Are you free?

[Breakingthewall]

Does your mind flow unhindered? Is your heart open without protective barriers? Is your being capable of surrendering to the abyss of existence and letting go of control? Right behind your eyes, is there something that oppresses, that controls, that squeezes? 

Is your mind spinning, grasping at ideas, needing to see itself on a timeline, creating a self-image based on comparison? 

In a moment, just temporarily, a few minutes, you can let go of all that completely, let go of the self and allow it to dissolve, in the reality, in the now. Open your heart to this experience, truly see that everything is perfect. let go of judgment, sadness and lack. smile into the abyss's face, without fear, and merge with it, be one with it. just for a while, a moment. Anything else is very difficult, there is tons of tension, the need for control and survival. We can see them, understand their need and for a moment let go of them. up to what point? that's the question. not wanting anything, not fearing anything, just merging with reality. this is spiritual work, not something to think or understand but to do. 

How many of us would get it really until the bottom? Maybe no one. Who could transcend the mind? 

As I write these words it is night and an old man, bent over, homeless, sick, absolutely alone, passes in front of me pushing a child's cart with his things, slowly step by step. Do us open our heart to be him? Do you open our heart to the immeasurable pain of beings without evading it by telling ourself that it is a dream, but rather opening our soul without fear to the suffering? Forgetting the difference between good and bad ,trascending it? 

There are no shortcuts, there is only one path: openness to reality. Then, even for some minutes, you can breath free, and be one with the unfathomable. But of course, until what point? Always a bit of resistance. Little by little, day by day, see it, the mental flow, the control, and observe it having the will of totally dissolving oneself in the flow, in the unlimited. Surrender the self, that's the thing. 

Because everyone who wants to save his life will lose it; and everyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.

[Someone here]

Freedom is not for you . It's from you .

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

Freedom is not for you . It's from you .

In one sense yes, in other freedom is you. 

[numbersinarow]

Yes, indeterminate individual free will.

[Kuba Powiertowski]

Let's put it a bit poetically and metaphorically. Freedom, like pleasure, are difficult concepts to define. Where pleasure ends and pain begins, is freedom ending and enslavement beginning? Or maybe the other way around? In the relative dimension, we will always get relative answers, if not paradoxical ones. I myself, struggle with this, as long as I struggle 😉😊. Lately, I have been discovering the blessing of not thinking beyond the bare necessity.

[Breakingthewall]

52 minutes ago, Kuba Powiertowski said:

Let's put it a bit poetically and metaphorically. Freedom, like pleasure, are difficult concepts to define

Freedom is total acceptance of yourself. but not of yourself as a human compared to other humans, but of yourself as an existence. For example, accepting your children being tortured by the Apaches in front of you being roasted on a grill and then you being devoured by insects for three days. Here is the difficult question of freedom, since reality does not joke. 

Freedom is to drain the cup to the end. give yourself as a sacrifice for crucifixion, torture, illness, loneliness and desolation. It is the price of glory. Reality is designed to keep us prisoners of our fear. You are a rock climber right? Why? because you have sensed that fear is prison. All of us will have our cross, that's the game.

But it is not necessary to go that far id say, it is enough to look the chains of our mind , look them in the face, and open ourselves to them with total honesty. Open our heart and accept the whole thing with humility, then the perfection manifest . I'm not claiming that I'm there, just some moments and struggling with myself to purify myself and trascending the fucking stubborn ego.  

If we are able to accept everything without rejecting anything, the transitory/illusory (although this word is confusing ) character of reality manifests itself, and the absolute perceives itself. This is freedom and what they call enlightenment: seeing through the veil of maya

Edited August 9 by Breakingthewall

[Kuba Powiertowski]

32 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

fucking stubborn ego. 

😂😂😂 confirm. It's stubborn af.

[Applegarden8]

While I feel more free from the forces of life than ever in my life I don't consider it freedom. I have something in my life that makes me feel great degree of freedom which increases over time.

Am I free? Not really.

It is more practical to say that this body separates me from freedom. That though does not mean that the body or the mind is the problem. We live in such a way, it takes a lot of effort to feel truly free. It's a full time job to make yourself that way. Even though, still somewhere, sometime glimpses of freedom happen and seem to be in a hands reach. Sometimes with a lot of effort you can't reach it. I don't know. Time will tell.

Edited August 10 by Applegarden8

[gettoefl]

 

your idea of surrendering to the "abyss of existence" is a way to dropping the ego ...it is  the ego's constant need to probe ideas, create timelines, and build self-images that keeps us trapped in a cycle of suffering and limitation

and your idea of "merging with reality" is akin to what acim calls "the holy instant" where we drop all defenses, judgments, fears, and open ourselves to the truth of our being and in such moments, we then experience a glimpse of what it means to be one with everything, to see the perfection in all that is, and to feel the deep peace that comes from knowing that there is no need to control or protect ourselves.

i liked your anecdote about the old man passing by, and the invitation to open our hearts to his suffering ... forgiveness is not about dismissing the pain in the world, but rather seeing beyond it to recognise the shared essence that connects us and the illusory nature of the separation that seems to cause this suffering ... to truly "lose our life" is to drop the ego's interpretations, and in doing so, to connect to our true self which is one with all.

i agree there are no shortcuts and it requires a willingness to confront and overcome our own resistance, and a commitment to see beyond the ego's illusions ... yet each moment of surrender brings us closer to the freedom you talk about ... and in this state, we not only find our own salvation but will also become instruments of healing and peace for others ... this is spiritual work, the work of remembering who we really are and extending that truth to everyone we encounter

[Schizophonia]

Freedom is an illusion.

