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Post by heretic on Jun 24, 2011 15:42:09 GMT -5
I'm trying to think what would scare the crap out of me... I once had the experience of trying to breathe(because I was not breathing at all) when I slipped out of the silence during meditation. While trying to catch my breath, I had the feeling of falling and I couldn't stop it..... Frightening, yes. But a few days later, I received the knowledge of what had taken place. I liked your falling in med story, so you have a sense about what I'm talking about... Of course there's nothing you can 'think' of that can scare the crap out of you... Maybe induce a little physiological fear... I'm talking about a real 'physical' encounter between the ego/mind and the existing non conceptual world. It's the mind's catastrophic reaction to seeing that non conceptual world and how it stops the minds continuance of the world. The world of everyday perception. The mind upholds the everyday world through it's projections, but when there is a disruption, through an illness or an accident, or drugs, etc... That continuity collapses and if the mind can't rebuild the continuity quickly enough, it faces it's own worst nightmare, the realization that it is an illusion. And since the mind and body are connected, that temporary ego/mind death manifests as a physical jolt in the body... The body is resilient though and can handle most jolts. But for some who don't want to take that chance, it's safer to be virtually (intellectually) awakened, rather than actually awakened... Reality and our reaction to it is entirely individual and unpredictable. I now interpret it as an intense, and I do mean INTENSE erotic opening (After all, we are meeting Pure Love for the first time), but it was experienced as a complete collapse of my defenses. FEAR (I kinda remember someone saying that fear of God is the beginning of knowledge) What now feels like the expansion of soul into infinite space for me, may feel like a terrifying fall into the void for someone else. The illusory self is still here. I trust the process will take care of that one day, too.
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Post by therealfake on Jun 24, 2011 16:32:50 GMT -5
Yes, that's all true and it's perfectly fine... Have you ever physically seen or experienced a dirt devil, you know that swirling wind, that seems to meander about, even though it's not a windy day? What we call reality labels that experience as 'wind' and the mind doesn't think much about it... Why would it, it doesn't see anything except it's own memories of "wind" it's own projection of all it's knowledge 'about' wind... The reality that we 'call' wind, is non conceptual, meaning we really don't 'know' what it is... But we 'act' like we do and so we take the world for granted... When you can see that the world is non conceptual, and not as you 'think' it is, you've just learned a new appreciation for everything in the universe... Including yourself, which I think you already have... Peace out...
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Post by heretic on Jun 24, 2011 16:43:02 GMT -5
Yes, that's all true and it's perfectly fine... Have you ever physically seen or experienced a dirt devil, you know that swirling wind, that seems to meander about, even though it's not a windy day? What we call reality labels that experience as 'wind' and the mind doesn't think much about it... Why would it, it doesn't see anything except it's own memories of "wind" it's own projection of all it's knowledge 'about' wind... The reality that we 'call' wind, is non conceptual, meaning we really don't 'know' what it is... But we 'act' like we do and so we take the world for granted... When you can see that the world is non conceptual, and not as you 'think' it is, you've just learned a new appreciation for everything in the universe... Including yourself, which I think you already have... Peace out... You know what bugs me? When I'm watching the weather on tv, and some meteorologist says, "The winds are really calm tonight." I start taking to the tv at this point...."Well, if the winds are really calm, then they aren't really winds are they, Mr. Meteorologist!? I don't know why I've allowed this to go on as long as I have! ;D peace out...
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2011 17:45:19 GMT -5
I would say a more useful 'noticing' would be the ability to not see what we don't want to see. I see this ability demonstrated every day on these forums and it continues to amaze me. would i be illustrating this perfectly if i said now: No comprendo? in this case what i don't want to see would be the truth of what you are saying. and, instead of noticing my ability to not see this, i just see it and express, once again, No Comprendo. could you give an example of someone demonstrating this thing that amazes you? i'm interested but don't get it.
