Moksha

Your insights are spot on. The more deeply you realize the treachery of desires and fears, the easier it will be to remain neutral and detached. And the more neutral and detached you are, the easier it will be to ignore the rantings of the egoic mind. It's like a spiritual centrifuge, casting thoughts away from the center, until eventually only spaciousness remains. Keep going, the truth will set you free?

If they teach you to release the need for control, as I believe they can, psychedelics may be useful. The danger is the temptation of psychedelics becoming an end unto themselves. As with any instruction, the method is only useful to the extent that its insights are integrated, and the method itself is released. When you are able to walk away from psychedelics entirely, without looking back, you will know that you are free. You don't have to be a born mystic or take psychedelics to realize truth. The absolute carves a unique path to itself through each form. The path is less important than the sincerity of the person taking it.

@Someone here You've realized that attachments are the source of your suffering. That's good, it opens the door for dissolving them. I can't speak for Leo, but to me doing the work means proving the sincerity of your insights. If they're just swimming around in your head, they aren't doing you any good. You have to actually integrate them. Pick an attachment in your life, and focus on truly letting it go. Not just conceptually, but directly. Put it to the test, and experientially prove that it's based on a lie. For example, you mentioned struggling with anxiety. Identify a situation that triggers anxiety for you. It could be something simple, like feeling the compulsion to check the lock on your door. Decide that the next time you feel this compulsion, instead of giving into it, you will notice it and let it go. It seems simple, but can be extremely difficult in practice, if it is a deep compulsion. Put your compulsion on trial. Instead of checking the lock on your door, turn around and walk away. After some time has passed, you will realize that your mind has moved on to something else, and you are still completely safe. The dire warnings of what would happen if you ignore the compulsion are proven to be based on a lie. Eventually you realize this so deeply that the compulsion entirely dissolves. It's a small victory, but can be a tremendous relief. You begin to see the pattern of how desires and fears have driven your behavior all of your life. It could be a minor attachment like the compulsion to lock your door, or a major attachment like depending on your partner to make you feel loved. Keep going. The victories in battling your attachments accumulate, until eventually the entire dam breaks. It takes absolute sincerity to get there, but you will. When you deeply understand that desires and fears always lead to suffering, you will finally have the strength to surrender them, and realize yourself.

You can't force it, but you can prepare for it. Every insight you have takes you deeper, and helps you relinquish the storms on the surface. Gather insights like stones that sink you into yourself. Descend patiently, and allow your form to adjust to each new depth. Before you know it, you will be breathing naturally, in deep water.

@Yimpa The beauty about letting go of attachment to results is that it frees you to live directly, without needing to define reality for yourself or others. True living doesn't begin until you let go of the dictionary handed to you by society. @gettoefl Nondual pointers are ironic, aren't they? It's why silence is the purest language. @StarStruck As a friend of mine who used to be on the forum often said, "Not two". Nondual doesn't mean "one". How do you count infinity?

There's no universal answer. You have to find what works for you, based on where you currently are. Meditation is a mainstay, but if that is difficult, hatha yoga is a good start. Try "The Mind Illuminated" by John Yates, and see if it helps.

Every belief, Buddhist or otherwise, is false. At best, they are pointers to the absolute within. Beliefs have to be relinquished to directly realize truth. It's a common mistake to conceptualize reality. The vast majority of people can't help themselves. They bang their heads against the absolute wall, until they are bloody and broken. It's true the absolute is nothing. It's also true that it is everything. How many realize that their essence is beyond nothing and everything? Reality is illogical, paradoxical, and incomprehensible. It's who you are, you just need to let go of the myopic mind and be.

Stop looking outside of yourself. Anchor your awareness within, and experience the phenomenal world without misidentifying as it. People crow about being awake, but this is the litmus test. If you are still afraid, you haven't realized who you are. You have to surrender to the unconditionality of yourself to be free. Check out "The wisdom of insecurity" by Alan Watts.

When this moves beyond commentary to being such a blatant realization that you have no choice but to surrender, you are on the path to freedom. Deeply realize that the list never ends, and get off the list.

