from the cushion that's pressure on you kind of from the outside are you any one of those sensations take a close look notice that you are not any one of those sensations what we would say is that you are experiencing those sensations but those sensations are not actually you right moreover notice again that these sensations are very fluid and changing they're changing almost every minute there is no one single constant sensation that has been impinging on you from the outside your entire life that you could possibly identify with there's no pressure there's no hot or cold there's no sharpness there's no any kind of outer pressure or outer touch so that means that you can't possibly be an outer touch good now let's consider the other component of touch which is what I'm going to call inner feeling inner feeling is all the feelings you have inside your body these can be pains or it could be a warm sensation or a cold sensation could be a internal pressure could be the feeling of your heart or your lungs or a tingly sensation behind your eyes or in your head or in your skull like maybe a headache or even the feeling of solidity inside your body all of these feelings either inner feelings and also will include into this emotions so when you feel angry or sad or happy or sexually excited all of these are internal feelings so now let's take a real close look at this one are you an internal feeling this is probably the trickiest one of also look very very carefully if you have a tendency to say that yes I am an internal feeling that's what I am and then what I want you to do is I want you to identify very specifically which internal feeling are you exactly are you the feeling in your chest are you the feeling behind the back of your eyes in your skull are you literally that feeling is that what you actually are look at this very open-mindedly without any biases or preconceptions what you should notice is that you're actually not an inner feeling what we would say is that you feel an inner feeling an inner feeling happens to you but you are not literally it and also notice that inner feelings also change very frequently and often you're not conscious at all of what inner feelings are happening inside of you right now you've become conscious of inner feelings because I've focused your attention on that but chances are when you are sitting there and I was talking about other stuff you were not connected to your inner feelings very much at all if you do believe that you are an inner feeling take a look and notice has there ever been a moment in your life where that inner feeling didn't exist or you weren't conscious of it because remember if we're saying that you're an inner feeling that means that inner feeling must have been constant from the moment of your birth up till today because that's literally what you are if that inner feeling ever stops existing you stop existing that's what it would mean for you to say that you are and inner feeling so take a look really carefully are you an inner feeling if you look carefully you should conclude that you're not because your inner feelings are always changing even sensations that for example in your chest or behind the back of your eyes these sensations which you might identify with they're still always changing they're not constant they're animated they have degrees of severity and so forth and sometimes they're totally absent for example when you're asleep good now let's consider the final channel which is thoughts are you a thought let's break this down to several components first let's consider your internal dialogue and what we might call your internal voice the way that you usually talk to yourself are you the internal voice take a look now the internal voice is something that we identify with usually automatically without even thinking about it much the inner voice feels like it's me but I want you just to look at this very objectively and just with very simple logic if you believe that you are the inner voice and that really feels like that's what you are that means that if the inner voice ever stopped speaking you would disappear that also means that the inner voice had to have been constantly speaking from the moment you were born up till today without ever stopping so are you the inner voice or are you the one who hears the inner voice notice the difference you probably want to say that no I'm the one who hears the inner voice I'm not literally the inner voice because the inner voice is not constant there are gaps between the inner voice you don't even have to be a very good meditator to be aware of that so you can't be the inner voice can you let's consider inner images notice that what you have many of your thoughts are visual thoughts you can picture an apple a car a tree a house a person your mom your dad your spouse you can picture all these things with your eyes closed these are all internal images you can also picture yourself you can picture your face with your eyes closed you can picture the back of your head with your eyes closed you can picture the silhouette of your body as though it was filmed by a camera from behind you with your eyes closed you can picture your arms and your your feet even though you can't see them you can picture very many things now the question is are you a picture is that what you literally are let's take a look really carefully and if you're going to say that yes I am a picture then I want you to be very clear and precise about which picture it is that you are notice that pictures are constantly changing in your mind so which picture are you are you the picture of your face is that what you are what if your face got disfigured and how it looked has changed would that change who you are most people would say no are you the picture of the outline of your body you might at