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Post by lolly on Dec 18, 2017 7:06:51 GMT -5
Yesterday, after I mentioned this thread to Carol, and we were talking about the many ways oceanic consciousness, boundarylessness, or the realization of non-separation occurs in peoples' lives, she suggested that I watch an interview on batgap with Paul Morgan-Somers, an Englishman. Paul was another fellow who, at the age of about 15 or 16 was playing soccer in his backyard when he was drawn to stop kicking the soccerball and sit down on the steps of his parent's house. As soon as he sat down, he entered what he called "the luminous ocean of being," and it never went away. He lost all interest in his prior ambition to become a professional soccer player, and after reading some words in the Upanishads (which gave him some vague understanding of what had happened to him), he, like Ramana, left a note for his parents, and went to spend 5 years in a Vedanta monastery. Afterwards, he lived for a while as a hermit, and, while meditating one day, the name of a woman who he had never met arose in his mind, and he knew that he would marry her. He subsequently met the woman, got married, had two children, and now operates a small business--a gallery--that supports his family. From the batgap video it seems obvious that Paul is a very happy camper, and still doesn't know how to talk about "the ocean" in which he lives. What we call "reality" is much stranger and more mysterious than anything we might imagine. paulmorgansomers.comOh yeah I recognise that guy. He's great.
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Post by ouroboros on Dec 18, 2017 16:01:36 GMT -5
If you tap a knee and it jerks, that's a reflex. If you tap a knee pretty hard and the mind goes into agitation in aversion to the pain, that's reactivity. Reactivity is essentially the running from pain while chasing pleasure, avoidance, resistance, aversion coupled with craving clinging etc. To me, meditation is quite simply the cessation of that movement. In my meditations, there can be significant pain at times if I've sat for a long time, but that feeling people think is their agitation, to me, is a intensified sensation in my head, so the neural network is firing just fine, which is reflexive, but I don't become disturbed by it aka reactive. There is a level of extreme where I do start to become overwhelmed, so I know I reached the limitation of my balance of equanimity and being disturbed, entered the reactive aftermath of the experience. I as ego is always central to such disruption, and meditators must already know that reaction stops things from happening. For example, there is a common meditation experience of taking a fall, but then a fright as one grasps for something, and that's it, the fall stops. That's the sort of thing I call 'reactivity' - not like a knee jerk reaction. Are we speakin' the same language? I didn't really get the drift of the last thing you said. Care to elaborate? (and the video is 'not available', but I'll look it up on you tube - I'm partial to a bit o' Led). This is an interesting sutta which ties in with what you're talking about, you might be familiar with it. Generally folks are concerned with the cessation of 'the second dart', in the analogy, where it could be said that insight results in a degree of detachment that effectively mitigates acute psychological suffering. A worthy goalless goal by any measure. But really the Buddha taught two things, the path to positive 'rebirth' (coming about through mindfulness, becoming/being conscious, virtuous activity etc) - where essentially the causes upon which the second dart arises are undermined as above, and the path to the complete cessation of 'rebirth' (liberation from samsara), and whilst from a certain perspective, the former can be viewed as the basis of the latter, the Buddha recognised the rarity of that, and so much focus was given to the former. there are two main views concerning enlightenment, the first being the ND view of self realisation (buddha described that as 'seeing you), and the second regards the total dissolution of mind and body (which buddha continued to teach). I 'personally' (forgive my profanity) think the purification process is ongoing, and regardless of self realisation With all that in mind, I also agree with what you said in your previous post here, that ultimately, the Buddha's teaching in particular goes much further than that, essentially to the cessation of 'the first dart' (which is still subject to the more broad conception that is dukkha). That further cessation is basically what total unbinding (paranibbana) points too. I'm firmly of the opinion that there's an even bigger, bigger picture, and that recognising this can come through joining more dots. As you say, the purifying process is ongoing ...
