Moksha

Exactly They are opposite ends of the same stick. How can something sleep or awaken that isn't ultimately real? The mystery is that absolute reality is within and beyond the dream. It has the capacity to show and hide itself from itself.

Do you see that absolute reality is beyond understanding and is only directly realized? What is there to understand that is not imagination?

Transcending suffering is the beginning of living lucidly. Attention is the currency of life, and we profligately spend it without regard to the return on our investment. So many wasted years trapped inside my head pursuing false fears and promises, instead of letting go and flying. Don't get caught down the rabbit hole tunneling for transient realizations, no matter how mind-blowing they seem at the time. It's like eating an entire bag of potato chips in a single sitting. Tastes great, but when the bag is empty you are still hungry. The only realization needed is the direct realization of who you are. Once you see clearly, you are finally free to embrace life unconditionally. As you climb into the sky, the cosmos unfolds beneath you, and the winds of life pass through you with stunning clarity that you never knew was possible. Lucid living is the pinnacle of the dream. Beyond beggaring love, it is being it.

@Squeekytoy Names are so self-ensnaring As I see it, the mystery of absolute reality spins maya out of the void, creating the original duality, but still being beyond both. Like making cotton candy at the fair. @Yimpa ?The spiritual journey is about letting go of judgment and the need for control. Internal boundaries dissolve as the mind unifies. When you realize space by distancing your attention from your thoughts, the sharks swimming in the murky depths of the unconscious spontaneously rise to the surface and release their pain. It is serene harmonization, and it continues spreading outward to dissolve apparent boundaries separating you from others. It is only words, until it actually happens and is directly realized. You see your absolute nature, which is the seamless essence of everything (i.e., love).

@Squeekytoy It's not contradictory when you consider that the will of god (if you choose to call it that) determines the origin and interaction of every phenomenon. It creates the machine, and its hand sends the ball spinning through every phenomenal encounter, predetermining the trajectory of its course. It is absolute choice, not personal. Everything personal is ultimately unreal.

Choice is not what people think it is. It is the confluence of every phenomenon into this event, which is called a choice, but is ultimately determined by the absolute that created all of it. So why practice, realize, and teach? Or not? Because you (i.e., absolute reality) choose that it be so.

@StarStruck ?

It's the anymore part that may give people pause. When I first joined the forum, I was lectured about referring to the theory (rather than the reality) of nonduality. Now it is alien consciousness. Stay tuned for the next episode in Leo's amazing adventure! If people want to live by spiritual proxy and see the journey as entertainment that's fine, but nothing will improve the quality of their lives like direct experience. I am not disparaging Leo. Setting aside that he has to support his family, and that a cascade of self-trumping claims serves this purpose, I feel that in his core Leo is sincere. I am only asking people to be sincere themselves, and use that sincerity to dive deeply into the unchartered territory within.

I agree, but am advocating proclaiming truth without the need for comparing your present state to the state of someone else. What matters is not whether a particular teacher is "more enlightened", but whether what is taught actually helps someone along their inner path of realization. Consider: 1) Enlightenment is not a measurable state, which one can use to objectively place oneself higher or lower than someone else. 2) Each inner journey is entirely unique, and there is no universal roadmap. It is about discovering the pointers that help with your particular journey, and not being distracted by those that don't. 3) Quantity <> quality in the realm of spiritual insights. You could have hundreds of experiences which, even if there was a way to quantify them, collectively pale compared to a single brilliant realization that entirely aligns with your ultimate nature. 4) Comparisons between people are fraught with the potential for feeding the ego, regardless of how sincere they are. It is a writhing pit of snakes that is dangerous and avoidable. 5) Extreme claims, such as being the most enlightened creature on the planet, cater to the most vulnerable. People naturally gravitate to such claims, especially when they are hungry for answers and are promised that satiation is within reach.

@theleelajoker I feel it has to do with the nature of existence. The cosmos is stretched upon a dream framework of dualities. Every process must have its polar opposite to exist. Chaos/order, Destruction/creation, Suffering/enlightenment. It is the inhalation and the exhalation of being. The Big-Bang and the Big-Crunch at every level. Beyond it all is the absolute, changeless, dimensionless, and timeless.

@Thought Art What is the point of claiming to be more enlightened than someone else, other than to serve the ego? It only increases the illusion of superiority and separation. It encourages guru-worship and idolism and is a distraction. Instead, why not point toward the inner journey, which is the only true path to realization? Everyone is their own sadguru.