What is not an illusion after all ? An hologram, a a sleight of hand.

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, gettoefl said:

and your idea of "merging with reality" is akin to what acim calls "the holy instant" where we drop all defenses, judgments, fears, and open ourselves to the truth of our being and in such moments, we then experience a glimpse of what it means to be one with everything, to see the perfection in all that is, and to feel the deep peace that comes from knowing that there is no need to control or protect ourselves.

Exactly, the idea is living it that state. Anything else is suffering and deception.

Once you see it, when the separation mechanisms of the psyche re-emerge (inevitably), the suffering becomes much more evident. Before it was always there, but you had concealment mechanisms, especially projection into the future or the past to escape from an inharmonious present. If you face this present with a vibration of suffering, you understand the mechanisms of separation. This does not mean that you will voluntarily and automatically make them disappear and become one with reality again, but this is encouraged to occur spontaneously more and more frequently. What was previously a one-time event, normally promoted by psychedelics, is beginning to be an everyday occurrence. For me, small doses of LSD are very useful, since they anesthetize the separating energy, but the idea is to achieve this in a sober and continuous way.

[Breakingthewall]

To be free is to leave the psyche. Once it is achieved, it seems very simple and obvious, then you are back inside and in a very difficult to solve maze. The psyche is a strange mechanism, a kind of evolutionary parasite that permeates your energetic structure and makes your mind operate in loop mode. It is impossible to get out of the psyche just by suggesting it, since it has many anchor points. you have to work on them, eroding them little by little, then there comes a time when sometimes, for short intervals, you leave the psyche, and the mind becomes clear and limitless. Any thought about yourself starts the loop of the psyche, and that mental flow begins to branch out and in a moment you are ruminating, giving energy to the psyche to continue with its inertia.

Once you leave the psyche and see it from the outside without its emotional charge, it seems ridiculous, a dead mask. but when it catches you again, it is very alive. It doesn't stop spinning around itself and it contracts your heart and mind. the psyche is greedy and miserable. It is a disgusting companion, a slimy parasite. It sticks to your face and presses it, like a closed fist behind your eyes, oppressive. All your emotionally charged memories, good or bad, are psyche. any self-referential identity and thought that is given importance, any self-valuation, any thought or emotion of dependence, of not being complete without something.

Releasing the psyche means opening the present moment, removing its limits. being empty of psyche, therefore full of existence. existence is this, now, not the protections of the psyche. Freedom is also here and now, not at some other point, since there is only this point: now. The greedy psyche, with all its evaluations, it's sadness, has to be seen as unreal, a software that has the mission of trapping you, imprisoning you. It is the product of life in human society that has evolved over thousands and thousands of years. There are thousands of generations trapped in that structure, giving life to it. Humans and psyche always are together. There are people who seem to be very happy with their positive psyche, but they are also trapped. At least in a comfortable cell, but it is a cell. There is only one freedom, letting it fall, emptying the mind of psyche. quite a challenge. 

If the psyche falls, the reality manifests clean and unlimited, but it's like a pendulum, disappears and comes back. The point is to choose the absence of psyche firmly. I would say that it has an important component of will, not just realization.

Edited August 10 by Breakingthewall

[gettoefl]

8 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

To be free is to leave the psyche. Once it is achieved, it seems very simple and obvious, then you are back inside and in a very difficult to solve maze. The psyche is a strange mechanism, a kind of evolutionary parasite that permeates your energetic structure and makes your mind operate in loop mode. It is impossible to get out of the psyche just by suggesting it, since it has many anchor points. you have to work on them, eroding them little by little, then there comes a time when sometimes, for short intervals, you leave the psyche, and the mind becomes clear and limitless. Any thought about yourself starts the loop of the psyche, and that mental flow begins to branch out and in a moment you are ruminating, giving energy to the psyche to continue with its inertia.

Once you leave the psyche and see it from the outside without its emotional charge, it seems ridiculous, a dead mask. but when it catches you again, it is very alive. It doesn't stop spinning around itself and it contracts your heart and mind. the psyche is greedy and miserable. It is a disgusting companion, a slimy parasite. It sticks to your face and presses it, like a closed fist behind your eyes, oppressive. All your emotionally charged memories, good or bad, are psyche. any self-referential identity and thought that is given importance, any self-valuation, any thought or emotion of dependence, of not being complete without something.

