Posts by Michael Gonzalez77

Paul Rogers94 said:Grace isn't something you can hustle for—if it were, it would just be a transaction. You can't "earn" grace. First, you gain an actual understanding of how reality works, and then you naturally gravitate toward truth—sort of like how sunflowers track the sun. Call it Love if that's your thing. Even if it looks like you worked hard to get there, those very efforts are actually driven by grace itself. None of this is your credit or your choice. It’s not some trophy won through sheer willpower; you can't "achieve" anything like this through grit alone. Still, it feels like there needs to be some sort of inherent maturity or readiness beforehand. Your only real job is to stop getting in your own way with all your theories... enlightenment isn't a prize waiting at the finish line of some spiritual marathon.

No matter how we frame it, we're talking about the same thing. It is grace, yet it is also earned—not through some transaction, but through spiritual effort. Ultimately, that effort is itself supported by grace. Standard logic doesn't apply here, so there's no point in trying to force it into a box.

Paul Rogers94 said:Pure love for the self burns away all the 'impurities'... a person can't achieve anything through their own will alone, without some sort of 'grace or help from above.'

I agree, but even that Love is a form of grace—and you don't get it for free.

Paul Rogers94 said:At one point, he tells a student—roughly this: once you leave here, do whatever you want. Smoke, drink, screw around... there’s zero risk of those things touching your true self. However, living within that "self" is what puts your habits at risk.

Essentially, virtue is just a natural byproduct—the scent, if you will—of actual insight. Simply mimicking virtue—forcing it—leads absolutely nowhere regarding true realization...

To start off, we should focus on "imitating" what the teacher provides for the mind to model. Basically, figure out what the teacher actually intended when they gave you a task—just do the absolute best you can with it. That's all there is to it. No problem.

casualtiger2 said:Thich Nhat Hanh

"Love is something that helps you suffer less."

The art of Being Peace | dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, 2008 05 13

Just another guru selling smoke—though, to be fair, he actually left a mark for the better. It wasn't just about peddling Buddhist meditation techniques and lofty teachings,
but his actual, boots-on-the-ground social activism.

<3

An incredibly inspiring documentary

northernwolf0 said:Humility isn't spirituality; spirit equals consciousness, so spirituality equals consciousness.

Modesty arrives naturally as a byproduct of spirituality and consciousness, whereas humility feels more like a form of masochism.

"Strength fuels humility, whereas modesty often masks weakness. Only someone who is truly great can be genuinely humble.

When a person acknowledges their true greatness—knowing it for a fact—that recognition is itself an act of humility. They accept their greatness as something completely natural, simply expressing what they actually are, much like a person wouldn't hesitate to admit they are human.

If a truly great person, fully aware of their stature, were to deny that greatness, they would actually be diminishing who they really are. This is because modesty is built on pretense, while true greatness requires no mask.

On the flip side, when someone claims greatness they don't actually possess, they are the ultimate hypocrite.

An honest person is one who, knowing they aren't great, firmly and sincerely admits it.

It’s common to find people who lack greatness yet pretend to be humble while secretly believing they are highly valuable. Through both words and actions, they constantly perform this humility, claiming to be "servants of humanity."

Real humility isn't achieved by putting on a costume of lowliness. True humility flows spontaneously and continuously from the strength of true greatness. Announcing your own humility doesn't make you humble. No matter how many times a parrot repeats, 'I am a man,' it will never become one.

It is better to lack greatness than to manufacture a false sense of it by adopting humility. These attempts to act humble don't show strength; instead, they reflect a modesty born of weakness and a fundamental misunderstanding of reality.

Beware of modesty. Under the cloak of humility, it inevitably leads a person into the trap of self-deception. Modesty breeds egoism, and eventually, a person practicing fake humility will be overtaken by pride.

The greatest greatness and the greatest humility go hand in hand, occurring naturally and without effort."

~ Meher Baba

Drew Cooper4 said:Besides, Michael Gonzalez77, you don't need to be some complex psychological machine to feel restless. A simple nervous system is enough for a threat to set you off.