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Post by laughter on Dec 19, 2017 6:20:34 GMT -5
Reactivity, in and of itself, is a simple function of being alive, and any competent saw bones with a knee hammer can demonstrate that point quite succinctly and wordlessly. Yes, I agree the meditation would be ongoing (consciously or otherwise) from the point of awakening until the point of what ZD has termed enlightenment. On one hand, I can imagine a world where everyone is enlightened by that standard, and it's a pleasant thought. Quite sublime, actually. But on the other hand, considering the possible distinctions between my notion of person and your notion of ego can be interesting and informative. Tolle equates the two the way that you have, but both McKenna and Niz, for example, had some provocative things to say that I perceive as related to the topic. To illustrate, Tolle's subsequent life choices leave him open to obvious criticisms about contradiction from people who might not quite resonate with or even really understand his message. The bottom line is that the life of a human being necessarily involves the appearances of entropy and contrast for as long as they're alive. The rhythms of the movements of that dream are always modulated by the music (the conditioning) of the individuated body/mind, and as you pointed out, their amplitudes are always ever a matter of degree. The master is not what shapes the music, but is instead, the music itself, and there is no song that isn't a sum total of pure tones. The poignant ecstasy of Plant's invitation to the movies is about as good an expression of what I'm trying to convey as any. If you tap a knee and it jerks, that's a reflex. If you tap a knee pretty hard and the mind goes into agitation in aversion to the pain, that's reactivity. Reactivity is essentially the running from pain while chasing pleasure, avoidance, resistance, aversion coupled with craving clinging etc. To me, meditation is quite simply the cessation of that movement. In my meditations, there can be significant pain at times if I've sat for a long time, but that feeling people think is their agitation, to me, is a intensified sensation in my head, so the neural network is firing just fine, which is reflexive, but I don't become disturbed by it aka reactive. There is a level of extreme where I do start to become overwhelmed, so I know I reached the limitation of my balance of equanimity and being disturbed, entered the reactive aftermath of the experience. I as ego is always central to such disruption, and meditators must already know that reaction stops things from happening. For example, there is a common meditation experience of taking a fall, but then a fright as one grasps for something, and that's it, the fall stops. That's the sort of thing I call 'reactivity' - not like a knee jerk reaction. Are we speakin' the same language? I didn't really get the drift of the last thing you said. Care to elaborate? (and the video is 'not available', but I'll look it up on you tube - I'm partial to a bit o' Led). Yeah, I could tell I'd meandered off into a half-assed sort of derivative poem before I hit post. But at least I didn't plagiarize. The bottom line was that I was offering the counterpoint of the present perfection that is the fact of every human being in response to the notion of a process of perfecting the purity of buddhahood. The way I prefer to express the notion of the end of suffering is in terms of the end of a pattern of thought and emotion that creates a sense of identification with anything temporal or material, and I think of this as "the person". But I respect the way you and ZD have used the word here, and I like to think that I also understand, to one degree or another, what you're each each getting at. It doesn't seem to me that there's any one right way to present a conception along these lines, and further, that there's the potential for perpetuating quality dialog on the topic by comparing notes. And continue, the dialog will, one way or another, with one set of voices or another, because subjectively speaking, the answer is eventually found only in silence, and objectively speaking, there is and never will be a bottom line. One of the deepest traps I've seen in these dialogs is to lock oneself into a position based on a lack of interest in, or an unwillingness or inability to imagine and/or accept the life experiences of others and how those experiences translate into a world view. We've discussed your idea of reactivity and what this means to each of us several times over the years. I've always appreciated the depth and elegance of your descriptions of meditation and the way you've used this idea of reactivity in those descriptions is the height of simplicity. But here, you see, you've coupled reactivity with several heavyweight complications. Depending on where someone is in life, desire doesn't necessarily have to lead to suffering and, in fact, it can just as easily be the absence of desire that does. Each of the two of us apparently conceive of ego as something that comes and goes even after "SR". The difference being (at least in terms of our current literal composition), that I perceive no such animal, nor the possibility of any such animal as "I, as ego". Adyashanti once expressed this perfectly with a conception of ego as nothing more than the passing thought of either "mine", or "not mine". Since in my conception the person is absent, unless I first bother with the tiresome and tedious task of disentangling a contextual knot, I'm left with this "impersonal ego" idea that is, of course, patently absurd. This is why I was borrowing Plant's poetry to try to get across how I see the inherent reactivity of human experience as relevant to awakening, self-realization and enlightenment, and my counterpoint about perfection. I even had to edit the borrowed phrasing as the first version was too ambiguous even for a half-assed poem. Ego is as comical as it is absurd, and absurdity is at the heart of all humor. McKenna got this across with a particular deftness in his first book. The instant of laughter is a sort of free-fall, as the mind is suddenly robbed of it's footing, and I've experienced a kind of metaphorical free-fall during silent, sitting meditation that involves a feeling of sort of dissociating from physicality and a deepening into the emptiness of a quiet mind. Is this the experience of falling that you were referring to? I'd say a reaction is sometimes the only way to perpetuate a movement, but that this is completely removed from that falling down.
