gettoefl

I think we’ve converged closer than it might appear. The disagreement squarely hinges on what we both mean by “the center” and then what exactly changes. When I claim that centrality collapses, I’m not by any means claiming that a functional center disappears, nor that preferences vanish, nor that the organism stops organizing experience around a locus. That would be biologically incoherent. What I’m pointing to here is the collapse of existential centrality, not operational centrality. You above describe the shift beautifully as a move from a closed energetic framework to an open one. I agree with that description almost entirely. Where I’d sharpen it is in the following: what opens is not the system around the center, but the claim that the center makes about itself. In the closed framework, the center is not merely active; it is authoritative. It dictates meaning, threat, urgency, and value as if these were intrinsic to reality rather than relational outputs. That’s what gives rise to the “energetic whips” you describe. These shocks don’t come from having a center; they come from the center being unconsciously taken as what one is. In the open framework, meanwhile, the center absolutely continues to function. It orients, evaluates, protects, and anticipates. But it no longer occupies the role of ontological referee. It is no longer the place where reality needs to justify itself. That’s the sense I allude to in which centrality collapses; I don't mean structurally, but existentially. This is why I hesitate to say “the self liberates itself,” even though I understand perfectly what you mean. From the inside, it undeniably feels that way. What actually dissolves is the self’s monopoly on interpretation. The self remains as interface, yes no doubt, but no longer as supreme governor of what is allowed to be. On the topic of will: I agree completely that this isn’t about seeking a better situation. That’s just another modulation of the prison. But I’m cautious with the phrase “absolute will for liberation,” because it risks smuggling in the very structure that later claims victory. What I see instead is not will overcoming the system, but will exhausting itself. A point where every strategy, improvement, transcendence, integration, dominance, surrender etc., has been tried and found insufficient. Liberation will not come from a stronger push, but from the system running out of ways to protect its internal division. Therefore I would reframe the objective slightly. It is not about “breaking free from the energetic prison” in the heroic sense. It is the complete collapse of the necessity for the prison to exist at all. The bars don’t get smashed; they stop being required. On the topic of suffering, we are in alignment. Of course acute suffering remains. Of course a parent will be devastated by the loss of a child. To deny that would be callous. The distinction I am making is a little narrower: what now disappears is suffering as default, in other words the background contraction that turns every experience into a referendum on one’s existential legitimacy. Pain still happens. Grief still happens. Fear still mobilizes. But they are no longer metabolized as evidence that something has gone fundamentally wrong with what one is. Lastly, when you describe the post-collapse landscape as freedom, openness, security, happiness, appreciation etc. I do agree but with this caveat. These are not states to be achieved, nor guarantees, nor permanent moods. They’re better framed as by-products of reduced internal friction. When the system stops fighting itself, energy gets freed up for contact, clarity, and responsiveness. So I don’t think we’re arguing here about whether the self exists, or whether the mind is real, or whether biology matters. On all those, I think we align. The outstanding question is simpler and sharper: Is the self a functional center within experience, or the authority experience must answer to? When that question resolves itself experientially, the framework opens up, not because the self has become infinite, but because it no longer needs to be defended as finite.

Reality accommodates both unity and separation. Unity means perfection, power, permanence. Separation means you give up some power in favor of some limitation in order to experience an adventure that is impossible in unity. You forget yourself for a while. When you tire of it, you fly back home by remembering who you are and embodying it.