Releasing the psyche means opening the present moment, removing its limits. being empty of psyche, therefore full of existence. existence is this, now, not the protections of the psyche. Freedom is also here and now, not at some other point, since there is only this point: now. The greedy psyche, with all its evaluations, it's sadness, has to be seen as unreal, a software that has the mission of trapping you, imprisoning you. It is the product of life in human society that has evolved over thousands and thousands of years. There are thousands of generations trapped in that structure, giving life to it. Humans and psyche always are together. There are people who seem to be very happy with their positive psyche, but they are also trapped. At least in a comfortable cell, but it is a cell. There is only one freedom, letting it fall, emptying the mind of psyche. quite a challenge. 

If the psyche falls, the reality manifests clean and unlimited, but it's like a pendulum, disappears and comes back. The point is to choose the absence of psyche firmly. I would say that it has an important component of will, not just realization.

 

 

amazingly perceptive insights here re the psyche and dismantling its sticky grasp ... the psyche being an evolutionary parasite keeping us trapped in never ending loops of self-referential thoughts certainly rings true for me and brings to mind that one of the first steps in this decoupling might be something as simple yet as potent as laying aside the language of adjectives

adjectives are what we use to categorize and define, creating distinctions and judgments that reinforce the illusory separation ... when we describe something as good/bad or pleasant/foul we plunge ourselves in duality and feed the psyche's drive to prop up a self-identity based on comparison and valuation ... if we consciously exclude these descriptors, slowly psyche's influence erodes and loosens its grip allowing us to sample reality as it is - boundless, unconditioned, and free of judgment.

to practice this requires a deliberate shift in the manner of engaging with thoughts and emotions ... instead of labeling and categorizing experiences, we merely observe them and let them arise and pass without attachment ... this can dissolve the boundaries that the psyche imposes, ushering a sense of unity and presence in the now ... and it's not just about resisting the psyche's pull but about gently disidentifying from its constructs while dwelling in a state of openness and acceptance rather than evaluation and control

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, gettoefl said:

adjectives are what we use to categorize and define, creating distinctions and judgments that reinforce the illusory separation ... when we describe something as good/bad or pleasant/foul we plunge ourselves in duality and feed the psyche's drive to prop up a self-identity based on comparison and valuation ... if we consciously exclude these descriptors, slowly psyche's influence erodes and loosens its grip allowing us to sample reality as it is - boundless, unconditioned, and free of judgment.

Exactly, but it's extremely difficult. As humans and evolutionary social beings we are deeply programmed for preference. and the primary preference is to live rather than die. Any mental exercise is violence and doomed to failure if it is not based on a real human transcendence. The human will always be a prisoner of the psyche, to leave the psyche you have to take a step back and identify with existence. And even then, the pendulum is going to move again and again. Then the effort has to be constant and deliberate to observe your suffering without evasion, because the psyche is always suffering. The human nature is very uncomfortable, a movement of reality to promote the most efficient evolutionary movement possible.

[gettoefl]

6 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

Exactly, but it's extremely difficult. As humans and evolutionary social beings we are deeply programmed for preference. and the primary preference is to live rather than die. Any mental exercise is violence and doomed to failure if it is not based on a real human transcendence. The human will always be a prisoner of the psyche, to leave the psyche you have to take a step back and identify with existence. And even then, the pendulum is going to move again and again. Then the effort has to be constant and deliberate to observe your suffering without evasion, because the psyche is always suffering. The human nature is very uncomfortable, a movement of reality to promote the most efficient evolutionary movement possible.

a good way to transcend the limitations of the psyche and its inevitable suffering is not through constant struggle or effort but by a shift of perception to see the divine in everything around you ... no longer focus on the negative, the fear, and the survival instincts that drive human behavior, choose rather to see the presence of the sacred and the sublime in every moment, every being, every experience ... by cultivating this awareness, you begin to see the world as a mirror, allowing you to experience a far deeper connection with existence and an otherworldly peace ... this shift makes a step towards true transcendence which can dissolve the cycle of suffering

 

Edited August 11 by gettoefl

[Breakingthewall]

On 11/8/2024 at 7:23 PM, gettoefl said:

a good way to transcend the limitations of the psyche and its inevitable suffering is not through constant struggle or effort but by a shift of perception to see the divine in everything around you ... no longer focus on the negative, the fear, and the survival instincts that drive human behavior, choose rather to see the presence of the sacred and the sublime in every moment, every being, every experience ... by cultivating this awareness, you begin to see the world as a mirror, allowing you to experience a far deeper connection with existence and an otherworldly peace ... this shift makes a step towards true transcendence which can dissolve the cycle of suffering

 

Yes ,it's as you said. The problem for me is that there is no middle ground. Either I'm in the psyche or I'm not. Being outside is an extremely delicate balance, in the end it absorbs you again. To be outside the psyche, from suffering, is to abandon the self. It is an act that is done or not, it cannot be done in part, little by little. It is total and immediate. For me it is still an enigma how this process works, but it is a total change in frequency, you are a different person. then going back to the person with a psyche is disgusting. you become absolutely intolerant to the suffering you have constantly lived with. In some cases it's very difficult to clean your karma, a real challenge, but I'd say that when you really start, some guidance appears, life flows in that direction 

Edited August 13 by Breakingthewall