Moksha

@axiom Love the analogy. Unfortunately the counting game never stops, you can only shrug and walk along the seashore hoping that your transient footprints may be a guide or not. Oh, and speaking of analogies Jonathan Livingston Seagull has the same message and is one of my favorites.

Michael Singer is excellent at communicating the pragmatism of spirituality. He worked in the prison system for decades, so his language is at the level that most people can understand. Set aside anything he (or anyone else) says that is conceptual and see beyond it. When he says, "it wasn't for you", he is pointing to the core reason for human suffering, which is the expectation that the cosmos should cater to your desires.

I agree that deep understanding is not mental. It is beyond conceptualization, perception, and experience. It is only directly realized. Silence is within relative reality, but it is ultimately beyond any beginning or ending. It is the language of truth, and I agree that there are deepening realizations of it until the absolute. If the mind is involved in any of its infinitely sneaky ways, see it, let it go, and continue sinking into the silent ocean of mystery that is ultimate reality.

I agree. The menagerie of perspectives is what drew me here and is the reason I stay.

As a fellow sober awakener, there are degrees of awakening, just as there are degrees of remaining awake. It is a journey, and ultimately the journey itself is just a story ultimate reality tells itself. Most here will skim over these insights, which I have been pondering this week. For me, they are bursting with light. -- Keep the "I am" in the focus of awareness, remember that you -are-, watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious will flow into the conscious without any special effort on your part. Wrong desires and fears, false ideas, social inhibitions are blocking and preventing its free interplay with the conscious. Once free to mingle, the two become one and the one becomes all. The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost. -- Now you are in the waking state, a person with name and shape, joys and sorrows. The person was not there before you were born, nor will be there after you die. Instead of struggling with the person to make it become what it is not, why not go beyond the waking state and leave the personal life altogether? It does not mean the extinction of the person; it means only seeing it in right perspective. -- No doubt, a drug that can affect your brain can also affect your mind, and give you all the strange experiences promised. But what are all the drugs compared to the drug that gave you this most unusual experience of being born and living in sorrow and fear, in search of happiness, which does not come, or does not last. You should inquire into the nature of this drug and find an antidote. -- Be careful. The moment you start talking you create a verbal universe, a universe of words, ideas, concepts and abstractions, interwoven and inter-dependent, most wonderfully generating, supporting and explaining each other and yet all without essence or substance, mere creations of the mind. Words create words, reality is silent.

In the moment of realizing truth, there is no suffering. Remaining deeply aware for the rest of the dream is the end of suffering and the pinnacle life experience. The truth is only directly realized in silence, beyond the fireworks of the ego. Everything else is a distraction at best, and endless entrapment in the mental labyrinth at worst.

Tell me about it, I spent years berating it until I realized it was only a reflection

@Carl-Richard @Nilsi Realizing your ignorance is the stairway to heaven. So both of you are right

@Illusory Self It's funny how life becomes kinder when you decide to stop scolding it. Almost like a mirror

Something that I shared with my daughter after seeing it in Paris. It doesn't matter if the form is human or alien, we are all the same brilliant being.

This is true, but also be careful not to conflate how you feel with suffering. You can be in deep physical or emotional pain, from what is happening in this moment, without suffering, which is the result of resisting the reality of this moment. If you are in the flow state of yourself, and allow the energy of everything you encounter to freely pass through you, you will never suffer again. When I suffered, it was always the result of focusing my attention on my mind and being caught up in its turmoil. I would invest enormous energy into the thought/feeling of an event that happened in the past, or the thought/feeling of an event that might happen in the future, neither of which had anything to do with the reality of now. My mind was doing its best to protect me from being hurt or from hurting others, without realizing that in doing so it was actually creating the suffering that it so desperately wanted to avoid. The energy of life has to go somewhere. It can pass through you, and teach you in the process without harming you, or its coming and going can be resisted. If you barricade yourself against negative energy, or cling to positive energy, either way you are trapping it inside of you. Until you surrender to it and release it, the energy will build into an internal hurricane of suffering. Enlightenment is the realization of your ultimate nature, and remaining within the stillness of your essence no matter what winds the life dream sends your way. You still feel the winds, but instead of fighting them you surrender to them. I love the example of the Zen master who received the news that his wife had suddenly died, and collapsed in tears and wailing. His awareness was still present, observing the energy of this event passing through the person without resisting it. It was an authentic experience, which he neither clung to nor resisted. That is what it means to live lucidly.

With some practice, you will develop a reliable internal compass that will help you recognize what is needed. I know that sounds vague, but the details of spiritual practice vary for each person. The intensity can ebb and flow even within the trajectory of your own progression. For example, after his awakening Tolle spent a couple of years sitting on park benches and simply observing life unfold, with new eyes. Then one day he felt an overwhelming internal mandate to move from being to doing. That is when he began writing "The Power of Now". I have found the same to be true for my own spiritual path. There have been extended periods of intense inner exploration, followed by periods of integrating newly realized insights. I have learned to listen to my inner voice on this. You (i.e., your ultimate nature) will guide yourself (i.e., your person) along the path. There may be gurus/teachers that you meet at different milestones, but ultimately you are the sadguru (Sanskrit for "true guru").