My cat gets restless like that too. He'll be lying there perfectly calm, and then suddenly his ears perk up, and he stares at something in front of him like he's seen a ghost (I never see what he's looking at), and it just goes like that. If a stranger walks into the house, he gets unsettled. That's it.

Unless you've put him through some physical trauma, believe me, your cat is a much calmer "person" than you are. Even with those sharper senses, he's totally chill being who he is. He's 100% a cat without needing to go searching for himself.😁

Michael Hernandez77 said:Praise be to God, whose unity precedes everything except Himself, and after whose unity nothing follows except Him. He simply is. For Him, there is no before or after, no above or below, no near or far. There is no merging or dividing, no how, no where, no when—not even the concepts of time, moments, age, existence, or place. He is, just as He always was. He is one without needing a definition of unity, and unique without needing the concept of uniqueness. He isn't made up of a name and a thing being named, because His name is Himself and the thing named is Himself. In truth, aside from Him, neither name nor object exists, because He is both the name and the reality. He is the beginning without primacy and the end without finality. He is the exterior without outsideness and the interior without insideness. What I mean is that He is the very essence of the first and the last, the very essence of the outer and the inner. Therefore, there is no such thing as a beginning, an end, an outside, or an inside, except for Him—and even then, those things don't become Him, nor does He become them.

Look, you have to understand this so you don't end up chasing shadows: He isn't contained within things, nor are things contained within Him. There is no coming or going. You can’t find Him through book learning, logic, deep thought, or even mental imagery. You won't find Him through your physical senses, your intuition, or any kind of observation. Nothing sees Him except Him; nothing perceives Him except Him. He is the only one who truly sees Himself, and He is the only one who truly knows Himself. No one else can see Him, and no one else can perceive Him. His veil is just a tiny fragment of His unity; nothing covers Him except Himself. That veil is simply His existence hiding within His own attribute-less unity. Not a single messenger, not a prophet, not a perfect saint, and not even the most enlightened angel standing right by His side can know Him. He is His own prophet, His own message, and His own word. He sent Himself, through Himself, out of Himself, to Himself. There was never a middleman or any cause other than Him. There is no distinction between the sender and the sent, or between the sent and the receiver.
The Prophet (bless his soul) once said: "To know oneself is to know one's Lord." He also noted—and I mean this with all respect—that he knows his Lord through his Lord. What the Prophet is really driving at is that you aren't actually "you." You are Him, without the concept of "you" getting in the way. It isn't like He is stepping into you or you are stepping into Him; it’s not even a matter of Him flowing out of you or you coming from Him. It’s not saying that you or your traits are some kind of separate entity that exists. Rather, it means you never truly existed in the first place—not through yourself, not through Him, not in Him, and not with Him. It's not that you stop existing or that you continue to exist. You simply *are* Him, free from all those limitations. If you can grasp your existence in that way, then you truly know God. If you can't, then you don't know God at all.

Most people who claim to "know God" make a massive mistake: they think they have to achieve some state of self-annihilation—or stop trying to annihilate themselves—as a prerequisite for spiritual connection. That’s just plain wrong. Here’s the thing: knowing God isn't about erasing your existence, nor is it about reclaiming it. It’s simpler than that. Things don't actually possess an independent existence on their own. And if something doesn't truly exist in that isolated way, you can't exactly "stop" its existence. To suggest that you have to cancel out your being is to assume that your being was a standalone reality to begin with, which is nothing more than idolatry. It's straightforward: if you know himself without relying on the illusion of independent existence or self-negation, then you know God. If you don't, you don't.
Ibn Arabi

Take a moment to reflect on this. 🙂

Thanks, but none of this is news to me—especially not when it comes to Sufi mysticism. I actually talk about many of these same concepts using different terminology. I could easily copy-paste endless examples for you if we wanted to, but we’d just end up circling the same drain. It’s all great for inspiration, sure— 🙂 but my conclusion remains the same: despite how convinced they might be, nobody on this forum is actually living permanently in the Real. True spirituality is a rare find. That’s why this forum is such a lovely place, though; it’s like a beautiful playground for kids, full of intellectual tinkering, occasional tears, and wonderful insights. That’s why I keep coming back. The imagery and symbolism used by those who have truly attained Enlightenment are beautiful, but you can find all that in books, too. Personally, I prefer the books. Best regards, hitting the road tonight.

