First off, for purposes of grokking this, I request you take the perspective, even if only for a moment, that everything in your human dream is 180 degrees off, a little like a reflection in a mirror. Allow for that possibility while you read the following.
When you appear to have been born into humanness, you died to your True Nature, to Truth. You were birthed into this human dream but it was actually a death from the perspective of Truth.
When you appear to die in the human dream, what is really happening is you are being born back into your True nature, Truth. When you are born you die and when you die you are born.
Imagine a night dream... the characters appear within a dream, they are birthed. Later that dream ends and the characters disappear (die). Where did they go? Nowhere, because there never existed. Yes, they appeared to have a variety of experiences within that night dream which might indicate they were 'real' characters.. seeing, hearing, feeling various experiences, but they were not 'real'. From their dream perspective they felt real, but upon awakening the dreaming human realizes they were just illusory.
In a lucid dream, which you have probably experienced, you wake up to your true nature as that of the human character having the night dream. You awaken inside the dream to the reality that the character in the night dream is the creation of a human. Said human is outside the dream. Where does the night dream character go? Nowhere, because he/she wasn't 'real' to start with. You might say he/she died and was absorbed back in the dreaming human. As above, so below.
Contemplate this, you are already dead. You couldn't be deader and some day you will die to this human dream and will become alive to your True Nature. Truth is the dreamer and, in your human format you are a dreamed character.
You might ask why your human character seems so real and believable. Your night dreams appear real while they are happening. If your dream of humanness did not appear real, with the validation of the senses and human drama, you would not stick around for the entertainment.
Could all this human dream be solely for entertainment? You can make up any reason you want for this human dream, I find entertainment works for me.
Yeah you can't think your way out of the dream, because thinking is just more content that arises within the dream. Thinking is still an important part in the process of awakening. We need knowledge in order to make sense of our experience, but intellectual knowledge is really just the first step in awakening. After we have sufficient intellectual knowledge we can put that knowledge to practical use (e.g meditation, self enquiry, etc) in order to see the dream for what it really is.
Awareness doesn't have the ability to set up resets or stop points. Everything is illusion, even the concept of somehow "becoming one with awareness" is still an illusion. It's all illusion, you can never escape it. There is the property of being aware and then there is the content that arises within awareness, because to be aware inherently means that there is something to be aware of. You cannot be aware and have nothing to be aware of because it's a contradiction.
So the only thing that can set up reset points is an illusory self. Presumably an illusory self with omnipotent powers. Even adopting the position "I am awareness" is illusory. You are always awareness, whether you're a human or something else.
So to get the ability to set reset points I'd say it's like this:
~ Property of being aware
Awareness of being aware
Awareness of being an omnipotent being (sets reset points)
Awareness of being a person
death of person
awareness of being an omnipotent being (sets reset points)
awareness of being aware
Originally commented by u/Green-Moon on 2017-11-07 00:57:34 (dpfa6jk)