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Post by laughter on Dec 19, 2017 9:00:17 GMT -5
If you tap a knee and it jerks, that's a reflex. If you tap a knee pretty hard and the mind goes into agitation in aversion to the pain, that's reactivity. Reactivity is essentially the running from pain while chasing pleasure, avoidance, resistance, aversion coupled with craving clinging etc. To me, meditation is quite simply the cessation of that movement. In my meditations, there can be significant pain at times if I've sat for a long time, but that feeling people think is their agitation, to me, is a intensified sensation in my head, so the neural network is firing just fine, which is reflexive, but I don't become disturbed by it aka reactive. There is a level of extreme where I do start to become overwhelmed, so I know I reached the limitation of my balance of equanimity and being disturbed, entered the reactive aftermath of the experience. I as ego is always central to such disruption, and meditators must already know that reaction stops things from happening. For example, there is a common meditation experience of taking a fall, but then a fright as one grasps for something, and that's it, the fall stops. That's the sort of thing I call 'reactivity' - not like a knee jerk reaction. Are we speakin' the same language? I didn't really get the drift of the last thing you said. Care to elaborate? (and the video is 'not available', but I'll look it up on you tube - I'm partial to a bit o' Led). This is an interesting sutta which ties in with what you're talking about, you might be familiar with it. Generally folks are concerned with the cessation of 'the second dart', in the analogy, where it could be said that insight results in a degree of detachment that effectively mitigates acute psychological suffering. A worthy goalless goal by any measure. But is this a goaless goal or rather, in the alternative, isn't there a material component to this detachment that's all relative? This sort of detachment and the outward appearance of self-control that goes along with it has the potential to cut both ways. It found it's way into European cultures by way of the " Stoics", and was so influential as to be woven into the fabric of those cultures and their derivatives in North America in ways that are completely taken for granted today. While I understand the positive potential of witnessing -- material or otherwise -- both from personal experience and the stories of others, I perceive several facets to the flip side of the coin. One is that if you take Eric's simple statement about the distinction between pain and suffering, it has the potential to raise a natural objection in the mind of someone who's never practiced any form of deliberate detachment to any depth. Ironically, those are the people who can benefit most from that sort of practice. Another is that the material benefits from personal self-mastery can deepen the sense of and attachment to the identity of the person as a person. It can also cause them to suppress and lose touch with their emotions. The last one is the most subtle. People who do quiet their minds and come to understand this distinction between pain and suffering both intellectually and experientially can come to accept this understanding as complete. As you pointed out in the rest of what you wrote, that's simply not the case. A simple way to understand this error is that it mistakes suffering to be a mechanistic product of the human mind as a definable process. Not that this notion isn't a good approximation -- which is why it's so effective -- but it entangles the question of what it means to be human along with it's synthesis.