I largely resonate with your description of the social matrix, and I think naming it explicitly is one of the few honest moves left. And certainly the human self is not a philosophical error. It is an astoundingly effective evolutionary construction, forged to bind individuals into coherent, self-sacrificing collectives. It is deeply engraved in our nervous systems, reinforced hormonally, both affectively, and symbolically. Calling this an “illusion” is sloppy at best and evasive at worst. Where you and I still diverge is what liberation actually consists of, and therefore what is meant by “breaking conditioning.” You describe transcendence as the breaking of attachment structures that are cellular, genetic, and therefore real. I concur with your insistence that this cannot be done by belief, reframing, or spiritual cosplay. However I suggest there is a subtle misidentification happening when attachment itself is treated as the chain that must be broken. Attachment is not the core issue here. Compulsion is. More precisely: the unconscious identification with attachment. The organism will by nature attach. It will always orient, prefer, avoid, bond, and protect. That’s not something that disappears and nor should it. Liberation refers not to the erasure of such dynamics but to the collapse of the structure that takes them to define what one truly is. This is where the “nothing left” framing both points in the right direction and then overshoots. Sure, liberation is expensive. And yes it involves the exhaustion of avoidance rather than its transcendence. But what is exhausted is not attachment per se; it is the need for attachment to function as one's self-definition. When that need collapses, attachment remains but without the existential pressure that once made it compulsory. That difference is key. You wrote: if you drop success, sex, relationship, meaning then the system grabs “God,” “pure consciousness,” or some metaphysical substitute. I agree. That is exactly what the self does since it must have something to aim at. But that substitution will take place provided the self-structure remains intact. What you find collapses in genuine liberation is not content, but centrality. The organism keeps functioning. Preferences remain. Pain still hurts. Fear still mobilizes. Social instincts still fire. But there is no longer a psychological center that asserts: “This has to go a certain way for me to be on track.” And this is where I propose your claim “there is no method” is both true and misleading. There is no method that the self can use to free itself, because any method becomes self-reinforcement. Perfect. This does not mean nothing happens. What happens in this case is a progressive failure of avoidance strategies (emotional, cognitive, spiritual), until the system can no longer maintain the fiction of internal division. I don't call this a technique. But it is definitely a process. And it doesn’t look like bliss, detachment, or saintliness. It is more akin to radical psychological transparency, where fear is felt as fear, attachment as attachment, grief as grief, all the while without being recruited into a narrative of identity management. This is the reason cheap spirituality is so addictive. It offers relief without disintegration. It soothes the system while preserving the core structure intact. Netflix and chill with incense anyone? But the alternative is not annihilation or being “left with nothing” in the nihilistic sense. What endures is a functioning organism without an internal civil war and without the constant friction of defending an identity against its own experience. So when I continue to claim that suffering is not structurally inevitable, I’m not denying genetics, evolution, or conditioning. I’m pointing to something more exact: Pain is inevitable. Reaction is inevitable. Attachment is inevitable. But suffering demands identification, namely the conversion of experience into a threat to what one takes oneself to be. When that conversion stops, nothing magical happens. The world doesn’t become a theme park. The briefcase still lurks. But experience no longer fractures the system internally. This is not escapism. It’s not transcendence as fantasy. It’s not becoming an earthworm. It’s just a human system that no longer has to protect itself from itself. And, yes indeed, that only happens when avoidance is utterly exhausted. On that, you and I see eye to eye.