first be tempted to say yes I am but then notice that if you lost an arm or a leg and it got amputated the picture in your mind would have to change and yet we would still say that you're basically you and that nothing really about you has changed you just lost an arm or leg also notice that if you do identify with any image at all that means that that image has to have been constantly displayed in your mind from the moment you were born up till today without any interruptions do you find such an image in your mind or is every image in your mind changing all the time like every five seconds if you're like the average person if you're like me every five seconds you have new images in your mind right picture a purple elephant with polka dots see now you have that image in your mind and whatever you're thinking before you've stopped probably thinking about so notice that you're not an image in your mind that doesn't make very much sense and the final thing let's consider is the I fought what I'm going to call the I thought the thought in your mind that says this is me this is me here I am I I am here I exist so put your awareness on that aspect of your mind right now the I thought and take a look and ask yourself are you the I thought now it seems like we're getting somewhere now it seems like we're really going deep we've gone through all the clutter and now we've gone to the very core of who you are you're this I thought right but wait a minute notice that this I thought if you believe you are the I thought that the I thought isn't constantly present there are many moments in your day where you have no thoughts about yourself where there is no I thought where there is no internal dialogue most obviously when you're asleep but also when you're tired or even when you're talking someone or you're playing a video game or you're watching a movie you're not thinking about yourself there is no I thought so if what you actually literally are is an I thought that I thought would have to have been constantly active from the moment you were born until today and that's clearly not the case the I thought is not even active for 24 hours let alone four decades at a time so now it gets a little tricky because we're starting to run out of things that you could be what is left we've eliminated sights sounds smells tastes touches feelings internal external ones we've eliminated all sorts of thoughts and internal dialogue what is left you might say well leo what I am is I'm the body I'm the entire collection of all of these things but notice that what the body is what you're calling the body in this case is just either a feeling or a thought an image in your mind or a combination of these occurring simultaneously and notice that this combination that you're calling the body isn't constantly active you might also say well Leo maybe I'm not the body maybe what I am is I just have this vague sense that I exist I'm not quite sure what I am but I just have this intuition I'm a very intuitive person and intuitively I just know that I'm I'm a soul I'm sort of consciousness I'm here I'm present I'm aware I'm this living entity I have sentient I have this intuition so I'm this intuitive thing but notice that whatever you call intuition very carefully examine what that is be very clear about it what you'll notice is that an intuition is just a feeling in your body or it's a thought or both also notice that this intuition is also not constantly active so this intuition cannot be you now you might say well Leo what I am maybe is not an intuition but I'm just I'm there behind the scenes you know all this stuff is happening to me but I'm just there behind the scene somewhere I'm not really sure what I am I'm just behind the scenes I just know I am okay well what I want you to notice is that sense that you are behind the scenes that what that actually literally is is a thought or a feeling if there were no thoughts or feelings there would be no sense of you behind the scenes so we've run out of room we've run out of channels notice that as much as you look as hard as you look and you could sit there and I could give you 10 days of straight sitting and looking you cannot find what I'm going to call the source self what you fundamentally believe that you are is not a body or a mind or a brain or some neurons or a feeling or an intuition or a thought or any of this kind of stuff what you fundamentally believe you are is that you're the perceiver the experiencer of all of these experiences or perceptions right does not feel right that what you are is you're the perceiver but notice that this perceiver no matter how much we look and we try to pinpoint where is this perceiver you can't actually find it this is what we're calling the source self is this perceiver what we say is we say I am experiencing the body I am experiencing the I thought I am having an intuition right because I is the perceiver that's perceiving all of experience notice though that this perceiver or source self is itself not an experience now that's very odd because on the one hand you feel like you've experienced all this stuff in life and all you have of life is experienced there is nothing else to life but experience so become conscious of that but also now become conscious of the fact that you are not an experience what you are physically metaphysically existentially is not an experience and cannot be an experience because every single experience you've ever had in your life has changed and will change and changes on a moment-to-moment basis so the question is what actually are you because right now you've been following with me what you are is a question mark I mean we could say that you're a perceiver but what this perceiver is we have no clue or where it is we don't even know where it's located you might say well