Joshe

Of course not. The issue is when people dress it up as "discovering truth" rather than "I trained toward states I value and got them." The first one creates needless developmental hierarchies, levels of awakening, on an on with the hierarchies. Always arguing over what or who is deeper, more awake, more true, etc. - without realizing the hierarchy itself is a preference, not a discovery.

🤦‍♂️HOW did you get there? You practiced. You read. You learned about surrender. You liked it. You oriented toward it. You tried an failed. You tried again. Over time, the effort became less visible and started feeling effortless. This is "training". You didn't just wake up one day into it. After you found it, the training disappeared - which is exactly what I've been saying. I think this might hit a little too close to home for you. No offense, but you don't know wtf you're talking about. I never stated "truth" is not for me". I said something like I'm not currently optimizing for spirituality. But you don't know how far I've already come. I am very humble/cautious in what I claim to know regarding spirituality. I don't make grand claims such as yourself and I sure as hell don't blindly adopt framework terminology that will skew my view. Don't let this fool you into thinking you know something about my spiritual development.

You practice. You make progress. You talk about "deeper" and "higher". You distinguish between people who "get it" and people who don't. You treat certain states as more valuable than others and use words like "awakening" and "enlightenment" and "realiziation". All of that implies a destination. A finish line. A place you're trying to get to that's better/higher than here. "Surrender" only makes sense if there's something on the other side of it. You're surrendering toward something. If there were no destination, why would surrendering be better than not surrendering? Why would you even recommend it? BECAUSE THERE IS A FRAMEWORK you're operating on with preferences driving it. You are not spiritual because you just so happened to surrender to reality and all was revealed. You selected for and aimed at what was revealed. Seek and ye shall find. You sought, you found. You thought you found that surrender is the way but what you really found is what consciousness produces when you train it toward surrender. What I'm saying here isn't some elaborate intellectual maze. Consciousness confirms whatever you point it toward Spiritual seekers point consciousness toward things they prefer (love, truth, peace, surrender) They aim for those things and find them They confidently call it discovery instead of construction

Jesus. This is getting so little news coverage.

Can you sit with this question: 'What if my framework-free seeing is just another framework I trained into and then forgot I trained into it?' Could it be that you trained so deeply into a way of seeing that it no longer feels like a perspective, but feels like actual reality? For example, you can train your consciousness to suspend interpretation, but the suspension itself is a trained orientation that originated from a preference and a framework, and over time, the training and framework are forgotten and what remains feels like raw reality. I'm not saying this about you necessarily, just pointing out that it is a real mechanism with big implications. This is exactly how people end up in the psych ward. They trained consciousness in a direction until the training disappeared and what remained felt like "just seeing reality". Same mechanism.

We often mistake choosing for discovery. Consciousness will validate whatever framework(s) you commit to. This mechanism is universal and unavoidable. If consciousness will validate whatever you commit to, then the honest move is to choose your framework knowing it's a choice - not to pretend you discovered actual reality. And even if you did, you should hold such things loosely. "I'm choosing to orient toward love because I prefer a life organized around it" is more honest than "I discovered reality is infinite love." Seek and ye shall find. Subtract and ye shall find too. You aimed at "removing falsehood" and you got a remainder and called it truth. But subtracting is seeking. It's spurred on by preference. What made you subtract? What made you call the remainder "truth" instead of "residue" or the "the stubborn parts that persist"? It is a preference to call what survives "truth". The vocabulary is selected for words that feel good, significant, profound. WHY? Values and preferences. My point is consciousness can be trained to confirm any framework, including spiritual frameworks that claim to be framework-free. That claim is the framework. You prefer your framework be framework-free, and you believe it is because that's what you sought. "I just look at what's true" is the framework. It's preference acting like neutrality. Your highest awakening is the same stuff as grandma washing dishes, with the main difference being the elaborate significance you add. These ideas are uncomfortable because they dissolve significance.

Consciousness is very fluid. You can make friends with Ultimate Satan if you train your consciousness that way. But you chose to train yours to befriend Ultimate Reality. You can train consciousness in any direction it will go. lol. C'mon man! This isn't a bad thing.

lol, ok. I know you don't believe this, but ok. What we call things matter. Calling a cable a cable isn't the same as calling conscious experience "God". If you call it God, then you're smuggling stuff in - love, purpose, sacredness, meaning, etc. And then you forget that you smuggled it in and act like you discovered it. That's my whole point. I know you're capable of seeing this if you will allow yourself. It doesn't have to be a permanent frame forever, but what I'm saying is a very real mechanism that most spiritual seekers never account for.

I never took it as a belief. I took it as a description, which I carefully thought through and held as a possibility and constantly questioned if any part of my understanding was wrong. So I'm confident that it's not a projection. Part of my point is you are free to call it whatever you want. But what you call it has significant implications.

The word "God" isn't a discovery. It's a choice, chosen from motivated reasoning. Rebuttal: "You'll understand when you go deeper." Of course! 😂

You are the example bro. I agree that consciousness is the fundamental substrate of reality. But to call it "God" is kind of my point. You were presented with the idea of "God" and you were eager to see it as such and turned reality into that. How do I know? Because I made the same mistake. I called consciousness "God" for many years as a result of following Leo's work. But then I grew up a little and realized I didn't need Leo's words to describe my experience and that it was a mistake actually. Just because consciousness is fundamental doesn't mean you get to call it "God" and import all the metaphysical baggage with it. I hope you can see the point.

Yeah, it's half venting but half substance too. I'm only human. There's still a deep line of inquiry here.

As far as I know.

You know I suck with words, but I mean it like it's an excuse. I'm not mocking, even though I was aware that it carries that connotation.

The truth-seeking narrative is cope. What you call spirituality is just preference-driven consciousness training. The only difference between a spiritual teacher and a psych patient is which direction they train their consciousness in. One aims at love, hits love and calls it truth. The other aims at threat, hits threat and calls it truth. Both trained consciousness in a direction. Both arrived exactly where they pointed. Both claimed discovery. One gets a retreat center, the other gets a prescription. lol "Seek, and ye shall find." How does this insight get so little attention? Go looking for rocks, find rocks. Go looking for love, find love. Go looking for threat, find threat. Go looking for God, find God. Go looking for meaninglessness, find meaninglessness. Ask this community what spirituality is for and they'll say equanimity, peace, love, presence. Interesting how these just so happen to be things they desperately want. People rig the game so that winning = getting what they wanted all along. When they hit the target they're aiming for, they call it "discovery of reality". "Seek and ye shall find" is not a strategy to acquire something. It's a fucking warning😂.