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Post by lolly on Dec 19, 2017 9:55:57 GMT -5
If you tap a knee and it jerks, that's a reflex. If you tap a knee pretty hard and the mind goes into agitation in aversion to the pain, that's reactivity. Reactivity is essentially the running from pain while chasing pleasure, avoidance, resistance, aversion coupled with craving clinging etc. To me, meditation is quite simply the cessation of that movement. In my meditations, there can be significant pain at times if I've sat for a long time, but that feeling people think is their agitation, to me, is a intensified sensation in my head, so the neural network is firing just fine, which is reflexive, but I don't become disturbed by it aka reactive. There is a level of extreme where I do start to become overwhelmed, so I know I reached the limitation of my balance of equanimity and being disturbed, entered the reactive aftermath of the experience. I as ego is always central to such disruption, and meditators must already know that reaction stops things from happening. For example, there is a common meditation experience of taking a fall, but then a fright as one grasps for something, and that's it, the fall stops. That's the sort of thing I call 'reactivity' - not like a knee jerk reaction. Are we speakin' the same language? I didn't really get the drift of the last thing you said. Care to elaborate? (and the video is 'not available', but I'll look it up on you tube - I'm partial to a bit o' Led). Yeah, I could tell I'd meandered off into a half-assed sort of derivative poem before I hit post. But at least I didn't plagiarize. The bottom line was that I was offering the counterpoint of the present perfection that is the fact of every human being in response to the notion of a process of perfecting the purity of buddhahood. Sure - it isn't an issue of judgment, but more like one of honesty. I think of it as, 'all things are seen with the eyes of love' so there's no worthiness issue at all when it comes to 'impurity'. Actually, come to think of it, non-judgment is instrumental to the process. I talk about reactivity as the essence of suffering because that is the generation of it, the actual mechanism, and also the psychological function of regenerating 'myself'. Thus I'm referring to a verb, activity, and not a noun, actor - but as there is no subject apart from the function, we're discussing much the same thing. Well I'm not talking about something I know, but just something I explore, so I have no notion of being right about these things and to me it's all a discussion. Sometimes it just seems so simple, 'I'm here and this is how it is'. Teehee 'answer in silence'. Desire, what they call 'craving', is the essence of suffering, and some will say attachment - and those who say desire will steer away from it and those who say attachment steer away for that, but this is what I mean: lets say I met a fantastic lady and thought, darn, I love the girl, and I start to make some really strong emotional attachments, and I know if she died or ran away or rooted the sexy tantra guy, that hurts, but where I make attachments that result in pain, as they do, could I call that pain 'suffering'? On the other hand, I love the girl and form attachments in the same way, but then I desire, I want something good from it and I don't pain, so naturally, I start attempting to make it as I want to be - controlling - as is the function of desire. Then I the same thing happens, she roots tantra guy, runs away, dies, and I feel pain because of my emotional attachments, but in this case I really suffer because desire is the will for it to be other than it is. Well ego defined as a false sense of self... maybe not. I think ady was being a tad offhandish there. teehee I was referring falling like a free fall. It's not really metaphorical, just not physical. The reaction obviously prevents things. I mean things are moving changing by their nature and the 'fright', that grasping, really only brings one back to the safety of 'the known'. I thought that was a really obvious way to illustrate my point on reactivity.
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Post by ouroboros on Dec 19, 2017 12:27:24 GMT -5
This is an interesting sutta which ties in with what you're talking about, you might be familiar with it. Generally folks are concerned with the cessation of 'the second dart', in the analogy, where it could be said that insight results in a degree of detachment that effectively mitigates acute psychological suffering. A worthy goalless goal by any measure. But is this a goaless goal or rather, in the alternative, isn't there a material component to this detachment that's all relative? Sure, it still comes under what I categorised as 'positive rebirth', which means it's essentially still in the realm of 'becoming'. (I think reefs recently put something up from one of his sources where they talked about that in terms of "more, more, more".) Anyway, it's just that it's a better quality becoming because it's an informed becoming, which as I say, from a certain perspective can be considered as the foundation for the cessation of becoming. I'm afraid some of these somewhat isolated and esoteric ways of talking about this stuff probably don't mean a lot, and I apologise for that. Right, I'm not sure practicing detachment as you put it will get you all that far. That does sound like a recipe for suppression, and from my experience you'd probably just end up with a nervous tic. The degree of detachment I was talking about tends to come about quite naturally as a result of insight (realisation) resulting in the mitigating of the arising of the second dart (which is equivalent to the suffering part of that equation). Obviously I know enough to duck any sustained conversation about the correlation between practice and realisation, hehe What's clear is there's a disparity between the common Western conception of suffering, certainly the way the subject is approached here on the forum, and seemingly in advaita generally, and the more encompassing conception of dukkha that the Buddha taught, which really was the very cornerstone of the teaching. For example dukkha encompasses both pain and suffering, but really it's much broader and runs much deeper than all that. Here I want to say something like, it's literally an aspect of the manifest (including mind), or that it's intrinsic to the arising … to the very generation of structure itself, because structure is ultimately empty and transient. But to do so is still unsatisfactory, because it's not really a quality as such. I sense this is sailing pretty close to where I'm coming from and I'm sure you'll understand when I say that in the final analysis such thingless things can only be known directly, and pointed to. The inability to be able to encapsulate dukkha in terms and conceptualities, is dukkha! But I'm digressing a bit.
