Moksha

Every experience in the cosmos is god veiled, in less or greater glory. It is god's essence, but it is inevitably and graciously indirect. God, or the absolute, in its infinite glory is changeless, timeless, and boundaryless, beyond its cosmos. Existence is only a dark mirror in which god reflects on the experience of itself.

Lucifer means "Son of the Morning". The story of his fall is the story of us all. Eventually even the most demonic of us still gets to dissolve back into the absolute that is its essence.

Exactly! The more direct the absolute is, the more the dream dissolves. The entire cosmos is only its imagination. The absolute is the essence of the cosmos, but it has to veil itself from itself in order to experience its creation. There are infinite levels of the absolute realizing itself within its dream. As it surrenders the attachment of its awareness to the cosmos, and turns awareness inward, it deepens into its infinite nature. Mystics see this. The absolute cannot be entirely realized within its dream. Its light is so intense that it dissolves every apparent boundary. The cosmos cannot contain its glory. Many spiritual traditions prescribe wearing a veil when appearing before God, or that God must veil itself before revealing its glory. The meaning behind these practices and writings is deeper than many realize. For example, Exodus 33: Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”

So even when you are directly experiencing your infinite nature as the absolute, your body is absolutely real, as is your ability to feel pain? Or does it just appear to be real?

There's nothing evil about money, only the love of it.

God appearing as other than God is a transient reflection, like gazing at yourself in a rippling lake. God itself is always absolute.

If this is true, why would hitting your thumb with a hammer have any effect when you are directly experiencing reality? If your body is still there, does this imply anything about your direct experience?

Tu es Dodo

By pursuing desires that will never fulfill you, and running from fears that aren't real.

If 5-Me0 disappears your body, how can your thumb be hit by a hammer? Unless you mean that it temporarily reduces body awareness, but that body awareness returns upon sensation. In which case, it sounds quite like what I describe as lucid dreaming.

Yes, but I was wondering if when you realize infinity and hit your thumb with a hammer, does it hurt?

People spend 99% of their time wasting time, regretting that they wasted time, dreaming of the time when they no longer waste time, and wishing that the moment now was different than it actually is. Why not try something different and experience life lucidly, as it actually is? You can still have goals, but don't define yourself by them. You will never realize love, happiness, and peace in the future, only now. Your kids are here, enjoy them while you can.

When you realize the absolute on 5-Me0, is there any pain when you hit your thumb with a hammer?

@Breakingthewall The form is relatively real, just like everything else in the cosmos. If it was absolute, its apparent mass wouldn't depend on the observer. Two atomic clocks perfectly synched but moving at different speeds wouldn't show different times when reunited. The relative doesn't have to be ignored, just don't misidentify with it. @Javfly33 I was referring to the insanity of the masses, but you're right that spiritual insanity can also occur, when direct realization becomes a memory. All the more reason to remain lucid within the dream.

Most people that consider themselves sane are actually insane. Rather than seeing reality as it is, they identify as an imaginary form, and make every decision based on phenomenal desires and fears. Awakening is the realization of sanity. It is seeing clearly. When it happens, of course it is a shock to the conditioned mind. The framework it has carefully constructed for decades to define reality collapses like a Jenga tower. It is left in disarray. You have to pace enlightenment. Otherwise it will overwhelm you, before you are ready to be overwhelmed. The adjustment is disorienting. I went through a period where I was afraid to even drive. How do you know if it is awakening or mental illness? Direct realization is absolute knowledge. There is zero doubt. As your mental structures relax and dissolve, your true nature shines with increasing intensity, and you understand unconditional love.

@Yimpa Thanks for your kind words, but believe me any eloquence is despite rather than due to my best efforts

@Water by the River Astute insights as usual. Meditation and psychedelics have tremendous potential, in addition to the traditional spiritual paths of contemplation, devotion, renunciation, and service. Really it comes down to sincerity and readiness, over any particular method. Each winding path diverges and intersects with other paths in the ascent of the mountain. The great joke is that after an arduous hike, when you take the final step to the summit, you dissolve. Good people come to worship me for different reasons. Some come to the spiritual life because of suffering, some in order to understand life; some come through a desire to achieve life’s purpose, and some come who are men and women of wisdom. Unwavering in devotion, always united with me, the man or woman of wisdom surpasses all the others…the wise who are always established in union, for whom there is no higher goal than me, may be regarded as my very Self…seeing me everywhere and in everything. Such great souls are very rare. The reason matters less than the realization. The enlightening journey is love, which sees the sameness in and beyond all things. To answer your question, I've experienced so many ego traps in my life that I've learned to step carefully. My foolishness has been my good fortune. Instead of trusting the senses, it navigates now from within.

The pantheon of gods is no more real than those that worship them. When the worshipped and the worshipper dissolve together, the absolute realizes itself.

Everything unreal is imagined, and everything is unreal Imagination is simply misidentification by the real for something it is not. Absolute reality is beyond thingness and nothingness. It's paradoxical to the mind, and can't be comprehended, only directly realized.

The only true knowledge is unexpressed being. Every word, thought, concept, feeling, sensation, and experience is imagination.

@Yimpa Unfortunately (for me), there's an inverse correlation between pondering truth and being youth.

You have an open mind. That's more than many spiritual people can say. Concepts only get in the way of awakening. It's an annoying catch of the game. Every idea has to be jettisoned. It's only when you disidentify from ideas (including the idea of you) that the space is created for the absolute to directly realize itself. Yes, the concept of the absolute is also an idea. When the absolute is directly realized, it is nameless. You're intelligent enough to see the quandary. To find yourself, you have to lose yourself. Conveniently inconvenient. The good news is that once the absolute realizes itself, it is able to remain lucid within its dream. Concepts are not only fine, but are necessary for the dream to continue its apparent existence. They are clearly seen as the masquerade of the absolute within itself.

Suffering for its own sake is reifying. Left to itself, it only leads into deeper descents. The suffering has to be willingly leveraged, like a prybar, to have any worth. The wisdom of suffering is realizing its cause. When you are able, you finally see that desperately pursuing desires and avoiding fears is the source and sustaining of suffering. This realization is the knock on the inward-opening door that the absolute has been patiently waiting to hear. The door opens, and the absolute embraces itself.

@Yimpa No. In this case, suffering was the ultimate psychedelic.

Unless there are physical/mental constraints, I see no reason why people couldn't try psychedelics to have these perceptions, or more precisely, to loosen or dissolve their mental misperceptions. I want to be clear that 1) psychedelics and/or 2) meditating for thousands of hours is not required, or even optimal, for the absolute within every form to fully realize itself. These practices may be highly beneficial in some cases, but they are not universally prescribed. Anyone claiming otherwise doesn't understand the unconditional and inevitable diversity of the pathways used by the absolute to dissolve misidentifications and directly realize itself, within its dream. I have noticed a general bias in this forum from people using psychedelics, insisting that their realizations are otherwise impossible. I understand the reasons for this bias, due to the extreme states that psychedelics can produce. However, it is simply untrue that these extreme states are necessary or universally optimal for awakening/enlightenment. I am not opposed to them, but I do oppose any mandate of psychedelics as a shortcut to absolute realization. I directly realize the absolute beyond the physical senses, and it is a perpetual state of being, free from psychedelics. I don't ask anyone to validate or invalidate my direct experience. Instead, I sincerely encourage whoever reads this to find their own internal path to the absolute, rather than adopting any universal prescription. Even as a tortoise draws in its limbs, the wise draw in their senses at will…Even of those who tread the path, the stormy senses can sweep off the mind. They live in wisdom who subdue their senses and keep their minds ever absorbed in me.