Moksha

The PC is the avatar of the player. There are infinite PCs, all being played by the One player. There are no NPCs. Consciousness imbues everything. We are all PCs, all avatars of God, and strange-loopy, we are capable of realizing our ultimate nature as the player. I don't think any of my MMORPGs really captured that concept

I get you bro, just pointing to the "finite experience of a self" as being created by God/Consciousness/Tat, and therefore ultimately incapable of autonomous "free will"

@Chance Cunningham Whether we are a soul on a journey through many lives, or we only get one shot in this life, is hard to say. Many of the near death experiences I've read about, as well as ancient wisdom, point to some form of bundled continuity across multiple lives, with lessons to be learned along the way, but regardless, as you have realized, every soul journey must eventually end. It is the inevitable fate of every form. Realizing the transience of form is the beginning of wisdom. The Buddha chose to leave his life of luxury, and even his wife and son, with the determination to learn the lesson of transience. Like you, I am getting older, and I no longer cling to the illusion, or even the desire, for immortality. As I see it, the secret of life is love. Dream lucidly, realizing yourself as God within the nowhere, and celebrate every step of the journey.

@bensenbiz ?

I wouldn't call it leapfrogging, so much as recognizing that phenomenal reality arises from, and returns to, ultimate reality. God creates and destroys, and is the cause of everything in the cosmos. Would you agree that anything created cannot have free will of its own accord? It must act according to the parameters of its creation.

There is no "proven method" that works for everyone. Each person's path is unique. Don't dismiss meditation; it is an ancient path that has worked for a lot of people. Some find it through selfless service. Others through renunciation. In my case, it was a simple formula: Suffering (realizing its source) + Bhakti (direct spiritual realization, primarily through the Bhagavad Gita)

Given this limitation, why look for a conceptual answer? Maybe the answer is in the question. How can there be free will, or determinism, if there is no I? See the shell game Consciousness plays?

Dude seems pretty impressed with himself, and is not shy about promoting his special "powers". If he was actually enlightened, why would he care what people think? Since it says "no chemicals" right there in the video, it must be true! I used to do magic as a kid. There are illusionists doing far more impressive things than causing a piece of paper to burst into flame. But they don't claim to be mystics and spiritual masters. I'm open to siddhis as an energy form of Consciousness, I just don't believe most of what I see. I have my own direct experiences, and that is all I trust.

@Alfonsoo I'm sorry for your loss. And yes, when a loved one dies, it is a loss. There is only God, but everything God creates, including the phenomenal "you" and your "loved one", is divine and worthy of honor. Each of us is not only God, but we are a soul, and a unique expression of God. This is why seeing reality only from the ultimate sense can come across as not only dispassionate, but even delusional. Reality is not only the ultimate; it is also the relative phenomenal world that God creates. All of it is God. When my mom dies, I will mourn not being able to talk with her each week. I will miss our family gatherings, and her amazing meals. I will celebrate her love, and everything she has done for me, including giving me life. I will hope to meet her again, somewhere along the soul journey, before we ultimately return to God. The ancient (and many modern) gurus consider the soul to be a manifestation of God, on a journey through many lives, collecting karma by its actions. The ultimate destination of the soul is returning to God. Interestingly, for them death is not something only to be mourned, but actually celebrated, since it represents another step in the journey back to the Ultimate. Dismissing life as a meaningless dream seems such a waste. We created the phenomenal world for a reason. It is here to be mourned, and to be loved. If if had no significance, God wouldn't have created it in the first place.

If it makes "you" feel superior to "another", for any reason, it is the ego at the helm. We are all the same, but the ego doesn't want to hear that. ?

I agree with you. As I said earlier, it is a continuum. Thought is the source of suffering. The more a being is capable of thinking, the deeper its suffering can be. That said, humans aren't unavoidably at the mercy of our minds. Consciousness has created the human form to be advanced enough for Self-awareness, i.e., Consciousness can realize itself through us. When that happens, the mind becomes the instrument, rather than the master.

Thanks for sharing, beautiful quote and relevant for all of us. Mind in this context is not conditioned thinking, which is subject to the rising and setting of the sun in the phenomenal world; it is the unconditional Consciousness that we ultimately are.

