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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2014 14:36:25 GMT -5
I see. I experience the focus of attention as both seemingly being directed by the mind and also having a mind of it's own. It's not a problem really, what's your take on it? Pretty much the same as yours. There's sometimes the rupa of deliberate, chosen focus of attention but the rupa of the separate isolated focuser just doesn't come into focus anymore. Can you tell me more about the rupa of the separate isolated focuser that doesn't come into focus anymore? Are you referring to the idea that what we are is a separate isolated bundle of thoughts and feelings?
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Post by laughter on Apr 10, 2014 18:40:04 GMT -5
Pretty much the same as yours. There's sometimes the rupa of deliberate, chosen focus of attention but the rupa of the separate isolated focuser just doesn't come into focus anymore. Can you tell me more about the rupa of the separate isolated focuser that doesn't come into focus anymore? Are you referring to the idea that what we are is a separate isolated bundle of thoughts and feelings? For most of my life I had an on-again-off-again strong sense of localized self (mostly on-again) -- an internal narrative of thought and feeling that located a "me in here" that felt like it was in my head. ZD has described this as "a little man in the head pulling levers", and while I find that metaphor delightfully comic, it is apt. The little guy is gone ... but I had no formal practice leading up to the event of his vanishing act, and likely because of that, as time has gone on since then there's been this witnessing of all the patterns that used to rely on the little-head-guy. That's likely gonna go on for some time. A metaphor I've used to describe this recently is like a bicycle wheel rolling along and all of a sudden the hub just vanishes ... the wheel still rolls with the spokes flailing around. Attention is shifted, focused, contracted, etc.. -- sometimes plans are made when necessary, but any deliberation, any isolated independent and localized autonomous direction of those processes is seen clearly as appearance.
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Post by laughter on Apr 10, 2014 18:52:44 GMT -5
Heard this tune drivin' back from the slopes this afternoon: I remember the first time I heard it all those years ago .. how the song just grabbed me and held me in a state of emotional catharsis. Wow, the why of that is pretty clear these days. This is another case of unconscious vector toward the truth, this time based on the pointer that is the impermanence of all form. Jimmy physically deals us the sense of the fleeting. He modulates a solid foreground beat and riff with several different ephemeral elements including backwards guitar, fading leads and fading rhythms. It's as if we can feel the heavy syncopation of the relentless foreground rhythm chords just going up on smoke ... somehow it seems to me as if he's successfully signaled senses other than our hearing with this, what I consider his finest piece of work.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2014 12:16:52 GMT -5
Can you tell me more about the rupa of the separate isolated focuser that doesn't come into focus anymore? Are you referring to the idea that what we are is a separate isolated bundle of thoughts and feelings? For most of my life I had an on-again-off-again strong sense of localized self (mostly on-again) -- an internal narrative of thought and feeling that located a "me in here" that felt like it was in my head. ZD has described this as "a little man in the head pulling levers", and while I find that metaphor delightfully comic, it is apt. The little guy is gone ... but I had no formal practice leading up to the event of his vanishing act, and likely because of that, as time has gone on since then there's been this witnessing of all the patterns that used to rely on the little-head-guy. That's likely gonna go on for some time. A metaphor I've used to describe this recently is like a bicycle wheel rolling along and all of a sudden the hub just vanishes ... the wheel still rolls with the spokes flailing around. Attention is shifted, focused, contracted, etc.. -- sometimes plans are made when necessary, but any deliberation, any isolated independent and localized autonomous direction of those processes is seen clearly as appearance. You use the term sense of a localized self and that it has vanished. Is it possible that the localized sense of self has been replaced with a non-localized sense of self? Or would that like a localized sense of self, also be clearly seen as an appearance?
