Moksha

The essence of all 8 billion puppets is the absolute, and it is inevitably at the mercy of itself. How many puppets jump out of the box on the first crank? It takes tremendous pressure before the coil has collected enough suffering to spring. As you say, the majority will remain trapped within their conceptual box their entire lives. Some suffer less, some more, but a few leverage their suffering to break free from their false identity and become lucid within the dream. Reincarnation is an idea that the psyche continues its journey through the cosmos until it's ready to surrender. Certainly possible within relative reality, but it's only a belief. People tend to think of enlightenment as binary, but there are gradual degrees of freedom within the dream. It's more like a slow-motion movie, where light seeps through the barest crack in the box, as the crank continues turning, and the puppet slowly emerges until it is entirely free. The deeper the realization and integration, the less you suffocate and the more free you become. Eventually in the perpetual state, the puppet wakes up, leaves the box, and is reunited with its creator, which is itself. Blue Fairy: Prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish, and someday you will be a real boy. *whispered* Awake, Pinocchio. Awake. *Pinocchio wakes up as a real boy*

Before: Suffer while anticipating chopping wood and carrying water, suffer while chopping wood and carrying water, suffer even while distracting myself from chopping wood and carrying water After: Meditate, contemplate, create, celebrate, and integrate, regardless of chopping wood and carrying water

As I see it, by deepening order of realization: Physical yoga (hatha) Mantras Koans Contemplation Silent meditation Direct inquiry

God's will is absolute and free. Agency is only an appearance within the dream. God cranks the cosmic jack-in-the-box, enjoying its music in anticipation of the puppet awakening. With each crank, the spring winds tighter and the pressure on the puppet hidden within increases, until finally the latch is released and puppet springs free. How nihilistic to believe that the puppet is at the mercy of the absolute, until it is realized that with every turn, the absolute within the puppet is preparing for freedom. Every spiritual teaching, every meditation practice, and every realization is another turn of the crank. If you want release from the suffocating entrapment of the box, pray to god for the cranking to continue.

Dualistic dreams within the dream. ⚡Oblivion is the gate to Infinity.

God is a mystery only to its imagination.

The form has phenomenal characteristics, including the state of absolute clarity within it, which affect the perception of other apparent forms.

It seems like mystical rhetoric until reality is directly realized. The you that perceives the sun and moon is no more absolutely real than the forms of the sun and moon are.

Every experience is surreal. They only vary in dilution. Imagining a monster under your bed is only slightly more surreal than so-called living.

The truth will set you free.

@Aaron p ⚡Misidentification is myopic. Your awareness is so entangled with experience that you constantly trip over yourself, like wearing geek goggles in a VR game. You don't realize how much energy you are pouring into the illusion until you remove the glasses and regain peripheral vision. Ironically, the dream gets better the less you identify with it.

When I say that perception is reality, I'm referring to the relative. The quality of your experience in the cosmos depends on the clarity of your perspective. Absolute reality is changeless, timeless, and limitless. The perceiver and the perceived continuously arise and dissolve within the dualistic, transient dream of the absolute. Ask who is observing the rising and setting of the moon, and realize that neither the observer nor the moon is absolutely real. You are the essential awareness that is within and beyond the appearance of both the observer and the moon.

A guru still steps out of the way to avoid the bus. If he doesn't, his perspective ends. It's precisely the transience of perspective that makes it precious, and worth preserving. Just because it's a dream doesn't mean it isn't worth experiencing, especially lucidly, free from the clutter of conditioning.

There is no personal will, only absolute will. You are the absolute, you just need to directly realize it. Of course it feels like you have no freedom, because you are ensnared in a conceptual trap. Find your way out of the trap, and learn to be free. It is a gradual process of disidentifying from the human mind. The idea that you have of you is an illusion. You are not thoughts, feelings, or experiences. You are the awareness in which these phenomena arise. The more you distance your attention from thoughts, and focus awareness within, the more free you will realize that you are. It's the purpose of spiritual practice. Meditate. Contemplate. Renounce. Above all, Directly Inquire. All of this is within your ability to do, and will contribute to your realization of freedom. The absolute has awakened itself countless times, and it will awaken within you when you put in the spiritual practice to set yourself free.

@Holykael Have you considered that spiritual advice, teachings, and insights are the absolute communicating within itself? Some of it is bullshit that deepens misidentification, and some of it is wisdom that leads toward awakening. This thread itself is a conversation created and responded to by the absolute. Whether it further entangles you in thoughts, or helps to free awareness from its thoughts, depends on your absolute desire. You are as free as you absolutely want to be, or not. The only reason you complain about not having freedom is because you are misidentified. Realize who you are, and you are free.

