How do you navigate the path that leads to liberation?

[Gem]

My way is to accept that ups and downs are an inevitable on the life path. When things are great I know it won't last. When things are rough I know it'll pass.

To know what is true is key to my navigation, and I'm not saying I'm good at it, but knowing how I am without the nagging need to be better lets me keep the peace. This is a more powerful driver of positive change than any will I might have to improve myself. It is inevitable that I'll change, and self-awareness is key to positive transformation. It's nature's way to be sentient-aware, which is the truthful path - as opposed to the path which follows delusion.

When I wander off track in emotion and distraction, it never leads me anywhere good, so each time I notice I've gone awry, I return to where I am, where awareness exists with the actuality of lived experience.

[JustBe]

Some people say they accept things going on outside of themselves, meaning they ‘tell themselves’ they do and have, yet within I’ve noticed they haven’t truly accepted what contains deeper the truth of this as ‘themselves containing themselves’ as that acceptance.

In my own personal experience of this, this is truly where and how I have navigated the path to liberation. Total acceptance of everything in me in everything I hold up against the world around me.

So if we wish to break it all down, it pretty much means regardless of ‘right’ ‘wrong, unjustly, just, good, bad, every reaction I have, every thought I hold up against the external harbouring internal reaction in some form, or hold against ‘standards’ ‘ideals’ ‘ideas’ .. if I’m not listening from within, taking my bull by the horns and attending to my own charge, to move me forward peacefully, then I lose sight of the ‘abundance’ within myself and each moment, that gears me towards a path that supports me, rather than contain me. That path may not look like the ‘ideal’ or as I ‘thought’ it would be, but in releasing myself, of all containment, it’s the path that best supports me.

In ways my mind could never imagined.

There is work ethic, their is a standards you live by, but as liberation, it’s all nothing in me, it’s true emptiness as the lived experience..moving and being as this. The appearance on the surface can only be known by you deeper as you.

The doing might then look the same, but it’s not...

You become a ‘doer’ who is liberated and because ‘it’s felt’ it’s ‘effective’ as itself just being and doing.

Once upon a time, I was chasing life, as a seeker chasing myself, now life greets me and I meet it as ‘I am’

Choices are greater when you stop the choosing in you..

[Phaelyn]

How do you navigate the path that leads to liberation?

Nurture peace, understanding, love, and awareness.

Really these are all aspects of a good path. If one's path involves conflict or self caused suffering of various kinds, I'd suggest a new path.

Liberation as a concept just means "a freedom from" .... in this case, freedom from anything that is not peace and love.

Peace and love is already here at all times, always present. The path is just learning what we are doing that is distracting us from that.

[sentient]

The path (ahead) reveals itself by walking it in ‘not knowing’ and 'knowing' in balance ....

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[Gem]

Originally Posted by Phaelyn

How do you navigate the path that leads to liberation?

Nurture peace, understanding, love, and awareness.

Really these are all aspects of a good path. If one's path involves conflict or self caused suffering of various kinds, I'd suggest a new path.

Liberation as a concept just means "a freedom from" .... in this case, freedom from anything that is not peace and love.

Peace and love is already here at all times, always present. The path is just learning what we are doing that is distracting us from that.

I guess in the Buddhist view, all suffering is self-generated as we may find it difficult to keep a balanced mind when our experience goes toward the extremes of pleasure and pain, which incites the desire and aversion reactivity referred to as 'craving', and cited as 'cause'.



The tricky part is the craving of craving, the aversion toward aversion, which characterises the tendencies of the psychological complex we refer to a 'bondage' (as opposed to liberation).


The freedom from this bondage is definitively liberation, but if it were a simple choice, then everyone would simply cease that tendency, and because practically no one does cease that, I don't regard it as a simple choice.


I regard it not as something one should set about willfully changing because they are adverse to their sufferance or because the desire a liberated state of some kind, since that is precisely the complex aforementioned. I regard it as self-awareness, so you know that is what is what you do and realise that is how you generate suffering. Then you can just observe it as it plays out, and if you can just observe it you have already withdrawn the volition from it and thus ceased to perpetuate it further.

[Phaelyn]

Originally Posted by Gem

I guess in the Buddhist view, all suffering is self-generated

There is a lot of suffering that is not self generated. This planet and human life can be extremely harsh, overwhelmingly harsh. It can be a very dangerous and violent world. Plus our own body's and minds and brains can make us experience extreme suffering. But the eastern view of this is it is a result of karma. But it can be extreme suffering no matter what the cause. But we can still carry love and peace and hope, faith, until the suffering fades away as all things are transitory and impermanent. It's not really an escape from suffering, it is more about an acceptance and a lack of fight about things I have no control over. Surrender..... a lot of suffering is about not accepting things as they are, fighting the inevitable. And not holding deep in one's being love and peace under all that suffering.

A poem written during WW2, on the wall of a cellar, by a Jew in the Cologne concentration camp.

