Moksha

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.

Exactly. The deeper you develop the capacity to remain clear, without losing yourself in imagination, the less you suffer. It's impossible to suffer when you are in the flow state.

"Harmonization of the mind happens naturally when your awareness remains focused on the absolute light within." You seem to be agreeing with this, and if so why are you seeing direct realization as having anything to do with understanding your mental patterns? Enlightenment is letting go of mental patterns, because you no longer identify with them. You don't need to understand them to dissolve them, you just need to directly understand who you are.

There's no limit to the levels you can explore within the dream. As a kid, I remember dreaming that I was dreaming that I was dreaming. It's like an endless hall of mirrors, each mirror reflecting the mirror in front of it, and projecting its reflection to the mirror behind. No wonder awareness so easily loses itself within reflection. If you want to escape the mirror trap, stop reflecting.

I was making a general observation. I have no idea how egotistical you are. Exploring experience is only egotistical to the extent that you identify with the experience, and attach expectations to it. My point is that imagination is the opposite of enlightenment. Experiencing the cosmos as an imaginary human, imagining that it is an alien, only buries you deeper in the dream. You are only awake to the degree that you directly realize who you are, beyond every form. A good litmus test is your baseline rate of suffering. If you only escape suffering by engaging in mind games, and find yourself constantly returning to suffering, you aren't awake yet.

@Adam M It's a trap to endlessly pursue imagination. So many people on this forum fall into it (including @Leo Gura). Yes, gods, aliens, and dragons exist within the absolute, but they are no more real than you are. Exotic forms are tantalizing to the mind, but diving into them is like throwing yourself onto barbed wire, over and over again, until you are bloody and exhausted by it all. Losing your awareness in form identity, whether it's this form, or some other imaginary form, is the opposite of awakening. It is egoic and binds you to suffering, regardless of the form that you pursue. Awakening is the absolute directly realizing itself, beyond imagination. It is freely channeling the light of your true nature. You still explore experience, but lucidly and unconditionally, without drowning in the suffering of false identification.

The ego doesn't actually die, since it isn't real. It's just a mask worn by the absolute, which it mistakes for itself. Awakening is temporarily removing the mask, and enlightenment is tossing the mask off the stage.

I appreciate what @Water by the River brings to the forum. He not only shares insights that have deepened his spiritual journey, but I feel he sincerely strives to integrate what he has realized.

You don't dissolve mental patterns by using more mental patterns to understand them. That would be adding fuel to the fire. Harmonization of the mind happens naturally when your awareness remains focused on the absolute light within.

Creativity purifies because it requires an unobstructed channel. Purity creates because it allows an unobstructed channel.