Michael Hernandez77 said:Look, Jack, you're overcomplicating things. Sorry, but I have to say it.
Let go of the universe, let go of the Creator's dream, and let go of that ultimate object we call the Creator.
The root of every single problem is just a dream within a dream. But even then, let’s skip that—it just drains your energy and focus.
Ask yourself: "Who am I, the one who is aware of my thoughts, emotions, and senses? Does the 'I' actually depend on them?"
Think about what it really means when people say "the kingdom of heaven is within you"... or that "the place we are searching for is the very place from which we are searching." You don't need anything more than that; just lay all your cards on the table.
There is no "us two." There is only Love. 🙂

I'm not clinging to any of this. 😁 That's why everything I say is meant to help: "Leave the busywork alone," but when it comes to intellectual play, I'll take as much of that as I can get for inspiration.

Most people don't actually struggle with the question "who am I?" Instead, they jump straight to conclusions—they rush to "become" something. That's exactly the excess they don't need. Thinking "this is who I am" leads directly to "I am this body," "I am this," "I am that." Eventually, they give themselves an answer based purely on imagination, rarely realizing they haven't actually reached self-knowledge at all. It might be better to start at the beginning with "what am I *not*?" 😁
This subject matter is incredibly sticky for the mind.

Michael Hernandez77 said:Jack, no... the universe isn't that dream, and there isn't a bigger "problem" than that.
To put it more bluntly, there really isn't any other problem besides this one: waking up and realizing you are the only "problem."
Everyone is searching, whether they realize it or just act on instinct.

They aren't searching; they're just grinding away in the vortex of life. Creation is a Dream, and man has manufactured a "dream within a dream," slowly getting crushed by the weight of mere impressions.

If we’re being precise, there isn't even a problem at all. But if we have to put it into human terms, then this is humanity's greatest struggle. Once we move past it, the Dream can finally flow naturally. The universe is a multi-layered illusion—there is no good or evil here—but an illusion within an illusion becomes a burden so heavy that even the creator shows up, pleading.

Since you can't really debate or philosophize about God, or even about life itself, language and poetry are the only things that let us buzz about it on a forum like this to feed our intellect. That's why it's easy to say, "No, Jack," because those are just words. But I say, "You're close, Michael Hernandez77, but the universe is a very real dream." 🙂

Michael Hernandez77 said:It’s about waking up from the greatest dream the universe ever had. You just wake up.
Himself, Him... it doesn't matter. 🙂 As long as there is an ego, once that's gone... there is Him.
By the way, I wrote the whole thing, but you only quoted a snippet. 🙂

The universe *is* the dream; there's no need for the Universe to "have a dream." 🙂

But that's only a "problem" for the seeker, whereas most people have much deeper issues than that.

Jacob Cruz42 said:Look, I didn't say you were claiming LIFE itself is just a "psychological phenomenon"—I said you were saying that about a PERSON. Right?

So, you totally misread me. Go back, read my post again, and please, just answer my questions. Please, thank you, seriously.

"Enivej, since you're supposedly 'at the end of the path,' how do you interpret someone becoming a 'psychological machine'?"

I answered exactly what you asked. Also, this isn't just some "interpretation" of mine—it’s not an opinion I cooked up; it’s a reality anyone can see if they actually pay attention.

It’s all in my previous post, along with an answer to your second question—the one touching on our natural connection to life, rather than feeling disconnected or stuck in those faulty thought patterns and endless stressors that cause almost all the world's suffering and misery.

Third thing: I’m not psychic. Everyone is responsible for their own actions; everyone either ramps up the pressure of falsehood or works to dial it down based on how they choose to live.

Jacob Cruz42 said:Enivej, since you’re basically walking the end of the path, how do you interpret people turning into "psychological machines"?
Was there even an alternative to this?
And finally—how much longer is all this going to last?
(Seriously, how much more can we take, for God's sake?!!?! 🤣)

I don't think you quite caught my drift.

