Moksha

In naming yourself, have you not made yourself, and anything you say, a falsehood?

You can build spiritual muscle. If you are able to realize the state of not-knowing/fearlessness/peace of mind when alone, practice maintaining that state in increasingly challenging circumstances. Other people are hell ? Maybe set yourself a more realistic level, like maintaining awareness while walking through a park, or while watching CNN. From the place of Consciousness, these passing forms can be hefted, like you are in a spiritual gym. The more you lift, the lighter they seem, not because they have changed, but because your spiritual muscle has grown.

@Endangered-EGO Do you see the common thread in your own experience: you are most spacious during "effortless concentration" and while "giving up any goal". Awareness is more a letting go of effort, since it is our natural state. Consciousness always is, if we would just stop struggling against it, and realize it. I haven't tried Shinzen Young's technique, but I like the idea of it for meditation. As humans, on the local scale, we survive through the expansion and contraction of our breath. On the life scale, we expand into adulthood, and contract into death. It is true for every form, on different scales. Consciousness itself is continuously expanding through creation, and contracting through realization. I see it as discontinuity within a continuous field. Individual personality is the closest discontinuity, but there is discontinuity in every other personality and form, even at the cosmic scale of time and space, all within the continuous field of Consciousness.

Yeah, it feels right. Identity is just the illusion of forces cohering together within an infinite field. The Buddha describes personality as a bundled blend of spices. He compares it to walking through a village marketplace, where vendors display their ingredients on mats. The spice-seller takes a banana leaf, and doles out small heaps of spices, like ginger and coriander, then wraps them up in the leaf and ties the bundle with a banana string. Each personality is a unique blend of five skandhas, or "heaps" of ingredients, which are energy formations: Rupa (form) Vedana (sensation or feeling) Samjna (perception) Samskara (forces of the mind) Vijnana (consciousness) Who knew that our personalities are nothing more than energy formations within an infinite continuous field?

@Endangered-EGO The more you are able to notice the gaps in anything, the more grounded in Consciousness "you" are. Maybe a better way of putting it is, paying attention to spaciousness helps to desolidify the energies of the personality, and reduces their pull on attention. Whatever you attend to, you empower. Attending to spaciousness will deepen your Conscious presence, whereas attending to your thoughts will further entrap you in them. "Spiritual thoughts" is a funny realization Your instinct is right; the problem is with identifying with them. They are just another thought form, pretending to be spiritual, but they are not actually spiritual. Spirit, or Consciousness, is continuous. It cannot be a thought, because thoughts are inevitably discontinuous. Our awareness of this can ebb and flow, but Consciousness is always. I have been feeling this for some time now, a nearly constant realization of spirit or Consciousness, but it still ebbs and flows, and like you, I still feel some pull from the energies of the personality. "I don't know" is the best turning point Continue not to know. Instead of trying to do anything, maybe it will be helpful not to try. Just notice those moments when you realize that you have drifted back into your mind, and the realization itself will create more space from your mind.

@Endangered-EGO Have you realized being Consciousness yet? I believe you have, since you describe small awakenings. That realization of infinite spaciousness, free from perspective, is the anchor. Attention amplifies. The more attention that is focused in Consciousness, the less pull there is from the thoughts, feelings, and other energy forms of personality. Conversely, the more attention that is focused on the energy forms of personality, the stronger these forces become. I have been practicing this, and yesterday something weird and a little scary happened. I experienced this reverse time loop, where my attention was reeled in, like watching my life in reverse. I was brought back to this experience of being a very young child, and looking through the eyes of the child. Then I sort of popped out of myself, back to being Consciousness, but observing this bundle of energies that I had identified with. I thought, "the boy in me is dissolving." It was a little disorienting. I couldn't detach entirely, and I didn't want to. But there was a lot more space than is usually the case. One other thing to share that might be helpful. I have been realizing continuity vs. discontinuity. Consciousness is infinitely continuous. All of the energies of personality, and more broadly of relative reality, resolve to discontinuity. There is no true solidity or continuity in the perceived world. For example, we perceive our thoughts as a continuous stream, but once attention is focused, we realize the gaps that exist between our thoughts. It's like a movie that appears to be continuous, but is comprised of separate frames with small gaps between each frame. I am enjoying observing these gaps. When you notice the gaps in your thoughts, and the gaps between your feelings, and even the gaps in your desires and your appetites, you realize the spaciousness underlying and infusing all of these energies. You realize that "you" are nothing more than these energy fields, and that Consciousness is experiencing "you" within its infinite spaciousness. As a practice, I think it might help you to try noticing these gaps.

When you realize yourself as Consciousness, your sense of self dissolves. Your personality is just a field of forces - thoughts, feelings, perceptions, memories, physical drives - that you used to identify with, but now see them for what they are. You are the field within which these forces arise and fall, and they no longer have much pull on you. The forces themselves have lost some of their coarseness, and have become more sublime. As Consciousness, you realize your infinite abundance. You can enjoy the forces for what they are, but no longer take them seriously, or direct your attention to them for long.

@Javfly33 "You" are no more than intentional, misdirected attention.

@Someone here I am timeless (and so are you)

Any pure attention, even for a moment, is an awakening. If you are able to feel the energy in your hands, and notice that you are observing this, you are, in this moment, awake.

No form can express the ultimate beauty of the formless. Exactly Free will is infinitely creative, and is not bound to any form.

Direct experience is pure awareness, and the absolute absence of thought.

@73809 Ego is the dream

Anything pursuing or pursued is part of the dream.

@VeganAwake Yes Experience is creation. It is imagination. It is intentional, misdirected attention. It loves doing it, always and infinitely.

Creation is nothing more than attention being misdirected, with intention. It is willful, pure imagination. The reason you see the form behind the glass is that the form is only that. Your attention is creating the form, just as it creates every form.

Have you tried? It is a good spiritual practice. Look at anything without needing to label it. Names dissolve into objects which dissolve into attributes which dissolve into nothingness.

@Vipassana Yes, and nonduality dreams all dualities ?

Waking up doesn't fix anything, it just is the realization that the only thing that matters is nothing at all.

Realize that anything that can be placed on a pedestal is not real.

Infinite illusion is still illusion. How can anything unreal be important? Unless this is threatened by numbers, they cannot be significant. The only significance is the nonduality that cannot be threatened

@Vipassana Maybe no number can be significant, and every number must be what it is. Patterns are only relative. From the perspective of Consciousness, all numbers are being infinitely expressed, always.

So much searching for meaning in numbers. The only real number is undefined.

Personality wants to awaken, and it never can by itself. The body, the mind, sensations, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and desires are all fields of forces that Consciousness bundles into a dream form. Waking up is nothing more than Consciousness realizing itself within the dream form. The more awake someone becomes, the more sublime these energies become, until the someone entirely dissolves.