Much Ado About Nothing.

Some of the questions asked about this - whatever it is we're talking about, awakening, liberation, oneness, non-duality, advaita, whatever - fill my character with compassion, and make any co-dependent tendencies come right to the forefront. I want to make it all better, I want to take the pain away. I want to cuddle people and day, oh, please don't worry, everything will be alright. Well, as a point 0f fact, it will, or more accurately, it is. There are a lot of ways to use words in various orders to say "this is it". It's very ordinary, awakening, enlightenment, whatever you want to call it. There are a lot of ideas the mind has about how it should be, all blissful and peaceful and wise, floaty and detached and charismatic, and only obtainable (by who?) after loads and scads and surfeits of extremely hard and intensive work. There are a whole heck of a lot of ways out there to chip away at the apparent self: inquiry, meditation, achieving certain states on a precise timeline, therapy, 12-step programs, diminishing the ego, etc. and so on ad infinitum, go ahead, do them all, there's nothing wrong with these practices. But perhaps the despotic mind can hold onto the idea that there is nowhere to go. This is it, all there is is this, whether it is seen or not; and there is nothing the dreamer can do to shatter the dream. The only hopeful thing I ever heard was, you could die at any time. The "ah-ha" moment, "when" what is becomes what is, can happen at any "time". The only useful thing practice seems to do is help the dreamer give up.