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Post by mamza on Jun 10, 2011 15:53:25 GMT -5
Say, something just occurred to me. I wanted to ask, "Can't I be in the moment and think at the same time? Be fully present to body sensations and mind at the same time?"
What occurred to me is that engaging even one thought, one tiny layer of whatever on top of what is brings about the whole dualism dealio. "I'm in the moment, but there's also this over here!" It becomes a 'let's do both' instead of 'this is it.' Sneaky sneaky sneaky! Not really, but har har anyway.
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Post by zendancer on Jun 10, 2011 16:40:12 GMT -5
Say, something just occurred to me. I wanted to ask, "Can't I be in the moment and think at the same time? Be fully present to body sensations and mind at the same time?" What occurred to me is that engaging even one thought, one tiny layer of whatever on top of what is brings about the whole dualism dealio. "I'm in the moment, but there's also this over here!" It becomes a 'let's do both' instead of 'this is it.' Sneaky sneaky sneaky! Not really, but har har anyway. Ha ha. How could you get out of this moment? This moment is all there is, so everything happens in this moment. As for your second question, you should investigate that for yourself. Find out if you can attend the actual and the imaginary at the same time. Is that possible, or is attention shifting back and forth very rapidly between the two?
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Post by therealfake on Jun 10, 2011 17:29:53 GMT -5
Say, something just occurred to me. I wanted to ask, "Can't I be in the moment and think at the same time? Be fully present to body sensations and mind at the same time?" What occurred to me is that engaging even one thought, one tiny layer of whatever on top of what is brings about the whole dualism dealio. "I'm in the moment, but there's also this over here!" It becomes a 'let's do both' instead of 'this is it.' Sneaky sneaky sneaky! Not really, but har har anyway. I’ve read where, in the moment, thoughts are being created, seemingly spontaneously. Usually they are about the past, but they can also arise as an unfolding in the present moment. It’s possible to have a thought be seen as an insight in the immediacy of the moment. That particular thought would be in touch with the very moment in which it sprang. When direct perception forms an insight from a thought, you have literally created a new kind of thought, a creative one. Either it’s true or not, I can’t really say…
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Post by teetown on Jun 11, 2011 8:59:21 GMT -5
I've noticed you say this a lot. I'm glad you've found a place to put all this reading knowledge to good use.
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Post by enigma on Jun 11, 2011 9:54:15 GMT -5
I've noticed you say this a lot. I'm glad you've found a place to put all this reading knowledge to good use. Sometimes we get tired of having our personal understanding challenged.
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Post by therealfake on Jun 11, 2011 12:52:48 GMT -5
I've noticed you say this a lot. I'm glad you've found a place to put all this reading knowledge to good use. Hahaha... You've 'noticed'!!...well done ...you've realized your 'noticing' has a scope of about 2 posts and one day... ;D
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Post by mamza on Jun 11, 2011 12:53:59 GMT -5
Say, something just occurred to me. I wanted to ask, "Can't I be in the moment and think at the same time? Be fully present to body sensations and mind at the same time?" What occurred to me is that engaging even one thought, one tiny layer of whatever on top of what is brings about the whole dualism dealio. "I'm in the moment, but there's also this over here!" It becomes a 'let's do both' instead of 'this is it.' Sneaky sneaky sneaky! Not really, but har har anyway. Ha ha. How could you get out of this moment? This moment is all there is, so everything happens in this moment. As for your second question, you should investigate that for yourself. Find out if you can attend the actual and the imaginary at the same time. Is that possible, or is attention shifting back and forth very rapidly between the two? I'd like to think that it's possible to do both at the same time, and sometimes it really seems like it's possible. I can't seem to do it though. Something is always passively seen--be it reality or imagination. And I guess that makes sense even from a logical point of view: how do you be fully present to two things at once? They'd have to be the same thing. Everything is one thing, but the only thing to be present to when I'm dreaming of a three headed dragon is the fact that I'm dreaming and not the dragon itself. I'm trying to do this now, and I'm getting to points where I THINK it's happening, but I can't say with 100% certainty that it is. I'm pretty sure it isn't happening because I'm thinking it's happening rather than seeing it happening. When I'm seeing, there's no thinking going on; and when I'm thinking, there's no seeing going on. I might have to toy with this a little more. Something's not connecting.