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Post by mamza on Jun 24, 2011 19:46:29 GMT -5
I would go with 2) aswell, but I'm not sure that it's correct. @"Seeing no-self in a split second and still wanting "self" to permanently fall away." I'm not really sure what you're expecting. When you see no-self in a split second, do you see that the belief that there is a traditional self is unjustified? Or does the seeing also include how the "sense of self" and "sense of doership" are simply impersonal events? If the latter are simple biological processes, why do you want them to fall away? Maybe they aren't at all manifestations of a self-delusion and will contunue even after enlightenment? Do you want some sort of a depersonalization state? I've done the no-self excercises a few months ago and have discovered that sense of self and sense of doership are just processes and that the thought "I am" is circular and doesn't refer to an entity and doesn't even refer to the sense of self. But I would be very reluctant to call it a realization, and it seems to be in the realm of intellectual knowledge based on phenomenological observation and deriving of conclusions based on the observations. So I've never had a subtle mind-blowing realization event and no feeling of liberation or freedom associated with it. Though I too can in a split second align with the seeing of experience empty of a self by simply directing attention towards actual experience. But there's still the nagging doubt that I've never looked in the way RT recommends, and hencely I am not sure that I've realized no-self as RT recommends. There's a little too much going on in this thread for me to take it all in, so I'm just going to respond to this post because I've been responding to you already anyway. When I see no self in a split second, it's not that I'm seeing something. I don't see other beliefs as unjustified, or others as justified. What I see is whatever's happening. No-self is synonymous with attending the actual for me, because the feeling I got when RT showed me 'no self' is the same feeling I get when attention is on the actual. In this 'place' (not that it's a place), there is most often 0 mental noise going on. Sometimes there is, and it just floats on by, but most of the time there isn't much going on upstairs. Now there's this idea that it's robotic or zombie-like because there's nothing personal about it. There's no 'I like this instead of that'. All there is is what's going on around me. I know this to be the 'normal' state of mind because it happens before any thinking, questioning, or anything comes into the picture. It's 100% passive. I don't expect anything; I don't try to accomplish anything other than what I'm doing. Liberation, freedom, and mind-blowing experiences are jack to me. If that's all I wanted I'd take a bunch of acid or some other crazy drug every day, you know? There are much easier ways to be happy than to go through all these hoops. I have had one or two moments when I thought, "Holy shit, this is it"---but as soon as I took that thought seriously it ended. It wasn't like I was floating in another dimension made of total orgasm or anything, more like a constant state of astonishment. All I could say was, "Holy shit." Trying to get that back is pointless. It was a side effect of something that happened, and trying to reach that place again isn't going to work because at that time everything in existence led up to that spot--there's no way to duplicate that. At this point all I want to do is just fall back to 'normal' (not that there's abnormal) and simply function the way I function at any given time. Happy-> happy. Sad-> sad.
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Post by enigma on Jun 24, 2011 19:55:26 GMT -5
@max:
Where this sort of unconscious self distraction always seems to show up is discussions of non-volition. When we talk about what oneness REALLY means, it seems to also happen. (Not on this forum so much, which is why it's appreciated. )
Dunno what to say about it, really, just a constant avoidance of the obvious in some very creative ways.
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Post by mamza on Jun 24, 2011 20:38:23 GMT -5
I never see the damn mustard bottle when it's right in front of me.
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Post by therealfake on Jun 24, 2011 21:56:47 GMT -5
In the rain forest they have discovered the most amazing insects, called tree hoppers...
They're tiny and if you weren't looking for them, you wouldn't even notice them.
They have the weirdest shapes imaginable, alien like, and some that are so camouflaged they look just like tiny cut leaves, or bumps of stems.
Once discovered, they found out that there were literally hundreds of species and a different tree could have a completely different species.
The point is they were discovered because somebody looked...
They took the time to look at what was there and not at what the mind told them what was there...
You don't see the mustard bottle because your looking at everything you 'know' about a mustard bottle.
The mind isn't actually thinking at all, it's just going through the data bank, the memory, of every thing 'mustard bottle'...
Is it within the realm of the human manifestation to experience the real mustard bottle?
