Moksha

Most people aren't ready to climb to the summit of perpetual awareness. They may temporarily see it from a distance, through psychedelics or other spiritual experiences, but the peek is not the peak. They lack the stamina to make the spiritual ascent. It's not because they are insincere or inept. They are staggering under the accumulated burden of destructive habits. This burden always returns after the peek experience, by contrast even heavier than before. Each of us walks the trail of life, collecting rocks (physical and mental habits) along the way. These rocks are formed from fleeing fears: mental trauma, physical abuse, broken relationships, etc. or chasing desires: pleasant experiences that entice us, or have come and gone, or are clung to in the desperate need to keep them from ever leaving. We carefully place each rock into our ego backpack. We believe that by containing each rock, we can control it, but it only adds to the weight we are carrying until it becomes unbearable. How do you sustain an arduous hike under such a burden? It's impossible. You can only ascend when you realize that the rocks must be removed. They are not only the source of your suffering, but are the reason you have not been able to attain the summit. This realization is the turning point in your spiritual journey. Usually, it only happens when you become so self-exhausted that you cannot go any farther. Life slams you hard enough and long enough that you finally open your eyes. You realize that all this time, fleeing fears and chasing desires has been the cause of your own damnation. Suffering, when leveraged, is the greatest grace. Initially it only adds to your burden, but when applied to the spiritual journey, to deepen your surrender of external pursuits, it will ultimately set you free. Whatever path you take (self-inquiry, meditation, yoga, renunciation, devotion, service, psychedelics), it can only bring you to the inner gate. Passing through to the other side, which is being absolute awareness, requires surrender. The ego, with its bulging backpack of lies, must be dropped to the ground, so you are small enough to fit through the narrow way. It is the final step of trust, which is the deepest love, that reunites you with yourself. The absolute realizes that all this time, it has been fooling itself by casting awareness externally, into the cosmos of its imagination. It has completed another night journey away from and back to itself. Awareness has traveled from twilight to darkness, and finally to dawn within the dream. Now, just before the sun ascends to its full glory, you are free to enjoy the receding stories of the dream, no longer being bound by them.

@KGrimes You're right that the mind is tricky, and are wise to be wary of it. It takes deep inner insight, yoked with sincere integration, for the mind to become domesticated. There are good therapists out there, but you have to keep looking until you find the right person for you. It's true that most therapists aren't awakened, but all you truly need is someone that can provide a safe space and ask questions that help you find the answers within yourself. There's a reason one of the traditional paths of awakening is bhakti, or devotion with the guidance of a guru. It is all the same summit, just different paths of getting there, based on the individual dispositions and strengths of the aspirant.

@Carl-Richard Spiritual spelunking You have to face the darkness and descend into the dragon's lair before being granted access to its hoard.

The prospect of such a sacrifice can scare people into dropping the pickaxe and running back to the entrance of the spiritual cave. So it goes until they finally tire of running, and strike gold.

Exactly. Love is you trying to realize itself, and it is others trying not to realize itself. Regardless of realization, it is still inevitably Love. When you understand your essence, you can't avoid understanding the essence of others. The apparent boundaries separating you from them begin to dissolve. It is all the same essence. Realizing this, how can there be judgment? It is all the absolute, losing and finding itself within its dream. It's ok to distance yourself from toxicity, until you are no longer defined by it. When the absolute awakens itself within you, it will work through you to awaken itself within others.

Loneliness bound by perspective is the lie of solipsism. Love beyond perspective is the absolute truth.

Einstein did

@KGrimes Good for you. Spirituality is therapy. We all have traumas that eventually dissolve in the light of unconditional love, which is your absolute nature. The best therapist walks cowled at your side, encouraging your progress along the inward path, until eventually you arrive at the gate of yourself. You pranam as you leave them behind, enter the gate, and realize that all along the face beneath the cowl was your own.

Every step of your path requires judgment. Eventually you realize that not only are others following the inevitable trajectory of their existence, but you are doing the same. Love is the absolute resonating with itself, within and between the apparent forms of its creation. When this is realized, there is no judgment of the self or of others, only unconditional grace.

