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My best friends right now are the trees. I like connecting with trees, feel who they are and present myself to them. They are always very honest and kind.

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The literature says that as we practice, we still grieve over what there is to grieve over, we are sad or joyful when those emotions arise. However we SUFFER less and less.

There's a distinction between pain (which is inextricably human) and suffering (which is a reaction we choose to attach to outselves as a result of pain). And I've found that to be true, though I still catch myself suffering (and am grateful that I'm less tethered to it than before....though if I let it build up, I can imagine getting strongly caught again). Pain just is. Suffering is reaction based on faulty understanding.

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On "becoming the mantra," while we'd all like to "Be here now," the becoming-ness of it is impossible to avoid. It is a matter of point of view. If I am out here in ego and go in on the mantra, I may appear to become the mantra as it and my egoic sense dissolve into stillness, which is my self. If I am in there already (as inner silence - witness), looking from the inside out, then there is no self-becoming as the mantra makes the same journey. The process is the same. Only the point of view is different. In the case of our questioner, he saw his ego self dissolve to become the mantra refining into expanding stillness. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it is only an observation of scenery and not an imposition on the procedure of deep meditation itself.

Of course, we cannot intellectually locate ourselves in one point of view or the other -- not organically anyway. Our point of view from ego or stillness is where it is depending on the condition of our neurobiology, and we will describe the experience from that angle accordingly. Over time, the point of view gradually shifts as our sense of self changes from external to internal. Then we can say, "Hey everyone, I'm really here now!"

In truth, we probably won't say much, and just go do the dishes and take out the trash. Nothing changes, even as everything does. We are becoming "That" even though we already are "That." I guess that is why they call it "realization." Realizing something that is already. It is a becoming ... a journey from here to here...

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if there is no judgement, if nothing is actually "better" or "worse", if there is no "good" or "evil"... isn't everything worthless then? Don't you end up in a total anxiety and despair over the meaningless nothingness? I read in a book about meditation that many people start meditating to "get a new life" - to change something bad to something good, perhaps the goal is to get more energy, feel more at ease, get happier, more attractive or whatever. And meditation will eventually ease whatever pain or trouble you have since you get a distance to your life. Your awareness can watch the ego and body from beside and not be bothered with whatever feeling that goes through your body, whatever thought that goes through your mind. It is perhaps a nice way to handle negative feelings. But what about the good feelings? Is the goal to become just as distanced from them as well, since the good feelings are no better than the bad ones? My mind demands logic. If ALL feelings are irrelevant after a while, that must be valid also for the good feelings. So where do you eventually end up?

The "bliss" that is mentioned as the "goal" sounds like a positive feeling. Why is bliss presented as being more "worth" than any other sensation?

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