Moksha

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.

@Squeekytoy Nice insights. For me, perfect blindness includes seeing beyond all mental projections, whether from the misidentifications of your form or of others. The boundaries themselves dissolve into the deep beyond. Mental projections create apparent ripples in the fabric of relative reality. The third eye sees the illusory nature of the projections and the ripples, beyond the surface expression to the depthless silence that is the absolute. Another beautiful pointer from the Gita: 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.

If you're seriously contemplating suicide, as @r0ckyreed said seek professional help. You aren't seeing clearly. Yes there are rare exceptions, for example euthanasia for people in extraordinary and inescapable pain. But the vast majority of suicides are people seeking escape from the demons of their mind, in the mistaken belief that their demons can't be dissolved. You created this form and its existence for a reason. Instead of tossing it aside, dive into it and realize the absolute love within that created this form in the first place.

Basically, yes. Realizing the absolute within goes beyond feeling and emptiness, but those are just pointers anyway. In meditation, you first realize what you are not (your thoughts, feelings, body, perceptions, etc.). It is a negative process of discarding the transient layers of the self. When the absolute within you is ready, it realizes itself. This is the positive process of being the infinite light of the absolute. Often it happens in meditation, but it happens through other practices too (contemplation, psychedelics, and my personal favorite - suffering). Regardless of the venue, the realization continually deepens within your existence until it is perpetual.

Just the opposite, it is seeing reality within the imagined. It resonates with the Tao Te Ching quote that @Squeekytoy shared yesterday, specifically "The wise alone are perfectly blind, seeing clearly into the distance." Perfectly blind refers to withdrawing from the senses, which is what is done in meditation. Seeing clearly is directly realizing the light within, which is your absolute nature, and observing the cosmos from the absolute perspective (which is unlimited). When the third eye opens, any observed form becomes surreally beautiful, with intricate details beyond what you could realize otherwise, but more deeply you see the essence of the form which resonates with the seamless essence within and beyond all forms. Boundaries dissolve.

The meditation object is mostly irrelevant. It is merely a focal point of attention, which allows you to be without phenomenal distractions (thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and sensations). You see them come and go in the periphery, but don't identify with them. For me, the meditation object is the inner body and I always meditate in silence. Guided meditation is only a distraction for my mind. When you do this, spaciousness expands within, making room for the light of the absolute to shine through. Sometimes entrapped energy (what I analogize as demons) will spontaneously arise from the subconscious into that space, and being the absolute you are present with it. No need to engage with it, just be unconditional love. The boundaries of the demon begin to dissolve, releasing its trapped energy back to the source. It is harmonizing and healing. For a meticulous guide to meditation, I recommend The Mind Illuminated by John Yates. It was quite helpful to me when I first started meditating.

Like an endless corridor of mirrors, all of which are only reflections of the absolute.

When I refer to the third eye, I'm not talking about siddhis. To me, phenomenal experiences like seeing moving images of light etc. are only a distraction. The third eye sees the seamless absolute within phenomena, and beyond phenomena. It is spiritual sight.

Great insight. Next: Realize even the insight never actually happened. (damn, so many emojis in me today)

As long as we can all still laugh at ourselves and others, life isn't so bad You might even say it creates spaciousness for deeper realization

Agree with you that many so-called spiritual teachers (especially those identifying as such) intentionally obfuscate their teachings in order to appear mysterious and wise. Run far away. That said, sometimes the teaching points to the absolute and only appears to be bullshit on the surface. I remember my first encounter with "The Power of Now", and my bullshit meter going haywire. I set the book aside, and it wasn't until years later that I gave it another shot. To my surprise it actually resonated. The teaching didn't change, but my readiness for it did. I sometimes look at things I post in this forum and laugh. If my earlier self read most of what it writes now, it wouldn't just dismiss the writings as mystical bullshit, it would toss them into the fire.

People circle the same glittering diamond at the center of reality, in closer orbits until they finally dissolve into it. Each journey of the absolute is unique, and realizing itself is not restricted to any particular path (not even 5-Me0). When the absolute awakens within a form, it dissolves the demons of the mind. Not only is there freedom from suffering, but the brilliance of being effortlessly flows through you. It is an infinite source that floods you with light and dissolves all boundaries. It is the expression of absolute unconditional seamless love. All words, until you sink into the absolute within and beyond them.

Everyone is born with the third eye, but it remains shut until death for most. It sees down the portal between the relative and the absolute. What opens it? Psychedelics, meditation, contemplation, and above all (for me) suffering. Some come into the dream with the eye already opened, or in a half-lidded state, but it is rare.