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Post by enigma on Jun 11, 2011 13:39:04 GMT -5
Attention is single pointed. That's why watching for the next thought stops all thoughts but the thought to watch for the next thought. You can attend to the senses or you can attend to the thoughts. As Zen says, most of us shift rapidly between the two, but attending the actual leaves no 'tracks' in the mind. There are no 'breadcrumbs' to follow back to that experience. It's here, and then it's gone.
The thoughts create the illusion of a kind of permanence, and so even though it is unreal, it can seem more real by virtue of the fact that it's a memory that can be recalled now, so we begin to imagine that the thought world is real, and the actual word is ignored. We learn to live in the thought world and just use the actual as data to feed that world. We literally think of the senses as data input, which implies that our attention is focused on what we can do with the data in our thought world.
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Post by heretic on Jun 11, 2011 14:31:24 GMT -5
Imagination is fun stuff. Now we all know that we get caught up in our thoughts and all that meta-reality stuff being discussed in other threads, but how many of you have noticed that imagination can cause wonderful things even while 'looking from that place'? What I mean is difficult to describe, so I'll give a little imagery: Driving down the road is very clear-headed for me most of the time. I turn on some tunes or roll down the windows and passively listen and look at the same time. Overload those senses. So anyway, the whole subject-object relationship breaks down a bit and for whatever reason, I started imagining I was in a spaceship. It wasn't normal imagining, though. I was completely present, but part of that presence included the imagining of the car as a spaceship. The only thing I was aware of was what I was directly seeing, hearing, and feeling--the windshield (and the supports holding it in place), the radio, and the seat/driver's wheel. But there was also an unbelievably fantastic adventure feel to it. I seriously thought I was blasting through space which just happened to look like earth. I knew I wasn't, but I thought I was. The two sort of fused together to make awesome. I guess the point is that imagination is part of the oneness dealio. I don't know what it is about this stuff, but I can't shake that awesome adventury feel off when isness becomes clear. The truly spiritual comes from the power of a high imagination, not from weak pious beliefs, nor from intellectual activities of the mind. Practices may help to clear our thoughts, but their relation to spiritual vision is that of grammar to living language, or of poetics to soul-uplifting poetry. The spiritual vision, like the poetical vision, is not an analysis, it is not even a synthesis: it is the joy of truth revealed to a living soul. Every spiritual, poetical, or creative vision comes from imagination- because imagination is the light of the soul. Without imagination we cannot have faith, because "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Things not seen, of course, by reason or by the eyes of the body, but seen by the spirit. Without imagination there is no vision and no creation. Most of the miseries of man, such as selfishness, injustice, and cruelty, have their root in a lack of imagination. But imagination is not fancy. Tagore says, "The stronger is the imagination, the less imaginary it is." Fancies disturb the mind, and may lead to destruction; but imagination is an inner light which with the help of reason leads to construction. He who accepts Nature's flow is all-cherishing.
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Post by enigma on Jun 11, 2011 14:56:43 GMT -5
"Most of the miseries of man, such as selfishness, injustice, and cruelty, have their root in a lack of imagination."
Oddly enough, all of those things have their root in imagination. Hehe.
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Post by heretic on Jun 11, 2011 15:00:00 GMT -5
In imagination imagining itself to be separate?
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Post by zendancer on Jun 11, 2011 15:02:57 GMT -5
Imagination is fun stuff. Now we all know that we get caught up in our thoughts and all that meta-reality stuff being discussed in other threads, but how many of you have noticed that imagination can cause wonderful things even while 'looking from that place'? What I mean is difficult to describe, so I'll give a little imagery: Driving down the road is very clear-headed for me most of the time. I turn on some tunes or roll down the windows and passively listen and look at the same time. Overload those senses. So anyway, the whole subject-object relationship breaks down a bit and for whatever reason, I started imagining I was in a spaceship. It wasn't normal imagining, though. I was completely present, but part of that presence included the imagining of the car as a spaceship. The only thing I was aware of was what I was directly seeing, hearing, and feeling--the windshield (and the supports holding it in place), the radio, and the seat/driver's wheel. But there was also an unbelievably fantastic adventure feel to it. I seriously thought I was blasting through space which just happened to look like earth. I knew I wasn't, but I thought I was. The two sort of fused together to make awesome. I guess the point is that imagination is part of the oneness dealio. I don't know what it is about this stuff, but I can't shake that awesome adventury feel off when isness becomes clear. The truly spiritual comes from the power of a high imagination, not from weak pious beliefs, nor from intellectual activities of the mind. Practices may help to clear our thoughts, but their relation to spiritual vision is that of grammar to living language, or of poetics to soul-uplifting poetry. The spiritual vision, like the poetical vision, is not an analysis, it is not even a synthesis: it is the joy of truth revealed to a living soul. Every spiritual, poetical, or creative vision comes from imagination- because imagination is the light of the soul. Without imagination we cannot have faith, because "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Things not seen, of course, by reason or by the eyes of the body, but seen by the spirit. Without imagination there is no vision and no creation. Most of the miseries of man, such as selfishness, injustice, and cruelty, have their root in a lack of imagination. But imagination is not fancy. Tagore says, "The stronger is the imagination, the less imaginary it is." Fancies disturb the mind, and may lead to destruction; but imagination is an inner light which with the help of reason leads to construction. He who accepts Nature's flow is all-cherishing.
