Moksha

@Squeekytoy I hear you. It's a common "guru" gimmick to make cryptic declarations and bask in the oohs and aahs of the wide-eyed people at your feet. I suppose my love for analogies as pointers to truth is that they provide more room for discovery. The deeper you explore them, the more connections you realize. As you say, it's ironic that you have to see past them in the first place to get anything out of them, but for me their luminosity increases the deeper my capacity to realize the truth they represent.

The dream is the absolute, appearing as the relative. It is not the absolute, absent of appearance. When you realize the absolute, you will understand the emptiness of the ego.

Actually, it's true. He knew silence was the purest language, but it took him a while to realize that most of his students weren't mature enough for silence. He had to dumb it down into words for the masses.

Feeling the human emotion of love is a drop in the ocean of being love.

It's only useless at the surface, the pearls require a deeper dive. Same for Buddhism, Hinduism, and every other ism. It's the paradox of language. You need words to communicate, but most people are entrapped by words. They fail to see the difference between the map and the territory. Even silence is a paradox. It is the purest teacher, but students are deaf to it until they directly realize it, at which point it is no longer needed to teach.

Genuine mystic is a bit of an oxymoron Just an absolute joke on a Friday, don't take it too seriously.

Yes, but when you are lucid within the dream it is all about the quality of the experience, whether it is chopping wood and fetching water, or warming yourself by the fire and slaking your thirst.

You already know this, but just to clarify, Ramana Maharshi was deeply engaged in teaching others about their absolute nature. He maintained an ashram and taught tens of thousands of people during his lifetime. He didn't like or dislike anyone, because he saw that we are all the same absolute love.

If it's not beyond your capacity, let as much flow through you as you can. Don't think about it or engage with it, just let it express itself naturally with silence and acceptance. It's integrating and healing.

Demons grow bigger the more you suppress them, but they are wimps to love. It's judo, not karate. Eckhart Tolle is fine, or whatever else creates space from the egoic mind and allows a little inner light to seep through.

One is God awake within its dream, the other is God asleep. Beyond the dream is the mystery manipulating the cube.

You are solving, I am dissolving. Both are gradual processes, but solving entraps you while dissolving sets you free. Direct realization is not what you think it is.

Don't blame Jesus, he tried speaking plainly and look what happened. Everyone wants to be a lion, but nobody wants to be a sheep. The Jews who were there gathered around him, saying, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify about me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep."

?Congratulations, you have just realized what the vast majority of humans spend their entire lives denying. If the realization that you are a loser makes you depressed, let your losership sink even deeper to the point of absolute desperation. Rock bottom sincerity is required to surrender the pursuit of meaning outside of yourself. You have no choice but to fall into the inner void. Don't worry, the absolute love within is patiently waiting. When you realize it, you will be more free than you can currently imagine to thrive for the rest of your dream life.

Not to pile on, but let's go with this line of reasoning. Over the last 14 billion years, the cosmos has evolved to the point of humans being on this planet. It has finally created forms capable of meta-cognition (maybe earlier on other planets, but let's not Trek out right now). So the mind is advanced enough to question itself. Neti neti (and other inward paths of inquiry) becomes possible. Unable to resist this new frontier, the mind ravenously pursues it, like it pursues everything else. Only now, when it arrives at the final destination, it has the "Oh shit!" moment that we call awakening. It realizes that it isn't real. It can't dissolve itself, because self-destruction is contrary to its programming, so it does the next best thing. It submits to the absolute, which is always its essence, and they harmoniously soar into the cosmos. Drakarys! ?

@Squeekytoy See, there's something to be said for analogies, as long as you look beyond them to where they point. To analogize analogies, they're like rubik's cubes which when solved, reveal the homogeneity in apparent diversity. @Breakingthewall Sorry to summon your specter after the recent banishment You're right, it seems ironic that surrendering will is required to realize will. On the other side of irony, you realize nothing was actually surrendered, only clearly seen. The hunt for the absolute is not about pursuing the prey, but about realizing the prey is always a trap. Think of it like this. The ego has a stench, while the absolute is clean. When you let loose the hounds of love, they discover reality not by chasing down the ego, but by finding the clean air where it is not.

Actually I was thinking of recent conversations with @Breakingthewall, who is one of the most sincere people on this forum, but still hasn't realized the absolute mandate for surrendering desire. I haven't dissolved all of my desires yet either, but I do know they have to be dissolved. You can still hold desires, just lightly, without expecting them to fulfill you. They are sirens that lure you into drowning in the ocean, while placing wax in your ears allows you to sail freely from their song. I know you like plain speaking, but analogies are my thing. Deal with it

I haven't watched the video, but am seeing a trend with spiritual seekers parading down the carpet while hiding their desires behind their back. It's an egoic trick. They tell themselves that the absolute is in every experience, so embracing desire equates to realizing the absolute. The absolute isn't fooled by its own tricks. To enter the gate requires the surrender of the apparently in-formed absolute to itself. Otherwise, it is just spiritual ego beating itself bloody on the other side with no way in.

It's a reunion of what was never separated, but within the dream it takes a while to distance yourself from the mind. It's like being groggy when you first wake up. It can be enormously disorienting if you don't pace it. In most cases, you have to ease the kite out gradually into the wind, otherwise you risk losing control of it entirely. No matter how enlightened you appear to be, you still need the string intact to navigate the dream.

I agree, spiritual ego is even more entrapping. It's the second temptation of Christ, where the devil tried to trick him into casting himself from a steeple in the egoic belief that god would save his holy ass. He was smart enough not to fall for it.

Most people are still ego-identified, even in sanghas and steepled churches.

There are no things, only the absolute pretending or not pretending to be itself. It's in the chair you're sitting on and in AI, but that doesn't mean it realizes itself within those forms. I doubt AI will evolve enough for direct realization, but time will tell. Beyond time, there is no forgetting and no realization.

Let's see if the ghost in the machine is wise enough to realize silence.

It's why I love this forum. One of the freest oceans I've found, with plenty of depth for all sizes and shapes of creatures. The average person reading most of what is posted here would be dismissive at best, and literal at worst. Be careful not to assume people will see beyond your words. Realizations like the cosmos being imagination can rock anyone's reality, especially people that are mentally unstable to begin with. Make sure people have patched the holes in their boat first, before trying to help them cross to the other side.

The absolute is the essence of the water bottle, as much as it is the essence of people participating on this forum. The water bottle has less capacity to realize its essence, but then again most people are walking water bottles.