gettoefl

What is helpful is to box beliefs into two categories: first is small, fixed and unwavering and second is open to change and are basically unimportant so if others have a different view you don't mind.

I think this is where the disagreement becomes unavoidable, and I’ll state it starkly. Your central point is implacable insistence that “the self as total reality in self-mode” is merely a neutral description. I’m saying this isn’t the case. It is overtly an ontological move that installs the self as the locus through which totality is affirmed. You go one to say that the self doesn’t “revolve around the idea,” but the structure of the statement gives the self a vaunted position: reality is hereby articulated as self. That is not innocent. It is exactly how centrality survives without explicit belief. You continue to reframe the issue as if the presented alternative were “eliminating the self” or treating it as a mistake. That’s a false dichotomy. No one here is denying the self, its preferences, its biological drives, or its narrative functions. What is being questioned is the necessity of the self remaining the reference point of meaning, even in an open, frictionless, luminous state. Do you not see that saying “the self is enlightened” still assigns awakening to a subject. The issue is not repression versus expression; it’s whether experience still orbits a fixed center that affirms, implicitly, here is what I am. Concerning death and threat: you propose the self will always be oriented toward preservation and avoidance. At the biological level, of course. But you’re conflating organismic response with existential organization. The point is not that fear responses vanish; it’s that they no longer define what is at stake. As long as openness is framed as what frees the self from threat, anxiety, or imprisonment, the self remains at the axis. You’re right that monastics often got muddled here. but replacing repression with integration fails to resolve the deeper issue if the self is still what experience is assumed to be about. Finally, when you say “it is the self that is enlightened, not other,” you’re pinpointing the exact limit I’m pointing to. That framing cannot see beyond itself because it assumes enlightenment must belong to someone. What I’m pointing to isn’t mystical ecstasy, holiness, or preference-erasure. It’s the collapse of the need for ownership of openness itself. Preferences can remain. Narratives can remain. Action can remain. What quietly falls away is the requirement that any of this confirm or instantiate a self as totality. So yes of course, you are right that the self is an expression, not the foundation. But you are stopping short of letting that fact actually land. You allow the self to be not ultimate, yet still indispensable as the place where reality recognizes itself. Therein is the nagging split. And until that goes, the self did not dissolve into openness at all; it merely learned to speak the language of totality fluently.

Your sense of self is so fragile that some passer-by can trample on it and change who you think you are?

I agree that openness is a decisive shift, and that a closed self is a form of quiet madness that most people normalize. Where I still differ is in treating interpretation as irrelevant once openness occurs. Interpretation does not cease simply because the system is open; what changes is what purpose interpretation is serving. An open self can still implicitly interpret reality as “what I now am”, namely as something that confirms its identity as totality. That move is extremely subtle, but it keeps a center in place, even if that center is expansive, fluid, and luminous. Saying “the self is total reality in the form of the self” is precisely where I think a residual split hides. It sounds non-dual, but it still installs the self as the reference point through which totality is known, owned, or instantiated. Openness, in the deeper sense that I’m pointing to, is not the self recognizing itself as totality. Rather it is the quiet loss of the need to recognize anything at all. Totality does not need to be occupied by a self, even in an open form. I also observe that death and threat are still doing important work in your framing. The self opens so it will no longer be under threat, no longer anxious, no longer imprisoned. That motivation assumes a center that must be safeguarded, even if now through openness rather than defense. What I’m pointing to is a shift where openness is no longer needed for the self, not to save it, complete it, or dissolve its fear, but happens seamlessly because the self is no longer the axis around which experience is organized. So yes, articulation does matter. This isn't primarily to dismantle belief systems about gods, purposes, or metaphysics. It matters because certain articulations quietly reinforce a center that says, “I am what this life is about now, just without any friction.” The difference I’m teasing out isn’t between closed and open, or ignorant and enlightened; it’s between an open self that accomplishes merging with reality, and the end of the very need for any self to stand in that position at all.

Nothing can make you angry. You want to be angry. It's a deliberate choice. For most it's default. If you want change, you will investigate what inside you is angry and is thus projected. Sounds from your post that you have some expectation the world needs to think like you do. Your opinions may work for you; another's opinions may work for them. The world needs no changing. It is where it has to be. It is like your child perhaps that hasn't grown up.

I agree with you that the fully integrated, frictionless self acts, chooses, and experiences reality, and that boundaries can dissolve so it moves without internal conflict. My point is nuanced: even in this state, the self will still experience reality as something it must harmonize with or preserve itself within. Integration alone will not automatically release the self’s sense that reality answers to it in some way. Will continues, movement continues and life continues, but the subtle epistemic assertion that “this is about me” still endures. The distinction is all about how centrality is experienced. One perspective preserves a harmonious, boundary-dissolved self that still functions as the reference point for meaning. The other allows the sense of central authority to quietly fall away: the self continues to engage fully, but now will not judge, interpret, or claims reality as its own. Function remains intact, yet that existential foundation of authorship, that gnawing premise that “today has to go the way I want”, is no longer.

I don’t dismiss that the self functions as will at the human level in, for example, choosing, acting and orienting the organism in the world. Where I make a distinction is in equating that functional will with authorship in the absolute sense. From my perspective, the self participates in movement, but does not originate meaning, existence, or reality itself. What falls away in liberation is not the capacity to decide or act, but the belief that this deciding center is the source from which reality proceeds or to which reality must conform. So where you describe enlightenment as the self becoming a frictionless flow of the real, I commend this as a description of a perfectly integrated self. Yet what I am pointing to is subtler: the self no longer experiences itself as the one to whom flow belongs. Will continues, movement continues, life continues, but all without the added layer of ownership: “this is my will, my life, my continuity.” The flow is not claimed. This is why I will hesitate to say the self “becomes one with reality.” Rather, the self is seen as within reality, not its representative or expression-in-chief. The difference is small in language but large experientially: one preserves the central authority that is now harmonious while the other lets central authority dissolve with function remaining intact. That, I think, is our real divergence: integrated centrality versus the quiet loss of central authorship. So this is not about the annihilation of the self, but its relegation from being what reality was ever about.

Where we still differ is what actually resolves in liberation. You describe an absolute mutation in which the self remains central but becomes open, integrated, and unlimited in its interface with the totality. From my perspective, what collapses is not the self’s structure or function, but its claim to authorship and authority, which refers to the silent assumption that experience must validate, protect, or define “me” for things to be on track. The center certainly continues to operate, but it no longer legislates meaning or stands as the reference point reality must answer to. Relatedly, I’m cautious about framing liberation as the self liberating itself through absolute will. What seems decisive isn’t a stronger or purer will, but the exhaustion of all self-based strategies, including integration, transcendence, or openness, that still assume a central authority. When that authority falls away, the self doesn’t disappear, but it is no longer the one to whom life is addressed. Pain, fear, and preference arise, yet they no longer organize experience around a threatened identity. That distinction, between an open central self and the loss of central authority altogether, is where I see our views meaningfully diverge.

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.