Moksha

Only on the surface. We have disagreed from time to time, and Leo has fired a few shots, but deep down he knows his own demons and respects sincerity.

Theories are useless for solving suffering. To be of any use, the knowledge has to be direct. Find a way to keep the window open (meditation, contemplation, self-inquiry, or whatever creates space from your mind), and the clouds will eventually clear enough for you to see the sun.

Objectively, there's unquestionably a difference but who is in a position to judge the suffering of one person vs. another? There are people living in mud huts in Kenya who are more happy, more fulfilled, and more engaged in life than some of the richest people in America who are miserable with ego-entitlement. I'm just not a fan of judgment in general. It tends to reinforce egoic boundaries, rather than dissolving them.

Mental illness and disability are hardly an easy path. Even with someone you know intimately, it's foolhardy to compare paths. Spirituality is always an individual journey, and the less judgment of others, the more awareness you can focus on clearly navigating your own path. Not that I'm judging your judgment

It's true you can't control destiny at the individual level, but you can learn to control whether or not you resist what happens. In the absence of judgment, it is all just energy flowing through you. In that way you can choose to be free.

I hated having roommates when I was younger, but there was no choice. Eventually I reached the point where I could afford to live on my own. You will too, but you may have to pay the price of losing privacy for a while. Look at it as a spiritual practice. If you leverage it, you can learn to let it flow through you without suffering, and expand the lesson to other areas of your life. Millions (billions?) of people on the planet are in the same situation, and they make it work. ChatGPT to the rescue: A 2020 report by the National Multifamily Housing Council found that 32% of renters lived with roommates. In other countries, such as in Europe, living with roommates is also a common practice among young adults, especially in urban areas where housing costs can be high. Overall, while we do not have an exact number for how many people on the planet have roommates, it is safe to say that living with roommates is a common practice in many parts of the world.

@Yimpa ⚡There's nothing like unsuffering love.

Well said. You are the universe, shaping yourself to realize yourself.

Relationships can create diamonds out of coal if you allow them to unshape you unconditionally.

Absolute reality is unconditional awareness, beyond states and statelessness. Maybe Ralston defines enlightenment differently, but I see it as the process of the absolute realizing itself within its dream. Because it is a process, with an apparent beginning and ending, it cannot be intransient.

Awareness turned outward is imagination. Awareness turned inward is enlightenment. Desire determines the direction.

Allurement is egoic. It dissolves boundaries by consumption, rather than by realization, and is the opposite of love.

I'm 100% confident not only that it exists within the dream, but that stillness, detachment, and uninvolvement are synonyms for love. I understand words aren't helping here, so will be still.

Time, space, and matter are only relatively real. They morph based on the perception of the observer. Absolute reality is immutable.

@Squeekytoy Defeating the hydra isn't about heroic effort, which only exhausts you, but about realizing that the hydra is only the shadow of the mind. The more you engage with it, the larger it looms. Instead of sparring with it, focus your awareness on the light, and the shadow falls behind.

To your essence ?

Not only is enlightenment a state, but there are infinite cities within it. Just because it borders the coast doesn't make it any more the ocean than Iowa is.

It's not surprising somebody would take what I shared and try to use it against me. Almost thou persuadeth me to be offended

People sometimes get confused about emptiness. It's not the absence of reality, but the absence of unreality. The enlightened being isn't sitting there in solipsistic solitude, it is seamlessly chilling with its friends.

Not to reinforce your Buddha accusations, but funny thing about names... The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

?? Which came first? Love and detaching from desire leads to enlightenment, which leads to love and detaching from desire. Light resonates with light.

You're correct that nothing is spontaneous, including psychedelic exploration. Maybe the absolute will open a perpetual portal to itself through psychedelics, maybe not. I have yet to see it, but of course that doesn't mean it isn't possible. All I know directly is that suffering does the trick, when you are willing to deeply learn the lesson it is trying to teach you.

I suspect the divergence is that you are referring to the phenomenal experiences of love, passion, creativity, and inner stillness while I am referring to the disappearance of phenomenal boundaries entirely, beyond all experiences. Absolute love is a realization, not an emotion. It is within and beyond the cosmos. I have had surges of love flow through me, and surges of stillness, but these are phenomenal experiences within the dream. They are pure expressions of the absolute, but they are still only expressions. The absolute beyond the cosmos is mystery. I know its facets, but I cannot see its coreless core, only realize that I am it.

I try not to assume what others do or don't realize. If you feel that I have judged you or your journey in any way, I apologize. That is not my intention. I believe the absolute in each avatar has to carve its own path to realization. I also believe, and have said specifically regarding both you and Leo, that you are entirely sincere. When I say that I have seen no evidence of psychedelics leading to enlightenment, I am referring to what has been shared in this forum and other sources (Ram Dass, Aldous Huxley, etc.) that I have read over the years. I am looking at the perpetual state of being lucid within the dream. I am not referring to enduring positive changes, which I'm quite sure you and Leo have realized. By enlightenment, I mean being in the continuous flow state of the absolute with its cosmos. You have shared that the door opens and closes for you. Leo has never indicated that the door is always open for him, at least not that I have seen. I don't presume whether it is or not. I hold all ideas loosely, including the ideas expressed here. They are sketches on a thin scrap of parchment, and are not absolutely real. I realize what I realize, and it is what it is. It is still within the dream, and my only commitment is to keeping the portal as clearly open as possible, regardless of what flows through it, until the portal itself finally dissolves.

I can't speak for buddhas (@squeekytoy ), but I can speak for myself. As I see this, detachment = disillusionment = enlightenment = love. It is all realizing the same absolute within, between, and beyond all beings. If you are attached to an identity, it defines your reality. It creates a false sense of separation. You are different from others, and others are different from you. You believe that love, happiness, and fulfillment are states to be reached by manipulating apparent situations outside of your apparent self, and you invest all of your awareness into this endless pursuit, which only barricades you further from realizing the absolute that is always this, but is lost within its cosmic dream of separation. The state of total detachment is the state of total inclusiveness. When the absolute realizes itself, there is nothing to be attached to, or to separate itself from. All apparent differences dissolve. You are apathetic to the appearance of separation in the environment, but you are entirely aware of the unity within and beyond the environment. You are immersed in everything, because everything is the same absolute. Think of it as that final moment before the drop dissolves back into the depthless ocean. It is still the subtlest hint of a drop, but its boundaries have already evaporated.