In life, perception is reality. The more blinded the absolute is by its attachments, the less perfect its experience will be. Misidentification is suffering. Lucidity is freedom. When the absolute clears the portal of a particular perspective, and flows unconditionally through it, the experience of the cosmos becomes sublime. There are still apparent highs and lows in life, but the absolute no longer loses itself within them, and brings its light into every situation it encounters. @Ayham Whenever you feel inadequate and condemn yourself as terrible, take a step back and ask who is passing this judgment. Is it the absolute, which is your essence, or is it the conditioned personality of the mind? @gettoefl Thank you for sharing. Although I had to look up "pith instructions" , I resonate with Dan Brown's realizations. Another analogy for enlightenment is launching a rocket into orbit. At first, gravity tries to prevent you from leaving the planet, and the pressure only increases until you pass the critical threshold. Most rockets fail their first few launches. The resistance is too strong, or the rocket lacks the structural integrity to survive the ascent. A successful launch requires a rocket with the single-pointed sincerity to remain intact, and sufficient fuel (suffering) to overcome the enormous gravity of the conditioned mind. To accelerate the ascent, the rocket releases most of its mass, and propels the tiny capsule higher into space. Once the threshold has been passed, gravity begins to release its hold, and the capsule merges with the deep of the absolute. The planet isn't abandoned, otherwise the capsule wouldn't survive. A tenuous orbit is necessary to remain within the cosmos, but the capsule is only loosely bound by the planet, and it is relatively free to fly through outer space.

Simmer down, ya imp ?

Awakening is awareness realizing itself. It sees that it is timeless, changeless, and seamless. This realization is direct and beyond doubt, entirely non-conceptual. The answers to the above questions flow from this realization. Since awareness is seamless, anything it seems to aware of (sensations, thoughts, feelings) cannot be absolutely real. Since awareness is timeless, the appearance of sensations, thoughts, and feelings receding over time cannot be absolutely real. Since awareness is changeless, the appearance of its cessation cannot be absolutely real. Even if you haven't awoken yet, you can test the boundaries of your assumptions about time, change, and separation by studying astrophysics and quantum physics. These are the sciences of extremes, i.e., the largest and smallest observable phenomena within the cosmos. In the narrow band of ordinary life, it's easy to delude ourselves that time, change, and separation are objectively real. It's only when we study the heights and depths of the cosmos that apparent reality begins to fray at the edges. You realize that these dimensions are not objective, but are relative. For example, time passes more quickly for an object moving faster than a slower moving object. It doesn't just reach point a to point b quicker, but time itself actually dilates for the faster object. Therefore, time is relative and cannot be absolute. The same is true for mass and energy. The entire cosmos is relatively, but not absolutely, real. Direct self-inquiry will reveal this to you. The essence of the absolute is within you, and it has the capacity to awaken to itself.

Trust, but directly verify.

The absolute cascades its awareness. It whispers its nameless name in the chamber of itself. It casts the stone of its essence into its still pond.

Dear God, may we sit together in silent communion?

From their point of view, it's you that is the alien. ?

Teachings are oars that the absolute uses to take itself to the other side of the river. Silent winds are direct and will accelerate your voyage, but not every boat is equipped with a mast and sail. As long as it's seaworthy, the actual design of the ship is secondary. It's not about getting there quickly, but about navigating according to the nature of your craft. There's a time for teachings, until they take you to the timeless shore, and can be discarded. They are only transitionally useful. How can you disembark to the other side if you insist on clinging to the oars that took you there?

Weight, height, speed, location, time, and other measures depend on comparing this to that. They presuppose differences that don't actually exist, and are bound to the relative dimensions of the dream. When seamlessness is realized, measures lose their meaning. It's fairly common to identify the absolute as emptiness. While it's true that the absolute is devoid of matter, it is equally true that the absolute is incomprehensibly dense, devoid of space. Chalk it up as another paradox proving that the mystery of the absolute can't be conceptually solved, only directly realized. There are the two -- the person and the witness, the observer. When you see them as one, and go beyond, you are in the supreme state. It is not perceivable, because it is what makes perception possible. It is beyond being and not being. It is neither the mirror nor the image in the mirror. It is what is -- the timeless reality, unbelievably hard and solid. There is only light and the light is all. Everything else if but a picture made of light. The picture is in the light and the light is in the picture. Life and death, self and not-self -- abandon all these ideas. They are of no use to you. - Nisargadatta Maharaj

Perfection isn't what people think it is. It's about alignment, or getting out of your own way. The more conditions you place on existence, the less perfect life will be. Live unconditionally, in the flow state, and the absolute will experience its creation perfectly through you.