Moksha

I don't espouse the ideology of karma and reincarnation. Maybe Consciousness works that way, or not. It isn't something I have directly realized, only the cosmic scale of cause and effect. On your question, the donkey (and every other being) does what Consciousness commands it to do. It has no free will of its own. I have compared it to a cosmic game of pinball, where steel balls ricochet across the machine, but only as a result of the Player that sends them spinning.

In Eastern spirituality, a person's level of Consciousness is the direct result of karma. Right action increases Consciousness, which further increases right action over many lifetimes. Conversely for wrong action. I see this as just another ideology, although it does resonate with what I have realized about the cause > effect nature of the cosmos.

The monkey mind doesn't want questions to disappear, because it feeds on the need to conceptualize reality. The only true answer to your ultimate nature is directly realized, entirely free from thoughts, emotions, and sensations. As long as you conceptualize awakening, you will never awaken. Enlightenment is perpetual presence and equanimity. You are no longer afraid or enticed by the false threats and promises of the conditioned mind. Instead of chasing happiness as most people do, you realize it within. 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. - Bhagavad Gita 4:19-20 As I have said, I have only one purpose: to make man free, to urge him towards freedom, to help him to break away from all limitations, for that alone will give him eternal happiness, will give him the unconditioned realization of the Self… Again, you have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity… You are accustomed to being told how far you have advanced, what is your spiritual status. How childish! Who but yourself can tell you if you are beautiful or ugly within? Who but yourself can tell you if you are incorruptible? You are not serious in these things. But those who really desire to understand, who are looking to find that which is eternal, without beginning and without an end, will walk together with a greater intensity, will be a danger to everything that is unessential, to unrealities, to shadows. And they will concentrate, they will become the flame, because they understand. - Jiddu Krishnamurti

Understandable, but for what it is worth there are "others" who have realized the sameness of themselves in all beings. It makes no sense to the solipsist, but maybe it will happen for you. Even within the dream, the indivisibility of the underlying Player can be realized, despite the apparent form that it inhabits.

It could be said that all questions resolve into the singular question asked by sages like Ramana Maharshi: "Who am I"? Neti neti is an ancient tradition of inquiry, where the personality is unpeeled layer by layer, like an onion, until only the Self remains. Meditation is an effective parer. When you realize the Self, within yourself, questions disappear and there is only lucid living. You no longer fear or desire, beyond the thinnest veil, because you are that close to waking up entirely from the dream.

Experience is imagination. It is the illusion of change. Time, space, and matter are not ultimately real. There is only Consciousness, dreaming the phenomenal cosmos. It is the unchanging ocean with apparently transient waves that always return to itself.

The necessary good of relative reality is also the necessary evil. In a cosmos of dualities, you can't have one without the other. The lucid dream is preceded by the non-lucid nightmare. The only path to ultimate reality is waking up from the dream entirely. It will happen when you are ready to relinquish the delusions of transitional experience and return to who you already are.

Define enlightenment. Leo has had deeper levels of awakening, but has also said he is not enlightened. The same is true for me. I see enlightenment as the permanent state of lucidity, where even within the dream Self-awareness is never distracted by the phenomenal world. It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages. And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever. But there is no other way. The river can not go back. Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence. The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then will fear disappear, because that’s where the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean. - Khalil Gibran

Ultimately, there is only undivided Mind. The moment you conceptualize a trinity, or any other separation of beings, it is bound to relative reality and not ultimately true.

Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size. - Einstein A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. - Einstein This is the true joy in life … the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. - Bernard Shaw Earth, water, fire, air, akasha, mind, intellect, and ego – these are the eight divisions of my prakriti. But beyond this I have another, higher nature, Arjuna; it supports the whole universe and is the source of life in all beings. In these two aspects of my nature is the womb of all creation. - Bhagavad Gita 7:4-6 Those who take refuge in me, striving for liberation from old age and death, come to know Brahman, the Self, and the nature of all action. Those who see me ruling the cosmos, who see me in the adhibhuta, the adhidaiva, and the adhiyajna, are conscious of me even at the time of death. - Bhagavad Gita 7:29-30 Under my watchful eye the laws of nature take their course. - Bhagavad Gita 9:10 O Lord, neither gods nor demons know your real nature. Indeed, you alone know yourself, O supreme spirit. You are the source of being. - Bhagavad Gita 10:14-15 If you egotistically say, "I will not fight this battle," your resolve will be useless; your own nature will drive you into it. Your own karma, born of your own nature, will drive you to do even that which you do not wish to do, because of your delusion. - Bhagavad Gita 18:59-60 We require a more ardent fire and a nobler love…if our spiritual nature were not on fire with other and nobler passions, we should never cast off the yoke of the senses. - St. John of the Cross I realized that it was not by wisdom that poets write their poetry, but by a kind of nature or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets; for these also say many beautiful things, but do not know anything of what they say. - Socrates You seem, Antiphon, to imagine that happiness consists in luxury and extravagance. But my belief is that to have no wants is divine; to have as few as possible comes next to the divine; and as that which is divine is supreme, so that which approaches nearest to its nature is nearest to the supreme. - Socrates Remembering that this body is like froth, of the nature of a mirage, break the flower-tipped arrows of Mara. Never again will death touch you. - Buddha The wise live without injuring nature, as the bee drinks nectar without harming the flower. - Buddha It is astonishing that every soul should forget its own nature, and think itself as a living soul residing in the body…as if confined in a pot. - Valmiki The insights called vipassana are not intellectual. Rather, they are experientially based, deeply intuitive realizations that transcend, and ultimately shatter, our commonly held beliefs and understandings. The five most important of these are Insights into impermanence, emptiness, the nature of suffering, the causal interdependence of all phenomena, and the illusion of the separate self (i.e., "no-Self"). You can experience the first four of those Insights using stable attention (samadhi) and mindfulness (sati) to investigate phenomena (dhamma vicaya) with persistence and energy (viriya). The fifth, Insight into no-Self, is the culminating Insight that actually produces Awakening, because only by overcoming our false, self-centered worldview can we realize our true nature. But this crucial Insight requires, in addition to the first four Insights, that the mind also be in a state of samatha, filled with deep tranquility and equanimity. - John Yates Mind is like the void in which there is no confusion or evil, as when the sun wheels through it shining upon the four corners of the world. For, when the sun rises and illuminates the whole earth, the void gains not in brilliance; and, when the sun sets, the void does not darken. The phenomena of light and dark alternate with each other, but the nature of the void remains unchanged. So it is with the Mind of the Buddha and of sentient beings. If you look upon the Buddha as presenting a pure, bright or Enlightened appearance, or upon sentient beings as presenting a foul, dark or mortal-seeming appearance, these conceptions resulting from attachment to form will keep you from supreme knowledge, even after the passing of as many aeons as there are sands in the Ganges. There is only the One Mind and not a particle of anything else on which to lay hold, for this Mind is the Buddha. If you students of the Way do not awake to this Mind substance, you will overlay Mind with conceptual thought, you will seek the Buddha outside yourselves, and you will remain attached to forms, pious practices and so on, all of which are harmful and not at all the way to supreme knowledge. - Huang Po

I feel every teacher should be taken with a large grain of salt. The ego loves nothing more than to pose as the antithesis of itself. Proclaiming yourself as enlightened without actually being enlightened is one of the most subtle forms of self-damnation. True teachers are not wise, but get out of the way so wisdom arises through them. If a teaching points you toward awakening, it is not because of the teacher or the student, but entirely due to Consciousness choosing to see itself.

You are no more or less a character in the story as everyone else. There are certainly manipulative and narcissistic teachers, but to claim that all are is to dismiss the wisdom of every spiritual tradition. If you believe it is possible for you to awaken to your true nature, surely you see that others may already have.

Within relative reality, there are characters through whom Consciousness has realized itself, and characters where it has not. Spiritual teachers are a mechanism for Consciousness to see itself, by pointing to its true nature. It is all Consciousness, playing the awakening game. Do not share this wisdom with anyone who lacks in devotion or self-control, lacks the desire to learn, or scoffs at me. Those who teach this supreme mystery of the Gita to all who love me perform the greatest act of love; they will come to me without doubt. No one can render me more devoted service; no one on earth can be more dear to me. - Bhagavad Gita 18:67-69

Solipsism is only a partial seeing. When you realize the sameness of your ultimate nature in all things, solipsism is grade school spirituality. It is all unbound Consciousness, beyond the false perspective of the self.

Exactly. Ultimate reality creates the why, hides itself from the why, discovers itself within the why, and transcends the why. Awakened people can try to explain what they have seen, but the words are only pointers. It will never make sense to the mind, and is only directly realized.

In phenomenal reality, everything that can be created will be created. All beliefs are inherently false, whether theistic or atheistic. At best, they can feebly point to truth but they are not truth. There is only direct realization of ultimate reality which is beyond time, space, and the cosmos.

