Moksha

@Thought Art It's human nature to look for a shortcut out of suffering. We want to believe that awakening will instantly solve all of our problems. Unfortunately, merely seeing won't do that for you. We still have decades of conditioning to deal with. Spiritual integration of insights requires sincere dedication and effort, in the context of patience and kindness toward oneself. Spiritual teachers do people a disservice when they make snake oil claims to free people from suffering, if they just sign up for this particular program, available today at 50% off. There is no easy path to enlightenment, but it is well worth taking the journey.

Good insights. I agree that anything experienced as a thought is inherently false. No thought, no writing, and no work of art can accurately describe ultimate reality. As the Upanishads say, "Words turn back frightened." God is beyond the conceptual mind to comprehend. It is only directly realized. Awakening is the opening of the third eye, and clearly seeing your ultimate nature, beyond the limitations of the senses. The conditioned mind may try to question it, but the seeing itself is spiritual, and beyond doubt.

@Thought Art I agree. To be fair, if you read Leo's teachings in context, he has always recognized the importance of integrating spiritual work with any insights gained through psychedelics. Others that I have read, like Ram Dass and Aldous Huxley, make the same observations. Awakening, whether through psychedelics or through meditation, is only the first step on the spiritual journey. Enlightenment, or being filled with light, is the purifying process of deconditioning the mind. It is developing clarity and commitment, so that rather than being distracted by desires, the mind remains a still and present flame. ?

@Strangeloop ? ?

Consciousness is pure awareness, and states only seem to change, as Consciousness navigates between them. You are the fish, and the apparent states of dreaming and waking are the banks between which you swim. It is said of these states of consciousness that in the dreaming state, when one is sleeping, the shining Self, who never dreams, who is ever awake, watches by his own light the dreams woven out of past deeds and present desires… But he is not affected by anything because he is detached and free; and after wandering here and there in the state of dreaming, enjoying pleasures and seeing good and evil, he returns to the state from which he began. As a great fish swims between the banks of a river as it likes, so does the shining Self move between the states of dreaming and waking. You, as Consciousness, are calling the shots of your dream character.

If only they had 5-meO-DMT when the Buddha, Jesus, and the sages of the Upanishads directly realized their true nature You are them, and they are you, and not every enlightened character requires psychedelics to see the dream for what it is.

Trick question, not falling for it Awareness = Consciousness = Love. It has no properties. At least, not when it is not pretending that it does.

One realizes the map isn't the territory, until realizing that the one realizing doesn't ultimately exist. The map is the territory, pointing to itself.

The ego takes life seriously, because it doesn't realize it only exists within the dream. ? Some spiritual teachers are so intensely focused on the teaching that they forget the implications of what they are trying to teach. If someone is truly awake, how can they deny the irony? As my man Tolle says: Don’t trust a guru that never laughs.

@Terell Kirby ? @Nahm So true. I was meditating this morning, and started to laugh. It caught me by surprise, because usually it is just a deep sense of peace and freedom. Maybe laughter is the ultimate liberation

As I see it, spirituality is the path to lucid dreaming. Waking up to your ultimate nature, within the dream, is the purpose of life. As Aldous Huxley put it: The Perennial Philosophy appears in every age and civilization: There is an infinite, changeless reality beneath the world of change This same reality lies at the core of every personality The purpose of life is to discover this reality experientially, that is, to realize God while here on earth

It feels like the end of suffering, effortless creativity, and the realization of unconditional love. I see enlightenment as a journey, where these states of Conscious clarity last longer, until you are in a perpetual state of presence. You realize your ultimate nature as Consciousness, that individuality is an illusion, and that attachments within the dream are distractions from the infinite abundance that you already are.

Ultimately, do you believe there is a distinction? Do boundaries exist, or are they only apparent as such? Is Consciousness all there is? If so, what is there to be aware of, other than itself?

Who is being aware of Consciousness? Ultimately, there is no separate "who", only Consciousness being Self-aware.

If time is relative, then there can be no absolute past or future, only the subjective perception of it. What happened to the "past" for the atomic clocks that showed an earlier time than the clocks left on the ground? If time is bound by perspective, what does that tell you about its ultimate reality? I accept that there is change, but only within relative reality. Space, time, and change are bound to the dream that Consciousness creates. They are only apparently, but not absolutely, real. Lord of the gods, you are the abode of the universe. Changeless, you are what is and what is not, and beyond the duality of existence and nonexistence. You are the first among the gods, the timeless spirit, the resting place of all beings. You are the knower and the thing which is known. You are the final home; with your infinite form you pervade the cosmos. - Bhagavad Gita 11:37-38 What does it mean to be the abode of the universe? Ultimate reality is beyond the cosmos, which it creates, but which does not define it. When individual perspectives dissolve, the appearance of the cosmos dissolves with them.

