Moksha

Good for you, It's for your own sake For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

Desires and fears are always attachments. This includes the desire to be free and the fear of not being loved. The deeper you realize the absolute, the more tenuous even these desires become.

Relative reality is ironic that way.

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The deeper you realize the absolute, the harder it will be for others to understand. Even awakening is rare, let alone enlightening. It dissolves boundaries, and you see the same essence in everything, regardless of apparently different states of identification. I don't talk about it much with my loved ones. Instead, I silently love them. You are flying higher, and seeing clearer, so what do you do now? You can enjoy the solo flight, or periodically choose to rejoin the flock and help them fly for themselves. I haven't thought about "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" for decades, but it has been in my mind lately. I relate to Jonathan at a deeper level than when I first pondered the analogy. Some people see it on the surface as a child's story, but it is luminous in its depths. A lot of quotes, but hopefully they will resonate in some way that is helpful: “Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flights–how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.” “You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch the perfect speed. And it isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.” “For a long time Jonathan forgot about the world that he had come from, that place where the Flock lived with its eyes tightly shut to the joy of flight, using its wings as means to the end of finding and fighting for food. But now and then, just for a moment, he remembered.” “His one sorrow was not solitude, it was that the other gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they refused to open their eyes and see.” “’Why is it,’ Jonathan puzzled, ‘that the hardest thing in the world is to convince a bird that he is free, and that he can prove it for himself if he’d just spend a little time practicing? Why should that be so hard?’” “For in spite of his lonely past, Jonathan Seagull was born to be an instructor, and his own way of demonstrating love was to give something of the truth that he had seen to a gull who asked only a chance to see truth for himself.” “He spoke of very simple things–It is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition out limitation in any form.” “Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation.” “Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.” “The trick was to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time.” “‘The only true law is that which leads to freedom,’ Jonathan said. ‘There is no other.’”

I only trust direct knowledge. I have no judgment toward others on their individual path to the absolute. Everyone is navigating their own apparent boat on their own apparent river, sailing into the same ocean.

People talk a lot about ego death, but talk is cheap. It is one thing to taunt the enemy on the battlefield, but victory is realizing the wisdom of laying down your sword and walking away. Without attention, the ego has no choice but to dissolve.

Desires and fears are minimally necessary to survive within the dream, far less than most people realize. Instead of chaining yourself, you can hold the thin string of the kite and allow it to fly.

The road to hell is paved with clear intentions I don't speak to anything except my direct experience, and the deeper I realize the absolute the more lucid, silent, and free I become.

@SOUL ?️? @Yimpa Ignorance is underrated. It is the next best thing to being here.

There is no absolute point of view. There is no solution, only dissolution. It isn't about comprehending something. It's about letting go of false comprehension.

Why cling to any map if you have already arrived at the destination? The map is useless at that point and can be burned.

I'm glad psychedelics have helped you transcend the ego, just pointing out that they are not the universal or ideal path for everyone. More important than temporarily transcending the ego is remaining in the silent absolute as the perpetual flow state within the dream. Maybe it happens for some on psychedelics alone, but if so I haven't seen it. It seems an endless roller coaster of highs and lows, with no enduring direct awareness.

The ego is illusion. It is false identification with the cosmos rather than direct realization of the absolute. What dissolves is not the mind, but identification with the mind. Unconditioned, the mind becomes your steed rather than your master. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. - Rainer Maria Rilke

The understanding that has to happen at the deepest level is that desires are inherently transient, and identification with them leads to blindness and suffering. Direct realization dissolves identification with desires. You are not your desires. You are beyond them, but to see this requires surrendering the attachment to desires, and the absolute directly realizing itself. You can still enjoy the cosmos without identifying with its forms. You directly resonate with its essence because it is who you actually are.

Any peak state is inevitably going to be followed by a valley state. It goes with dualing the cosmos. Sink into absolute silence, which is beyond any transient state. It doesn't mean you can't celebrate life in the process. To the contrary, it liberates you from the party downer of yourself.

I awoke without psychedelics, not because I am superior or inferior, but because the absolute chose this as the inner pilgrimage to itself within this form. People awaken in many ways, and just because psychedelics has helped you doesn't mean it is the universal or preferable path for everyone else.

@StillnessSpeaks There's an inverse correlation between identity and freedom. The more boundaries the mind creates between you and others, the stronger the bars become on your self-made prison. Freedom is letting go of identity and boundaries, which is absolute love. @BlueOak Yes, the essence of every person, every animal, every plant, and every other form is absolutely the same. Realizing the seamlessness of reality dissolves every identity. For most of us, this isn't a one-time realization, but an ever-deepening release of the false idea of separation and resonating with the absolute within, between, and beyond forms.

How you get here doesn't matter, just stay here if you can. An entire lifetime of profound insights won't keep the gate to the Absolute open until you are truly ready to pay the price of ego death. Few are willing to let go of their desires and fears to that depth.

@BlueOak No, people don't experience this daily. The vast majority are oblivious to their absolute nature. Many have thoughts about it, but few directly realize it. When they do, it dissolves identity.

See my earlier post to @Breakingthewall in this thread. Pain is endemic to living, suffering is not.

@BlueOak What do you see as the difference between losing yourself within an identity and remaining lucid while performing whatever tasks are required (stacking shelves, writing books, riding the bus, etc.)? The absolute lucidly experiencing life through a form is like sprinkling salt on an otherwise bland plate of food. It enhances the quality of every phenomenal experience, even stacking shelves. Have you experienced this yet? If not, try being lucid during any task that you would otherwise consider to be mundane. Instead of letting your mind wander, or being bored, or wishing you were anywhere but here, unconditionally allow whatever is happening and notice the energy of it flowing through you. Instead of judging the moment, embrace it as the reality which the cosmos (which is also you) is presenting here and now. Everything resonates when there is no resistance. Why? Awareness magnifies whatever it focuses on. If it is entangled in phenomena, it believes itself to be a prisoner of its circumstances. If it is Self-aware and flows freely through the form, it enlightens every experience. This joy becomes deeper the more free the absolute realizes itself to be, like a river bursting through a log jam until every blockage is cleared.

Do you feel it is possible to perform a role well (Boss, Bus Driver, Friend) without identifying with it? What if no matter what activities you are doing, rather than losing yourself in the experience, you remain centered in your absolute nature? Can lucidity enhance the quality of what you do, by allowing the expression of freedom, creativity, and intelligence through your form?

Not all identifications are equally damning. You need a little identity to remain within the dream, just much less than most people realize.

That's true for most decisions in relative reality, which relies on the illusion of memories and anticipations. There is also the absolute flow state, which can inform decisions in the moment beyond the belief in a past or a future. It happens sometimes, even for people that are not awake in general.