One point nobody can deny is that Leo's post has driven a plethora of perspectives. I love the diversity of our community and feel that every perspective has some wisdom within it. I appreciate everyone that has posted here, regardless of what has been said. My realizations: 1) Claiming to be more enlightened than someone else is egoic and therefore false. 2) Taking offense at someone claiming to be more enlightened than you is also egoic and therefore false. 3) The more enlightened you are, the more boundaries dissolve. You realize that people claiming to be more enlightened, or taking offense at not being considered enlightened, are also you. 4) Along the path of enlightenment, you see that the entire path is also part of the dream. 5) Despite being part of the dream, the spiritual path increases the lucidity and quality of the dream. The more clearly you see, the more brilliant the dream experiences become. 6) The moment you identify with or become addicted to the experiences themselves, including spiritual experiences, you have lost your lucidity and are again trapped within the dream. 7) The pinnacle purpose of life is learning to remain lucid, free of entanglement with desires and fears, and therefore able to fully enjoy the experiences of life without being suffocated by them.

@theleelajoker It is endemic to the human condition. The vast majority of people will be born and die without even seeing that they are not their thoughts, let alone directly realizing what they actually are. We feast insatiably on suffering.

Every word falls short of describing reality, but being is as good as any. The purpose of differentiating the states of being (absolute vs. relative) is to facilitate the realization that being loses and finds itself within its imagination. It is always being, but it is not always aware of its absolute nature. The apparent differentiation is a pointer created by itself to guide its awareness back to its absolute nature.

I haven't read it since I was a kid, but within the dream there's always hope. Look at Fletcher! Lowell! Charles-Roland! Judy Lee! Are they also special and gifted and divine? No more than you are, no more than I am. The only difference, the very only one, is that they have begun to understand what they really are and have begun to practice it.

@axiom Love the analogy. Unfortunately the counting game never stops, you can only shrug and walk along the seashore hoping that your transient footprints may be a guide or not. Oh, and speaking of analogies Jonathan Livingston Seagull has the same message and is one of my favorites.

Michael Singer is excellent at communicating the pragmatism of spirituality. He worked in the prison system for decades, so his language is at the level that most people can understand. Set aside anything he (or anyone else) says that is conceptual and see beyond it. When he says, "it wasn't for you", he is pointing to the core reason for human suffering, which is the expectation that the cosmos should cater to your desires.

I agree that deep understanding is not mental. It is beyond conceptualization, perception, and experience. It is only directly realized. Silence is within relative reality, but it is ultimately beyond any beginning or ending. It is the language of truth, and I agree that there are deepening realizations of it until the absolute. If the mind is involved in any of its infinitely sneaky ways, see it, let it go, and continue sinking into the silent ocean of mystery that is ultimate reality.

I agree. The menagerie of perspectives is what drew me here and is the reason I stay.

As a fellow sober awakener, there are degrees of awakening, just as there are degrees of remaining awake. It is a journey, and ultimately the journey itself is just a story ultimate reality tells itself. Most here will skim over these insights, which I have been pondering this week. For me, they are bursting with light. -- Keep the "I am" in the focus of awareness, remember that you -are-, watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious will flow into the conscious without any special effort on your part. Wrong desires and fears, false ideas, social inhibitions are blocking and preventing its free interplay with the conscious. Once free to mingle, the two become one and the one becomes all. The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost. -- Now you are in the waking state, a person with name and shape, joys and sorrows. The person was not there before you were born, nor will be there after you die. Instead of struggling with the person to make it become what it is not, why not go beyond the waking state and leave the personal life altogether? It does not mean the extinction of the person; it means only seeing it in right perspective. -- No doubt, a drug that can affect your brain can also affect your mind, and give you all the strange experiences promised. But what are all the drugs compared to the drug that gave you this most unusual experience of being born and living in sorrow and fear, in search of happiness, which does not come, or does not last. You should inquire into the nature of this drug and find an antidote. -- Be careful. The moment you start talking you create a verbal universe, a universe of words, ideas, concepts and abstractions, interwoven and inter-dependent, most wonderfully generating, supporting and explaining each other and yet all without essence or substance, mere creations of the mind. Words create words, reality is silent.

In the moment of realizing truth, there is no suffering. Remaining deeply aware for the rest of the dream is the end of suffering and the pinnacle life experience. The truth is only directly realized in silence, beyond the fireworks of the ego. Everything else is a distraction at best, and endless entrapment in the mental labyrinth at worst.

Tell me about it, I spent years berating it until I realized it was only a reflection

@Carl-Richard @Nilsi Realizing your ignorance is the stairway to heaven. So both of you are right

@Illusory Self It's funny how life becomes kinder when you decide to stop scolding it. Almost like a mirror

Something that I shared with my daughter after seeing it in Paris. It doesn't matter if the form is human or alien, we are all the same brilliant being.