I'm not saying human existence itself is just some psychological phenomenon or a figment of our imagination. Rather, I mean that while our existence belongs to the realm of creation (the Creator), the way we identify our consciousness with various impressions—using them to build our own little individual bubbles—is a psychological dimension. This dimension becomes so dominant in the mind that it overshadows actual creation. Life itself ends up becoming nothing more than a shadow cast by a totally fake psychological world within the mind.

Psychological development is a necessary stage of growth. However, because modern civilization increasingly detaches us from natural impulses and floods us with unnatural impressions—basically, what you could call a "faulty way of thinking"—we end up building an accumulator of massive negative thoughts, stress, and toxic emotional states. It limits our ability to grow or refine our perception. These things restrict overall development and cause physical deviations in the body, leading to what we call chronic illnesses. Those aren't natural processes; they are straight-up degradation.
(Unnatural impressions come from identifying with life's fictions, assigning value to things that don't actually possess it, and vice versa. Instead of experiencing life as creation—as both the creation and the Creator—with a natural drive to know the wholeness of life, we get lost. Life isn't just a collection of separate things existing side-by-side; it is entirely whole and unified. It only looks fragmented to our intellect because we try to use our intellect to enter a dimension where the intellect doesn't even function.)

So, look at it this way: you have a person sitting in their armchair, feeling intense fear for their life due to the compulsive force of accumulated impressions. They pass away right there in that chair through an unconscious process of mental emptying. Their brain can no longer distinguish between their actual reality and a projection; it reacts to both exactly the same way. I'm not sure if I've made that clear enough.

Bottom line: I'm not saying human life is a "psychological phenomenon." I'm saying that the subjective experience of individuals is such that they spend most of their lives living inside products of their own thoughts. Often, they are just glorifying their own memories of what life *should* be, even though they didn't create their own bodies. Instead, they feed those bodies nonsense born from a distorted way of thinking. They see almost nothing of real life; they only see the self-made shadow.

Michael Hernandez77 said:The people who have realized Reality, as you put it, are rare—but there are actually more than you might think. There are even some right here on this forum.
Keep in mind that realizing Reality—fully stepping into who you truly are and living in the fullness of "I Am"—isn't just an instant click. It’s a very, very long path. So, there are definitely those who have opened those doors, regardless of which "step" they are currently on.
Truth is simple, incredibly simple, and massive; it's right under your nose (I'd almost say it's inside your nose 🙂).
Just ask yourself what St. Francis meant when he said, "the place from which you seek is the place you are seeking from," or what Jesus meant when He said "the kingdom of heaven is within you."
Or, even more directly, just ask: "Who am I?" Anyone who puts all their chips on that question is truly blessed.

I spent 16 years walking alongside an enlightened Teacher, and unfortunately, that experience taught me that we don't have anyone like that here. I know plenty of guys out there making all sorts of claims, but most of them are just kids lost in a carnival of cotton candy and spinning rides.

I know firsthand that the path is a long one, especially if you're wandering without any guidance.

So, there's no point in me beating around the bush; it's obvious to me. When I say "rare," I mean rare individuals out of 7.3 billion people. On this forum? Zero. But that’s not really the point.

Michael Hernandez77 said:Exactly. It isn’t based on actual experience; it’s just programming and conditioning (which you call accumulation).

I agree, but life experience and spiritual progress are incredibly layered and surreal. They feel even more unreal when consciousness perceives them as "real." Everything is built on memory—this massive buildup of impressions. You can't have life without impressions, you can't have evolution without them, and you certainly can't have spiritual growth without them. Even though the spiritual path represents a kind of "truer unreality," everything essentially exists within the realm of imagination fueled by those impressions. Consciousness slowly lets them go, levels them out, and neutralizes them. But before that happens, we live through them, all while simultaneously picking up new ones. We exist in these sudden bursts, stuck in their presence for a long time, mistaking it all for "experience."

Everyone's subjectivity is rooted in memory until consciousness finally breaks free from it. That's why there are endless nuances of experience, not just in everyday life, but even on the spiritual path itself.

