Moksha

Your instinct is guiding you well here. I share your cynicism of solipsism. It is duality parading as nonduality. If You are the Source of the cosmos, and everything out there is just an illusion, then You have created a duality between You and the illusions that you create. Nonduality goes beyond solipsism. It it the realization that everything, including the infinite variety of forms that You create, is mysteriously part of the same One. The waves of the ocean are still part of the ocean, however transient they may be. Don't dismiss life as meaningless, as so many solipsists do. God is all, including the journey of each soul back to its Source.

Dude was brilliant, everything I've heard from him was spot on.

Alan Watts famously said that when you get the message, hang up. Psychedelics can open your eyes, but then you have to do the work. If you keep listening to the message, without acting on it, you are trapping yourself into a compulsive loop. Instead, be the message.

Monkey mind alert ? Maybe, just maybe, we can't understand how nothing and everything are synchronically possible, beyond our monkey brains to comprehend.

Love is the opposite of loneliness. ?

I'm no Zen master, but my key takeaway is simply this: "No Mind".

I would tell him to trust his soul, and let go of every belief.

Alan Watts, Ram Dass, Eckhart Tolle, and quite a few others whom people consider to be enlightened have resonated, if not identified, with Buddhism. I see it as a portal, rather than a belief system. It is simply the recognition that we are not our conditioning, that the mind is the source of suffering, and that we can be free from suffering, even within relative reality. As with any philosophy or religion, discard the beliefs and realize the core insights. As Aldous Huxley found in his review of world philosophies and religions, there are 3 core truths with which all agree: 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

Enlightenment is freedom from ego. Anyone that thinks Trump has no ego doesn't understand what ego is. Honestly, I feel sorry for him. The human is likely beyond redemption, at least in this life, but if you look past that, his Self is the same that all of us is. Enough politics though, or I will need to self-moderate and move my post to the appropriate forum

Mysticism it the pathway to spirituality. Your true nature is Consciousness, and mysticism is the journey of Self-discovery. There are no concepts involved, only direct experience as Consciousness itself. I can't speak for Leo, but Consciousness is completely unconstrained. Imagination is just another word for creation, and creation is the game Consciousness plays. It is the ultimate storyteller, and what you think of as "you" is just a character in the divine story.

Welcome, @Mythos! Mysticism is less of a worldview, and more the path of directly realizing reality. It is nonconceptual, unmitigated, personal realization and resonance with the divine. There are mystics across most religions (Hindu, Christian, etc.), and the difference is that they trust their direct experience above any external authority.

Thus the quotes.

Religious beliefs vs. Spirituality. Conditioned mind vs. Consciousness. Ego vs. unconditional Love. Specialness vs. Sameness. Transient grasping vs. Being. It's your story, choose the telling.

Isn't it funny how it always resolves to Love? I would spend time with the people I Love. I would eat the food that fills me with Love. I would feel the music that inspires Love. What is the common denominator here? ?

My first thread, when I joined the forum, was on free will. The ego is an illusion. It has no more control than You allow. It is a disjointed bundle of energy that saps You of Yourself. Give it control, and it will make you suffer. Deny its lies, and you will be free. The "choice" is up to You.

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For me, the catalytic insight was that my conditioned mind has always been the source of my suffering. I saw my ego for what it truly was. I knew, beyond doubt, that my ego could never be trusted. When I directly realized this, I pried my fingers from the ledge that I had been clinging to all of my life, and fell into the void. It was a freefall away from "myself", and the Love that is my true Self caught me, and has kept me safe ever since.

Why suffer unnecessarily? The only reason people suffer is because they have not awakened to the reality of who they are. They chase after happiness in a transient world that, by its very nature, can never deliver what they want. The look for security in insecurity. They crave love, without realizing that their essential nature is love. It's important to distinguish between suffering and pain. An enlightened person is as vulnerable to pain, dissolution, and death as any other human being. But they no longer suffer, because instead of denying reality, they realize and embrace it. The quality of their existence and their interactions with others is more refined. Their love is unconditional, and that makes all the difference.

Good observation. People get confused about this, probably more than any other subject (pun intended) Ultimately, there is no object, only the infinite Subject. Relatively, there are endless causal interactions between subjects and objects. The mystery is in how these two, Ultimate and Relative reality, interact and conflate into the One God. I prefer the term "Relative reality" to "dream", because dreams imply insignificance. While it is true that Relative reality is of secondary significance, it is not devoid of meaning. Instead of being apathetic about the "dream", live lucidly. Realize who You ultimately are, but LOVE the dream itself. You created it for a reason.

Eternity implies time. Time only exists in relative reality. In ultimate reality, there is no time, no space, no separation, no change. Don't worry about time, just channel this.

It only takes as long as you need to realize that "you" are temporary. You are infinite, and we are all You. Nothing that is real can be threatened. ?

? Realizing not only that your thoughts mean nothing, but that they are the enemy of Self-realization, is the beginning of wisdom. Nothing can be known, and nothing needs to be known. It sounds cliche, but it really is about being. Hope you enjoy the book, bro!

The ego hungers, insatiably, for security. Have you practiced being present, in insecurity? Can you be at peace, not knowing anything? Great reading, if you are looking for a stable alternative, beyond psychedelics (author is guilty as charged, but gets it): The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety - Alan Watts

Running the conceptual hamster wheel is exhausting, and it will eventually wear you out. I'm not much into models, including spiral dynamics. They tend to point people toward thinking, encouraging egoic comparisons, rather than Self-realizing. That said, ask yourself what you really mean by "understanding the existential dilemma". Understanding is intellectualizing. It is not about understanding. It is about being. You are already enough.

It relates to the question I asked you earlier. I trust my intuition, because it doesn't let me down. I don't demand an immediate answer. I just ask the question, and trust that the answer will come. Often it is surprising, sometimes it is even frightening, but I am thankful for it, and I respond to it. There is an infinitely vast intelligence, which is the Source of who we ultimately are, that we can access, even in the world of relative reality. Ironically, the more we let go, the easier the answers flow.