Moksha

Every sense can be a conduit to yourself, if it bridges the sameness of the perceiver and the perceived. You lose and find yourself within it. It's funny how forms perceive the cosmos differently. My brain often defaults to music when I'm not actively thinking, even when I am aware that it is just another thought. John Yates writes about sub-minds in "The Mind Illuminated", and apparently one of my sub-minds loves to jam. ?

@sleep Enlightenment is a realization, not an achievement. It is the absolute awakening to itself, within the dream. It happens when the absolute is ready for it to happen. It's good that you are getting treatment on the relative level. As @Thought Art says, you need an intact mind before it is stable enough to withstand the cosmic forces of letting it go. Like making sure the kite has no holes, before setting it free into the wind. In addition to your treatment, I recommend trying meditation and seeing if it helps. Even now, you can find some relief from suffering simply by letting your thoughts settle, and focusing on the inner light which is what you actually are.

I was thinking about him just now when I read the thread. Very DT. Even more funny when you realize that all of them are absolutely you, and may actually serve as a foil for your own self-forgetting.

Like a filmstrip running across the unchanging light of the absolute.

@Yimpa To me, life itself is a lucid dream. Sometimes there are dreams within the dream, and they also are lucid insights of the absolute. It seems to happen naturally in the harmonizing of the conscious and subconscious mind. Lucidity is experiencing the dream through a unified mind. I read words like these and am aware of how they sound on the surface. There is no guru and no teaching outside of your true nature. Look beyond them within yourself and you will see where they point. ?⚡

@Squeekytoy Just calling out the attempt to conceptually deconstruct blockages, rather than directly disentangling them. They are not a problem to be solved, but a misidentification to be dissolved. I agree that blockages are bound by beliefs (conscious or subconscious), and letting go of beliefs is the realization of unconditional love, which is beyond beliefs. @Breakingthewall Yes, I have seen true horror. There are ancient demons, which are the last to go, but even they eventually dissolve in absolute love.

If by deep understanding you mean direct realization of the absolute, I relatively agree. Absolute reality doesn't actually change, it only appears to change. These energy blockages occur because we resist or cling to experiences. The energy of dream experiences needs to flow through us, and we prevent it from doing so. It builds up like a pressure cooker. We resist because we believe it will keep us safe, or make us happy. In fact it does just the opposite. Like barnacles on a ship, energy blockages encumber the life journey. When the absolute realizes itself, it sees that it is infinitely sustaining. There is no need for seeking safety, meaning, or fulfillment outside of itself, because it is within and beyond everything. The solvent for the demons of the mind is not conceptual deconstruction, but the direct power of unconditional love, which is our essence.

@Breakingthewall Lucid living, not lucid hibernation The relative is experienced, without resistance or misidentification. The tortured dog suffers less than the tortured human. Minds have the capacity to learn and avoid the appearance of threatening events, which is survival at the relative level. No animal clings to memories so severely as humans do, then again they lack the meta capacity to directly realize the absolute within. When I speak about blockages naturally and effortlessly dissolving, I am sharing my experience. It doesn't happen instantly, but it does dissolve. I don't understand how it happens, only that it does, and life is clearer and more vibrant because of it.

?It's easy to underestimate the cost of surrendering to the glory of the absolute. People naturally want an easy awakening, but eventually realize that this is naïve. The absolute is such pure love that only the unconditional descent into the darkness leads into its light. It wrings every drop of ego from the sponge, but replenishes it to overflowing with the water of life. Dissolving identification with the mind doesn't require releasing the person entirely. Instead, it is transfigured into a steed, which takes you to the tallest peaks and the deepest depths within the dream.

Great insights above, I will just note that you get what you pay for. Psychedelics are dynamite to the conceptual mind, and can reveal the wizard behind the curtain. The challenge is integrating those realizations into your daily life. You aren't likely to become enlightened through psychedelics alone. The price of admission to the absolute still has to be paid. The mind is constantly grasping for meaning, without understanding that the answer is already within. There are various ways to tame it (suffering, contemplation, meditation) but until then you will lose God as quickly as you find it. You don't have to wrangle the mind to the ground like a wild bull, just quietly approach without identifying with it. The light of the absolute is all the meaning it needs.

?

The absolute isn't usable by anything. Any so-called absolute that is addictive is not the absolute. The essence of the relative is the absolute, in disguise. When the absolute realizes itself within the relative, the form becomes "enlightened" and lives lucidly, but the form is still tenuously bound within the dream until it entirely dissolves. In reality, the absolute never actually changes. It is resistance (or clinging) to events which creates energy blockages. Energy has to flow through the form for it to be free. When the absolute awakens, its light begins to dissolve these blockages, until the energy is finally released. Nothing needs to be understood or intentionally unblocked, it happens spontaneously and naturally like the sun dispelling clouds from the sky.

