Really, Nonconceptuality Again?!

I've been meditating on a pretty steady weekly basis with Soryu Forall lately. During one of these last few weeks he brought up the difference between conditional and unconditional happiness. It reminded me of a few connections I never finished putting together for the attentional stage developments beyond Clarity. I felt like I had plenty of time to work out some of these details for a couple reasons. First, only so many people are living from Clarity anyway and fueling or crafting their own sense of consistent inspiration. And second, while I'm willing to say some things that I'm not all that sure of, I try not to take that habit too far. But working with Shinzen has really helped clarify Mindful Appreciation, and that pushes the envelope concerning clarity about, well, Clarity. In one sense, acting from the stage/structures of Clarity can mean living/acting from a sense of an inspired self. Described from a different direction, we could say it has a lot to do with consistently acting from beyond the limited/individual sense of self. There is a very real, salient feeling of transcendence--moments of being absolutely just your authentic self and other moments of being so absorbed in what you're doing that it is as if there is no self "there" to speak of. But there are limits to the personal sense of inspiration and clarity as well, and I was less sure how to speak about this prior to hearing the term "unconditional"/"unconditioned" again in the right context. Since I was less sure about describing psychological structures or common states and ways of being beyond inspiration than I was with describing inspiration--which I'm now thinking of calling personal inspiration--it took a while of just letting theory sort of simmer on the back burner without paying it much attention. Part of what i had right was that I was using the term "joy" to describe this next stage of Nonconceptuality. It seemed important and somehow related to what I identified as the chief attentional skill for this stage--justice. Now, I have to say that I was somewhat confused by these two standing out together as distinguishing this stage from others, but having ground through a ton of contemplative material--much of it taken in without really grasping it--this apparently odd juxtaposition struck me as just right, even though I didn't know why it was right. I had little faith in my ability to figure it out by trying too hard to do so, so I set it down for a while. Why justice and joy since you rarely see joyful judges? Well, I knew that something along the lines of "joy" was right because I met contemplative folks who weren't that joyful, and their emotional stance actually seemed like a sign of a lack of fulfillment. Fulfillment is probably quite different from realization or actualization, so I don't really claim any ability or feel much interest in classifying who is at which level. But I knew that if I was going to continue to encourage folks to put a lot of continued effort into becoming better people, then it seemed like that path should at least eventually include a sense of fulfillment of some sort. Here's the simple breakdown. It's okay to be motivated, but it's impossible to recognize justice as just when working from a motivated, grasping-oriented mindset. It's impossible to live beyond grasping without largely living beyond a sense of limitation. Dealing with limitations and looking at limited resources, etc. generally makes sense but it is not totality. If you get beyond the lived sense of limitation with some undertones of positive emotionality (which is our birthright as mammals), something of indescribable beauty has been waiting there for you the whole time, living right there the whole time. (In Rumi's words, "The others would be jealous if they knew of this.") In contacting that beauty, only compassion makes sense. (In Soryu's words, "Mindfulness is seeing everyone as wonderful." If mindfulness also involves accurate perception, how can that be true?) Without knowing the limitlessness of this beauty, there can still be some fear of loss; but if you taste this truly, if you soak in it, it becomes impossible to fear any loss because there are no bounds. And this is the other "part" of totality. Now for justice as a skill. Probably every human being I have met has been sure that they are somehow being cheated by other people, life, the universe, or something if they are not living an authentically inspired life ("jealous"). Just as emotionality is our birthright as mammals, inspiration is our birthright as human beings. We know, at a very deep level, that we are being cheated if we are not feeling the love, tasting the beauty, "sharing" in the feeling of limitlessness itself. But because of whatever reasons--and there are many--we either settle for cheap knock-off imitations or we focus on the more superficial ways in which we are dissatisfied. Any conception or feeling of justice that does not direct others to the literal best that they can be may be justifiable retribution (and understand that I am not knocking retribution) but it is not something that I could call justice. It is by going completely beyond limitation itself that we can completely "contact" a joy that surpasses conditions, that is neither inside or outside of conditions.