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Post by laughter on Apr 11, 2014 12:50:36 GMT -5
For most of my life I had an on-again-off-again strong sense of localized self (mostly on-again) -- an internal narrative of thought and feeling that located a "me in here" that felt like it was in my head. ZD has described this as "a little man in the head pulling levers", and while I find that metaphor delightfully comic, it is apt. The little guy is gone ... but I had no formal practice leading up to the event of his vanishing act, and likely because of that, as time has gone on since then there's been this witnessing of all the patterns that used to rely on the little-head-guy. That's likely gonna go on for some time. A metaphor I've used to describe this recently is like a bicycle wheel rolling along and all of a sudden the hub just vanishes ... the wheel still rolls with the spokes flailing around. Attention is shifted, focused, contracted, etc.. -- sometimes plans are made when necessary, but any deliberation, any isolated independent and localized autonomous direction of those processes is seen clearly as appearance. You use the term sense of a localized self and that it has vanished. Is it possible that the localized sense of self has been replaced with a non-localized sense of self? Or would that like a localized sense of self, also be clearly seen as an appearance? The I-thought appears but there's really no way to take it all that seriously these days. It's appearence, and it's related to those patterns of reactivity mentioned previously -- the spokes on the wheel that flail around now that the little-head-guy is gone. I'll use pronouns and respond to my name of course. ... not really sure what you might be alluding to by "non-localized sense of self". Do you feel that? If so, maybe you could describe it? Perhaps I might relate to what you're referring to. Late edit -- it occurs to me that perhaps the title character in The Who's "Tommy" might embody a metaphor for what you're referring to with that phrase ...
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2014 14:15:36 GMT -5
You use the term sense of a localized self and that it has vanished. Is it possible that the localized sense of self has been replaced with a non-localized sense of self? Or would that like a localized sense of self, also be clearly seen as an appearance? The I-thought appears but there's really no way to take it all that seriously these days. It's appearence, and it's related to those patterns of reactivity mentioned previously -- the spokes on the wheel that flail around now that the little-head-guy is gone. I'll use pronouns and respond to my name of course. ... not really sure what you might be alluding to by "non-localized sense of self". Do you feel that? If so, maybe you could describe it? Perhaps I might relate to what you're referring to. Late edit -- it occurs to me that perhaps the title character in The Who's "Tommy" might embody a metaphor for what you're referring to with that phrase ... I know what you mean by the I-thought, the thought that appears and takes credit for a great run down the ski hill for example. My experience of skiing down the ski hill isn't colored by a sense of a separate I-thought. It only appears that way after the fact, in the form of a thought that imagines it was there all the time. Is that the same for you and if so can you tell me more about it being a sense of a localized self? Do you mean that the sense of a localized self is localized in that particular thought?
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Post by laughter on Apr 11, 2014 14:35:24 GMT -5
The I-thought appears but there's really no way to take it all that seriously these days. It's appearence, and it's related to those patterns of reactivity mentioned previously -- the spokes on the wheel that flail around now that the little-head-guy is gone. I'll use pronouns and respond to my name of course. ... not really sure what you might be alluding to by "non-localized sense of self". Do you feel that? If so, maybe you could describe it? Perhaps I might relate to what you're referring to. Late edit -- it occurs to me that perhaps the title character in The Who's "Tommy" might embody a metaphor for what you're referring to with that phrase ... I know what you mean by the I-thought, the thought that appears and takes credit for a great run down the ski hill for example. My experience of skiing down the ski hill isn't colored by a sense of a separate I-thought. It only appears that way after the fact, in the form of a thought that imagines it was there all the time. Is that the same for you and if so can you tell me more about it being a sense of a localized self? One time a year or so after little-head-guy left I was out on the slopes and the thought occurred "wow, this is going by so fast. Be present the next run" ... so at the start of the next run there was this deliberate attempt to be present that lasted until about halfway into the 2nd turn from the top. "who it was" that wanted to be present became obvious. That was actually a pattern that formed up after the little-guy was gone. An example of an older pattern that obviously predated his departure was catching the perception of the skiers seen from the charlift and the rating of them relative to my skill. Gone in a heartbeat, that one. The I-thought can get one into trouble up on the hill for sure. I like to ski fast, and I've always liked to try new things and to push the boundaries of wherever my skill level happens to be, so much of the time on the slopes -- even before I stumbled onto "The Power of Now" -- was in a flow in which (sorry for the cheese!) the skier, the ski's and the hill were undivided -- it was "get out of he way" or be in danger. These days, there is a subtle sense of that flow all the time, on and off the slopes, even when things really start to suck. I had one run this year at the top of an iced-up steep where I ran out of trail and didn't dare do anything but step out of the bindings to turn around. It was interesting to watch the natural fear without the arising of terror, to experience the blunder and laugh at myself free of any embarrassment -- and one of the old patterns played out when I went back for a 2nd run to do it better.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2014 15:00:07 GMT -5
I know what you mean by the I-thought, the thought that appears and takes credit for a great run down the ski hill for example. My experience of skiing down the ski hill isn't colored by a sense of a separate I-thought. It only appears that way after the fact, in the form of a thought that imagines it was there all the time. Is that the same for you and if so can you tell me more about it being a sense of a localized self? One time a year or so after little-head-guy left I was out on the slopes and the thought occurred "wow, this is going by so fast. Be present the next run" ... so at the start of the next run there was this deliberate attempt to be present that lasted until about halfway into the 2nd turn from the top. "who it was" that wanted to be present became obvious. That was actually a pattern that formed up after the little-guy was gone. An example of an older pattern that obviously predated his departure was catching the perception of the skiers seen from the charlift and the rating of them relative to my skill. Gone in a heartbeat, that one. The I-thought can get one into trouble up on the hill for sure. I like to ski fast, and I've always liked to try new things and to push the boundaries of wherever my skill level happens to be, so much of the time on the slopes -- even before I stumbled onto "The Power of Now" -- was in a flow in which (sorry for the cheese!) the skier, the ski's and the hill were undivided -- it was "get out of he way" or be in danger. These days, there is a subtle sense of that flow all the time, on and off the slopes, even when things really start to suck. I had one run this year at the top of an iced-up steep where I ran out of trail and didn't dare do anything but step out of the bindings to turn around. It was interesting to watch the natural fear without the arising of terror, to experience the blunder and laugh at myself free of any embarrassment -- and one of the old patterns played out when I went back for a 2nd run to do it better.