Here and accounted for

Yes, the absolute source is always unconditional, but its journey through the cosmos is the experience of cluttering and clearing infinite perspectives. The absolute creates a portal, which is the seeming perspective of the self, through which it explores its dream. It's like a river running outward, and accumulating debris by its undercurrent. Gradually the opening is clogged, creating the sense of separating the river from its source. The river reverses course, back along the dry bed of its suffering. Flowing inward with increasing pressure, it breaks through the damn of its exploration, until perspective is clear and the river again flows freely. There is no judgment of selfishness or selflessness, only the absolute exploring the phenomenal circular path within its dream.

Whatever spiritual path you take, pace it. Retain awareness of form limitations, and remain within them even as they fade. If the kite gets too high, too quickly, beyond the control of the hand that flies it, it is at risk of being lost in the wind.

Everything is different, nothing is the same. Beyond everything and nothing, the extreme states of the dream, is the incomprehensible mystery of the absolute, which directly realizes itself in silence.

The wicked irony of pursuing fame through spirituality (or any other attempt to mistake spirituality as a means to an end) is that when you finally strike spiritual gold, whatever was being pursued with such greed is discarded as the worthless distraction that it is.

He was a mystic who directly understood not only his true nature, but the preciousness of each apparent form.

At deeper levels of awareness, the you perspective is so ephemeral that it nearly ceases to exist. A portal is still required for the absolute to realize itself from within its dream, but the resonance of light becomes so brilliant that the apparent details of the cosmos seamlessly resolve. It's still a perspective, but from such spaciousness that the absolute is in the pure state of itself, free from misidentification with the actions or results of its apparent form.

Every idea occurring within a person, and shared with other people, is an expression of the absolute. It is the ohm of its creation, guiding itself outward in its phenomenal pursuit, and eventually guiding itself back inward to its true nature. The inward path tends to progress from gross (e.g., physical yogas) to more refined (e.g., self-inquiry) maps, until the silent portal of deep realization is finally passed. Only then does the absolute fully awaken to itself within its dream.

This is true. Not only does the absolute use apparent expressions of itself to guide other apparent expressions to itself, but it is patiently shrewd in doing so. For most people, enlightenment is a progression, built on a series of semi-truths which gradually become more pure the deeper awareness realizes itself.

This is a pointer. Despite what you have realized, until you begin integrating your spiritual insights into your life, you will continue to be externally entangled. There is little value in spiritual experiences, unless they are leveraged to drive your awareness internally to the source. Eventually, your attachments must be dissolved, because they are clearly seen as the source of your distraction and disillusionment. Ask yourself who it is that feels anxious about the external world. When you abide in the answer deeply within, you stably see that there is nothing about which to be anxious. You are the absolute solution to your suffering. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. - A Course in Miracles

Solipsism is the limited idea of seamlessness as realized from an apparent perspective. It doesn't acknowledge that there are infinite apparent perspectives, all as unreal as this perspective, with infinite degrees of absolute realization within the dream.

Within the dream, reality is defined by dualities. Any state presupposes the opposite state. There is no heaven without hell. In the absence of polarities, there can be no apparent movement, no passing of time, and no experience. Absolute reality is this, and polarities only seem to exist within maya.

Who is using words toward God, and who is being affected? Mantra is the spoken inward path of the absolute toward its unveiled self. Deeper into the journey, it is supplanted by meditation, which is the mental inward path. After passing through the gate, meditation is supplanted by direct realization, which is the abiding seamless state.

Word is just a pointer made of veiled god toward unveiled god. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, The only unveiled pointer is silence.

The more conscious a form is, the more god it is.

As a conceptual trap, Buddhism is no worse than any other religion, and certainly better than some. Regardless of the ideology, can you realize the underlying truth without identifying with the surface teachings? If so, who cares what Leo or any other teacher claims? Look within yourself, and trust only what you directly see.