You're a mystic, ask yourself. The only real answers arise from within. Oh, and welcome to the forum For what it's worth, every moment is a small death. You are already dying and being reborn as you read this. Loving someone dearly isn't something to take for granted. Only you can answer whether the love is worth whatever cost that comes with it. One thing for sure: chasing endless adventure is the classic Don Quixote self-deception. You will never arrive, or if you do, the destination won't last. The answer to life is already inside of You, in the Now. Celebrate every step of the journey, wherever that journey takes you.

Judgment is always egoic. It is a way of making yourself feel superior to someone else, which is how the ego thrives. The opposite of judgment isn't apathy. It is unconditional love, and the recognition that we are all souls on the same dream journey home.

There is no way forward, either. There is only Now. Why not make it the most beautiful Now it can be? Stillness. Awareness. Freedom from thought. Just being. Focus on the energy field that connects you with the bird in your original post. The bird's peace is found in presence, and you can feel the same presence. The Consciousness of us all is the same. Is it better to maintain the illusion of separation and suffering, or to realize our true nature as Love?

Witnessing isn't just chilling in the back of your mind, as lazy thoughts come and go. Eckhart Tolle describes it as being in the Transcendent dimension, which is the state of resonating with your ultimate nature as Consciousness. Try feeling your inner body while you Witness. Don't just casually observe, actually feel your true nature. Can you sense the infinite abundance here? Do you feel the divinity of it? You are riding the waves of a depthless ocean, and if you do it Consciously, inspiration and motivation will naturally arise. Offer yourself to Consciousness, which is who You are, and ask for guidance. Then act on it. Changing mental and physical behavioral patterns is what enlightenment is all about. It is channeling the Consciousness that you are, and allowing its searing light to burn away your attachments. It is ultimately about unconditionally loving yourself, and everyone else, which is God.

You are on a good path. Realizing yourself as the observer of your thoughts, rather than identifying with them, will help ground you in presence. You will reach the point where you are in this state of awareness, even while doing. There will be more spaciousness, more creativity, and more love in your life. That is what I mean by dreaming lucidly. Enjoy the dream, realizing that it will end one day. Whether dreaming or not, the essence of You can never be threatened.

@ilja What do you "think" Tolle is trying to teach?

It's a continuum. More thought = more suffering, as long as you identify with your thoughts. When you rise above them, they are no longer a problem.

The purpose of life is to experience the dream, and ultimately learn to live lucidly within the dream, by realizing and manifesting yourself as Love, as Consciousness, as God.

I agree there is a continuum. Evolution has created humans to have the greatest capacity for Self-awareness, but we evolved from lower forms that weren't entirely devoid of it. My point is that animals, in general, are in a more pure state of being than most humans, and that humans are the source of our own suffering. Animals and plants are at a level below human thought, and human thought is the source of our suffering. I am defining suffering specifically as imprisonment within the conditioned mind, driven by resistance to what is, and am differentiating it from pain. A few quotes from Tolle that refer to this: The animals are at a level prior to thinking. They haven't lost themselves in thought. We rise above thinking and then we meet them again, where we're both in no-thought. There's a deep connection. For a long time humans probably were in touch on a deeper level with the depths of their being, unconsciously so, the same way an animal or a tree is. Gradually, though, more and more of their identity went into the movement of thought. They identified more and more with the movement of thinking. I sometimes say animals are closer to God than humans. They are closer to the source. The humans are more lost in the mind forms. Being is more obscured to the human because of the overlay of ego and mental formation. We are destined not to go back to the level of animals that we've come from but to return to being by going beyond thinking.

Thank you for sharing such a personal a profound experience, and welcome to the forum! I love what you describe here, and was trying to speak to it in this thread. When your spiritual eyes open, you recognize the coherence of Consciousness, and see the sameness in everything. We are all the same God, manifested through different forms and in different states, but ultimately there is only God.

There is only Consciousness, but it exists in different states of Self-realization.

Animals don't suffer, because they live in the present moment. Don't confuse suffering and pain. Everything can experience pain, but suffering is different. It is self-inflicted. Humans complain about current reality, as if complaining or refusing to acknowledge what is makes any positive difference. It doesn't, it only needs to unnecessary suffering. The good news is that we can learn not to suffer. Animals are fortunate that they don't need that lesson, but the downside is they cannot attain Self-realization. They are uncomplaining characters in the dream, but they cannot see themselves as characters.

Seeking for a sign is still striving, beyond being. The only sign that matters is the ? sign of the ego.