it's located in my skull obviously or maybe in my chest or in my throat or somewhere in the body but that's not how how can you be sure you haven't even figured out what it is and you certainly have it located it because if you located it you could tell me what it is and if you do happen to locate something and you say well leo that's it well what you're pointing at is another experience you don't actually believe you're that thing you believe you're the perceiver of that thing so notice that this is a very slippery game that we play is that whatever we point to by definition cannot be us because it's an experience and we're not an experience more than one perceiving the experience your mind should be opening up now to a very interesting possibility and this possibility is that it's never really occurred to you to question what you are existentially before in your entire life you've just kind of assumed that you're there and that you exist and that you are something tangible and very real and yet when you actually look into the matter as hard as you try and you can try for hundreds of hours you will discover that you cannot find yourself so could it be that what you are is something very different than you assumed let's examine some of your core assumptions core assumption number one is that you exist it's almost unthinkable to question this assumption because well here you are holding the assumption so obviously you exist right well let's just be very open minded and just take this as an assumption so assumption number one is that you exist assumption number two is that you are an object or a thing that can be found that can be located that has a shape and assumption number three is that you are located in space right you assume that you're located somewhere you're not without location so those are three core assumptions you hold now my question to you if you're very open-minded could any of these assumptions be wrong how can you be sure that these assumptions are all true now you might say well leo these are some very very basic self-evident assumptions they can't be otherwise but I want you to consider very carefully that we're looking into the very nature of your existence we're looking to something very very existentially in a very fundamental basic way we're looking at the very basic building blocks of life so your assumptions about what could or couldn't be true be careful about that because those are based on everyday normal experience they are not based upon deep existential investigation and also notice that you have no frame of reference in this investigation because what we're calling you yourself what you are it's not like you've been a hundred different human beings so you have no frame of reference because you have no experience you've never been someone else have you you've only been yourself so we're dealing with one example the only example so we can't really know what's probable or improbable what's realistic or what's far-fetched because we only have one example and we can't compare it to anything else and what you are is not comparable to a chair or a car or a tree or a planet or a galaxy or a molecule or anything else like that because those are all again experiences what you are is a very different thing so could it be that your very nature is radically different from ordinary everyday objects and could it be the sum of these assumptions you hold that you are an object that you're located in space and even that you exist that some of these assumptions are groundless and just assumptions made carelessly without careful investigation into whether they are true or not what want you to consider is the possibility that you've been misled from birth that you were born and people starting with your parents started pointing at you and saying that's you the body the brain the mind this is you and you went through school and you went to college and you interact with all your friends and everyone assumed this from the very beginning but all this was a mistake you've been misled by people who were themselves misled and never took the time to look very carefully into who they were they just assumed that they were a body a mind and a brain this isn't so far-fetched because after all you do acknowledge that indoctrination is possible especially with young human beings you know that if we take a child and we indoctrinate this child from the very moment he is born and we tell him some religious ideology or some political philosophy that this child without knowing any better if he grows up in Vaught in that environment he will believe unquestionably whatever he's been taught and that will get program and sort of imprinted into his mind and it'll be very difficult for him to see the world in any other way so now what I want you to do as part of this visualization is I want you to actually imagine that this child is you and that when you were born and growing up and all the way up to today you have been indoctrinated not in a malicious way but in an unconscious way with a ideology that what you are is an object a body a mind and a brain and that actually this is not true just open your mind to that possibility remember this is just a thought experiment I'm not telling you to believe me I'm not saying this is absolutely true I'm just saying just imagine it for the next few minutes as a thought experiment and now again look very closely keep your eyes still closed look very closely inside yourself and try to find what we're calling the source self the perceiver of all your experiences try to find you notice that anything that you grasp on to as you isn't you notice how the mind scrambles and tries to cling to one thing after another thing after another thing but that nothing that it clings to is actually you it's like sand that slips through your fingers