u/PrajnaClear

I think modern Western society is so steeped in the left hemisphere that they, by and large, don't and can't understand metaphor, which is largely a function of the right hemisphere of the brain.

All understanding and explanation is only metaphor. Words and abstract concepts are a shaperned, abstracted, and many reflection removed medium of the same. (i.e., a sensation, a thought, a thought about a thought, and so on. All thoughts are about sensations or another thought. It all comes back to one ultimate metaphor, the first person perspective. The metaphor is what one of those is or can be like, as experienced and intimately known)

I think it's immensely helpful to understand metaphor to understand non-duality, and if you understand metaphor, I can simply say that the teaching is the empty metaphor. The metaphor with nothing in it. If you understand metaphor, there's literally nothing else to say, nothing else to understand. Understand the metaphor, drop the metaphor, instantiate the metaphor.

It's all heart, down to the last glimmer going into the void, and up from the void into a glimmer.

Eternally shining

The original mind had no distinctions. It's an empty field. I was born, taught to respond to a name, taught to recognize patterns in the appearance in front of me, and my machine mind learned patterns in it as well. That activity became compulsive self-referential habit energy. Then the original mind was hopelessly overlaid with the process of ego on loop, going to each thought and sensation and claiming ownership, drawing lines in empty space to use, manipulate. This is not apart from the original mind, but original mind tends to forget itself in the animation of this process.

So a glitch comes into this process from religion, spirituality. Completely consumed in thoughts, ideas, there's an idea that says "if you encounter this thought/idea, there's a good chance you're reading it trapped in a system that has forgotten in what it runs. Stop and take a look outside of this system of signs you're operating in. What is it?"

The original mind is there the same as ever. None the worse for wear, not in time, entirely unconcerned, illuminating with no thoughts of high or low, deluded or aware...always there, illuminating the whole time, and having gotten the sign to look outside of the system of signs, I can ironically see, it was always sitting right there, I was simply looking it right past it the whole time. It is quiet, unassuming. It draws no attention to iself, but in true silence and stillness, reveals its character as unbound, without limit, and beyond distinction.

I find that it was almost as if I was under hypnosis. Having successfully hypnotized myself once, it's very much like that. Richard Feynman (physicist) got hypnotized and felt that he felt like he didn't have to listen, but just did, so in that ironic sense, he did have to listen, simply while feeling as if he didn't really have to the whole time. I see this process operating, and I know the original mind doesn't have to turn into it, but it's easy to drift in to. It feels as though I could simply turn away forever and just forget about the machine mind in all regards, almost simply lie there and die of thirst or dehydration without any concern at all, but there's that little hypnotic feel to the machine mind, "look at me, run me, identify with me." And I can see it very clearly now, and it feels as though I am actually free to look away at any time, it's as if I'm under a hypnotic suggestion "just come back and animate the machine a little bit more. Have something nice to eat. Watch this youtube video" whatever. Thoughts seen clearly seem to have this character of a little hypnotic bubble, a sort of bubble of trapped mind energy.

The last mile feels like waking up from that hypnosis. With more awareness over time, the suggestion of identifying with form gets easier to see, and the feeling that I could not do it starts to be backed more often by actually just not doing it. There seems to be no solution but to notice it again and again, sit calmly in the original mind for a bit feeling the hypnotic draw until it subsides for a bit, and over time, the feeling of the draw gets clearer and weaker, and then I can resist it more easily.

I think of what Shantideva says in the Way of the Bodhisattva:

> For it’s as if by chance that I have gained > > This state so hard to find, wherein to help myself. > > If now, while having such discernment, > > I am once again consigned to hell, > > > I am as if benumbed by sorcery, > > As if reduced to total mindlessness. > > I do not know what dulls my wits. > > O what is it that has me in its grip?

I tend to think awakening and kensho are moments of full contact with the original mind. I think radical non-duality does a disservice in not dealing with the hypnotic gravity well of the machine mind. It's so hard, difficult, improbable, and a relief to even find the escape hatch that I don't think these speakers either are genuinely trying to help (they want to cash in), or they're fully aware that all they're doing is putting a spotlight on the exit sign, but I think they by and large have not investigated deeply enough to realize that they've only done the impossible task of coming back out from the event horizon of a black hole, but they have not escaped the gravity well, and do not know they are still in the gravity well, because in perceiving it clearly, it would seem negligent not to address the final escape from the gravity well.

This is where I think a tradition like Dzogchen does much better. Take the three words of Garab Dorje:

1. Direct introduction to the nature of mind
2. Decide on this unique state
3. Proceed with confidence in the state of liberation.

Only in refined traditions does the last mile seem adequately addressed, the absolute necessity of stabilizing full recognition in all situations. The Tibetan tradition says that it's like ringing a bell. You recognize the nature of mind, rest in that...and eventually, you'll notice you forgot it. Then you come back, and leave the mind in an uncontrived natural state for as long as it lasts. You don't create it, you don't force it, and you don't keep hammering the bell--none of that will lead to the exhaustion of the identification energy, but reinforce it. Without someone pointing that out, how to get your fingers out of this Chinese finger trap, you can't just pull them out. There is no way to force out the habit energy of mind identification, that would be another obscuration. It's all well and good to point out that your fingers are in a Chinese finger trap and say "your hands can be free!", but how do you get your fingers out of trap for good? I tend to think that radical non-duality speakers, by and large, don't even do a very good job pointing a spotlight at the exit sign, more like "here's what the outside looks like." That's really not helping you get out of the exit. It's not even telling you where the exit is. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if most of them saw the outside through a window. A few might have had a picnic there. But if they lived there, I don't think they could mislead so badly in any kind of clear conscience.