I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining
And I believe in love,
even when there’s no one there.
And I believe in God,
even when he is silent.

Originally Posted by Gem

The tricky part is the craving of craving, the aversion toward aversion, which characterizes the tendencies of the psychological complex we refer to a 'bondage' (as opposed to liberation).

True a very real phenomena I've experienced (or been caught up in) often.

Originally Posted by Gem

The freedom from this bondage is definitively liberation, but if it were a simple choice, then everyone would simply cease that tendency, and because practically no one does cease that, I don't regard it as a simple choice.

The river that is this body and it's mind, does not stop flowing until it does when it's time is up. One guru described it like being in a swiftly moving river... the body and it's mind, the strong current is down stream. But the divine is where the river starts, high in the mountains. It is there we must go. One can chose to head up stream but that does not stop the river. It is a moment to moment concentration or awareness, so one is facing the right way and moving in the right direction. It requires awareness, energy, and all it takes is one tiny moment of not paying attention, and the current takes us with it.

Originally Posted by Gem

they are adverse to their sufferance or because the desire a liberated state of some kind, since that is precisely the complex aforementioned. I regard it as self-awareness, so you know that is what is what you do and realize that is how you generate suffering. Then you can just observe it as it plays out, and if you can just observe it you have already withdrawn the volition from it and thus ceased to perpetuate it further.

It's interesting because I am aware of the conflict of it, yet somehow I'm not aware I am creating that because I am locked into certain ideas. But then when the source is seen, it's like an insight, an "ah ha" moment and the awareness of the (cause and effect - one thing) ends it. It's like having an itch on the leg and it bothering me awhile.... then I become aware of the root cause, an ant on my leg..... in one motion, awareness of the suffering and the cause, the finger flicks the ant away, the conflict or the source of suffering is gone. The solution was not to end the suffering somehow, though some practice or technique or series of classes, it was merely to be aware of the source of it.

[Joe Mc]

Good one Gem. I agree with everything you say here. There is just one thing that kinda grabbed me.

Originally Posted by Gem

but knowing how I am without the nagging need to be better lets me keep the peace. This is a more powerful driver of positive change than any will I might have to improve myself..

I was watching a documentary the other night about a Japanese geezer who skied down Everest, don't know if you've seen it but i'll post the link for all. The cinematography is wowwwsaa etc. and the story line too. Anyway they run into Sir Edmund Hilary during their trek to Everest base camp. In the convo that ensues you'll hear Sir Ed saying ...Humans need Challenges... I don't know where the human race will be ..or would be without challenges..something like that... Really Struck me and knew what he meant and knew it was different than the striving i would probably in the past have associated with what he was saying ?? ..Example at the moment for me is I'm learning a bit of welding to fix some gates for my father, ( i said to my father these are the pearly gates ..he did smile lol) Anyways that type of thing ..like a new challenge for me ? It doesn't feel driven although that too could creep in ? Is that what you mean ..that at any time we can become unhealthily and unnecessarily driven ? Thanks for the great post.

The Man Who Skied Down Everest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViFmRQx66Xg&t=3950s

I thought it was a fantastic piece of filming and tragic and controversial too that 6 sherpas lose their lives in the process.

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[sky]

Originally Posted by sentient

The path (ahead) reveals itself by walking it in ‘not knowing’ and 'knowing' in balance ....

*

' Not knowing and knowing in balance '

exactly..... ' The Middle Path '

[sentient]

Are we open and do we have faith for the path to unfold, reveal itself for us to follow ….
or do we tell the path, what it should and should not be, before we even step on it?

Is the path a strict following of the scripture or is it intuitive or can it be both?

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[JustBe]

Originally Posted by sentient

Are we open and do we have faith for the path to unfold, reveal itself for us to follow ….
or do we tell the path, what it should and should not be, before we even step on it?

Is the path a strict following of the scripture or is it intuitive or can it be both?

*

Is their a path?

Or is it life?

And each of us only know life as we are ‘aware’..

In which case not all are seeking liberation but rather ‘just live’..

I base my own liberation and navigation now through ‘understanding’ what and how I’ve been previously, to what and how I can be now.

So in many ways ‘regardless’ of how I perceive navigation and liberation, as a spiritual relationship, many are lead this way just be living their life.

So in this way, is their really ‘liberation’ or the awareness and understanding through ones own personal life experience that moves and shows them more. To be and do things differently.

Of course we can ‘dedicate’ to a path, but in the end they are all tools..

Showing one ‘more’ ...gaining insights and realisations in choice and choice-less actions, beliefs, experiences and more..

So in this view, ‘as things are’ ‘as I am’ is enough, because if I’m not aware, life often supports me to see in some way..

People often talk about the ‘need’ to be open to navigate, but in my experience the navigation can come through life itself, ‘to open’ more in us..

So life itself is a great navigator to liberate the confines of ones ‘now’ life experience just by living and breathing..