Eastern mystics call it emptiness. Western mystics call it fullness. Regardless of the name, the absolute directly realizes itself, beyond the senses. What is awakening, if not reality letting go of misidentification with the mind, and realizing itself beyond the mind? Awareness is aware. Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone beyond all going, offering the heart-mind to the fire of awareness!

@ardacigin Is it possible for the absolute to directly realize itself, apart from the sensations of the form? Is there a fundamental essence that underlies reality, and has the capacity to hide and find itself?

All perspectives are untrue, but some are more cluttered by false beliefs than others. The perspective of an enlightened being is broader and clearer than the perspective of a being completely ensnared in its mind. The absolute may experience its cosmos more directly through an enlightened being, but even in the absence of beliefs, the portal and its perspective remain imaginary props.

The mind is a dragon. ? If you are foolish enough to try dominating it by force, it will ravage you. Instead, allow it to approach without attacking or fleeing from it. When you have proven the mettle of your sincerity, it will allow you onto its back and take you to unseen heights.

Talk is cheap, integration is not. People place a stale piece of bread on the altar, and demand a miracle.

@UnbornTao A certain piercer of Tao-rats recently confessed to ruthless honesty. Call it what you want, it comes down to sincerity. Not the kind that can be spoken, but the essential umbilical cord to truth. It lets you be born into the cosmos for a while, and wander around to explore with new eyes, but keep the cord intact, and it will eventually pull you back into unbirth.

Infinitely more, and the deeper you go, the less discussion is needed. You can temporarily stop listening to your mind in any number of ways, and humans are notorious for our capacity to create escape mechanisms. Unfortunately, it's an endless hamster wheel that never actually gets you out of the cage. Realizing who you aren't is an important milestone, but it only brings you to the gate. The toll still has to be paid before you're allowed passage to realizing who you are. By purest path, I mean self-inquiry is the most direct. It's also the most rare. The absolute is nothing if not creative in carving out paths to discovering itself.

If psychedelics aren't sufficient to keep the portal open, the lesson of suffering will. Even the most stubborn of us will eventually surrender, when the weight becomes unbearable.

Hence the matter of suffering.

This is the only realization you truly need. Integrating the realization, to deeper and deeper levels, is the real work of enlightenment.

I see.

The lies of the mind are crafted from fears and desires. We falsely believe that we can be harmed, or that bliss is around the next bend. All you need to remain open is to deeply realize that these are only lies. Your true nature is beyond threat, and is the essence of bliss. With practice, you will let go of these lies more easily, until your inner trust becomes so absolute that nothing has the power to distract.

@Adam M If you can directly realize who you are through self-inquiry, it's the purest path. Following it leads beyond "I AM" to simply "AM". Suffering is the result of seeking fulfillment through false identification. Its purpose is to goad you into awakening to your true nature. Enlightenment is possible, but it's also rare. Most people are born and die without becoming enlightened. They may have genuine realizations, but the conditioning of their mind doesn't allow them to remain awake. Enlightenment is only an imaginary portal to absolute being. It isn't real. Within the dream, the absolute realizes itself, and continues lucidly to experience its imagination. You're right that the absolute creates attachments within its dream, only to dissolve them, ad infinitum. It's god doing god. The point of spirituality is to arrive at the peak state of the dream, where you are able to experience the phenomenal glory of your imagination, free from the suffering of misidentification.

You aren't in the open state all the time because you still listen to the demands and distractions of your mind. The only truth you need to understand about the mind is that identifying with it always leads to suffering. If you deeply realize this, you will no longer listen to the mind, regardless of its lies.

Yes, enlightenment is the perpetual absence of ego-identification. If you are moving into and out of the flow state, putting on the ego mask over and over again, you aren't enlightened. Trading the human mask for an alien mask doesn't make you any more enlightened. Leo seems to believe that scuba diving into ever deeper levels of exotic identification is AWAKENING. It isn't. It is IMAGINING.

When you are open completely to the now, limitless, the patterns of the mind disappear. If they reappear later, the solution isn't to grab them, interrogate them, and try to understand them. The solution is to return to the now, over and over again, until it becomes your default state of being.