I think we’re actually much closer than it might seem, but we’re talking past each other at one crucial junction. I in no way deny the biological reality of the human organism or the anticipatory intelligence of the nervous system. Of course the organism prepares, strategizes, and floods itself with chemistry when threat appears. That’s not the debate. Nor is the fact that pain, fear responses, and even extreme suffering can and do arise when the body–mind is harmed. Any spirituality that skips that is either dishonest or dissociated. Where I think the disagreement lies is here: such responses do not, by themselves, constitute suffering in the sense that I point to. They are necessary functions of an organism. Suffering is what arises when those functions are owned by, interpreted through, and organized around a defended center that takes itself to be fundamentally vulnerable. In other words, the issue isn’t that the human system reacts. The issue here is whether there is an inner structure that says “this is happening to me, and therefore something essential is at stake.” That structure is not the same as biology. It’s a configuration of meaning, identification, and self-reference layered on top of it. When I use the word “invulnerable,” I don’t mean immune to pain, torture, or death. I mean invulnerable in a more specific sense: nothing that happens is taken to confirm or threaten an identity that must be preserved. The organism can still recoil, resist, and cry out but there is no inner fracture arising where experience gets converted to existential damage. This is how your briefcase example above, while rhetorically powerful, doesn’t quite land. Yes, pain is at hand. Yes, fear is felt. But those alone don’t prove the necessity of suffering as such. They only prove the necessity of sensation and response. Suffering requires an additional move, and that is known as appropriation. And this is also where I with respect push back on your Zen caricature. Zen's goal isn’t to turn humans into earthworms or even deny anticipatory intelligence. At its zenith, pardon the pun, it’s pointing to a mind that functions without clinging to the products of its own activity. Perception, anticipation, even resistance can and do still occur, yet without being folded into the story of “me versus what is.” So when spirituality critiques the mind, it’s not saying the mind needs to vanish, nor that one's conditioning can be erased. It’s pointing to whether the mind is self-defending and self-confirming, or can be transparent to its own activity. The former inevitably converts threat into suffering. The latter does not, even though pain may still arise. In this sense, I agree with you: the mind has to break its chains rather than pretend they are not there. But those chains aren’t biology, anticipation, or even fear. They’re the root assumption that there is a central entity that must be protected for life to be acceptable. I repeat that I’m not seeking less mind, weaker mind, or a return to raw sensation. I’m arguing for a mind that no longer has to protect itself from its own experience. That is by no means unnatural, forced, or dissociative. It is simply a different internal organization of the same human system. Pain may still happen. Even extreme pain. Yet suffering is not structurally inevitable. That's the work.

Let me flesh this out a little. I do not believe the issue is whether the mind is real or can be “switched off.” And I agree with you that the mind is certainly part of lived reality, and pretending otherwise is unhelpful. But that’s not the distinction I’m pointing to here. The distinction I am making concerns the very structure of the mind. One configuration of mind posits that it is organized around: a center that must be preserved interpretation as being personal and consequential meaning tied to vulnerability In that configuration, suffering is not an avoidable mistake bur rather it is structurally inevitable. The second configuration of mind is one that is organized without: a defended center ownership of meaning the assumption of vulnerability In this configuration, the mind is just as active - perception, sensation, thought all continue - but suffering no longer arises, because there is nothing that can be harmed. So this isn’t about rejecting the mind in favor of an “animalistic” or sensory state, nor is it about glorifying raw sensation and It’s also not about turning the mind off. It’s about whether the mind is self-referential and defensive, or non-appropriative and open. Where spirituality critiques the mind, at its best it’s not calling the mind an error. Rather it’s pointing out a particular way the mind relates to itself that generates unnecessary pain. To say “both are just constructions” misses that point. Two constructions can be experientially night-and-day different, even if both arise within the same reality. So I’m not arguing for less mind or weaker mind. If anything, what I am proposing is a mind that no longer has to spend all its energy defending a vulnerable self which in particular means a mind that’s free to function fully because it isn’t busy protecting an identity. In summary: The issue isn’t mind versus no-mind. It’s vulnerability-based mind versus invulnerable mind. That difference is not intended to explain everything, but ignoring it simplistically explains suffering away rather than understanding it.

The first is fundamental I'm sure you would agree. You don't know a world until you see it.

I’m not suggesting that one construction is “true” and the other “false.” What I am saying is that one construction brings with it apparent vulnerability and ongoing suffering, and the other reveals invulnerability together with the absence of suffering. Collapsing that difference by calling both “just constructions” indeed explains everything yet at the same time clarifies nothing.

One is a construction within experience and the other is the absence of construction. The first is limited because it is made of distinctions while the second is not unlimited in size or scope but it is unbounded and unconstructed because no distinctions are being made at all.

Mental construction is what one sends back to the world. It is based on sensory perception. You see before you know. Even if you just saw in a book.

I would say your account works fine at the level of image representation, the conceptual domain where seeing, liking, and remembering are all brain-mediated constructions gathered at an arbitrary center. At that level, they evidently belong to the same domain. I want to say that there is another sense of “seeing” that isn’t representational at all: a non-conceptual awareness prior to image, memory, or evaluation. In this sense, liking cannot occur, because liking already presupposes interpretation. I suggest seeing and liking become the same only once seeing has already been converted into representation. In short, there are two ways to see a tree: I already know everything about what I am right now seeing o my man vs. I actually know nothing about what I am right now seeing o my God.