What you and I are talking about presents a spiritual paradox. Even if we’ve wrapped our heads around it intellectually—or maybe caught tiny glimpses of it through experience—actually experiencing it directly requires being completely free from the weight of those old impressions. It demands total spiritual maturity. To be honest, I haven't seen that level of maturity from anyone on this forum yet (and I'm nowhere near it myself; I'm just barely keeping pace on the path). That's why it's always so easy for us to talk about enlightenment or God. It’s just intellectual play, a cocktail of ideas. We subconsciously defend these thoughts as if they were profound insights or God-given revelations, when really they are just tiny sparks hinting that something is being revealed. Yet, we love to talk as if we’ve actually grasped Reality. We haven't. The people who truly have are rare; you won't find them easily on forums, though some do speak about it publicly.

Michael Hernandez77 said:The core issue is that people simply don't trust their own lived experience. It doesn't matter what they try to prove; they'll keep doing it because they believe their social programming more than what they actually feel and know deep down. That's where all the trouble starts.

Human experience is a complex web of different dimensions. It all depends on how strongly someone identifies with their "I" identity—that sense of self tied to a physical body or a mind built mostly from unconscious patterns. For most people right now, awareness is limited to certain thought processes. But a thought is just the result of past accumulation; it’s always rooted in the "past." In many ways, projection isn't much different from this accumulation. This creates a repetitive cycle of drama, where people get stuck in a loop of impressions that drive constant desire. It’s like being caught in a whirlpool. Within that loop, there is a flow, and wherever there is flow, you inevitably have the subjective experience of time.

Michael Hernandez77 said:The only experience shared by all 7.5 billion people on Earth is that time doesn't actually exist. That is the one true, fundamental reality because it simply is.
The real issue is that people choose to believe their programming and conditioning rather than their own direct experience.
Try asking anyone on the planet to point to the past or the future—just try pointing your finger at them.

In reality, it’s the opposite; 99.99% of people will fight to prove that time exists. In their lived experience, time is everything—they check their watches, they track the sun, the moon, and the stars.

So, we aren't going to see eye-to-eye here. It’s incredibly difficult to explain to people that time isn't actually "real," even though it functions as a concept within the physical realm—much like other phenomena that transform how we hear things or how consciousness perceives reality, not to mention the psychological dimension of existence.

Michael Hernandez77 said:Right, just like how you keep insisting that time doesn't exist, even though I never actually claimed it did. The simple fact that the only time that exists is *now* actually contradicts the very concept of "time" itself.🙂

The truth is, this has nothing to do with what people call being "in the moment." That whole "living in the now" thing is just a subjective nudge—something anyone can parrot after they feel a brief lapse in their perception of "physical time." It’s basically when you stop identifying so heavily with your physical body for a second (which isn't timelessness; let's just call it a short meditative state). As for the actual non-existence of time? We don't even need to debate that. Whether you believe it or not doesn't change the reality; having an opinion on it isn't the same as experiencing it.

Timelessness, as a dimension, isn't contradictory—and nothing illusory (like time) could ever be contradictory to it.
(The term is just conditional; it's just a way to point toward something related to time).

Michael Hernandez77 said:I can't get behind that. You're trying to make this complicated when it's actually incredibly simple.
The NOW exists, whether you call it a moment, an era, or whatever else you want. Words are just limitations—they naturally feed into dualism—but if you approach this with an open mind and a little insight, you’ll see where I'm coming from. 🙂

You just misunderstood my point and jumped to the conclusion that I was saying the exact opposite of what I meant. Does that clear things up?
My point was something else entirely, but you grabbed one introductory sentence and twisted it to fit your own perspective without looking at the context. Time doesn't exist, regardless of what label we slap on it. On the other hand, we recognize three different layers: chronological (tied to physical matter), subtle, and mental. But there's no need to dive into that right now, just as there's no need to discuss how most people don't actually experience timelessness, no matter how "simple" it might sound.

nimblewolf11 said:It’s like they say, don't focus on the finger—look at where it’s actually pointing, right?

They strip away the context first, then just twist individual words however they want. Maybe I'm being a bit too intense about it, but that's how it feels.