Moksha

Exactly. Thinking will never lead you to understanding. It is a will-o'-wisp promising to light your way, but instead it leads you into the swamp of oblivion. You will find yourself by not thinking. It's called Being for a reason

Pain is the result of damage to the body or mind, and cannot usually be avoided. Suffering is self-inflicted damage from being unwilling to accept the isness of the Now. It's only necessary until you realize that it is unnecessary.

Consciousness is different from thought. If you trace "You" back to Yourself, what do you find? Sublime, eternal awareness. It is a moment of pure reality, and there is no thought. You can notice thoughts drifting across the sky of You, but you aren't pulled by them. You can even actively direct your thoughts from this place of being, and discover an ocean of creativity and intelligence that your little wave mind could never have realized on its own.

Whether you wake up in the traditional way, or through a conscious-altering substance, you still have to do the work of dissolving your aversions and desires. The ego doesn't die just because you're awake. It fights to the bitter end to defend its pretense of an existence. It lurks in the corner like a good little shadow as long as you observe it, but the moment you look elsewhere, it looms with a knife at your back. Enlightenment tastes like poison at first, which turns to nectar. The ego tastes like nectar at first, which turns to poison. Once you learn that lesson, and remember it enough times, you will finally find the wisdom to deny the ego its day. Not today, ego! Not today.

David Bowie does a great ego impression

@How to be wise

@actualizing25 When they awaken. It's not a choice. Suffering happens to you, and if you're lucky, eventually you ripen enough that the suffering slams you out of the dream and back into the reality that you are. Leo might say, you could just take a psychedelic instead. I'm old school though; I prefer the path of suffering

Insanity is the opposite of enlightenment. It is complete identification with the conditioned mind. Most humans are insane. You will only just be when you are ready to just be. When you wake up, you recognize the kama that ego uses to lure you back into the labyrinth of the conditioned mind. You see the lies for what they are, and they have no power over you. Unfortunately, waking up isn't a one time event. I'm still in slumber a good part of the time. At least now it feels like lucid dreaming

Exactly. Suffering only awakens people when they are ready to be awakened. The apple only falls from the tree when it is ripe enough to lose its attachment.

Even the monster under my bed??

That there is no world.

You are pointing at yourself, right now. Do you see? Waking up is literally going over your head, because concepts are all the ego is. You can still use the mind, but you aren't the mind. Ego is nothing more than identification with the mind. When you let that identification go, you are free.

It's so simple, isn't it? Concepts are only a distraction. Just be.

So true.

Whether it feels better or not has nothing to do with whether it is. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. The only truth is the light that we are; everything else is just a story.

Yep, complete disintegration of the self. It's cool that we can experience ourSelves even in the human form, just not fully. Enlightened people come pretty close, but even they have gunas attaching them to the world of form. Total enlightenment means going poof back into the light that you always are.

@SoonHei

Concepts are part of the illusion. There is no name for the ultimate Mystery. We only experience it directly when we wake up and realize ourselves

Suffering happens when we identify with the ego, rather than realizing who we are. It is a misalignment with the present moment. The ego refuses to accept what is. It can only live in the fictional past or future; the Now dissolves it. Ego is an illusion that will always lead to suffering. When you wake up, you realize that you are the Now, and you never were anything else. Time is an illusion. There is no time in the present moment, and the present moment is all that there is. There is no suffering in pure Consciousness, only light, the unitive reality, which is another word for freedom, intelligence, love, happiness, and peace. A bunch of words which are only pointers. When you wake up, you will experience yourself.

I wouldn't call it a motivation so much as a force. Suffering wakes you up, whether you want it to or not. It is the main way Consciousness becomes aware of itself.

You are the abyss, and suffering is the thing that shoves you into it. Freefalling into yourself is a great ride

Suffering is the ultimate psychedelic.

Now is timeless. Everything manifests in the Now. How could it manifest anywhere else? Always implies time. In ultimate reality, there is no time. Dualism is an illusion; Consciousness is the only reality and it is a singularity.

The illusion only goes on as long as it needs to. You just have to hear the pounding on your door that is suffering, and wake up.

Now is the only reality. Past and future don't exist, never have and never will