Can you comment on what is meant by the Way of Denial?
The way of denial is what happens after awakening. In awakening the only Thing that really matters becomes Known. From then onward most of what filled our minds about spirituality becomes obsolete and is naturally discarded because most spiritual ideas support seeking. It is that simple.
So, after awakening, if an effort is required it is the effort of elimination. The idea of acquiring something like acquiring consciousness, for example, becomes absurd. Acquiring anything becomes spiritually absurd.
In some traditions in India the way of denial is referred to as Neti-Neti. Not this, not that. What is being sought is not anything that can be named or has a form.
In Marseilles Tarot it is depicted by the card number 13. Traditionally that card does not have a name. Where all other cards have a name, on card 13 there is the blade of a scythe.
Cut it out. Eliminate, Not this, not that. What is sought is not your name, not your body, not “me”, not “I”, not Buddha, not anyone, not anything. Not your image of yourself. That card appears immediately after the card symbolizing Awakening.
After we know What Matters elimination is the only thing left to be done. The rest is imagination. This is not hyperbole. The final and only obstacle to Spiritual Realization is imagination. So a particular form of imagination has to be eliminated. The “liberated I” is an image.
How?
By one of two ways: paying attention to What Matters, or realizing that the imagination of self does not matter.
The path is predictable and the patterns are known. See the timeline depicted in more detail in Tarot in these two articles: Timeline #1 and Timeline #2.
