It's refreshing that you realize it is pointless to debate this topic. I don't really enjoy debate and I'm responding to express my thoughts on the topic, not to be argumentative.
I agree that we are not our thoughts, that "CONSCIOUSNESS is the empty canvas through which MIND paints using THOUGHT and creates EXPERIENCE." That is why my tagline is "You are the sky. Everything else -- it's just the weather." I accept this as a metaphor for the nature of consciousness, which is an inherently subjective experience and difficult to explain. Where we differ is I don't see that "MIND is a higher level of consciousness that allows one to understand the secrets of life." You say one of these secrets is "MIND is love." This is where I become skeptical. If you had said the nature of MIND is equanimity, I could relate to that. Emotions, like thoughts, are clouds passing across the sky. They are ephemeral. Love, however, isn't like equanimity, it isn't neutral. Love is a very specific emotional state and a very desirable one. We are highly motivated for love to be the higher state of consciousness, people yearn for it. This is why people interpret a euphoric trip as Truth and not a horror trip. I would like to believe that there is a higher consciousness that is love, just as I would like to believe that everything that I am will not disappear when my body dies. Desire affects judgment-- we see what we want to see. Because love is an emotion, I suspect love, like all thoughts, emotions, and sensations, is yet another cloud passing across the sky.
You have wisdom in you, GSOgymrat (or whatever your real name is). These insights you have experienced about being the sky in which the clouds pass are powerful, but those insights go
deeper, and as your level of consciousness rises, you will see more and more and more and more. And just when you think you've seen it all, you will see more...
THOUGHT cannot understand CONSCIOUSNESS because THOUGHT is within CONSCIOUSNESS. Therefore it is absolutely pointless to talk about it because words will never reach it. The paint cannot understand the canvas. YOU, on the other hand, are BEYOND THOUGHT. YOU are the GREAT MIND in which the play of life unfolds. YOU are the painter who can SEE the canvas. YOU can KNOW without THOUGHT.
Your skepticism will have no room to speak when the energy of LOVE washes over you. You will have no words. Belief has no place in SEEING. You can resist or accept an idea, in the context of TRUTH it makes as much difference as putting on a red shirt or a green shirt in the morning. There is no point in talking about this because talking about this will not bring you to a place where you SEE it.
You must SEE it in order for it to be real for you.
I am living proof of LOVE in action. Even as a type these words LOVE wells up within me. As I'm sure if you look inside yourself with a quiet mind you will find the feeling, perhaps quiet at first, welling up within you too. That feeling then becomes a voice, and the voice sings a new world. Allow this feeling to guide THOUGHT and it will transform your world from the inside out.
LOVE is a state of consciousness in which we see there is only ONE energy. There is only ONE intelligence. One SPIRIT that is animating all of creation. We are all connected, not because we are all human, but because we are all living expressions happening within ONE MIND. We share the same source and we have not left that source. There is no point in talking about this because talking about this is not SEEING it.
This is IMPOSSIBLE for the intellect to understand. Only the SPIRIT in you can realize that it is SPIRIT. SPIRIT sometimes believes it is human. Because it has lost itself in a dream, it feels alone, and so it seeks. It will continue to seek indefinitely, though what it seeks will change, it will always feel dissatisfied when it finally gets what it thinks it needs to feel whole.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to not seek while you are out of touch with who you really are. Because SPIRIT is seeking the KNOWING of itself, and only when we look within will that seeking be over once and for all. Only then will you feel the wholeness you have always been looking for. Not through ideologies, not through believing, not through rationalizing, through SEEING.
LOVE is not a passing state. It is the most natural state of being of the spirit. It is the default energy of creation before the contamination of thought. To the thinking mind, LOVE can be intellectualized as a level of consciousness, but it is much more than that. It is self-realization. It is experienced the moment the SPIRITUAL and the MATERIAL come together as ONE. The moment you remember that you are not separate from your experience.
LOVE is a state in which you look at the world which appears outside you and KNOW that it is all within you.
It is a place where fear disappears completely.
Can you be afraid of a nightmare when you know it is only a dream? You are SPIRIT dreaming of EARTH. You are looking down at your body even while you read this.
You have NOTHING to fear because EVERYTHING is MIND. And MIND is ETERNAL. In the absence of fear, there is only LOVE.