Moksha

I just now saw a video from Adyashanti. He shared a true story of a Zen master who, in the last 40 years, took his students to a restaurant. In the middle of the meal, he received a phone call informing him that his wife had suddenly died. The Zen master collapsed into tears and wailed at the loss of his loved one. Seeing this, one of the students shook his head in dismay and asked how this was possible. The senior student looked over and said, "How sad that you have known our master all these years, and still have no idea of enlightenment." Awakening is not the end of pain. It is the end of resisting pain, and the realization that denying the energy of the present moment only feeds a more ferocious level of suffering. Be careful what you ask for. If you want to avoid all pain, you must also avoid the joys of cosmic existence. You can't have one without the other. Let the energy of the moment flow through you, without losing awareness, regardless of whether it is pleasurable or painful. Live the dream lucidly. On your question, there is little value in abandoning family to meditate forever in a cave. If you want to know if you are truly awake, put yourself into situations that demand the focus of your awareness. People are the perfect litmus test. When you are able to remain fully aware in the present moment, allowing whatever arises to be without identifying with it, only then will you be free from the attachments of the world. Realize yourself as the ocean, while enjoying the apparent dance of the waves. There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath…for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still. - Herman Melville

The ideas of souls and reincarnation are attempts of the mind to explain how Consciousness plays its game of Self-discovery within the cosmos. As conceptualizations, they cannot capture God-Realization, which is direct and beyond spiritual beliefs. The how of Consciousness is rife with conjecture, and varies from one human mind to the next. The being of Consciousness is the only realization that is directly true. It is the blinding light that banishes the shadows of speculation, and reveals all ideas to be ultimately insignificant.

@Rasheed ?

A few quotes from my favorite scientist, who realized that ultimate truth is the mystery that cannot be comprehended by the human mind, no matter the level of genius: The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe. The years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion, and final emergence into light—only those who have experienced it can understand that. Let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—-a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.

Fundamentalist Christianity is an egoic bastardization of the original teachings of Jesus. Just as with eastern spirituality, there have been mystics within Christianity (St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, etc.) who saw beyond the ceremonies, idols, and tenets to the God within that they symbolized. Nothing you say will make a difference until people are ready to realize the truth. When they are ready, the letters inscribed in the bible will burn until only the spaciousness of wisdom that they try to represent remains. You are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. - Psalm 82:6 Be still, and know that I am God. - Psalm 46:10 The light of the body is the eye; if therefore your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light. - Matthew 6:22 The kingdom of God comes not with observation: Neither will they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. - Luke 17:20-22 Edit: @Razard86 Just read your post and realized that you already cited some of these gems

The danger of questions is that they engage the thinking mind. As long as you are thinking, you are at risk of barricading your true self. Contemplation is fine and even useful, but only within the fire of awareness. When the fire is the center, contemplation feeds it. When it is absent, contemplation becomes a self-perpetuating snare. Ramana Maharshi is known for asking a single question: "Who am I?". He is even more famous for his silence, which he considered to be the purest state of being: Silence is ever-speaking, it is the perennial flow of "language." It is interrupted by speaking, for words destroy this mute language. Silence is unceasing eloquence. It is the best language. There is a state when words cease and silence prevails.

@iboughtleosbooklist Have you considered that the fear of pain is collectively worse than the pain itself? Pain is often unavoidable, but for most of us it isn't that common. Suffering, which is the fear of pain, is far more endemic and damaging to the human condition. Many people suffer constantly, and unnecessarily. Let go of suffering, and life becomes bearable and even beautiful. Pain still happens, but so does love. It is tragic that the vast majority of humans live as if they are already dead rather than simply living.

I don't espouse the ideology of karma and reincarnation. Maybe Consciousness works that way, or not. It isn't something I have directly realized, only the cosmic scale of cause and effect. On your question, the donkey (and every other being) does what Consciousness commands it to do. It has no free will of its own. I have compared it to a cosmic game of pinball, where steel balls ricochet across the machine, but only as a result of the Player that sends them spinning.

In Eastern spirituality, a person's level of Consciousness is the direct result of karma. Right action increases Consciousness, which further increases right action over many lifetimes. Conversely for wrong action. I see this as just another ideology, although it does resonate with what I have realized about the cause > effect nature of the cosmos.

