Moksha

Enlightened people are always awake. Sometimes it is a catastrophic awakening, as with Tolle, but usually it is a gradual awakening, like the sun rising into the sky. The more you practice vigilance, the fewer naps you will take.

Consciousness. It creates everything and dissolves everything.

Amazing, isn't it? ?

The Buddha couldn't have said it better. If you meditate earnestly, through spiritual disciplines you can make an island for yourself that no flood can overwhelm. The immature lose their vigilance, but the wise guard it as their greatest treasure.

Relatively ridiculous, yes. Ultimately ridiculous, less yes. Every answer is ultimately ridiculous (including this one).

Wolf Blitzer in the Situation Room: Thinking God The Situation: Being God

@Amaal Reality is simpler than your mind is making it. Consciousness is all there is. Everything else, including you and David, are nothing but dream expressions of the same Consciousness. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. (A Course in Miracles)

Maybe this is because in dark settings, your physical senses are less engaged. Fewer distractions to entrap your mind, and more room for the light of Consciousness to arise. This is one of the reasons some people meditate with their eyes closed. I also find that being in nature, especially without naming anything, Consciously resonates.

I feel that awakening is just the first step of the enlightenment journey. Realizing yourself as Consciousness is beautiful, but there is still so much deconditioning to be done. This is a gradual process, but it too is beautiful. I wrote this yesterday and wanted to share it here: *** The Bonfire Consciousness strikes the spark of my undoing, Catching in the kindling of thought, Consuming it to soot, intensifying, Crumbling the timbers that it wrought, Purifying fire ever rising, Burning through the ropes of my desire, Devouring the karma of my making, Soul wind stirring these flames higher, Scattering the ashes of my suffering, No illusion left, only the fire.

The ego doesn't awaken. Just the opposite. Whenever you are awake, the ego runs for the shadows. It can't continue pretending to be solid, in the light of Consciousness. First chance it gets, the ego will sneak out and trick you into reidentifying with it, thus resolidifying it with your energy. Vigilance is required.

No interpretation required. No thought required. No desire for awakening required. No beliefs required. No names required. No ego required. No self required. No trust in the words of others required. Consciousness becoming aware of itself, and nothing else.

Awakening isn't a secret, so much as a realization. It is the absence of thought, the receding of the senses, the opening of your spiritual eyes, and the direct realization of the same Consciousness in everything.

I don't practice meditating much, but most of my life is a meditation. The effort is in staying centered in Consciousness, and allowing its light to dissolve your conditioning. The result is worth it, but it does take courage, integrity, and will.

There is a way to directly confirm the sameness of Consciousness.

I have experienced some weird things, but not to the point of feeling like I couldn't control my body. One time, it felt like a disidentification with my body, where I realized I was in this meat puppet thing and could pull its jaw strings, but I wasn't it. I also felt kind of bad when I tugged the strings, because it seemed disrespectful.

Touche Of course you are right. Ultimate reality cannot be known, and we are fools to name it. We can only directly realize it, trust it, and love it.

Your ego missed you too. It is a sneaky bastard, hiding in the shadows when you are Conscious, and waiting to jump out when you finally start to feel safe. My suffering has reduced 95% for the past 6 months. Even then, I have had some ego attacks, accounting for the remaining 5%. It is going for the jugular now, playing the strings that go the deepest. I have realized some fundamentals about my personality that I never truly understood before. The deconditioning is disorienting sometimes, but I am determined to ride it out. Fucking ego has to (mostly) die.

Yes That is the difference between pain and suffering. The former is unavoidable, the latter is not.

The alternative being...?

Consciousness is. Everything else, including people, is its creation. Consciousness is experiencing the dream through seemingly separate people, which are different expressions of itself. Only Consciousness has no beginning and no end. Everything else, including people, are transient expressions that inevitably have a beginning and an end.

That direct realization, and the will to remain in it, will open the door to everything.

@Breakingthewall Dogs know the secret of living: they are entirely present. They are free from suffering, because they resist nothing. We make it so difficult for ourselves as humans. What are we trying to accomplish by resisting what is? Does the resistance change anything, ever? The irony is that by letting go of resistance, we are in a higher state of Consciousness that allows us to change whatever needs to be changed, with more quality and efficacy than would have been possible otherwise. It is not about embracing the dark side of life, but about accepting that there is a dark side, and doing what Consciousness demands. Life is absolutely ugly, but it it is also absolutely beautiful. Creation demands both. Every duality that can exist, must exist. The alternative is destruction, which dissolves the ugly, but also dissolves the beautiful. I love my partner, my children, and the rest of my family. Since I have learned to suffer less, I am able to love them more. I hope that I can help them also learn to suffer less.

Welcome, @Amaal This insight is a step toward a greater realization. Have you considered that your sister may be as real, or as unreal, as you? If that is true, what does it say about your essential nature, and the essential nature of your sister? What do you have in common, and what is different? When you withdraw the senses, and see spiritually, you realize the connectedness of everything. Not only between you and your sister, but between you and the tree outside your window, between you and the sun, and even between you and the chair you are sitting on. It is all the same Consciousness, manifested through different forms. You are Consciousness, expressed through the transient personality of your self. Your sister is the same Consciousness, expressed through the transient personality of her self. We are all the same Consciousness, expressed through infinitely diverse forms. ?

@abrakamowse?

Who is the I observing observation? I believe it works like this. Consciousness amplifies whatever it attends, and dissolves whatever it does not attend. That is how creation and destruction happen. Quantum physics has recognized this, with the discovery of the role of the perceiver in shaping reality. Consciousness literally creates and destroys, by fluctuating the state and focus of its attention. Whether this is ultimately true or not, it illustrates that creation and destruction follow a set of rules. Other rules appear to be infinite potential and expressed energy, inevitable creation and destruction, transcendent nonduality, necessary duality within the dream dimension, and the essential nature of Consciousness as love. Whether or not these rules are transcendentally true, it is evident that such rules must exist. If anything is, then rules are simply the parameters and expression of its existence.