Moksha

@Javfly33 If you knew me, you might reconsider the person you've constructed in your head. I rarely share much about my life, because the details of a person tend to be distracting. The point of spirituality is to let go of the person, and realize the absolute, which is the undifferentiated essence of everyone. Whether or not a teaching helps your spiritual progress depends on the pointer, not on the conduit. Worry less about who is saying what, and focus on whether what is being taught actually deepens your inner journey to realization and integration. If the teaching or technique helps you, leverage it, regardless of your judgment about whoever shares it. If the teaching or technique doesn't resonate, discard it, regardless of the charisma of whoever shares it. I have surrendered, more deeply than you realize. I have very few watered-down beliefs, thoughts no longer plague me, and I suffer very little. The light of god is steady within this form. I live directly. None of that is relevant, and I won't speak further about it. What I share here is what I have directly realized. God is us, and it is not only choosing its path within this form, but it is interacting with itself through other forms. It is all god.

By getting out of your own way. Once the source of light within you is unobstructed, it will burst into the cosmos, banishing the shadows from every corner.

Nothing sharpens will so much as suffering.

No-self is only arriving at the gate, by realizing what you are not. You are not a person, thoughts, emotions, or experiences. Neti neti will help you realize this. Awakening is direct realization of the absolute, which is who you actually are. Enlightenment is the integration of this realization. Surrender means letting go of all imaginary identifications, not conceptually, but directly. You live anchored in awareness, and realize that it is the only reality. Everything else that you encounter is the dream, and while you can enjoy phenomena, you don't attach yourself to them. I've never stated, in any thread, that I am enlightened. I've said many times that there are infinite degrees of enlightenment, and that it is a continual process of sinking into the absolute and dissolving attachments. It is far more difficult than most people imagine, and it will test your sincerity to the dregs. You have no idea yet what ego death is.

@Javfly33 If you go back and read my posts, I've said nothing about my personal state relative to yours. I've only made statements about reality. We are absolutely the same. Neither of us is superior or inferior to the other. Gaslighting will only hurt your progress. There is zero judgment here, and if what I shared doesn't resonate with you, of course you should ignore it. Forget about Sadghuru, and be your own sadguru. @Breakingthewall ⚡The spiritual journey tests your commitment to truth. With each insight, you have the opportunity to integrate it, or create an idol to it. There is no value in worshipping false gods. It is the illusion of holiness, but it lacks power. The true god is within, and to be realized, god demands the deepest offering. Pay the price of Abraham, or walk away from the altar. God won't awaken to itself without sacrificing everything it values that is not real. @Benton @gettoefl ?

The purpose of spirituality is learning not to get caught up in things mentally, and to see reality truly. Meditation is a good first step. There are a lot of people who lose themselves within their imagination, and mistake it for spirituality. Anything that ensnares you in the unreal is egoic, and only leads to suffering. Look for teachings that help you master your thoughts, and take you deeper into directly realizing your absolute nature.

@Javfly33 I haven't shared anything personal, nor does it matter what I've realized or not. My intent isn't to rain on your spiritual parade. To the contrary, I'm happy for you. The point is truth. Apply it or disregard it, as it suits you. Freedom is directly correlated with integrity. It's not about relative techniques, but about absolute surrender. You get what you pay for, and there are no spiritual shortcuts. When it is ready, instead of seeking temporary peak states, the absolute develops the sincerity to perpetually allow the deepest energies of form thoughts, desires, and fears to flow through it, without misidentifying as or engaging with these energies. Ego death is more difficult than the vast majority of spiritual seekers realize. It will test your integrity to the core. It requires absolute inner trust. @Benton Enlightenment transforms the quality of the dream. There's nothing wrong with siddhis, or any other experiences, as long as you remain anchored in the absolute rather than misidentifying with them. They are imaginary, and aren't actually real. Development only occurs within the dream, but it has relative value. If your eyes remain open, development happens naturally. Addictions to sensations and perceptions gradually diminish until they are entirely gone. The more deeply you remain in the flow state of awareness, the less you will suffer, and the more direct your experience within the dream will be.

Awesome. I haven't seen his prison, but have walked through the Acropolis in the footsteps of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. All of them were brilliant, but I feel that Socrates came closest to seeing directly through the eyes of the mystic.