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Post by laughter on Dec 21, 2017 5:41:44 GMT -5
But is this a goaless goal or rather, in the alternative, isn't there a material component to this detachment that's all relative? Sure, it still comes under what I categorised as 'positive rebirth', which means it's essentially still in the realm of 'becoming'. (I think reefs recently put something up from one of his sources where they talked about that in terms of "more, more, more".) Anyway, it's just that it's a better quality becoming because it's an informed becoming, which as I say, from a certain perspective can be considered as the foundation for the cessation of becoming. I'm afraid some of these somewhat isolated and esoteric ways of talking about this stuff probably don't mean a lot, and I apologise for that. Right, I'm not sure practicing detachment as you put it will get you all that far. That does sound like a recipe for suppression, and from my experience you'd probably just end up with a nervous tic. The degree of detachment I was talking about tends to come about quite naturally as a result of insight (realisation) resulting in the mitigating of the arising of the second dart (which is equivalent to the suffering part of that equation). Obviously I know enough to duck any sustained conversation about the correlation between practice and realisation, hehe Sometimes darts are best just avoided .. hey no need to apologize, I appreciate your engagement on the topic. Stoic detachment can give a peep more than just a problem with their nerves, although my guess is that for most, the stress of the suppression involved will eventually take it's toll somewhere, somewhen. But it makes for effective soldiers, nanny's, salespeeps, managers, customer service reps (especially phone reps) and can be quite key to success in the art of romantic seduction. What's clear is there's a disparity between the common Western conception of suffering, certainly the way the subject is approached here on the forum, and seemingly in advaita generally, and the more encompassing conception of dukkha that the Buddha taught, which really was the very cornerstone of the teaching. For example dukkha encompasses both pain and suffering, but really it's much broader and runs much deeper than all that. Here I want to say something like, it's literally an aspect of the manifest (including mind), or that it's intrinsic to the arising … to the very generation of structure itself, because structure is ultimately empty and transient. But to do so is still unsatisfactory, because it's not really a quality as such. I sense this is sailing pretty close to where I'm coming from and I'm sure you'll understand when I say that in the final analysis such thingless things can only be known directly, and pointed to. The inability to be able to encapsulate dukkha in terms and conceptualities, is dukkha! But I'm digressing a bit. Maxy's written on this meaning of dukka a few times before, and I think of it in the simple terms of the fact of entropy. I can't speak to the treatment of the topic by traditional, authoritative AV sources .. too bad Tony (Satchitananda) isn't around to chime in on that. I'd say that the past forum dialogs about suffering have compensated for a deficit of foundation on this point with an enthusiastic exhaustion of the various possible approaches to the subject. They way that I understand how suffering and a quiet mind relate to awakening currently is in terms of a dichotomy of witnessing. In one form, there is a person making relative observation, with a sense of psychological detachment, but without any conscious engagement on the question of what is witnessing. I've been referring to that as the material witnessing of the Stoics, and I see it related to what E' calls the "split-mind". The way I see it, until self-realization, any process of quieting the mind through directing attention will have some facet of a material split-mind. After realization witnessing may or may not happen, and if and how often and how involved would depend on the nature of the conditioning of the individual at the time of realization. But this after-the fact observation is free of the illusion of personal identity. So awakening, as I see it, is pre-realization, but involves some level of conscious engagement with the notion of what is observing. Now people might look back and say that they never engaged with self-inquiry in this way, and I wouldn't necessarily question the fact of their realization, but I think that it might be possible to shoehorn many of the stories into the template somehow.