and now here's the critical step of this entire inquiry process make sure you do this right here again look for the source self really try to pinpoint what you are what are you physically existentially metaphysically like really no nonsense no hocus pocus no philosophy no religious just what argue right now in your direct experience find yourself notice again that you failed you fail to find yourself now here's the kicker listen very close right in the moment of failing to find yourself what I want you to notice is that actually you're not failing when you're grasping and it feels like you're grasping at empty air and that nothing you grasp is actually you and that what you are is intangible notice that happening right now for you and it feels like you're failing to grasp on your still you're looking you're looking for an object to grasp onto what I want you to notice is that actually you're not failing you found yourself what you are is you are this empty nothing that you're grasping inside of but you're telling yourself that can't be me I have to be a thing and I what I to open your mind to is to the possibility that you are purely nothing you exist but you exist as nothing and that there is no content or experience that is you and that it will never ever be found because what you are is you are nothing you are it that is you that is real that is as real as real gets and that this nothingness it exists and not only does it exist but it is also self-aware it is an inherently self-aware nothingness now notice that whatever image you might have or opinion or idea you might have of this nothing as that is not nothing else that's not what I'm talking about what I'm telling you is to be actually become that which you have been failing to find become it you are it there's really nothing for you to do here because you are it you've always been it it's the only one constant that's existed from the moment you were born to today in fact it's existed before you were even born nothing is not darkness or blackness don't confuse nothing with that this nothing is not also your idea of nothing or an experience of nothing remember that anything you experience is not nothing what I'm talking about here is actual honest-to-god nothing it is not an experience you cannot grasp it with your mind you could not think about it cognitively this nothing is not an object it is not a thing it is not located in any space it has no Cartesian coordinates it is not big it is not small it is not tall it is not short it is not wide it is not thin it is not solid it is not empty it has no color it has no shape it has no smell no taste no anything this nothing instead of being located it is an infinite field so try to be no don't just imagine actually become the infinite nothing field that you are this field is self-aware all experience occurs within this field the field itself is not an experience experience is what occurs inside the field and this is actually are physically metaphysically and existentially this is what you are you are a self-aware field of nothingness that stretches out to infinity and has no end and no beginning and no boundary and is absolutely constant bask in that let whatever you're experiencing be okay don't try to force anything or change anything just be open to whatever comes to you even if what comes to you is not something that you want or expected don't try to fake the experience of nothingness either it came to you or it didn't let either way be okay good now go ahead and open your eyes and that's the end of the guided visualization but I still have a few things that I want to tell to you so don't and the episode yet two things happen here either you did have a direct experience of nothingness or you didn't now if you didn't have a direct experience of nothingness don't worry it's fine most people will not have a direct experience of nothingness from doing this just once I have done way over a thousand hours of this type of work and only once out of those let's say thousand hours I don't even know how many hours I've lost track only once have I had a direct experience so it can be a rare thing and it can take a lot of work to just get to the point where you can open your mind up sufficiently or you can even be open to this experience the problem is that most people mines are way too closed to even get close to having this experience now I'm using the word experience because there's no other word that we have in the English language so I'm calling it an experience even though it's not really an experience now if you did have some kind of direct experience of this nothing of what you actually are then congratulations don't freak out it's normal to be scared when you have this experience for the first time in your life it's a very radical experience because you've never experienced yourself in your entire life until now that's a huge accomplishment congratulations it can be scary because this nothingness is very radically different for what you believed you were and you've been very very misled for the entirety of your life it's like you've awoken for the first time in your life it's a life transforming experience don't freak out it's not a negative experience very positive experience but it can seem negative from the egos point of view because it's very threatening to your old way of looking at the world take the time to clarify what you experience here if you did experience something actually clarify this nothingness what is it is it really you take a time to look at it write it down if you need to if you had something important occur for you because the clarification of it really helps for you to solidify in your own mind what this thing was it's a very mysterious and paradoxical thing if you didn't have an experience like most of you probably didn't then