Is that non conceptual mustard bottle part of what God wants to experience through the human form?
Just musing, cause I like mustard... especially on hot hopper dog's...
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Post by question on Jun 24, 2011 22:34:22 GMT -5
There's a little too much going on in this thread for me to take it all in, so I'm just going to respond to this post because I've been responding to you already anyway. When I see no self in a split second, it's not that I'm seeing something. I don't see other beliefs as unjustified, or others as justified. What I see is whatever's happening. No-self is synonymous with attending the actual for me, because the feeling I got when RT showed me 'no self' is the same feeling I get when attention is on the actual. In this 'place' (not that it's a place), there is most often 0 mental noise going on. Sometimes there is, and it just floats on by, but most of the time there isn't much going on upstairs. Now there's this idea that it's robotic or zombie-like because there's nothing personal about it. There's no 'I like this instead of that'. All there is is what's going on around me. I know this to be the 'normal' state of mind because it happens before any thinking, questioning, or anything comes into the picture. It's 100% passive. I don't expect anything; I don't try to accomplish anything other than what I'm doing. Thanks for clarifying. This is pretty much my experience, too. I can add that for me it's not like a special place and maybe there's another special place and yet another... it just seems to be the place of the awareness not swept by the content of thoughts and instead remaining on the actual (the other place is simply when attention is sucked into thoughts). So in ATA there is indeed a sort of not-knowing and yet, strangely, if I expose ideas and beliefs to that place then it affects those very ideas and beliefs. So maybe it's not a fair generalisation to claim this place exclusively for no-self, but rather that when exposed to ATA the belief in a self begins to crumble, in a similar way as any other belief crumbles when exposed to ATA.
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Post by enigma on Jun 24, 2011 23:16:50 GMT -5
I never see the d**n mustard bottle when it's right in front of me. Maybe if you painted it bright yellow or sumthin?..........Oh, wait!
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Post by mamza on Jun 25, 2011 0:47:02 GMT -5
I never see the d**n mustard bottle when it's right in front of me. Maybe if you painted it bright yellow or sumthin?..........Oh, wait! That always makes my mom so mad... but all I can do is laugh and say goddammit.
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Post by heretic on Jun 25, 2011 9:07:58 GMT -5
Yes, that's all true and it's perfectly fine. So, it's possible that ekstasis was transcended in the state of no-thought, and a merging took place. No breath (as though it had been sucked out of the lungs- it was a real struggle to breathe once again) and falling were the corresponding subtle (the first time- not so much) subjective events in the central nervous system. It still happens on occasion. I'm no longer afraid of it.
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Post by heretic on Jun 25, 2011 9:30:30 GMT -5
Yes, that's all true and it's perfectly fine. So, it's possible that ekstasis was transcended in the state of no-thought, and a merging took place. No breath (as though it had been sucked out of the lungs- it was a real struggle to breathe once again) and falling were the corresponding subtle (the first time- not so much) subjective events in the central nervous system. It still happens on occasion. I'm no longer afraid of it. In fact, I liken it to the peace which surpasses all understanding. I'm being told I have to go out and cut the grass. I don't understand that. It's grass. It's supposed to grow. Who am I to interfere? ;D Have a fun day, bro.
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Post by therealfake on Jun 25, 2011 9:39:28 GMT -5
Yes, that's all true and it's perfectly fine. So, it's possible that ekstasis was transcended in the state of no-thought, and a merging took place. No breath (as though it had been sucked out of the lungs- it was a real struggle to breathe once again) and falling were the corresponding subtle (the first time- not so much) subjective events in the central nervous system. It still happens on occasion. I'm no longer afraid of it. You call it falling because you 'know' falling conceptually... Interestingly, you didn't consider being pulled, as opposed to falling, in your explanation of that experience. I mean without a reference point and no thought about it, how would you know the difference between falling or being pulled or even flying? Sorry, that's what a moment of silence does...
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Post by mamza on Jun 25, 2011 11:31:05 GMT -5
...A moment of silence makes you think about alternative ways to describe falling? That's unusual.
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