@theleelajoker Beautiful insights. I'm glad the retreat was helpful for you, despite the Vipassana teachings. It's not unique to Vipassana, all teachings have the potential for being repressive if you cling to them instead of seeing beyond them to the wisdom they point toward. For a long time, I thought my mind was the enemy. Of course, this is the mind thinking something about itself The mind should at least get credit for its capacity to recognize its limitations. It can do so, if the essence of who you are awakens enough to guide it in this way. After a long period of suffering, when I was finally brought to the nadir of myself, I made a deal with my mind. I promised to remain in the surrendered state if my mind would stop torturing me. I realized that my mind was not my enemy. All this time, it had only been trying to keep me safe. I had supercharged it with my attention to such a degree that it dominated my life and made me miserable. We settled into a harmonious state. It's like the earth in its formative stages being pummeled by asteroids, but eventually reaching a stable system with the moon serenely orbiting it. My mind is the moon, and although I don't ultimately identify with it, I realize its value in sustaining the system of myself. There is spaciousness between us, but just enough attraction for sustainability. It's a beautiful way to live. I don't regret the suffering, or even that I didn't realize this sooner. It took 13.7 billion years for the cosmos to create this little system, and I honor it. ?

@Alex_R It's true that we are the universe, but we are also the void. We are within the dualities of existence and nonexistence, and our essence is beyond both.

Any extreme, including extreme spirituality, is a red flag. It's good that you recognize the neurotic tendencies of your mind. That suggests you have already realized some space between yourself and your thoughts. Neuroticism loves extremes. It is based on the false belief that there is a linear correlation between effort and positive results. There is a positive correlation to a certain point, but beyond that more effort actually produces negative results. There is wisdom in moderation. Meditate, contemplate, and engage in other spiritual endeavors that deepen your understanding of yourself. Then take a break and enjoy life, finding ways to apply the lessons learned from your spiritual practice. This balanced approach between being and doing will smooth out your spiritual progression, and make it more sustainable.

This isn't about an apparent person believing or dismissing anything. It is about the absolute realizing itself within the person, and still continuing to experience the dream. When it chooses to "awaken" within a character and experience the cosmos, it doesn't identify with the character but uses it as a conduit for lucidly navigating the dream. That is what I mean by honoring life.

Suffering is necessary to drive home the lesson that manipulating reality to suit your desires and assuage your fears is absolutely futile. We make ourselves miserable by insisting that the cosmos should cater to our needs. Nothing that is transient can give you enduring happiness and peace. Only the timeless within can realize the timeless. To free yourself from suffering, you have to learn to live in the flow state of yourself, without resistance to reality. Fighting with your mind is not the answer. Resistance only makes the mind stronger. All you need is to realize that you are not your mind, and that will create the space for you to realize what you actually are. The attachments of the mind begin to dissolve, and it settles into an effortless orbit like the moon around the earth. It is still part of the system, but chaos is replaced by harmony.

That is the spiritual journey in a nutshell. You reach the point where the suffering created by the mind's constant manipulations becomes so suffocating that anything is preferable to it. It takes that level of desperation to leap off the crumbling ledge of certainty, and plunge into the unknown. When you do, your demons will test you. The mind doesn't let go easily. Liberation requires absolute courage and sincerity. When you prove true, you will discover the essence that is who you actually are and nothing will entice you from it.

I agree that the proof is in the spiritual pudding. Many people claim to have transformative realizations, but if they still suffer how are these realizations different from the manipulations of the egoic mind? The journey is not only about understanding what you are not, but about directly realizing what you are, and thereby dissolving the personal attachments that cause you to suffer. The vast majority of content on this forum is about proclaiming profound insights, rather than doing the spiritual work of surrendering to the reality of yourself. If you still suffer, you have not yet fully realized or surrendered. When I first woke up, I went through quite a long period of time where my suffering was all but gone. I naïvely assumed that this awakened state was permanent, when in reality it was not. To the contrary, it was followed by an even darker period of suffering than I was in before I awakened. I now realize why this deeper suffering was necessary, and am grateful for what it taught me. Again, I find myself no longer suffering, but it is a deeper realization than before. It's like the first awakening was the birth of an infant that was cradled until it was ready to learn to walk. Love set me on my own feet, and I felt utterly abandoned until I finally found my way to the other side. Is the suffering permanently gone? I suppose it again depends on how well I have learned its lessons.

Not necessarily. You can take care of the self without identifying with it. Waking up isn't about dismissing life as an empty illusion, it is about living life lucidly. Honoring life is Advaita, but seems to be lost in Neo-Advaita.

@Carl-Richard I agree. Calling it solipsism is misleading and confusing to most people. It encourages the idea that you (i.e., the person) are imagining everything, without directly acknowledging that you (i.e., the person having this amazing realization) are also being imagined. Ultimately, there is no POV and everyone is just as "real" or "unreal" as everyone else.

I gave you two examples of illusions. Does it matter how each magic trick is performed if neither represents reality? There is no absolute time or change, only relative time and change within the cosmos. Both are magic tricks of the mind.

What exactly is the difference between pulling a rabbit out of a hat and sawing a woman in half?

@axiom Doubt everything that can be known. Directly realize what cannot be known.

Duplication and any other appearance of separation is not ultimately real. Although words are only words, my definition of Consciousness has evolved. As I see it, Awareness is absolute and Consciousness is the apparent localization of Awareness. Just as Atman is localized Brahman, rays are localized sun, and waves are localized ocean.