Breakingthewall

The angle from which this issue is being approached is wrong. It's not about defining reality as love, but about understanding what we call love. Love is what it means to be alive without barriers. And being alive means being, but in a dual state. Normally, when we talk about love, we refer to the feeling between two beings or realities, which excludes everything that isn't them. This is because we close off our reality in order to survive. We block out everything that is negative for survival, but we open our perceptual field on certain occasions: children, partners, art, etc. Love isn't something special; it's reality without barriers, the unity of being without limits. It's being without closing ourselves off. Being human, closing ourselves off is inevitable. Enlightenment is achieving total openness at certain times. Then you realize that what you are in essence is unlimited being, and what that being implies. Implies everything, and you could call it unlimited love, or call love the fact of being

It's not that he's right or wrong, it's that he never opened the door to the totality in his life and thinks enlightenment is "this." So if someone asks him about, let's say, "mystical" things, he responds with superiority, saying that it's all emotional nonsense. Or if you ask him about psychedelics, he dismisses them because he took LSD when he was 18, so he already knows everything. It's like a blind man saying that sight doesn't exist, and all those who claim to see are just naive children deceived by some guru. It's very easy to see that he's closed due a heavy ego that is attached to the mind thinking that this is the no mind

I wouldn't say that reality is love; I would say that love is reality, and so is the Hiroshima bomb. The ultimate foundation of reality is the absence of limits, and limitlessness translates into being. Being implies creation without barriers, and this force is equivalent in quality to what we call love. Destruction is the other side of creation, and its substance is the same, but we cannot see it because we have an absolute bias toward survival, as the self-preserving structures that we are.

At the end the unlimited power that is being without boundaries is exactly the same than the love that a mother feels for her baby but without boundaries. Then if you say that the absolute is love, or being, you are closer than if you say that the absolute is consciousness. Anyway, if you ask Ralston about it he would answer: aaahyshhh young ignorant and almost retarded baby, you say that because any scammer told you, and you, who are simple piece of shit without brain, bought it, look, buy my book, ok retarded? And stop disturbing. I understand that this message is seductive for many, but I see it bit....well, arrogant. Over all if it comes from a closed mind

Ralston is simply completely wrong from the ground up. For him, there is such a thing as "absolute truth," which is something you come to know when you free yourself from those sticky, false human feelings. Human feelings are an expression of what reality is, only biased, compartmentalized in order to allow the survival of concrete, self-preserving forms, that is, life. The absolute is not consciousness where images appear; that is logically absurd, since "absolute" cannot be something where something else appears. The absolute is the total, and the total is being. Being is affirmative: it is. And this translates into absolute power. Opening yourself to the total is opening yourself to the power of infinite supernovae, not to tranquil, empty screens. Leo is much closer to explaining enlightenment than the non-dualists; his flaw is that he cannot detach himself from centrality (aka solipsism), but at least he understands true substance.

The problem is the word "love." Normally, love means the feeling you have for someone or something. But in a broader sense, it means unity, creation, expansion, and generative power. If you fully open your psyche until not even the slightest barrier remains, what is revealed is the unlimited, and the unlimited, having no limits, is infinite creative power, absolute fullness. This can be called love. Ralston, Spira, and non-dualists in general have a very limited view of enlightenment. For them, it's something mental, understanding what reality is, the screen where everything happens, etc. They are disconnected from life, and they are not enlightened; they are rather endarkened, same than bitter james 😘. They don't want to understand because they prefer to be right than to be really enlightened. A problem of humility

Exactly, it's a process of alignment, cleaning. It's more or less automatic, when you really start to move in the direction of the openess, little by little, old mental habits get broken,a real change occurs. For me there is always some degree of closeness in day by day. As you said, serious meditation is necessary to break through, even for a few moments, the shell of the ego, which then returns. Sometimes it happens spontaneously, but usually there is closeness. The interesting thing is that you begin to perceive the mechanisms that close us off, and if you're even slightly perceptive, you'll see that these mechanisms are very deep and inherent to human beings. For example, the need for solid human bonds is paramount being a human. We could deny this fact calling the relationships "maya", but this doesn't going to make that need to disappear. we live in a society where relationships are extremely superficial, and this is deeply destabilizing. Spirituality is often used as a band-aid or an escape, just like success in any field. When you can't trust anyone, not even yourself, you need to build a network of stories, desires, and fears that keeps you grounded; otherwise, your psyche will collapse. Peering into the abyss of total nihilism, as you mentioned before, isn't something many people want to do. It's absolutely a must in you want to open yourself to the unlimited. You cant immerse yourself in the total ocean introducing only a toe, you have to jump without net.

The main factor that makes real meditation impossible is the need for self-definition, for identification. This need is inherent to the human being; it is a mechanism of social cohesion that allows the group to function as a single entity. Real meditation is not achieved through techniques, but through stepping out of the psychological matrix of identity. The real work is not in the practice of meditation, but in self-exposure, coherence, and integrity. Loyalty to yourself as absolute value. When the psychological axis shifts from the need for self-definition and validation to integrity and transparency, the mind becomes silent. Only then does meditation make sense, as one gains access to the primordial layers of the psyche: the drive for permanence, the fear of harm and disappearance, the need for control and other bases of the human psyche Directly perceiving these underlying patterns is what eventually allows the psyche to open. “Openness” means the absence of limits. Limits define, and create a sense of control and security. The absence of limits is initially terrifying, unsustainable for more than a few seconds. The system automatically contracts again. Anyone seeking liberation must seek this rupture. At some point, it becomes more tolerable, until it is perceived as freedom. Identity is then replaced by effortless openness, as it is revealed to be a mental process. not false, but not fundamental, not absolute. Openness is not an “open mind,” but the fact of being perceiving itself without mental limitations. It is something simple and, at the same time, complete. Not definable because there are not limits. This is the state where life becomes beauty, perception becomes deep and the heart becomes open.

