Moksha

If wise words prove a person is enlightened, do unwise words prove the opposite? I suppose that's why silence is the purest pointer to the impersonal.

I discussed the necessity and risks of using words as pointers earlier. My point is that deepening your spirituality is about dissolving your mind habits. Clinging to your desires and fears only causes suffering. The more distracted you are by thoughts and feelings, the easier it is to become mesmerized by your imagination. If you want to remain unconditionally open to the reality of awareness, you have to develop the spiritual maturity to disregard thoughts and feelings as being unreal.

You can have a sense of "I" through the portal of the form, without identifying with it. You still see the shoes and put them on, but you remain aware that the shoes and the person wearing them aren't absolutely real.

Overall I agree. For me it happened without psychedelics, and I'm still not convinced psychedelics will allow you to be perpetually open. Maybe they are a starting point, but you still have to develop the astutetness while sober to immediately recognize and dismiss thoughts and emotions as distractions, while remaining anchored in awareness. It's so easy to fall back into misidentification by pursuing the "extremely interesting". That only tosses you back into the swamp of thoughts. Anything that can be understood by the mind is not actually real. You can study the sciences of extreme relative reality, like astrophysics and quantum physics, to get the tiniest glimpse, but it is nothing compared to direct realization.

For me, the how began with realizing who I am, and that there are blockages preventing the awareness which is my nature from lucidly experiencing its creation. I knew instinctively and deeply that these blockages had to be dissolved. Shortly after joining the forum, I wrote several poems about precisely this. It didn't happen yet, but I knew it must. The dark night of the soul honed my awareness to single-pointed sincerity. It was the pathway of hell that led to heaven. It was necessary for me to truly surrender. I learned to identify thoughts and feelings immediately, without being drawn into them or misidentifying as them. As Ramana Maharshi put it, by ignoring them I scorched them. The obstacles gradually cleared, until the portal was direct. This is the pathway of enlightenment. It is not about solving the unsolvable paradoxes of the cosmos, but about falling so deeply in love with the reality of yourself that nothing has the power to entice you from it.

You know better than to dismiss what we have shared as regurgitated dogma. I share what I have directly realized, regardless of whether or not it was already realized by mystics crumbled to dust.

Only because your hilarious quips and insightful antics have made everyone laugh so hard that we are exhausted into slumber.

I'm referring to dissolving desires and aversions which are so distracting that they close the portal to awareness. You have to dive deep into the ocean of yourself, and face the darkest, murkiest fears. There's nothing complex about it, but it requires absolute sincerity. When you do, these mind creatures release their grip, and you are free to live directly. Not all attachments are distracting. I enjoy New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream. I can do so without losing awareness; in fact, awareness makes every bite tastier.

If you're spiritually mature enough to see beyond words to the meaning they represent, I highly recommend "I Am That" by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. It's available as a free PDF download.

The spiritual journey allows the absolute to see more clearly. The absolute realizes the real vs. the false within its dream. It begins to experience its imagination lucidly, without losing itself within it. Openness requires letting go of your desires and aversions. It isn't about analyzing, desconstructing, or solving them. It is about dissolving them by deepening awareness.

The spiritual journey begins with realization, but deepens with integration. The complexity that you see is caused by learned patterns, which have to be unlearned. Focus on clearing the portal. Let go of thinking and allow life to unfold unconditionally, within the awareness that you are. When awareness passes the event threshold within its dream, phenomena begin to lose their gravitational pull. There is deepening distance from thoughts and feelings. They are immediately seen for the transient phenomena that they are, and instead of demanding your attention, they converge as pointers to this.

The conditioned mind is a cluttered portal that creates a false sense of separation, and blinds the absolute from itself. The clear mind is its direct conduit.

@Javfly33 @Bazooka Jesus ?The mind confides, "I serve you well", while stoking up the flames of hell.

Direct realization dissolves the "I" that thinks it exists. Apparent boundaries fade, and awareness is within and beyond everything. There's still the bare portal of a perspective, but instead of identifying as a person, the absolute sees the portal as a window to its imagination.

