Moksha

The polarities of the dream are existence and non-existence. The cosmos and the void are the extremes of imagination. Each necessitates the other, and neither is absolutely real.

The prime directive of the evolved mind is to name. It's no longer enough for the creature to simply be. It seeks to differentiate itself in order to prove its superiority. The snake mistakes itself for another, and blindly consumes its own tail in the process. When Adam was cast out of paradise, the first thing he did was to name all the birds and the beasts, dividing himself from them. He was harmonious in the garden, but became ensnared in the illusion of separation. Set apart, he was forced to live by the sweat of his brow. When this is realized, the underlying reason for suffering is seen, and the inner path to the nameless absolute unfolds. Naming is judgment. It draws an imaginary line between the internal and the external, creating the appearance of control and resistance. It is the opposite of unconditional love. The eternal Tao is nameless and undifferentiated. Heaven and earth flow from its imagination, creating a countless multitude of apparent beings, but the Tao remains seamless, changeless, and timeless. It is beyond the boundaries of judgment. Only the unnamed Tao is truly free.

When you pass through the gate of grace and mercy, the karma of your actions is cleansed. The burden of personal conditioning is laid down. Salvation is realized, and punishment is absolved. It is the end of judgment. On the other side, the pure absolute merges with itself.

@Jannes The spiritual journey has two phases, the negative withdrawal from illusion, followed by the positive embrace of truth. The path to truth begins with the absolute riding the wave of the human mind along the neti neti current, until it breaks upon the other shore. Realizing what it is not is as far as the human mind can take the absolute. It is the surrendering phase of the spiritual journey. Once it has released the illusion of what it is not, the absolute steps onto the other shore, and directly realizes its true nature. It is free to continue exploring the dream, grounded in the absolute reality of itself.

Yes on spirituality, but unfortunately not on philosophy. Philosophy traps you within the mind, and spirituality frees you from the mind. In most cases philosophy hinders, rather than helps, direct realization.

Religion is conceptual. True spirituality is the direct source beyond beliefs.

Spirituality is the tough love that philosophy needs but usually refuses. Socrates at least concluded that he knows nothing, which opens the possibility for direct realization. Know-it-alls are farther from true knowledge than know-nothings.

Philosophy is conceptual conjecture about reality. Spirituality is absolute realization.

If meaning is the reason for existence, clearly the purpose of creation is to experience it. Before awakening, there is meaning because you still experience the cosmos. After awakening, meaning deepens because you experience the cosmos lucidly. The unveiled absolute is undefined, beyond meaning.

The void is as real and as unreal as the cosmos. Each has the same essence as the other, which is the seamless essence beyond them both. Find the common denominator and realize god.

God blinds nothing but itself, and god helps nothing but itself. There is no permanent state. I once was blind, but now I see.

Eventually, when you've suffered enough, you realize that everything that has happened to you, including your self-destructive habits, and the damage you have inflicted on others, could not possibly have happened any other way, precisely because of the conditions in the cosmos that conspired to create each event. The cosmos is a pinball machine of causes and effects. Once the ball goes spinning, it must interact with each bumper, spinner, and flipper in its unique trajectory, due to the pressure and timing of the plunger that put it into motion, along with all the other balls in play. The ball can complain all it wants. It doesn't make the slightest difference. It goes where it must go, and interacts as it must, until inevitably it is swallowed back into the machine. Welcome to the arcade of relative reality. Instead of entrapping your attention within the tiny steel ball ricocheting across the playfield of obstacles and ramps, WAKE UP. You are the PLAYER, and the machine is entirely within your dream. You can still play the game, but do it lucidly, without suffering every time the ball encounters resistance. The more anchored you are in awareness, the less judgment there is of the game, and the more free you are to enjoy it without losing your awareness within it.

Therefore, the only realizable reality is beyond the appearance of things.

Not unless you're serious about awakening.

@Reciprocality The mind spins endlessly, like a top across the surface of a table, absorbed in its solitary dance, until at last it settles, returning to seamless stillness, the requiem of realization.

@OldManCorcoran explained it well. In meditation, you reach the realization where dualities dissolve and there is only pure awareness. Who is the I that is aware of sensations, thoughts, and feelings? What happens when sensations, thoughts, and feelings recede? Does absolute awareness suddenly stop in the absence of apparent objects? When you wake up from a dream, you don't have to perceive anything to realize you are awake. It is an effortless, obvious realization. Spiritual awakening is the absolute directly realizing itself, which is not only the essence of every apparent object, but is beyond the material cosmos. The apparent separation of the seer and the seen dissolves into seamless awareness.