That sounds like: I write to show that I'm very profound, same time I imply that all the words written in the thread are unnecessary mess for who's very elevate as me . Please, don't disturb my pure and clean silence. Namaste. Ohm. My pure presence is the only enlightenment that you need. Give me some money. This spirituality is outdated. Fewer and fewer people believe narcissists who sell their presence. We need to be concrete, direct, and without evasions.

Enlightenment is something very simple yet very difficult. It is the dissolution of the inner boundaries of the psyche. Boundaries are defenses, created by evolution given the reality of life in general and human life in particular. These defenses are especially subtle and powerful in the social game, where acceptance equates to life and rejection to death (when humans were tribal). Their force is enormous, and facing them head-on without fear or avoidance is a challenge. The barriers of the psyche are not thoughts; rather, thoughts emanate from them. They are real neurological structures that activate when they connect with the situations for which they were created. Behind them lies the primordial barrier: the fear of death, the need to remain. Gazing into the great abyss of total dissolution and opening oneself to it is the ultimate challenge. Enlightenment is not about knowing things, realizing what you are, being consciousness, etc., but about opening your energetic configuration by releasing all barriers and being without limits. only for a moment at first, gradually building up to sustain that openness until it becomes your reality

Both are real. There is not "how real". How real is a stone in comparison with a planet? Exactly in the same level: real. A dream is happening due countless of relationship between fields, etc, same than anything else. Spirituality is not that mess, is being open to your total nature, that is the nature of everything, that is the absence of limits that is. But you are open to it from a limited structure or process that is happening now that is your human nature. Nothing is a "dream" , thats just obscurantist spirituality that confuses everyone

It's exactly as real than being awake, but in another state. Don't you see that you are dividing the reality in categories, putting a higher category the label of "truth", and lower category the label of "dream"?

Any limit is real since it's happening. If you create a limit between the observer and the object, the limit is happening and has consequences. Maybe it's not absolute, can be dissolved, but until you dissolve it, it is. Labelling everything as illusory is just a mental complication without any utility. This could sounds like poetry, but is meaningless in the sense that divide the true essence (the screen) and the form. This is non dualistic spirituality.

Dreams are real. For a dream to occur billions of neural connection are happening. A dream Is as real as a stone or a Galaxy, there are no categories of reality. Maybe for you as a human a dream has no consequences and a stone in your head yes, but that doesn't implies that one is more rela than other

The reality manifested in a process that is happening, like anything else When we talk about "true", or "absolute", it means unlimited. Limited is made by limitation, for example if you perceive yourself as pain, or sadness, or anything concrete. The point of meditation is open yourself to the unlimited, that means the relaxation of all the limits. When you are the witness of the thoughts there is a limit between you and the thoughts

This is not your true essence, it's just an state where you split the reality between the witness and the forms that arises. That witness seems empty because it's a limited perspective that you are creating by the fact of meditating. Your true essence gets open when the separation between object and subject collapses and you release the control. The fact of being an observer is contraction, that's why it feels so tense

What imagination? That's spiritual bypassing . Then there is the reality, that is pure and good, and your imagination, that is impure and bad.

The distinctions are real. Pretending they don't exist is a kind of spiritual narcissism that closes you off. No one achieves openness with those non-dualistic tricks. You have to know how to differentiate between process and substance; then you can function as a process aligned with your total nature. To pretend that everything is illusory is to deny something that exists, a kind of mental castration that locks you in a dead state that you define as "awake."

I see it different, everything is just the reality happening, processes unfolding, it's not "maya", it's just how reality manifest. The "truth" is the perception of the nature of the reality beyond the form. That doesn't mean that the form is Maya or unreal, means that the form is form, and the nature is the nature. Both are two aspects of the reality. No one is false. But the point is being open to the total nature of the reality, to what is. Then the form appears as what is in this form . I think that this of Maya is not useful to see clearly, but it's just my opinion. Anyway, a pleasure to talk

Then why do you call it dream if it's the same than the reality? A dream is something less real, an illusion. An illusion is illusory because it's not real. If anything is an illusion is in comparison with something that is not an illusion. If everything is an illusion, then it's just you putting labels to create an unnecessary mental mess

It's much more simple: everything is real because everything is the reality. Or maybe are you one of those non dualistic who make an absolute duality between real and dream?

Of course, it's the reality happening, I would call real to the reality. You are there, if you want to call it unreal to feel better it's your choice. But if anything is not real, then what is "real"?

I do since you equate fear and illusion. That means escapism. Like: this is just a dream, it's not happening. That's just a mental trick. Maybe you went through a very hard problems, but this attitude is evasion.

This is where you enter the realm of non-dualistic modern spirituality, and your reasoning completely collapses. Fear is not an illusion; it's an essential mechanism for the complex process we call life to be possible. If you're serious about spirituality, you have to confront fear for real. Not just "observing" it at home, but when death and ruin lurks. Then you'll see how illusory it truly is.

There are two types of people: those who observe reality to understand it, and those who do so to reinforce a self-image they need. You don't have to be Muslim, uneducated, or anything like that; you could be a Nobel laureate, but if you operate in defensive mode, you'll see all of reality through the filter of your absolute need for identity.