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Post by laughter on May 21, 2014 14:08:47 GMT -5
These are excerpts from the beginning, middle and end of T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding"Midwinter spring is its own season Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, Suspended in time, between pole and tropic. When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire, The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches, In windless cold that is the heart's heat, Reflecting in a watery mirror A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon. And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier, Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom Of snow, a bloom more sudden Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading, Not in the scheme of generation. Where is the summer, the unimaginable Zero summer?
If you came this way, Taking the route you would be likely to take From the place you would be likely to come from, If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness. It would be the same at the end of the journey, If you came at night like a broken king, If you came by day not knowing what you came for, It would be the same, when you leave the rough road And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for Is only a shell, a husk of meaning From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled If at all. Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws, Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city-- But this is the nearest, in place and time, Now and in England.
If you came this way, Taking any route, starting from anywhere, At any time or at any season, It would always be the same: you would have to put off Sense and notion. You are not here to verify, Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity Or carry report. You are here to kneel Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more Than an order of words, the conscious occupation Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying. And what the dead had no speech for, when living, They can tell you, being dead: the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. Here, the intersection of the timeless moment Is England and nowhere. Never and always.
There are three conditions which often look alike Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow: Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference Which resembles the others as death resembles life, Being between two lives - unflowering, between The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory: For liberation - not less of love but expanding Of love beyond desire, and so liberation From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country Begins as an attachment to our own field of action And comes to find that action of little importance Though never indifferent. History may be servitude, History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always-- A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.
==== The bush is a metaphor for the seeker ("the broken king") who pauses halfway on his journey in icy mid-winter detachment, eventually arriving back to the beginning where the "voluptuary sweetness" heralds the end of the search in the "stillness between the two waves". T.S. seems to be saying that there are as many paths as seekers ("Taking any route, starting from anywhere") and he also seems to take notice of the limits of the mind, of the edge and futility of reasoning and knowledge: when you leave the rough road And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for Is only a shell, a husk of meaning From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled If at all. Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment.at a particular point ("There are other places Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws") ... which is essentially where insight ends and devotion begins. The poem explores the nature of beginnings and endings by way of a literal contradiction: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time
which, when, instead of taken literally, if allowed to mean what it means, is anything but a contradiction and is actually quite definitive on the issue.
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2014 14:28:23 GMT -5
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Post by laughter on Oct 3, 2016 0:15:51 GMT -5
since judgment is the hot topic... what's the difference (if any) between saying "I love this song!" and "I judge this song to be fantastic" ♫♫ As it keeps my heart and soul in its place And I will love with urgency but not with haste ♫♫ Well I think the difference is that judgment usually has a negative connotation to it, as the most common meaning of it involves a criticism of the one being judged. When it's not negative, it's definitely still not the sort of embracing that love suggests. For instance, your "better judgment" isn't about loving something, it's about making a smart choice. Loving on a tune, on the other hand, is all about the literal resonance you have with the literal vibe that's goin' on. Been meaning to get to the Jerry interview. Like how it started, how he reacts to "who are you?" The in-line version cut off after the first 7 minutes. Gotta' make the time, and in my better judgment I already know it would be time better spent than keeping up with the mt.
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