@Javfly33 It's all good. Just saying that extreme states of bliss, as wonderful as they are, aren't enlightenment. Ecstasy isn't sustainable, within the dream. Something I was pondering this morning, not specific to this discussion, but still relevant: Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. - 1 Kings 19:11-12

This belief is the essence of ego entrapment. Don't fall for it. You are drowning your awareness in an indulgent sea of siddhis. Everything that begins and ends, that is experiential, and that creates a sense of awe and separation, is unreal. Imagination is unreality, NOT reality. Absolute reality is unchanging, SILENT awareness, beyond its dream. Awakening is absolute realization, which allows the absolute to lucidly enjoy its dream, without misidentifying with it. This is you, knocking on the door of your sleeping self, trying to awaken you from your dream. Knock: Q: The worry with me is that I am prone to denying existence to what I cannot imagine. M: You would be wiser to deny the existence of what you imagine. It is the imagined that is unreal. - Nisargadatta Maharaj Knock: Reality must be always real. It is not with forms and names. That which underlies these is the reality. It underlies limitations, being itself limitless. It is not bound. It underlies unrealities, itself being real. Reality is that which is. It is as it is. It transcends speech. It is beyond the expressions "existence, non-existence", etc. - Ramana Maharshi Knock: Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true. - Adyashanti

It's good that you're cautious of the ego's constant attempts to hijack spiritual progress. The closer you get to awakening, the more desperately the ego clamors to distract you from the truth. Spiritual bypassing is the attempt to shortcut the process by mistaking insights for awakening, or more insidiously by pursuing extreme spiritual experiences at the expense of putting in the work necessary for integration. Enlightenment is 1% realization, and 99% integration. Realization won't free you from suffering. Integration will. It's about developing the spiritual muscle to swim against the current of the conditioned mind, without losing your awareness within it. If you still find yourself getting entangled in experiences, there's spiritual work to be done. You have to sever the roots of mental attachment to desires in order to realize that you are absolutely free.

You mentioned kriya, and the "wacky intense and impossible-to-believe states of being" that people experience when channeling spiritual energy. What is it about kundalini yoga that makes it dangerous? Extrapolating beyond kundalini, to spiritual practices in general, is it possible that there is risk in pursuing increasingly extreme states? I'm happy to see your spiritual progress, and have no reason to believe you're on the path of spiritual addiction, just a rhetorical warning sign for you to contemplate. Oh, and thanks @Yimpa for distracting from our spiritual discourse For the record, I'm too weak to be female. A friend and I were chatting the other day, and he told me about a woman who spent hours grappling with a mountain lion, to keep it from hurting her child. When people finally arrived to pull the mountain lion off, the woman died, but only after ensuring that her child was safe. Now that is strength. ?

Ego death is simple, just lose the "I want" and realize the know. Unfortunately, simple doesn't mean easy.

@Javfly33 I was referring to spiritual energy in general, but the quote from Ramana Maharshi is specifically on kundalini yoga as a method for channeling this energy. Just a warning to be relatively careful. @Benton Siddhis only exist within the dream. The absolute is changeless, timeless, and seamless.

@Benton Everything is a false appearance of you. As long as you realize that, and remain anchored in awareness, you can still enjoy the dream without losing yourself within it. If you lose yourself, through any addiction (including siddhis), you suffer. Siddhis may still happen beyond fixation, and in those cases there's little risk of misidentification.

Awareness is the fuel of the cosmos. Everything is possible in the dream, including miracles and siddhis, but there are always consequences. Seeking for signs and indulging in manifestations is a distraction from realization. It can become an addiction. Do what you want, but steer clear if you want to be in pure awareness. Sri Ramana Maharshi never advised his devotees to practice kundalini yoga since he regarded it as being both potentially dangerous and unnecessary. He accepted the existence of the kundalini power and the chakras but he said that even if the kundalini reached the sahasrara it would not result in realization.

Surrender occurs when you irrevocably realize that clinging to anything, people, possessions, pursuits, protections, passions, proclivities, professions, platitudes, philosophies, and yes even psychedelics, inevitably increases suffering. Only then will you have the wisdom to loosen your grip, look within, and be free.