-That most thoughts are destructive, and even the few constructive thoughts can only inform you what you are not -That you are the source of your suffering -That only you can find the way out of your suffering -That there is no universal path to inner truth, and only you can walk the inner path to yourself -That there is no easy shortcut to awakening -That the cosmos owes you nothing, and your only options are to resist it or embrace it -That you can only prepare yourself for awakening through sincere surrender, and ultimately realization is absolute grace -That realizing your absolute nature requires surrendering attachment to everything you desire and fear -That enlightenment is 1% realization and 99% integration -That enlightenment is an ever-deepening process, not an event -That even awakening and enlightenment, while improving the quality of experience, are only dream strands woven within the imagination of the absolute -That there are no actual boundaries, no change, no movement, no passing of time, and the absolute is seamlessly within and beyond all appearances

The ego is so insidious that even acknowledgment can make you feel embarrassed. It's the inverse of pride. Self-judgment leads to suffering, believe me I know it well. Hopefully you can see it for what it is, and learn sooner than I did to let the judgment go. It claims to keep you safe, but actually hurts you. Before trusting other people, learn to trust yourself. You are your own true guide, despite whatever doubts you currently have. Instead of listening to your incessant thoughts, which aren't you, learn to be comfortable with inner silence, which is you. It will serve you well. Meditation will teach you this. It's a skill, like anything else. You will become adept at noticing thoughts without identifying with them, and eventually surrender thoughts entirely. You will learn to settle into pure awareness. Set a timer for 1 minute, and whatever thought happens to be in your head when the timer goes off, instead of clinging to it simply notice it. Let it be in your consciousness, and observe it from a distance without judging it or engaging with it. Just watch it drift unnamed across the field of your awareness, and eventually disappear. Then notice the next thought that arises. It won't take long for you to realize that you are not the source of your thoughts. They come and go, and they don't define you. You are the underlying awareness, and your true nature is not conditional on your thoughts. Make silence your best friend, and it will set you free.

Thanks @Someone here, if I offended you in some way back then I apologize.

Just awareness, no OFs, ANDs, or BUTs

You're well ahead of where I was at 19, so give yourself some credit Do you have a meditation practice yet? If not, given that you're struggling with awakening anxiety, meditation will probably help you. There are several excellent guides; my go-to was "The Mind Illuminated" by John Yates. It's hefty, but chock-full of detailed recommendations. Also if you're inclined to contemplation, spend a few months diving into source material like the "Bhagavad Gita" or the "Upanishads". It will calm and center you. The fear is produced by your mind, and is completely natural. We're genetically programmed to fight for form survival, so it's not surprising that the mind freaks out when we no longer identify with its thoughts. Instead of fighting it, give it space and let it naturally adjust. It's like a wild horse that needs to be tamed gradually, with handfuls of sweet grass. The biggest ego trap is conceptual questioning. I noticed that whenever I felt disoriented, it was due to thinking about my spiritual journey rather than silently realizing. When I created some space from my thoughts, and centered my awareness in myself, the disorientation went away. It took some practice, but eventually it became natural. Every time you have a thought, instead of rushing to it like a moth to the flame, let the thought come and go without energizing it with your attention. Here again, meditation can be your mainstay. Confusion only happens when you get entrapped in the snare of your thoughts. Eventually when you realize your essence beyond thoughts, clarity and peace will be your default state.

@Jehovah increases @Javfly33 ?We have all the time in the world to realize we are timeless.

If it were me, I would stop smoking weed for a while and focus on integrating what has been realized so far. The deepening will happen on its own, if you let it. The spiritual path takes you beyond where your mind wants to go. Your mind prefers the familiar environment of being with friends, playing video games, and maybe occasionally contemplating spirituality. No harm, no foul. When you begin to realize that the mind itself, with its addictions and habits, is the source of suffering, the mind protests too much, and fights back. It is more formidable than you realize, and you need a solid foundation before you can begin releasing the kite into the wind. Serious spirituality requires absolute surrender, and many of us don't reach that point easily, if ever. After awakening, I went through a long period of disorientation and distress. There were times when I didn't even feel safe to drive. I realized that I had to pace it, if I wanted to continue going deeper without losing my mind entirely. Eventually, I acclimatized and was able to safely continue the descent. It's not an easy process, and there's no reason to rush. Take your time and enjoy the journey.

I suppose it's one reason I don't follow any teachers. You can't really know what is happening behind the curtain, nor does their infrastructure matter for your own journey. If a particular teaching resonates and takes you deeper, leverage it. When it is no longer helpful, let it go. You reach the point where external teachings are unnecessary, and eventually arrive at the non-place where even internal realizations are released.

What experience beyond awakening is direct? Every sensation and perception is indirectly received, processed, and presented internally in a contrived form that inevitably misrepresents whatever is being observed. Setting aside the reality of the cosmos, how could this highly refined form be real? Your image of a rose is nothing like whatever is creating the qualia of its form. Every experience is unreal by definition. On your specific question, if other people confirm seeing a rose, it wouldn't be a hallucination in the traditional sense. Whether the image in their head resembles in any way the image in your own head is impossible to say.