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Post by ouroboros on Dec 21, 2017 11:39:10 GMT -5
Sometimes darts are best just avoided .. hey no need to apologize, I appreciate your engagement on the topic. Stoic detachment can give a peep more than just a problem with their nerves, although my guess is that for most, the stress of the suppression involved will eventually take it's toll somewhere, somewhen. But it makes for effective soldiers, nanny's, salespeeps, managers, customer service reps (especially phone reps) and can be quite key to success in the art of romantic seduction. It's kind of you to say. Yep, and I'm sure you'll agree that genuine detachment is commonly underestimated, and often mistakenly confused with apathy. Sat seemed convinced that advaita and buddhism were ultimately pointing to the same thing, but I never really saw it that way. At least not with his and pretty much every other AV proponent I've seen here on the forum's interpretation. It's said that the Buddha cut his teeth on the vedic and brahmanical stuff - being the prevalent theosophy of the age, but eventually came to see it as incomplete. An event which was the catalyst for his coming to rest beneath the bodhi tree and vowing not to move until he came to know the Truth or died. It's apparent to me there are some fairly major differences between Self-'doctrine' (as generally expounded) and the middle way teaching. For example, dependant origination is basically a comprehensive and detailed exposition of the process by which sentient beings arise and fall in a cyclical fashion, so in perpetuity, prior to liberation. Basically the tathagata deconstructed what the brahmana taught as atman in the upanisads, which imho, mostly seems to just lead to the opposite extreme to the more commonplace self-identification. It expresses subtlely as Self-identification (although disclaimed) with tinges of attikavada (i.e. affirmationism - posits an unchanging Self as a subject) & natthikavada i.e. (nihilism - denies moral responsibility). To be clear that's not what the Buddha taught, and actively cautioned against such views, realising them to be subtle mind anchors inhibiting more profound insight, and ultimately, true liberation. In fairness to sat I'm obliged to point out that he argued vehemently against that second tinge. Dukkha, as entropy is good, although it's said that, as a rule of thumb: as soon as you think you've found the single best translation for the word, think again, for no matter how you describe dukkha, it's always deeper, subtler, and more unsatisfactory than that. It's certainly true that the riverbank analogy only works so far, and whilst in a certain context we can talk in terms of a person making observation, as you put it, ultimately the expression in its entirety is a process of observation, as the d/s exp demonstrates. In fact the only reason we can use the 'person observing' context, is because the path expression - in its entirety- takes, is a sort of feedback loop, so we talk in that 'person context' as observation being a sort of sense (sensory) derivative. But that's only ever half the equation, it's a limited view that breaks down under sustained scrutiny, as you know. We have to talk about how the observer is the observed, but really that is just, the arise and fall of observation as - the path expression takes. Also known as 'perception is creation'. Yes, but it is possible to use a thorn to remove a thorn, and end up with no thorns. Really that's simply the path liberation takes. And in the broadest sense that after the fact observation is still 'proto-thorny', hehe. Still becoming, still founded upon ignorance, and still subject to dukkha.
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Post by laughter on Dec 22, 2017 7:25:58 GMT -5
hmmm .. that example you gave about the girl is rather filled out. Quite lifelike, actually. Did it happen to someone you know, a "friend of yours"? As far as the Adyashanti idea goes, well, it can be interesting to explore in terms of walking/talking eyes-open meditation, and I offered it as a particular example of a meaning of ego that is distinct from the notion of a person. With self-realization, something ends. No person is all ego, and also, ego is sometimes impersonal in that it can source from a group identity. We could say that an illusion ends with self-realization, and from there all the different permutations on the meanings of these words progress. The progression can get all the more interesting the less attachment is made to specific couplings between meanings and words, like ego, and person, as comparing the different uses can sometimes get really interesting. dude. told you months ago. it's like this. This is why I was borrowing Plant's poetry to try to get across how I see the inherent reactivity of human experience as relevant to awakening, self-realization and enlightenment, and my counterpoint about perfection. I even had to edit the borrowed phrasing as the first version was too ambiguous even for a half-assed poem. Ego is as comical as it is absurd, and absurdity is at the heart of all humor. McKenna got this across with a particular deftness in his first book. The instant of laughter is a sort of free-fall, as the mind is suddenly robbed of it's footing, and I've experienced a kind of metaphorical free-fall during silent, sitting meditation that involves a feeling of sort of dissociating from physicality and a deepening into the emptiness of a quiet mind. Is this the experience of falling that you were referring to? I'd say a reaction is sometimes the only way to perpetuate a movement, but that this is completely removed from that falling down. I was referring falling like a free fall. It's not really metaphorical, just not physical. The reaction obviously prevents things. I mean things are moving changing by their nature and the 'fright', that grasping, really only brings one back to the safety of 'the known'. I thought that was a really obvious way to illustrate my point on reactivity. Oh then I am well acquainted with this sense of falling you're referring to. If it's not a literal pull on your body by gravity then of course it's metaphorical. But I still don't relate to the reactivity cutting it off, because by the time I'd started meditating the old identity had been shattered by "The Power of Now". I actually seek out that sensation when I sit, and it's more like a peaceful expansive weightlessness. The bottom line was that I was offering the counterpoint of the present perfection that is the fact of every human being in response to the notion of a process of perfecting the purity of buddhahood. Sure - it isn't an issue of judgment, but more like one of honesty. I think of it as, 'all things are seen with the eyes of love' so there's no worthiness issue at all when it comes to 'impurity'. Actually, come to think of it, non-judgment is instrumental to the process. Well see now that's all sensible, simple, insightful and clear, but it takes all of the fun out of waxing poetic about it.