Letting go of control comes with practice, but it is terrifying, and runs contrary to the survival instinct. It's like a stunt performer jumping from a tall building, and rolling with the momentum to reduce impact. Most of us would stiffen our legs to control the fall, and break them in the process. Most of the suffering we experience in life comes from trying to control our environment to suit our needs. Instead of allowing them to be as they are, we manipulate our loved ones, the opinions of others, and even our beliefs to make us feel safe. Every reaction creates an equal and opposite reaction, and only damages us further. When you let life flow through you, instead of placing conditions on it, you surrender the need for control and realize absolute love. If you want to be free, stop fighting, stop thinking, stop demanding, and simply flow.

@gettoefl That's correct. Meditation is the subtractive practice of withdrawing from the conditioned mind. It distances awareness from thoughts, revealing them to be phenomenal distractions rather than absolute. Meditation brings you to the inner gate, but only direct realization passes you through the gate to the other shore. People misconstrue awakening as an ecstatic phenomenal experience, but it is beyond phenomena. It is the seamlessness of light resonating with light. Jesus said the way is narrow and few people find it, and he was right. Not because it is so deeply hidden, but because the cost of passing through it is perceived to be too high.

The only bondage is misidentification, and freedom is the absence of misidentification. Imagination isn't free, it only misconstrues itself to be.

It's true that the mind has a deeply programmed survival instinct. Despite that, it is a supercomputer with capacity beyond what most people realize. Chat GPT 4.0, even the paid version, doesn't come close. Every decision the mind makes is the result of a satisficing formula that it runs, with each variable weighted based on its current evaluation of reality. This weighting is the result of biological and social conditioning, which continuously evolves. For many, the formula is built entirely on external variables. What will pursuing x, y, and z do to contribute to my survival and well-being? Awakening becomes possible when the mind realizes that every formula it has used to this point has actually been detrimental, rather than fulfilling. It becomes necessary to modify the formula, in order to free itself from the suffering state. The absolute can't use the mind to directly realize itself, but it can leverage the remarkable subtractive capacity of the mind to realize what it is not. This begins the process of elimination. I am not the body. I am not thoughts. I am not feelings. I am not perceptions, sensations, or experiences. I am not memories or anticipations. I am not desires or fears. The neti neti journey applies the remarkable power of the mind to guide the absolute to the inner gate of itself. It is as far as the mind can go, but still, what a triumph. Here, in the shadow of the gateless gate, spiritual practice helps to sink awareness into the ocean of its essence. Meditation, contemplation, and inner inquiry gradually distance awareness from the external, and draw awareness deeper into itself. Identification with the external is surrendered as identification with the internal is increased. Often this is a long and painful process, of relinquishing cherished beliefs and fears. Awareness spirals itself deeper, into the dark night of the soul, which is terrifying to the remnant of the self, but is necessary to create the cataclysmic will to finally let go. It only becomes possible when it is realized that letting go will actually set you free. Even then, surrender alone is insufficient to propel awareness through the inner gate. There is still too much conditioning, a lifetime of attachments which block the spiritual passage, and cannot be dissolved by will alone. It is only by the light of absolute grace, on the other side of the gate, that these attachments gradually dissolve, until the sliver expression of the absolute is finally refined enough to fit through the gate to itself. This reunion is entirely lifechanging. The dream continues, but awareness is no longer at the mercy of experience. It clearly sees that everything arising and dissolving is its own essence, in this penultimate adventure within its imagination. It's not over yet, not until love and light have poured through the portal of this perspective, cascading through its cosmos, helping the absolute continue awakening to itself.

I prefer love as a perspective-free pointer. Solipsism, despite its claims to the contrary, is so narcissistic.

@CARDOZZO It's amazing how you can read the same book for years, and not understand what it truly means until much later, when you see through new eyes. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. - John 14:20

The absolute is beyond dualities. People try to understand it conceptually, but they can't grok paradox. Philosophers beat their heads bloody against the nameless door and it never yields. It is mystery to the mind, and can only be directly realized. The absolute is attributeless, but it is beyond time, space, finity, matter, and change. To see deeper than dualities, you have to withdraw the senses and directly realize what you actually are. It's nonsense, and it's true.

@CARDOZZO I haven't read all of it yet either, but enough to know that she was a mystic.