We are what we value. The worth of anything is entirely subjective. As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What happens when it is realized that there is no separate beholder? This realization is equanimity, or the letting go of value as ultimate reality. Attachments to money, popularity, etc. define the path that we follow. It is only when desires are seen clearly, as products of the conditioned mind, that the illusion of individual identity is dispelled. As Jesus put it: Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! - Matthew 6:19-23

When people say there is only the present moment, they are pointing to a deeper reality, beyond personal experience. Consciousness creates the apparent dimensions of time and space, and everything within its cosmic web is only relatively real. This is directly realized, but has also been supported by science. If time was absolute, it would pass at the same rate, regardless of the perspective of the observer. However, once you move beyond the narrow band of normal human existence, the illusion of objective reality begins to fray. My favorite example is the Hafele–Keating experiment: In October 1971, Joseph C. Hafele, a physicist, and Richard E. Keating, an astronomer, took four cesium-beam atomic clocks aboard commercial airliners. They flew twice around the world, first eastward, then westward, and compared the clocks against others that remained at the United States Naval Observatory. When reunited, the three sets of clocks were found to disagree with one another, and their differences were consistent with the predictions of special and general relativity.

Ultimately, there is no location of the mind because space doesn't exist. Location is a meaningless concept, as is the idea of "my" mind and "my" body. From the relative perspective, in Eastern spirituality there is a form hierarchy for each being: The senses are higher than the body, the mind higher than the senses, above the mind is the intellect, and above the intellect is the Atman. Thus, knowing that which is supreme, let the Atman rule the ego. - Bhagavad Gita 3:42-43

Ultimatists will point out that there is no you to find the truth, only Consciousness, which is itself truth. Relativists will say that after realizing your true nature, you will be free to live lucidly, creatively, and serenely within the dream, until your form dissolves, and you dissolve like salt into the infinite ocean of You. Both are correct, based on perspective. There is no perspective, for ultimatists, and there are infinite perspectives, for relativists. The Mystery of God is beyond, and still encompasses both. Mystics have attempted to describe this (as transcendent vs. immanent divinity) for millennia, but words fail, and truth can only be directly realized.

The message of quantum mechanics and astrophysics is the same. At extreme micro- and macro-levels, the edges of reality, as most humans perceive it, begin to fray. It is not even close to what we think it is. In this dimension, everything is revealed to be relative rather than absolute. Ultimate reality is unchanging, and is the creator of all apparently diverse things. It is beyond the dream of the cosmos.

Conscious contemplation is powerful. For me, it is more about resonating with the presence invoked by the words, rather than conceptualizing the words themselves. For example, when I contemplate the Bhagavad Gita, there is simply Self-realization, beyond thought. The stigma in Eastern spirituality against thinking is the recognition that we are not our thoughts, and of the danger of identifying with them. Meditation reveals this profoundly. You realize that you are the spacious awareness within which thoughts arise, but thoughts are merely phenomena that come and go. Thinking is important. Not thinking is even more important. As I see it, the merging of the two is being present, and allowing presence to guide your planning in life. When planning arises out of presence, it is more creative, more inspired, and more likely to produce positive results.

@Consilience Can't we all just get along? There is only One of us after all ?

Consciousness is the master of creation. Ego is the illusion that separation is all there is. It is possible to live lucidly, as a conscious being, realizing that your dream character is not your ultimate identity.

@Consilience Amen and hallelujah. ? I agree 100%. You call out one of the cardinal lines I've seen in this forum. Let's call it north-south. People tend to flock to one side or the other. Psychedelics vs. meditation, as if there is only one path that has spiritual value. The other cardinal line is east-west, or ultimate vs. relative reality. Some insist that ultimate reality is all that matters, and the dream is a fantasy to be dismissed. Others champion the celebration of the dream, even knowing it for what it is. Lines are inevitably divisive and egoic. We are all the same, seamless Consciousness, and yet we draw these lines like children, within the coloring book of the cosmos. Indivision intersects with division. Maybe it is possible to realize the serenity of unity and the creativity of division, while appreciating the reality and the beauty of both.

Awakening is not an achievement, it is a realization. If you are proud about awakening, you aren't awake. Ironically, the more you chase awakening, the more it eludes you. The problem is seeing it as a state to be achieved, rather than realizing the truth is already here, within you, when you are ready to see it. It will happen when it is supposed to happen. Your happiness doesn't depend upon it. Find joy in every step of the journey, and that realization itself will open your eyes.