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Post by lolly on Dec 22, 2017 7:52:51 GMT -5
hmmm .. that example you gave about the girl is rather filled out. Quite lifelike, actually. Did it happen to someone you know, a "friend of yours"? It happens to near enough everyone, I thought. Me maybe 3 time already. (not that they root tantra types, cheated or died or anything - that's just an imaginary scenario. My life was not nearly that entertaining. In a spiritual context I stick to ego = 'false sense of self'. I listened to an Ady talk the other night, and he seems pretty nuanced compared to the general run of the mill. dude. told you months ago. it's like this. I was referring falling like a free fall. It's not really metaphorical, just not physical. The reaction obviously prevents things. I mean things are moving changing by their nature and the 'fright', that grasping, really only brings one back to the safety of 'the known'. I thought that was a really obvious way to illustrate my point on reactivity. Oh then I am well acquainted with this sense of falling you're referring to. If it's not a literal pull on your body by gravity then of course it's metaphorical. But I still don't relate to the reactivity cutting it off, because by the time I'd started meditating the old identity had been shattered by "The Power of Now". I actually seek out that sensation when I sit, and it's more like a peaceful expansive weightlessness.
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Post by lolly on Dec 22, 2017 7:54:06 GMT -5
The quotey things get really hard with the emojis and stuff can bately read the BBcode in that one
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Post by laughter on Dec 22, 2017 23:30:14 GMT -5
The quotey things get really hard with the emojis and stuff can bately read the BBcode in that one
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Post by laughter on Dec 22, 2017 23:33:40 GMT -5
In a spiritual context I stick to ego = 'false sense of self'. I listened to an Ady talk the other night, and he seems pretty nuanced compared to the general run of the mill. Oh, well in those terms then I'd say that ego can return after awakening but not after self-realization. I can't really speak to the way that ZD was referring to enlightenment because I'd just be imagining something that's not within my experience, but it would seem to me that realization would be prerequisite to enlightenment, so no such thing as enlightened ego (teehee).
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Post by laughter on Dec 23, 2017 1:09:27 GMT -5
Oh peaceful expance is pretty common too, but when it's like like, whoosh, that, like falling, can bring a strong grasping as well. I do find it strange that meditator doesn't realise that reactivity is what stops 'the flow'. I go deep sometimes -- deep enough to lose touch with all sensation but ambient noise and any breeze (and those are faint) -- and it depends on alot of factors. One time I stood up from a bench outside, walked to my car, and was so disoriented I backed into another car, demolition derby style. It was like 40 feet away and the only other car in a big 'ole lot. And I feel that feeling of falling sometimes, it's just that for me it's all very gentle and gradual. Not that there aren't discontinuities sometimes, but that those discontinuities don't ever cause me to react to them. Like I said, by the time I'd started meditating the reactive pattern of thought and emotion that would have generated the fear you're alluding to had been shattered.
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Post by etolle on Dec 23, 2017 9:33:04 GMT -5
when you say unexpected grace,what exactly do you mean?..how long does direct contact with inner silence last? Unexpected grace? In this case, it's like suddenly remembering with vivid clarity something you didn't know you had forgotten. Direct contact? It can be poorly compared to entering the cold atlantic waters off a new england beach in summer - at first the experience is a shock to the system, but after a while one becomes more and more acclimated to it, and soon swims, plays and frolics within it with natural ease. thanks a lot for this explanation.very clear now
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