The relationship between spirituality and physiology is interesting. I have had times where my heart was pounding out of my chest, with serious concerns that my health was at risk. I have also experienced weird moments of dizziness, and being concerned that I couldn't safely drive. Unpredictable, but frightening. It seems to be related to pivotal moments when my mind is aligning to my nature. Conditioning is not easily overcome. It is gradually dissolved, and if you are wise it is an open and gentle process. I have learned not to force it, but let equanimity happen on its own cadence.

@Breakingthewall As Tolle says, suffering is only necessary until it is no longer necessary. It serves the purpose of catalyzing awakening, and after you are fully awake there is no need to suffer. This is different from physical pain, etc. Suffering is resistance of the present moment and seeking external happiness rather than realizing it within. I may try 5 meo at some point, but it is just another experience. I can see it helping some people, but we each have a different path.

@Breakingthewall I don’t feel chasing experiences leads to awakening, but once awake you can enjoy experiences lucidly without an ulterior motive. It is amazing how the simplest experience, like walking your dog down a tree-lined street, can be entirely transformed when thoughts recede and there is only being, without naming. The moment expands and you see the sameness underlying all beings, even the apparent space between them. It is all the phenomenal expression of underlying reality. When you are going through DNOS, it is a downward spiral of suffering that is all the worse for having been free of suffering for so long. Like Lucifer being in heaven, and then cast down to hell, deprived of the glory he took for granted. Practices like meditation that brought serenity before are seen to be empty offerings, which have no value of themselves until they are accepted. The suffering intensifies until you finally open your eyes to the wisdom and grace in DNOS. It becomes undeniable that not only are you nothing without God, but you are nothing with God. The shadow self identified as you eventually dissolves into reunion with the glory of your ultimate nature.

As I understand your experience, twice you broke through the void to realize the infinite abundance of ultimate reality. That is something you know, and can wish to realize again. For me, there was an awakening which was profound enough that I felt it would last forever. It transformed my life, and my suffering dissolved. (Un)Fortunately the blissful state only lasted for 7 months. Then I was plunged into the dark night. I couldn’t understand why or how this happened. It lasted for over a year, during which I was absent from these forums. I read “Dark Night of the Soul” with commentary from Mirabai Starr and found it enormously helpful. It resonated deeply with my own experience. She explained that DNOS is not wishing for something you don’t know, but seeing the face of God and then being banished from its presence. The seeing makes the absence all the more painful. It grinds you down until there is nothing you desire more deeply than reunion with God. God is only a name, which like all names falls short of describing ultimate reality. I see it as a powerful pointer to the holiness and wholeness of the Self which is who we truly are.

@Breakingthewall Great insights. The pathway to God-realization is different for each of us. There are examples of mystics from Vyasa to Teresa of Avila to Siddhartha who directly realized their ultimate nature as God without 5 meo. I agree that there are glimpses of ultimate reality, and there are bombs. Usually the bomb doesn’t explode until the self desires nothing more desperately or deeply than reunion with God, even if the reunion means annihilation. A while back I shared a stanza from St. John of the Cross where he compared awakening to God breaking the neck of the self, in an act of divine love that was its dissolution and the direct realization of being God. I feel this is why the dark night of the soul is so often necessary before full awakening occurs. The suffering of separation must reach such intensity that even the drive for self-survival surrenders to the love of God. All along, it is God dreaming of reunion with itself, and usually the nightmare is necessary before awakening occurs.

Consciousness can use the mind to communicate and create, but its essential nature is beyond words. it is vastly intelligent and wise, but it is also infinitely still. Sometimes it is referred to as the silent Witness of life. For me, it feels like a flood of love and light, although those words are only pointers.

Detaching from fear and desire is the pathway to the end of suffering. I agree with @Leo Gura that this is not necessarily the same as God-realization, although it certainly paves the way. The reverse is also true: God-realization facilitates dissolving attachments. They are seen to be futile striving for happiness outside of ourselves, when our true nature is already infinitely abundant.

When you fully awaken to your ultimate nature, you see the essential sameness of yourself in all beings. It is not only realizing that you are God, but that God is all.

Partial awakening (including solipsism) is more frightening than full awakening. The conditioned mind is still fighting for survival because it lacks the wisdom to let go. Like a rocket climbing into the stratosphere, the forces opposing the ascent beyond yourself increase until gravity is gone and there is only free space. Enlightenment is the most liberating, profoundly enjoyable way to live. Life loses its melodrama. You are finally free to live creatively in this moment, lucidly enjoying the dream for what it is. There is no fear, only the serene wisdom that nothing ultimately real can be threatened.