Forget what teachers say, regardless of their conceptual framework (Nondual, Christian, whatever), and look inside yourself for the answer. Sorry if it sounds cryptic, but the absolute within already realizes the answer to your question, if only the mind will stop grappling with it.

Give it some time, most of my life wasn't even lucid After awakening, I began meditating and have found it to be enormously helpful in stabilizing lucidity. I have meditated every day since then (over 2 years now), except for the nadir of DNOS, where I disengaged from everything except the escape of the relative. On the other side of darkness, the absolute has finally begun to realize stability. The mind is a coin sent spinning on the table of life, something like this: Before beginning, it is still in the hand of the absolute The absolute puts it in motion The mind is entirely self-engaged as it travels across the table Eventually, it begins to settle in one place High wobbling as it comes to term with not traveling Gradually less wobbling, and faster oscillations Harmony as it merges with the surface of being Snatched back by the hand that gave it life

True knowledge is direct and timeless. A priori and a posteriori knowledge only relate to the relative.

The form of the person is an energetic construction, but the essence is absolute. The form and all of its memories are not absolutely real. The more attention you invest into memories (past or future), the less lucid you are, and the more entrapped the absolute appears to be. It is not about forgetting memories, but about disidentifying from them. The more poignant a memory is (whether conscious or subconscious), the greater its gravitational pull on your attention. This attraction naturally attenuates the more deeply the absolute realizes itself. The light of your absolute nature effortlessly dissolves it all, except the minimum gravity necessary to continue navigating the dream.

Siddhis are often more a temptation to identify as a spiritual self, than they are a gift. I spread before your eyes, Nachiketa, The fulfillment of all worldly desires: Power to dominate the earth, delights Celestial gained through religious rites, Miraculous powers beyond time and space. These with will and wisdom have you renounced.

I absolutely agree

I agree. Even the spiritual journey can become an addiction if you let it. It usually takes time within the dream for the absolute to harmonize with the relative. As I found early on, rushing the process only leads to disorientation. As you approach equanimity, there is no need for an external guru. You are the sadguru.

Both + Beyond Both

You're welcome ? Anything can be a meditation object, even a pleasant sensation, but to me it seems not the most suitable. There is the risk of identifying with the sensation, and also every sensation is transient. Breathing and the inner body are always there, providing a more stable anchor for the mind. It creates the space for attending to the absolute, which is far deeper and more fulfilling than any sensation can be.

@Squeekytoy I'm not familiar with the semantic difference between inclusive and integrated views. To me they are the same, but probably it's a matter of definition. When every boundary dissolves, including the ultimate boundary between the cosmos and the void, there is only the absolute. It is all the absolute, regardless of apparent distinctions. The absolute is within every form of the cosmos, and it is within every potentiality of the void, but it is beyond both of these dualities. You have to wake up first, but lucidly navigating the dream requires perpetual awakening, or enlightenment. Instead of depending on external supports, whether psychedelics, teachings, or meditation, you are in the perpetual flow state of absolute expression. The deep realization of the absolute is entirely unconditional and sustaining.

@gettoefl Nice, you could also say: PM (past memories) - AM (anticipated memories) = FM (freedom from memories) People spend 99% of their lives clinging to memories, rather than flowing in the reality of now. Lose the memories and realize the timeless.

It is insane that people spend the vast majority of their lives suffocating inside of their heads. Lucid living is rare, but it is absolutely possible. The love and beauty only deepen over time, until time itself dissolves. Ego-death is different from person-death. Ego is not the person, but identification as the person. When you realize the absolute, the ego dissipates but the person remains. It is less substantial, needy, and complaining but it is still there, all the more precious for its obvious transience, and transparent enough for the absolute light within to shine through.

I try to stay with absolute insights rather than conjecture, but this is a pet topic (free will was the first post I created here), so here is a nutshell hybrid based on how I currently see it. Freedom correlates positively with absolute realization. As the absolute appears to move from misidentification to realization to unconditional changelessness, freedom increases. Absolute freedom is only expressed from absolute reality. Within the cosmos, at moderate levels of relative reality, there is no freedom. Everything is cause and effect, per Newton's model. None of us here is absolutely free, although awakening and enlightenment are relatively more free states. The thinner the self becomes, the more free the absolute is to express itself within the dream. Moving to the extremes of astrophysics and quantum physics, freedom is increasingly realized. The movement of a particle is no longer predictable, but the pattern of its collective expression is. Absolute freedom requires being entirely beyond the cosmos.