Moksha

When it comes to meditation, or any other spiritual practice, it's more about experimenting to see what works than about following a universal method. Even for a specific guide like The Mind Illuminated, it's best to follow your instinct and modify the approach according to your needs. For example, following the breath doesn't feel natural to me. Focusing on the inner body does. So that is the core of my practice, even though TMI references the breath. Eventually, you reach the point where you can immediately center on awareness and any specific technique becomes secondary. It gradually rewires the brain, and becomes your default state even in regular life.

Embracing the ego is suffering. Until the absolute realizes that the ego is not its essence, and surrenders its pursuit of external identification, it will remain entrapped within its dream. It can still be within the dream, enjoying the imagination of experience, without losing its awareness. Enlightenment is the state of lucid being within the dream. It is the end of suffering. Drink the poison or don't, it's up to you.

The dream is the imagination of the absolute. It plunders in the guise of the ego, and after exhausting itself in the profligate pursuit of pleasure, it suffers and surrenders its mask, gratefully returning inward on the path of enlightenment. Ego and enlightenment are within the dream, but the outbound journey is entrapping and the inbound journey is liberating. Each person will live according to its destiny, in ego, or if inner grace is granted, in enlightenment. Choose your adventure.

Good inner pointer. What is the purpose of pain in the physical body? It didn't evolve solely to make us miserable, but to wake us up to the damage being caused. If you stick your hand in a fire without pain, why remove it? Suffering is the anguish of the soul. It exists to help you wake up to the damage being caused by your misdirection. Without it, why would you surrender yourself to god? Leverage it to loosen your attachment to the self. Let it guide you inward, to the absolute. The balm of suffering is the unconditional love that is your essence.

@Yimpa whenliethenmeant ☀️

Fairness is a relative construct of the human mind. By the above standard, how is it fair for a 10 year-old kid who has barely begun his life to die from cancer? His window for finding answers and growing in character is dramatically shorter than most people. Not to say that fairness is an unworthy aspiration. On the relative level, it has worth. Instead of applying fairness as a precondition for happiness, see reality for what it is, without being miserable about it. Unconditionally embrace the experience of whatever life brings you. Drink it fully and devour it the marrow, without losing your awareness within it. This is the dream feast!

It's amazing how much more space there is for solving the practical puzzles of life when your awareness is no longer hostage to the demands of the conditioned mind.

The former informs the freedom of the latter. There's playing the games of children, then there's playing the ultimate game of lucid dreaming. Nothing like flying freely, wherever you choose to go, without fear of falling. The only rule is surrender, which as it turns out is simply realization.

They grow by absorption. Everything they touch gets assimilated, increasing their monstrosity: It's best to stay out of their way, warning others and cleaning up the slime trail in their (una)wake.

@Bazooka Jesus beat me to it. Nothing so direct as the language of silence. Sages say that the state in which the thought "I" does not rise even in the least, alone is Self which is silence. That silent Self alone is God; Self alone is the jiva. Self alone is this ancient world. All other knowledges are only petty and trivial knowledges; the experience of silence alone is the real and perfect knowledge. Know that the many objective differences are not real but are mere superimpositions on Self, which is the form of true knowledge.

By identifying as an I, which necessitates a comparison with apparent others.

Awakening is realization, and enlightenment is integration, which allows you to remain awake. You can awaken in an instant, and sink deeper into absolute realization the rest of your life. Purity isn't a prerequisite for awakening, but is the final form state within the dream.

Depersonalization is like a magician reaching into the hat and failing to find a rabbit, without realizing that he himself is part of the trick. It's confusing to the mind, and is the limit of its comprehension. Why did the illusion of individual existence suddenly stop working? The rabbit ego is nowhere to be found, but the dream still hasn't been dispelled. All the magician mind can do is dive head first into the hat, desperately trying to lose itself in the void of its unreality. Escape from the illusion requires direct realization. The curtain goes down for intermission, and the lights turn on. It is the grace of the absolute allowing itself to awaken, without losing awareness even as intermission ends and the act goes on.

Siddhartha wasn't a Buddhist, Vyasa wasn't a Hindu, and Jesus wasn't a Christian. The inward journey requires surrendering all beliefs, to become small enough to pass through the gate of the absolute. Only then will you directly realize god.

Growing from identification as a separate ego to identification as a cosmic ego is a monstrously impressive feat. Reminds me of playing D&D as a kid, and my eyes widening in horror as little slimes merged together into a giant GELATINOUS CUBE (queue dramatic music). Note that gelatinous cubes have a high damage resistance to most attacks, and are immune to effects that rely on sight. The secret to dissolving them is raw elemental damage from a distance, to avoid being engulfed.

@Razard86 This is a decent map of unconditional love, worth pondering to get your bearings on the inward path. WARNING: Following this path can lead to losing yourself entirely: If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

In the spiritual journey, you realize that conditions are the building blocks of the dream. We go through life constructing this Jenga fortress around ourselves, each block a belief that is handed to us by society or self-contrived. Conditions define us and create an increasingly desperate sense of separation. Eventually, the walls of the fortress become so thick that they entirely block us from the light of our true nature. We isolate our awareness from its source, entrapped within a prison of our own making. Awakening is the pausing of this process, where the absolute deeply realizes the reason for its suffering. It begins unbuilding its tower, plucking out conditions block by block. It is the inward journey of deconstruction, where beliefs are surrendered and the absolute begins to directly see itself. Chinks appear in the walls and pure light floods through, helping to dissolve remaining blocks. The prodigal son, which thought itself to be separate in its pursuit of phenomenal pleasure, is reunited with the father in the unconditional embrace of the absolute.

@CARDOZZO Spot on. As someone that has lived in judgment for decades, my advice is to let it go. It doesn't mean abandoning discretion on the relative level, only seeing deeply, beyond the illusion of separation. Judgment is suffering. It doesn't matter if you are comparing yourself to others, or if you are comparing yourself internally, to a contrived standard. Contrast is the illusion of separation, which only strengthens the ego. It entraps awareness within apparent boundaries, which causes conflict with itself. This clash happens regardless of whether you are judged to be higher than or lower than something else. The appearance of separation is unsettling, distracting, and enslaving. It is the opposite of unconditional love, which is our true nature. Learn not to judge, and you will be in the perpetual flow state of the absolute, even while still within its dream.

Awareness is the absolute focused internally. Experience is the absolute focused externally. The apparent shifting of focus between the external and the internal is the OM, or the birth and death of the cosmos.

No worries, you are still good medicine. Egos hate laughter almost as much as they hate being ignored.

If you're really that anxious to be admonished, I second the vote hereto submitted in this thread to promote Razard to the esteemed position of Moderator.

Renunciation is a path to awakening, but there are other paths equally as effective. The most direct is self-inquiry. What matters is finding the path that is right for you, and learning to enjoy the journey.

There are monks who spend their lives looking for, but never realizing, the absolute in caves. There are monks who realize the absolute, and leave their caves to help others realize the absolute. There are monks who realize the absolute, and still spend their lives in caves. Solution: Don't be a monk What the absolute chooses to do with its so-called time is entirely up to the absolute. When it has surfeited its journey in a particular form, after decades (lifetimes?) of action and service, why not enjoy the final moments of this form in the transient solitude of a cave?

I'm the guy at the back, preaching to an audience that has long since moved on.

When directly realized, the absolute is absolutely obvious. It's only when people remove themselves from the summit and try to make sense of their realization that they get confused.