The monkey mind doesn't want questions to disappear, because it feeds on the need to conceptualize reality. The only true answer to your ultimate nature is directly realized, entirely free from thoughts, emotions, and sensations. As long as you conceptualize awakening, you will never awaken. Enlightenment is perpetual presence and equanimity. You are no longer afraid or enticed by the false threats and promises of the conditioned mind. Instead of chasing happiness as most people do, you realize it within. The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge. The wise, ever satisfied, have abandoned all external supports. Their security is unaffected by the results of their action; even while acting, they really do nothing at all. - Bhagavad Gita 4:19-20 As I have said, I have only one purpose: to make man free, to urge him towards freedom, to help him to break away from all limitations, for that alone will give him eternal happiness, will give him the unconditioned realization of the Self… Again, you have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity… You are accustomed to being told how far you have advanced, what is your spiritual status. How childish! Who but yourself can tell you if you are beautiful or ugly within? Who but yourself can tell you if you are incorruptible? You are not serious in these things. But those who really desire to understand, who are looking to find that which is eternal, without beginning and without an end, will walk together with a greater intensity, will be a danger to everything that is unessential, to unrealities, to shadows. And they will concentrate, they will become the flame, because they understand. - Jiddu Krishnamurti

Understandable, but for what it is worth there are "others" who have realized the sameness of themselves in all beings. It makes no sense to the solipsist, but maybe it will happen for you. Even within the dream, the indivisibility of the underlying Player can be realized, despite the apparent form that it inhabits.

It could be said that all questions resolve into the singular question asked by sages like Ramana Maharshi: "Who am I"? Neti neti is an ancient tradition of inquiry, where the personality is unpeeled layer by layer, like an onion, until only the Self remains. Meditation is an effective parer. When you realize the Self, within yourself, questions disappear and there is only lucid living. You no longer fear or desire, beyond the thinnest veil, because you are that close to waking up entirely from the dream.

Experience is imagination. It is the illusion of change. Time, space, and matter are not ultimately real. There is only Consciousness, dreaming the phenomenal cosmos. It is the unchanging ocean with apparently transient waves that always return to itself.

The necessary good of relative reality is also the necessary evil. In a cosmos of dualities, you can't have one without the other. The lucid dream is preceded by the non-lucid nightmare. The only path to ultimate reality is waking up from the dream entirely. It will happen when you are ready to relinquish the delusions of transitional experience and return to who you already are.

Define enlightenment. Leo has had deeper levels of awakening, but has also said he is not enlightened. The same is true for me. I see enlightenment as the permanent state of lucidity, where even within the dream Self-awareness is never distracted by the phenomenal world. It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages. And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever. But there is no other way. The river can not go back. Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence. The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then will fear disappear, because that’s where the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean. - Khalil Gibran

Ultimately, there is only undivided Mind. The moment you conceptualize a trinity, or any other separation of beings, it is bound to relative reality and not ultimately true.

Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size. - Einstein A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. - Einstein This is the true joy in life … the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. - Bernard Shaw Earth, water, fire, air, akasha, mind, intellect, and ego – these are the eight divisions of my prakriti. But beyond this I have another, higher nature, Arjuna; it supports the whole universe and is the source of life in all beings. In these two aspects of my nature is the womb of all creation. - Bhagavad Gita 7:4-6 Those who take refuge in me, striving for liberation from old age and death, come to know Brahman, the Self, and the nature of all action. Those who see me ruling the cosmos, who see me in the adhibhuta, the adhidaiva, and the adhiyajna, are conscious of me even at the time of death. - Bhagavad Gita 7:29-30 Under my watchful eye the laws of nature take their course. - Bhagavad Gita 9:10 O Lord, neither gods nor demons know your real nature. Indeed, you alone know yourself, O supreme spirit. You are the source of being. - Bhagavad Gita 10:14-15 If you egotistically say, "I will not fight this battle," your resolve will be useless; your own nature will drive you into it. Your own karma, born of your own nature, will drive you to do even that which you do not wish to do, because of your delusion. - Bhagavad Gita 18:59-60 We require a more ardent fire and a nobler love…if our spiritual nature were not on fire with other and nobler passions, we should never cast off the yoke of the senses. - St. John of the Cross I realized that it was not by wisdom that poets write their poetry, but by a kind of nature or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets; for these also say many beautiful things, but do not know anything of what they say. - Socrates You seem, Antiphon, to imagine that happiness consists in luxury and extravagance. But my belief is that to have no wants is divine; to have as few as possible comes next to the divine; and as that which is divine is supreme, so that which approaches nearest to its nature is nearest to the supreme. - Socrates Remembering that this body is like froth, of the nature of a mirage, break the flower-tipped arrows of Mara. Never again will death touch you. - Buddha The wise live without injuring nature, as the bee drinks nectar without harming the flower. - Buddha It is astonishing that every soul should forget its own nature, and think itself as a living soul residing in the body…as if confined in a pot. - Valmiki The insights called vipassana are not intellectual. Rather, they are experientially based, deeply intuitive realizations that transcend, and ultimately shatter, our commonly held beliefs and understandings. The five most important of these are Insights into impermanence, emptiness, the nature of suffering, the causal interdependence of all phenomena, and the illusion of the separate self (i.e., "no-Self"). You can experience the first four of those Insights using stable attention (samadhi) and mindfulness (sati) to investigate phenomena (dhamma vicaya) with persistence and energy (viriya). The fifth, Insight into no-Self, is the culminating Insight that actually produces Awakening, because only by overcoming our false, self-centered worldview can we realize our true nature. But this crucial Insight requires, in addition to the first four Insights, that the mind also be in a state of samatha, filled with deep tranquility and equanimity. - John Yates Mind is like the void in which there is no confusion or evil, as when the sun wheels through it shining upon the four corners of the world. For, when the sun rises and illuminates the whole earth, the void gains not in brilliance; and, when the sun sets, the void does not darken. The phenomena of light and dark alternate with each other, but the nature of the void remains unchanged. So it is with the Mind of the Buddha and of sentient beings. If you look upon the Buddha as presenting a pure, bright or Enlightened appearance, or upon sentient beings as presenting a foul, dark or mortal-seeming appearance, these conceptions resulting from attachment to form will keep you from supreme knowledge, even after the passing of as many aeons as there are sands in the Ganges. There is only the One Mind and not a particle of anything else on which to lay hold, for this Mind is the Buddha. If you students of the Way do not awake to this Mind substance, you will overlay Mind with conceptual thought, you will seek the Buddha outside yourselves, and you will remain attached to forms, pious practices and so on, all of which are harmful and not at all the way to supreme knowledge. - Huang Po

I feel every teacher should be taken with a large grain of salt. The ego loves nothing more than to pose as the antithesis of itself. Proclaiming yourself as enlightened without actually being enlightened is one of the most subtle forms of self-damnation. True teachers are not wise, but get out of the way so wisdom arises through them. If a teaching points you toward awakening, it is not because of the teacher or the student, but entirely due to Consciousness choosing to see itself.

You are no more or less a character in the story as everyone else. There are certainly manipulative and narcissistic teachers, but to claim that all are is to dismiss the wisdom of every spiritual tradition. If you believe it is possible for you to awaken to your true nature, surely you see that others may already have.

Within relative reality, there are characters through whom Consciousness has realized itself, and characters where it has not. Spiritual teachers are a mechanism for Consciousness to see itself, by pointing to its true nature. It is all Consciousness, playing the awakening game. Do not share this wisdom with anyone who lacks in devotion or self-control, lacks the desire to learn, or scoffs at me. Those who teach this supreme mystery of the Gita to all who love me perform the greatest act of love; they will come to me without doubt. No one can render me more devoted service; no one on earth can be more dear to me. - Bhagavad Gita 18:67-69

Solipsism is only a partial seeing. When you realize the sameness of your ultimate nature in all things, solipsism is grade school spirituality. It is all unbound Consciousness, beyond the false perspective of the self.

Exactly. Ultimate reality creates the why, hides itself from the why, discovers itself within the why, and transcends the why. Awakened people can try to explain what they have seen, but the words are only pointers. It will never make sense to the mind, and is only directly realized.

In phenomenal reality, everything that can be created will be created. All beliefs are inherently false, whether theistic or atheistic. At best, they can feebly point to truth but they are not truth. There is only direct realization of ultimate reality which is beyond time, space, and the cosmos.

The relationship between spirituality and physiology is interesting. I have had times where my heart was pounding out of my chest, with serious concerns that my health was at risk. I have also experienced weird moments of dizziness, and being concerned that I couldn't safely drive. Unpredictable, but frightening. It seems to be related to pivotal moments when my mind is aligning to my nature. Conditioning is not easily overcome. It is gradually dissolved, and if you are wise it is an open and gentle process. I have learned not to force it, but let equanimity happen on its own cadence.

@Breakingthewall As Tolle says, suffering is only necessary until it is no longer necessary. It serves the purpose of catalyzing awakening, and after you are fully awake there is no need to suffer. This is different from physical pain, etc. Suffering is resistance of the present moment and seeking external happiness rather than realizing it within. I may try 5 meo at some point, but it is just another experience. I can see it helping some people, but we each have a different path.