Acceptance, as described, implies a resolution or conclusion. But isn’t this still a form of control, an attempt by thought to manage or overcome fear, desire, or suffering?
When the mind truly observes without the filter of acceptance or rejection, doesn’t the whole dynamic of fear, desire, and suffering lose its grip naturally, not as a conclusion, but as a simple fact? Isn’t this freedom?
If I conclude that acceptance of death = x, and that by trying to accept death I might succeed and gain x. Then yes : I have set up a conflict based on confusion.
But as you say its just a logical statement of fact that x = x, or in your statement : in the absence of rejection there is no rejection.
Or in mine : in the absence of fear there is no fear.
nb. Lack of rejection = acceptance.
Acceptance of death = freedom from the fear of death
A = A
when I go upstairs, I am automatically moving away from downstairs
Could you please elaborate on this?
When speaking of illusion, rational thought tends to focus on magicians, physical illusions, and so on. But what if one looks at that third possibility in another way, wondering how it is possible that Buddha, after having (supposedly) realized the illusion of everything (including himself) remained in an illusory world speaking to illusory beings about illusion?
Freedom has been defined in this thread as the absence of the central authority (or the absence of authority)
In the absence of authority, pure observation may arise.
Pure observation, meaning unbiased, unconstrained by evil or self centered bias.
Pure meaning absence of motive.
We have also said that no extraordinary insight or obvious blinding clarity (enlightenment experience) into the whole movement of self is actually necessary.
That merely the perception (however slight or for whatever reason) that freedom from evil is preferable.
This feeling, that awareness is preferable to the dictat of the self, is sufficient for ordinary awareness to blossom into choiceless awareness.
Agreed? Yes? No? Is this what we are saying?
The function of the self is to suffer (in order to secure potential future gains)
The function of the self is to act as the central entity that reacts to its environment through the inputs based of fear and desire (for future security and comfort)
knowing that it is an illusion and yet enjoying the show.
It seems to me that the world, the life that may have arisen from these illusions, is not an illusion, but the real society and the real life of people in this society. I think Buddha said: Life is suffering. It is possible that this suffering arises from illusions that are not recognized as such. After he (like Krishnamurti) had (supposedly) insight into the nature of man, I assume he was guided in his further life by compassion - by the Buddhist vow to save all living beings, however many there may be. Or K’s concern to set mankind unconditionally free. Free from suffering, one seems to be capable of compassion. I don’t think one would enjoy the show.
Could it be that I only have meaning being a sufferer and otherwise do not appear
The feeling of suffering has authority insofar as it evokes the self-perception as someone. Someone who suffers. And because you feel something, you must be someone. It’s difficult to question that.
If the self is categorizing and recording what it is aware of as good/bad, pleasurable/painful, like/dislike, agree/disagree, profit/loss, do/don’t do, etc., one is living with what thought says is happening instead of with what’s actually happening. This constant reaction of thought doesn’t stop, so the only way to know what actually is happening is to be aware of how thought is resisting awareness.
It seems we have submitted to the tyranny of thought because thought can be put to that use. We choose to be slaves.
Perhaps this logical framework makes sense to you and gives a conclusion you are looking for.
For an external observer when you say “A = A”, or “in the absence of fear there is no fear,” it’s logically sound. But is the reality of fear or rejection merely a logical equation?
Fear is not resolved through statements or conclusions; it is only understood through direct observation, without resistance or the attempt to escape from it. Here we are talking about the actual movement of fear, aren’t we?
The analogy of going upstairs automatically moving away from downstairs reflects a spatial movement. But psychological fear or rejection does not operate in this linear way. It is a cyclical movement, a pattern of thought perpetuating itself through identification, resistance, and effort.
Why do we seek conclusions, frameworks, and theories about these psychological questions?
Is it because we feel that in arriving at an answer, in creating agreement, we will somehow resolve the deep challenges of our inner lives? But if we were to all agree on what the self is, what enlightenment is, what freedom is… what then? What would we do next after these statements of agreement?
Would such agreement fundamentally change the nature of our lives? Or would it simply provide another set of ideas, another construct within which we operate?
Perhaps the question is not what we can conclude together, but whether we can look together, inquire together, without the need for resolution, without the need to anchor ourselves in certainty.
What is the actual movement of life, my friend, if not the ongoing discovery that comes when we are free of all conclusions?
This is precisely what I asked myself after reading the following…
Or do you think the latter is not a framework/conclusion/theory? 
Nothing is resolved through statements or conclusions. Declaration is not resolution.
Yes, you are right. Now, when is fear resolved? And even a deeper question, is fear something to be resolved?
If the first step is the last step, the first step, it seems to me, is stepping away from desire to change oneself to curiosity about what one’s self is.
And it seems like a giant step because one doesn’t quit what one feels bound and determined to do until/unless one has the insight to see how mistaken it is.
The awareness that I actually don’t exist?
To put in in the Bard’s words, I am a “tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.”
Let’s no forget that we don’t actually know this because we’re too attached to thought to know anything but what we think we know.
Awareness doesn’t ‘know’, it only reveals…it illuminates the scene?
“Only”? We know only the occasional flash of light, the partial insight that shows us we are denizens of the dark.
The difference between what we know as awareness and what we think of as direct perception, observation, illumination, is that our awareness is trampled by our reactive resistance to it. We don’t abide with the light of awareness because we are identified with and attached to our content. That turns off the light as soon as it can.
There is no knowledge to be attained, nothing hidden to be revealed. Awareness is whole, complete in itself. Thought, with its inherent fragmentation, and language, with its limitations, cannot approach this wholeness.
So insight/awareness shows us that we are sinners and will go to hell if we don’t remedy it?
Where did that come from? “sinners”, “hell”?.