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I prefer direct knowledge as a pointer vs. understanding, which feels more conceptual. All words are only pointers and have the potential to distract. Silence is the language of the absolute, communicating more purely than anything that has been said in this thread or anywhere else. @Inliytened1 I have shared my spiritual journey here and elsewhere, but does it matter? Your recent posts in this thread resonate with some of my realizations, for what it's worth. @all: Maybe it's because I so often quote from Buddhist and Hindu mystics that people mistake me for a believer. I could as easily quote from Christian or Muslim mystics. Whether it's my words, or the words from whatever source I quote, look beyond the surface, and see if anything directly resonates with the absolute within. Don't get caught up in concepts, and don't mistake me for doing the same. I hold no beliefs, beyond the minimum necessary to navigate relative reality. I will share something I was pondering last night, and directly relates to what is being discussed in this thread. Please just once, look beyond the words. Keep very quiet and watch what comes to the surface of the mind. Reject the known, welcome the so far unknown and reject it in its turn. Thus you come to a state in which there is no knowledge, only being, in which being itself is knowledge. To know by being is direct knowledge.

I don't think anything about what you are teaching. I've only ever seen two of your videos. You have your own spiritual path, and I thoughtlessly respect it as I respect all inevitable paths, including my own. The paths of you and other forms mean nothing to this path, except when they resonate with realizing the absolute within. The same is true when I ponder different writings. I love the deepening light, but have no judgment toward anything which doesn't increase its luminosity.

@Jehovah increases Nice observations, I agree with you. The infinite internal highway is the ever-deepening direct realization of absolute reality, within the dream. When the dream finally ends for a form, it dissolves and its essence resolves into the absolute that imagines the form. The essence never actually is defined, but within the dream it appears as such. As a pointer, I prefer infinite highway to non-dual highway since the latter can become a conceptual trap. Your insight about the highway never going anywhere, nor the people on it, reminds me: The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge. The wise, ever satisfied, have abandoned all external supports. Their security is unaffected by the results of their action; even while acting, they really do nothing at all.

Within the dream there are infinite forms, states, and planes of comprehension. Beyond is the absolute which is the essence of it all.

As you've probably noticed in the monster thread, there are different perspectives on the value of conceptual thinking I feel it has enormous relative value, as long as you don't identify with it. After talking with a lot of people, I've realized the spiritual journey is entirely unique. The absolute is nothing if not creative in realizing itself. For me, life has been a strange unraveling hybrid of relative- and absolute-identification. I have a Ph.D. in psychology so clearly the human mind is interesting to my character. Still, as far back as I can remember there is a keen spiritual sensitivity. I don't identify with beliefs any more, but for a long time much of me did. It took a lot of suffering, caused by that misidentification, before I finally woke up to the shenanigans of my mind. Now, it is all about deepening the direct realization of being and navigating life from 20,000 leagues under the sea. It is eerily silent and seamless, but looking upward you still see the phenomenal diversity of creation on the surface of reality. From this perspective, every form is more precious because of its obvious transience. You feel the absolute aliveness of each moment, and the flow of experience moves through you like a symphony. I used to spend so much of my life struggling inside of my head. Now, when triggers happen that used to send me into a tailspin, I blink and they are usually gone. I still get annoyed at times, but at least the suffering is under the bridge. Life has become unconditional, and there is so much more space for creativity and productivity. I notice little things, like the taste of cold water or the amazing acrobatics of a pigeon in the sky, and there is sincere appreciation in each moment. There are fewer apparent boundaries within myself and others now. I was still asleep when I first heard this song, but it spoke to me and still does. The lyrics are probably boring to some people, but I love where they point. As the Rush Comes Traveling somewhere, could be anywhere There's a coldness in the air, but I don't care We drift deeper, life goes on We drift deeper into the sound Traveling somewhere, could be anywhere There's a coldness in the air, but I don't care We drift deeper into the sound, life goes on We drift deeper into the sound, feeling strong So bring it on So bring it on Embrace me, surround me as the rush comes Embrace me, surround me as the rush comes Embrace me, surround me as the rush comes Oh, embrace me, surround me as the rush comes So bring it on So bring it on We drift deeper into the sound, life goes on We drift deeper into the sound, feeling strong So bring it on So bring it on Embrace me, surround me as the rush comes Embrace me, surround me as the rush comes Embrace me, surround me as the rush comes Oh, embrace me, surround me as the rush comes Embrace me, surround me as the rush comes Oh, embrace me, surround me as the rush comes Oh, embrace me, surround me as the rush comes As the rush comes As the rush comes As the rush comes As the rush comes