I'm constantly impressed by how infinitely tenacious delusion is. It's amazing to me that no matter how profound my insights, it's pretty clear I still really don't understand anything. I think that there are others who understand something but I don't really know. But I'll say we anyway as in we have tentative understandings and agreements of relative truths but they don't seem to me to extend far. Nevertheless, I like seeming truth wherever I find it.

I like Buddha's four noble truths and Bashar's four laws of creation [You exist (always have always will), all is one and one is all, what you put out is what you get back, everything changes] though I have my own interpretation of each which change somewhat from time to time. I like Sri Ramana Maharshi saying that there's only the Self (which I call Big Self like Suzuki Roshi's Big Mind) which Maharshi says can be called God, Brahma or whatever. He says you know you exist and that feeling you have of being an I is itself this Self, this All That Is. (I'd rather not use capitals for these terms but they make it easier to read. Nabokov was against using parentheses but they also seem to me to aid understanding though this clause is distracting.) All these teachers  point to the fallibility of symbols and symbolic thought to get to the truth. Christian Mystics and Taoists, among a pantheon of the wise, also indicate that concepts just don't do it - but they also indicate  that concepts enable us to go beyond concepts.

The teachers I am drawn to also warn about depending on meditation even though they all promote it. I wouldn't want to stop meditating and turning many activities into meditation.

I meditate for decades and ponder deep teachings like the universal "Who am I?" But still delusion rules.

I think of Lew Richmond's humbling experience of helplessness in his recovery from viral encephalitis as expressed in Healing Lazerous, of Ram Dass's appraisal of his spiritual progress in light of his stoke as revealed in Fierce Grace, of Suzuki Roshi's facing the limits of his practice when he almost drowned as revealed in Ch. 18 of Crooked Cucumber.

Recently my son Clay took psychedelic mushrooms in Saline Valley next to Death Valley. I don't do anything to get high anymore but I made some black tea later in a travel cup he'd used to make his mushroom tea and while driving back to Santa Rosa got a hit of some residue, the slightest hint of a divine message as can come through such substances and instantly realized that I am totally not in touch with reality which playfully briefly kissed me with its undeniable transcendence. It was sublime to be reminded that we are all something wonderful and one-derful and humorous to be reminded of my staggering limits.

It's obvious that delusion is the ultimate - by whatever name.