The treachery of words is that they so easily misrepresent awareness as something to be sought after, discovered, or explored rather than directly realized. Concepts are entrapping, rather than enlightening. Unfortunately, words are often a necessary medium for the absolute to indirectly communicate with itself. They are best abandoned once direct realization occurs, except as a rudimentary tool for continuing the expansion of awareness. After awakening, the spiritual journey is about integration. Instead of trying to conceptually solve the unsolvable, it becomes the deepening process of clearing attachments, and living directly. If thoughts are increasing rather than decreasing, awareness is losing itself again, within its siren song.

Outer ring: Categorize reality as simple (i.e., absolute) vs. complex (i.e., relative). Inner ring: Categorize reality as incomprehensible (i.e., the paradoxical mystery that is beyond attributes and dualities) vs. comprehensible (i.e., conceptualizations about the nature of the cosmos). Bullseye: Release the need to categorize, recognizing all thoughts, models, and conclusions as dross of the conditioned mind, and directly realize reality.

The name (absolute, god, whatever) is only a pointer to reality.

All qualia are imaginary, including the appearance of sensations and perceptions. If it begins or ends, it isn't real. If it moves or changes, it isn't real. If it is separate, combinable, or divisible, it isn't real. If it is describable or definable, it isn't real. Reality is the absolute appearing as unreality, and essentially being beyond appearance.

Since there's no difference between you and me, it's immensely reassuring to know that I'm as AWAKE as you are. Tossing my Gita into the fire ?, cardboard box here I come! ?

The absolute has the capacity to forget and realize itself, through apparently different forms. It can realize itself within one form, while appearing to be oblivious in another form.

@Someone here Depends how you define existence, but if you mean absolute reality, phenomena only appear to exist. They are the real pretending to be what it is not. Realizing that transience is unreal, directly beyond thoughts, is cataclysmic to the ego. Everything you have identified as, developed relationships with, pursued and fled, transforms from a super-immersive VR experience into a jittery film silently passing across the screen of your awareness. At first it is shocking to the absolute within the form, which to this point has identified with the mind. The film rolls on, but no longer has meaning. Eventually the absolute recovers and tries to make sense of being beyond the mind. It's an impossible task. Inconceivable. The brain can't compute its unreality. The absolute may vehemently deny what it has realized, turning away from the inevitable implications of its misidentification, but it can't unsee what it has seen. It is tumultuous, terrifying, and takes you deeper than any paradigm shift. People wanting to pursue the spiritual path need to understand this. Awakening tests your sincerity to the core. It's critical that the mind is intact enough not to break under the weight of its unreality. If it does, lucidity within the dream no longer becomes possible. Awareness becomes trapped again within the labyrinth of the mind, possibly for the duration of the form. Don't trifle with ego death. This is one reason I feel the spiritual journey is healthiest when it unfolds naturally, without shortcuts. Of course, the shortcuts are also attempts of the absolute to realize itself, and they may facilitate the process, as long as the mind doesn't entirely unravel in the attempt. I don't see it as shameful that passing through the gate usually requires a sharper goad than curiosity. Suffering has the power to drive you forward, but only if it is leveraged to deepen your surrender. Otherwise, suffering only entangles you more deeply in the dream. The love of truth can also bring you through the gate, without needing to suffer so deeply, but the love has to be so sincere that you are willing to sacrifice everything, including yourself, to realize the truth.

I agree, it's stunning when you take a step back and realize the transience of the cosmos. We sometimes take for granted that everything will continue as it currently appears, especially personal experience. I remember being in my 20s and writing in my journal that I felt at the pinnacle of life, and nothing was beyond my power to achieve. Life teaches you the lesson of transience. If you pay attention, and allow its implications to sink in, the search for the absolute, which is beyond change, becomes increasingly sincere.

Extremity is easier and more dangerous than moderation.

Even if it means hiking for a while through the abyss, take the inner path that leads to absolute light.

On your behalf, allow me to say you're welcome to yourself, and also thank you for being here with yourself.