just keep noticing that if you look and you try to locate yourself you actually can't you can't find yourself there's a reason for that it's because you're not an object and you're not located in space keep questioning why you assume that you are an object why would you assume that is that just something you heard from your parents from your teachers is that just something that seems reasonable to you seems intuitive to you is that something that just science told you will just keep in mind that all these people they may not know who they are either so the things they tell you and the assumptions you pick up from our culture could be very flawed assumptions after all if you were born 2,000 years ago chances are you had the assumption that the earth is flat so our culture dramatically influences our assumptions about reality and don't think that just because we're living in a modern scientific era full of technology that we are immune to wrong assumptions about the core existential nature of reality that is something that as a culture and even as science we still haven't conquered we have a long way to go before we conquer that as a collective culture that's why it takes an extremely radically open mind what I'm claiming though is that this practice here is a very profound practice you can do this by yourself you can re-watch this episode many many times you can listen to it I encourage you to do it hundreds thousands of times until you break through and discover empirically that you are nothing because this is not a theory of mine this is not something I just concocted sitting there in my room like Oh what kind of interesting metaphysical mumbo-jumbo could I come up to just tell people that they could believe that's not what I'm doing here I'm claiming this is an empirical discovery that you can make if you are open-minded enough that's really all it takes is just radical open-mindedness and then just persistence with looking looking looking looking looking looking looking and not giving way to distraction this nothingness that you are is the most profound thing that you can discover in all of life this nothingness is eternal which means that it exists outside of time and space time and space are conceptual constructs that occur within this nothingness these are very radical ideas they're more than ideas they're actually realities but the danger is that you take them as ideas and beliefs and as soon as you do you're nowhere you're back in the delusion of your mind this nothingness is eternal and it's also self-aware so this nothingness don't confuse it with some existential bleak depressing nothingness this nothingness is the most divine beautiful Oh inspiring miraculous thing that you can discover it's not a thing but we have no words in the English language or not a thing other than nothingness you see ours it's self-aware but it's not a human being it's not a molecule it's not an atom it's not matter it's not energy it's not spirit or soul what you might call I mean you could call it that but that just really gets you lost in labels and ideas that aren't very helpful this is the neti neti method old old old ancient method all you're doing is you're just sitting you're trying to find what you actually are and you keep failing over and over and over and over and over again and you're going to fail tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of times until your brain can't take it anymore it becomes too painful and finally what happens that there is a surrender and you surrender to the fact that the thing you are not finding is actually you you can't find it because you assume that you're something and what you are is nothing so it's like you're looking for a needle in the haystack and the needle turns out to be the air the empty air that is between the the haystack but that can take a lot of work to crack that nut can take a lot of work to crack so I encourage you to keep at it keep your faith keep going for it remember this is not a belief system this is an empirical discovery that anyone can make including you all right that's it I'm signing off go ahead post me your comments down below please click the like button for me so that this episode is seen by more people share it with a friend if you will and lastly come check out actualizado right here this is my website of a free newsletter my newsletter is designed to keep you on track with self-actualization self-actualization work is all source of self-improvement work how do you create a really powerful excellent life that you can be really proud of but also then it starts to bleed into self transcendence work which is what we're doing here how do you transcend the self so that your life is not just about luxurious greatness and riches and wealth and success but that your life becomes something much more profound your life becomes divine your life becomes literally awesome not awesome in the vulgar sense I mean awesome in the religious sense in the spiritual sense this nothingness is where the word awesome comes from if you ever even glance upon this nothingness if you have that privilege in your life and you do the work to get it then you will know what the word awesome means and until then stay tuned keep watching more every single week new stuff is coming out you're going to get deeper and deeper insights for me for how to master your life from the most mundane levels to the most divine levels and I'm really excited to to bridge the gap between the mundane and the divine for you because the divine is not some religious hocus-pocus stuff is something that's very important Angela that you can tap into yourself and when you can actually synergize and combine the mundane the divine that's when your life becomes truly what I call extraordinary so sign up stay tuned and I'll see you soon you