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Post by zendancer on Jun 11, 2011 15:12:38 GMT -5
Imagination is fun stuff. Now we all know that we get caught up in our thoughts and all that meta-reality stuff being discussed in other threads, but how many of you have noticed that imagination can cause wonderful things even while 'looking from that place'? What I mean is difficult to describe, so I'll give a little imagery: Driving down the road is very clear-headed for me most of the time. I turn on some tunes or roll down the windows and passively listen and look at the same time. Overload those senses. So anyway, the whole subject-object relationship breaks down a bit and for whatever reason, I started imagining I was in a spaceship. It wasn't normal imagining, though. I was completely present, but part of that presence included the imagining of the car as a spaceship. The only thing I was aware of was what I was directly seeing, hearing, and feeling--the windshield (and the supports holding it in place), the radio, and the seat/driver's wheel. But there was also an unbelievably fantastic adventure feel to it. I seriously thought I was blasting through space which just happened to look like earth. I knew I wasn't, but I thought I was. The two sort of fused together to make awesome. I guess the point is that imagination is part of the oneness dealio. I don't know what it is about this stuff, but I can't shake that awesome adventury feel off when isness becomes clear. The truly spiritual comes from the power of a high imagination, not from weak pious beliefs, nor from intellectual activities of the mind. Practices may help to clear our thoughts, but their relation to spiritual vision is that of grammar to living language, or of poetics to soul-uplifting poetry. The spiritual vision, like the poetical vision, is not an analysis, it is not even a synthesis: it is the joy of truth revealed to a living soul. Every spiritual, poetical, or creative vision comes from imagination- because imagination is the light of the soul. Without imagination we cannot have faith, because "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Things not seen, of course, by reason or by the eyes of the body, but seen by the spirit. Without imagination there is no vision and no creation. Most of the miseries of man, such as selfishness, injustice, and cruelty, have their root in a lack of imagination. But imagination is not fancy. Tagore says, "The stronger is the imagination, the less imaginary it is." Fancies disturb the mind, and may lead to destruction; but imagination is an inner light which with the help of reason leads to construction. He who accepts Nature's flow is all-cherishing. Ummmmm.....I would say that the exact opposite of this is true. Imagination is a weak substitute for reality, yet it is worshipped by contemporary artists and visionaries because they don;t know of anything more powerful. I would prefer one thimbleful of reality to a universe full of imagination. Faith is only necessary as a precursor to direct experience. I may have faith that the Eiffel Tower exists, but after I travel to Paris and see the rusty steel girders for myself, I don't need to have faith. The same is true of God. Faith in God is fine, but direct experience is a million times more powerful. Paraphrasing Tagore, I would say that the stronger the imagination is, the less imaginary it SEEMS.
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Post by heretic on Jun 11, 2011 15:27:03 GMT -5
But isn't the womb of creation the ultimate manifestation of imagination?
Faith is a good starting point to travel the road to direct experience. In my experience, hope would be the obstacle after beginning the journey.
I liked the paraphrasing in both your, and Tagore's insights.
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Post by zendancer on Jun 11, 2011 15:56:42 GMT -5
But isn't the womb of creation the ultimate manifestation of imagination? Faith is a good starting point to travel the road to direct experience. In my experience, hope would be the obstacle after beginning the journey. I liked the paraphrasing in both your, and Tagore's insights. Ha ha! I don;t know what the "womb of creation" is, but there's a whole lot I don't know. LOL Yes, hope can be a very big obstacle. We might ask, "Who is it that would be hoping for what?"
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