Moksha

Yep, you are wrong. Material wealth will never deliver internal happiness and peace. To the contrary, the pursuit of wealth is a distraction of the ego. It is an endless appetite that will never be satiated, as long as your identity is entrapped by it. This guy named Jesus met a rich dude one time and told him this: If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.

Psychopomp is a bit of a red flag, but not entirely. Psycho: A crazy or mentally unstable person. Pomp: Ceremony and splendid display, especially at a public event. By what standard, though? Most "normal" people, particularly those of the Western persuasion, consider mystical insights to be delusional. Ultimately, who cares what they think? The whole point is to let go of thinking, and choose being.

Awesome ? Awakening is a beautiful moment of lucidity, which often is followed by falling back to sleep. Enjoy the clarity, celebrate it, and remember it. Enlightenment is the unconditional state of Self-awareness, and it requires vigilance and patience, to establish an immovable island, that will not be deceived by the conditioned mind. The ego doesn't give up easily. It is a long and bloody battle. You are wise to realize that the struggle is far from over. Celebrate this, and learn to continue celebrating this, until nothing else matters.

I agree. Wealth, in a broader sense, is the accumulation of anything in abundance, including conceptual knowledge. To pass through the eye of the needle requires detachment from identification with wealth, in whatever form it may take. It is the realization that you are the eye of the needle itself.

Like begets like. Any addiction, like chasing after money, only becomes stronger the more you engage in it. Addictions always lead to unhappiness in the end, because they lure you away from yourself. There's nothing wrong with making money, just don't let it define your happiness. Realize that you do not have to suffer, and enjoy every step of the journey. Goals are great, as long as they don't distract you from the infinite greatness that you already are.

I lean toward the valve theory, as espoused by Aldous Huxley and others. His letter explained his motivations as being rooted in an idea that the brain is a reducing valve that restricts consciousness, and hoping mescaline might help access a greater degree of awareness (an idea he later included in the book). The brain is a mechanism used by Consciousness, to hide from itself, until it discovers itself. The challenge of the game is to unlock the deep subconscious reality that is there, initially beyond our grasp, but ultimately obtainable through sincere seeking.

Welcome to the forum, @Gianna God is All. Selfless and selfish are dualities, within relative reality. All dualities abide within God, but do not define God. God is both the caretaker of the cosmos, and is beyond the cosmos. 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

General warning to stop the personal insults. Keep it focused on the topic, or the thread will be locked. Thanks.

This thread has run its course.

Fear is the misguided belief that something bad will happen to you. Enlightenment is the direct realization, and the manifestation, of your true nature. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. - A Course in Miracles The opposite of fear is enlightenment.

Meditation is the whip for taming the wild lion that is your conditioned mind. For most people, awakenings don't last, because they haven't deeply committed yet to the wisdom that they offer, nor have they done the work of integrating those insights into their daily life. It would be nice if you could just take 5-MeO-DMT, and be entirely free from suffering thereafter. Insights don't decondition your mind; they only provide the path to freedom, if you are ready to follow it.

@GreenLight I'm glad it was helpful ?

Being present doesn't mean being a doormat. It means accepting the reality of the present moment, and taking action where action is required. A fully Awake, fully conscious human being has the love, compassion, and energy to make change for the better whenever it's possible, the equanimity to accept what can't be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference. - John Yates, The Mind Illuminated

The dream moves within you. You are the abode of the universe. Movement requires time and separation. If time and separation are bound to relative reality (which they are), the idea of movement is similarly bound. Ultimately, there is only changeless, motionless, continuous reality.

Great comments, and I completely agree. There is nothing wrong with setting goals for ourselves, and succeeding in the material world. The secret is to enjoy each step of the journey, rather than holding our happiness hostage, until the goal is achieved. Happiness will never happen in the future. It is always here, in the Now, already within us. As long as we realize that, money, possessions, and status have no power over us. They can be enjoyed for what they are, without our happiness depending on them.

@1liamo78 Love the fish analogy, and I completely agree. Here's to swimming in the ocean of unseeing, just enjoying being ?

@Farnaby I see it as lucid glimpses, within the dream. Those moments where you realize that everything is One. We are all the same Consciousness. The chord of Hallelujah.

From whose perspective? Ultimately, there is only synchronicity. Relatively, the more Self-aware we are, the more clearly we see the sameness in everything.

New research shows the richer we get, the less happy we become. A study, published this month in the journal Nature Human Behavior, found that once we reach a certain household income -- $105,000 in the United States, $95,000 globally -- more income “tended to be associated with reduced life satisfaction and a lower level of well-being.”

I respect your sincere pursuit of truth, and your desire not to insult other people. As I see it, the degree to which someone feels offended is an indication of their ego. If someone has truly awakened, why would they ever feel insulted in the first place, given that the nature of the realization is that we are all the same Consciousness? Is it possible to insult yourself? You mentioned that you have had profound insights about reality. How do you reconcile those insights with the realization that as humans we know nothing? My answer: Direct insights arise from Consciousness, and are non-conceptual. As humans, we can know nothing conceptually, except that we know nothing. We can only directly realize truth, free from concepts. You don't come across as feeling superior to others because of your personal insights. Perhaps others, who have had insights along the lines of what Aldous Huxley mentioned, similarly don't feel superior to you. To the contrary, the very nature of the core realization is that we are all the same, and there is no inferiority/superiority

Awakening is directly experienced, without concepts. I understand and respect your desire to carve your own path, but don't make the mistake of believing that just because it hasn't happened to you, it cannot happen to others, or even to yourself. Check out the Perennial Philosophy, from Aldous Huxley, based on his research on universal wisdom 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 Rather than dismissing this wisdom as egocentric, realize that there may be a common truth to thousands of years of spiritual searching. Only you can directly experience it for yourself, but at least stay open to the possibility, and respect that maybe some of us are sharing our realization with authenticity.

Consciousness is everything, and every nothing. It encompasses all, including even the ego. Without the ego, how else would Consciousness be able to forget itself, and find itself, within relative reality? It is all Consciousness, in different states of Self-Awareness.

Good for you. Never take another person's word for what is. The only reality that matters is your direct experience. The many things that we could teach each other would be entirely conceptual, and thus relatively worthless. In relative reality, the only true knowledge is that we know nothing. ?

@DocWatts Good observations, and all valid from the perspective of what humans think we need. Sadly, it is endogenous to our species that what we think we need rarely matches what we actually need. Of course there are basic survival needs, beyond which we couldn't exist. But most of what makes us miserable is the misunderstanding of who we are. When we let go of thought, and realize our true nature, it becomes clear that, as Consciousness, we are already infinitely abundant. The reason for our suffering is the egoic insistence on looking for happiness outside of ourselves, when all along the bliss is already here.

There was a significant shift in my thinking and behavior, but awakening doesn't destroy the conditioned mind. It simply is the direct realization that You are not your conditioned mind. Self-Realization awakens you to the profound space of Consciousness, which is who You ultimately are, and within which the conditioned mind exists. You observe the thoughts that arise, without being identified by them. To your question on free will: You, as Consciousness, are freely making the choices that define your form. In that sense, free will exists. The conditioned mind, that you once thought was you, never had any free will in the first place. It is shaped and conditioned by biology and environment, and has no free will of its own accord. Consciousness is always calling the shots.