@Water by the River @Leo Gura In his latest newsletter, Ralston gives a few key insights into how his consciousness has deepened. He is also writing a new book with the titel "Whereof One Cannot Speak" that is supposed to be the deepest and most advanced book he has written, in his own words "perhaps the deepest and most advanced conscious book ever written", where he will go into depth about his deepest awakenings and insights into absolute consciousness.  The following is an excerpt from his newsletter: "Dear Cheng Hsin Community,  Increasing consciousness just doesn't stop! I am so grateful for what I have become conscious of, not just over the many decades but even just last year! At this point, I'd like to just sit with people and share this consciousness as best I can —a consciousness that is everything, beyond self and not-self, including and squaring the absolute and the relative. It is unbelievable. But that would be for the me-that-really-doesn't-exist, and so selfish. What is best for people, however, is for you to do the work, step by step, and grasp all of the assertions made in the workshops. I might want to just jump to the end, but I realize that's not going to work for you, so I have to support you even if I'd love for you to just be free of it all already! (I have always tended to be impatient. :)) Although, I'd love to be able to simply share the humor and joy I feel, and have you get the consciousness from which it comes, it doesn't work that way. Tough noogies for me, eh? But I do want what's best for you. A New Depth of Consciousness Perhaps I should share a bit about this consciousness. I can see that one might ask: if I got What I am and What Another is, etc. so long ago, what was missing or not conscious for me that is now? Good question. As is often the case in consciousness work, some ignorance remains, or the dots don’t connect. So, although I was completely conscious of what I am, it was still what “I” am! There was no doubt that this is infinite and absolute, but the mind still held it as related to “I.” In this new consciousness, finally even my mind got on board and the "I" went. I know this is hard to understand.  It’s not an either/or. In such consciousness “I” is seen for what it is, just as are mind, objects, and everything else. It’s like falling into the absolute consciousness that manifests as relative things—nothing is excluded. A final link was made. I had grasped my nature and even the nature of existence, and although I understood the absolute and relative can't be different, my mind still made a distinction between the relative and the absolute. Now I actually see the relative is the absolute, or to say it another way, I see the absolute in the relative—a very impossible thing for a mind to do. It has become obvious, and I smack my forehead that I didn't see it before. The real nature of existence both absolute and relative—is absolute consciousness.  Me, and everyone else I know or have heard of, still had our enlightenments stuck in the distinction of me and not-me, even grasping that another is the same as me didn’t break the spell, it was understood that they had to be the same, but in reality, no one can square the absolute with the relative. But in this case, consciousness has now done just that. Anyway, once me and not-me disappeared, everything just fell into place—in a much more “inclusive” way than I could have imagined. It humbled me, at least in my heart—but as person (a limited form of consciousness) I’m still that presumptuous and insolent guy, I just laugh a lot more. Love and Sadness Once I was dining out and as I looked around at the various fellow diners, I did my best to experience the world they experienced. I supplemented this effort with my own memory of a world I experienced in which I lived many, many decades ago. My reaction to what I saw was a combination of love and heartbreak. Why those reactions? I recognize others as myself, and seem to have some kind of compassion or love for us all, and yet there was also a sadness. This sadness was based on seeing the unnecessary but incredibly solidly stuck limitations within which their whole world existed. This is hard to convey, it is certainly unusual, but you might be able to relate to something in this area given you've gleaned some of your own limitations and perhaps had breakthroughs allowing you to glimpse past them.  One example that might shed a little light on this experience was a hit I had with one of my old t'ai chi teachers. He has accomplished his life goals, is at the top of his field and very successful, and yet as I brought him to mind I was suddenly sad because he is completely limited to that world and knows nothing else, having no access to any reality outside of this limited world. Whereas I had so much more. The good news, I suppose, is that he doesn't know he is limited, he only sees he is king of his world and thinks this world is important. Yet, to me this is sad because it is so ignorant about its limitations and myopic nature. This is the same for the vast majority of humans. That is why I had the heartbreak watching the people around me at dinner." Winter_CHNL2025.pdf