Love is just God re-grafting all its long lost limbs strewn across the millennia and scattered across the universes. Come back home my love, nothing wrong was ever possible.

Hate is just love taking out the trash, don't you know. Gimme space, forget grace the raucous shriek of an ego, amigo.

Only God exists. A thought from God can arise, let there be something born - call it ego which stands for expiring god offshoot - apart from God. An impossible happening but a possible thought and the thought has to expire since only God can exist forever. Upon this thought gets built the entire belief system of the ego. From this an illusory world gets projected, seeming to be real but not real, and covering over God and making God seem absent. The world continues only because its original thought is believed. When belief is withdrawn through forgiveness, the world is gently undone, and, as was always the case, only God remains. So only God exists alongside God's necessarily temporary thoughts about what does not exist which we refer to as illusions and may be believed or not believed.

Thoughts aren't personal; they are collective. That is why Leibnitz and Newton discovered calculus at the exact same moment. The thought was ready to be birthed.

Thought is energy in the ether. You can latch or you can leave. Any thought is available to everyone. There is no private mind just one mind. If you latch to a thought, you will claim it as yours and make things arise from it. If you leave it be, it weakens. If everyone leaves it be, it disappears. All the thoughts floating around is how conscious humanity is. You are not bound by those thoughts. They are all ego. You are a lot more than ego. Moksha is your destiny. Leave thoughts alone.

The point of meditation is that state needs to carry over into non-meditation so that the two become one. We meditate so we no longer need meditation. This takes great consciousness and a lifestyle aligned with the highest purpose. Meditation needs to inculcate efficacious life choices. You no longer waste time. Life is precious, divine and miraculous.

Renounce then replace. Buddha did the former well but that is why he had to come back. To replace. Replace is, I do not know what this in front of me means but I renounce my silly limited mental ideas and I let this absolute meaning be revealed.

Some food for thought is that unconditional means you can't limit it to two people.

Santa and death are non-existent in a 2-person universe. Santa and death are existent in a 1-person universe. There is only a 1-person universe. Therefore non-existence is non-existent as its name suggests. I imagine santa and death however I wish and update based on life or not however I please. I may be stupid but that is the reality of my life experience so let's live and let live

Communication is simple. You get 60 seconds to speak or 6 sentences to write. That is all my bandwidth accords you. This is a imparting style known as parliamentary procedure - look it up - which was adopted by Toastmasters. Intelligence and respect for others, is how to speak in a minute folks. Set the buzzer and then stop your six sentences.

Needs are needed. Wants are traps. Want is: this will make me happy. It won't. Distinguishing between wants and needs is the tricky part since body is complicated. Do you need sex or do you want it?

No they are opposites. Love is to give. Attach is to take.

Mediocrity is seeing mediocre everywhere. Who made you judge and jury? People are happy. You are not. Yet you judge. People are incredible. You have work to do.

Attachment is the belief in the illusion of a thing increasing my happiness. I believe this makes me happy. So, why do I believe this? Because I believe in the illusion of a body that I claim mine. This body needs to be made happy. The belief, I am this body, needs dissolving. The truth is, I operate a body for the purpose of realizing my true nature. Next question is why did I attach to a body? Let's save that enquiry until we have given up on the above. One step at a time.

Love is what reality does: propagates ever more of itself, expands and extends, eternally and ecstatically. Good loves to beget good. Us mortals have taken a break from this to labor under apparent limitation and apparent separation. You just believe in limitation and separation and this makes them seem real not that they were ever real. Yet love is still available. And is the way home. Let go of imaginary separation (which is what spirituality is supposed to teach). Only if you are ready to my friend. You may think I have having a good time thanks. Well then keep on at it. Love is patient and everything is in hand.