Moksha

Why not find a qualified therapist who can also provide guidance with your meditation practice? I've noticed that deepening phases are often accompanied by anxiety, which gradually settles as the mind adjusts to more docile states. It's like scuba diving for the soul. You need to take your time, rather than helter-skeltering into the murky depths. Patience, diligence, and unconditional love toward the self will eventually get you here.

Just because god loves you doesn't mean it is going to shape the cosmos to suit you. God loves you so much that it will shape you to suit the cosmos.

Conceptual analysis tends to reinforce apparent boundaries, while Self-realization dissolves them. Instead of losing yourself within the labyrinth of the mind, live the dream lucidly. The Self is overflowing with phenomenal wonders, despite the disappearing boundaries.

Now that is direct knowledge

Demons vary according to the person's samskaras (blockages). You may not fear snakes, for example, but probably safe to say that death is a common samskara. Especially ego death.

@Breakingthewall Hell is a preference hierarchy: 1) Archdemon 2) Demon 3) Devil 4) Imp There's nothing wrong with dissolving a few imps first before moving on to devils and demons. Eventually though, you have to face the archdemon of death, and love the smug off its face.

It is the simplest and the rarest realization. Don't let the mind deceive you into believing that dissolving demons is only possible in extreme states. Take any desire or fear that you have, it doesn't matter. You already have the power to let it flow through you. What you lack is motivation. For example, I hate snakes. They have always freaked me out. I could convince myself that willingly holding a snake is inconceivable. It is a lie. What if the life of my daughter depends on it? Amazing how instantly the will arises to meet the moment.

It's easy to mistake good fortune for flow. When the energy of current events aligns with your desires, life is easy and feels free. It's only when the energy shifts, and opposes your desires, that life becomes difficult and feels like bondage. Now is the window for realizing the absolute within, by allowing all energies that you encounter to flow through you without resistance. Until you surrender, the winds of life will continue to assault you, and make you suffer. Life will be entirely conditional, depending on which direction the winds blow. Freedom is living in the flow state, regardless of what energies you encounter. It is the unconditional nexus of being in the world, but not of the world.

Heaven and hell are dualities of the absolute within the dream. Direct realization of itself is heaven, which dissolves boundaries and is unconditional love. Misidentification of itself is hell, which imagines boundaries and is suffering caused by imposing conditions on the cosmos. Beyond the cosmos there is no heaven or hell, only the silent mystery of absolute reality.

@Breakingthewall The absolute chooses everything, even the most horrific events. How could it be otherwise, in the realm of unlimited imagination. Phenomenal beauty cannot be experienced unless phenomenal terror is also allowed. Dualities are inevitable within the dream. The secret of the dream is that when realizing itself, the absolute allows all experiences to flow through it without resistance. In the flow state, there is no judgment of energetic expressions as desirable or undesirable, simply the unconditional submission to them all. This is the absolute realizing the absolute. It is love within and beyond the dream.

Given that you spent most of your growing up life with him, I don't doubt that your grandpa knew you well, probably better than you know yourself. Don't assume that he didn't see past the suffering you were in, to the grandson that he knew and loved. He may not have understood why you were suffering, but he loved you all the same, and knew that you loved him regardless of how you acted. Take this as a window to yourself. What does blaming yourself accomplish? Would your grandfather want you to be miserable about it, or would he want you to learn from it and celebrate your life? I'm very familiar with self-judgment. It teaches you nothing, and takes everything. See it for the lie that it is, and let it go.

Thank you Leo, for creating a space for entirely exotic creatures to discover ourselves. ?

Each person exists within its unique cosmos. It senses, perceives, interprets, and creates its own relative reality, which is entirely different from the reality of any other person. To realize the sameness of the absolute requires withdrawing from the energies of relative reality, and focusing awareness on the essence. It dissolves all apparent boundaries. The third eye is just an analogy, but it resonates. It is direct awareness of the absolute within and beyond this and other forms, entirely free from the delusions and distractions of maya.

The deeper you sink into direct realization, the easier it is to recognize immature insights. Instead of seeing them as false, appreciate them as downward spiraling stairs into the absolute. Had you tried to jump the stairs to an entirely lower level, you might have cracked your skull in the process.

I agree, the power of a guru is its transparency to the light of the absolute which shines through it. People are naturally drawn to this energy, although they usually don't realize why. It resonates with the absolute within them. I don't know if one of my preceding forms was a mystic, but am convinced that once upon a time I was a tree

Form and formless are also dualities. The absolute is in them, but is also beyond them. But beyond this formless state there is another, unmanifested reality, which is eternal and is not dissolved when the cosmos is destroyed.

@AndylizedAAY Realize that the "force" blocking you is the absolute within. Rather than getting angry at yourself (i.e., the absolute) for being blocked, contemplate why you appear to be blocking yourself. Are you actually being blocked, and if so is it possible that a different path will serve you better? Maybe the reason for the block is to teach you how to transcend being blocked. Regardless, resisting the block will only further entrap you. The answer to every phenomenal event is never resistance, but submission. This doesn't mean being a doormat, or that responses (as opposed to reactions) aren't appropriate. All it means is accepting the reality of what is happening right now, and allowing its energy to flow through you and refine you, instead of fighting against it. There is so much unnecessary suffering from resistance, which only further increases suffering. It is easier to do this after you have awakened, since you are able to stabilize awareness within the absolute, rather than being completely abducted by events. Even before awakening though, you can begin practicing this. Do it with small things, like being stuck behind a slow moving car on the freeway. When you successfully allow the energy to pass through you, it will be easier with more energetic events. Remember that Jesus taught the Kingdom of Heaven is within. Reaching god is not an external event, but a direct internal realization.

Define life.

The absolute uses the mind to realize what it is not. That is as far as the mind can go. Beyond that, through the inner gate, the absolute begins to directly realize itself. Sometimes enlightenment is cataclysmic, but usually it happens gradually like a sunrise. When the dream ends, the entire adventure from ignorance to awakening to enlightenment is seen for the transient sequence of experiences that it is. The absolute never actually changes.

You're correct that there are false awakenings, where the absolute convinces itself that it is lucid but it is still thought-identified. It's a common spiritual trap and everyone (including me) is wise to be wary of it. Conceptions of awakening are never awakening. It is direct realization, or it is false. When mystics speak of ending suffering, they are referring to the suffering caused by identifying with the conditioned mind. Desires and fears always lead to suffering, because they are based on the false belief that the object of desire or fear is real. Love, integrity, and happiness are only directly realized within.

It isn't about changing yourself, but about realizing yourself. At first, the spiritual path takes tremendous courage. You are doing battle with the demons of the conditioned mind. After passing through the gate, courage is transfigured into fearlessness. Demons dissolve.

Certainly not the absolute Within the dream there are highs and lows, and the absolute chooses where it appears to go.

Every experience is within the dream, but is the quality of experiencing thought-entrapment equal to the quality of experiencing enlightenment?

I am no longer trapped, but have been trapped by misidentification most of my life. It took decades of sincere suffering before I was ready to dissolve the conceptual cage and realize the absolute within. Flowers are luminous. Jesus taught people to become like the lilies of the field. Not that our destiny is to be mindless, but to realize our true nature and through its light experience the phenomenal beauty of the cosmos.

Sincerity will never lead you astray. As for curiosity, do you see a difference between conceptual exploration and deepening direct realization?