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Post by enigma on Sept 23, 2014 11:52:59 GMT -5
Yeah, same here, except I've noticed that emotion can either follow or precede conscious thought. There is what we could call preconscious thought, and together with that is preconscious feeling. IOW, there's lots of stuff going on below the water line that has to build up some intensity before it reaches the surface. Feeling is still associated with thought on some level and doesn't actually show up for no reason at all. Yeah, I think that's true for the most part. I also think there are some unexplained emotional energies that maybe relate to somebody's thoughts somewhere, but not necessarily the thoughts of the person experiencing them. Supernatural stuff, past-life stuff, group consciousness stuff, that sort of thing. So the relationship between thought and emotion can get blurry. Yes, there are collective influences because the individual perspective is a rather arbitrary distinction to begin with, although those individual dynamics have to align with those thoughts/feelings to some degree in order to be influenced, so it's not entirely 'unexplained'. To explain it all we would have to take into account all the movements in the universe, and we're not being quite that ambitious right now. Hehe. No, Peace and Love are not emotions, though the experience can produce such. They are fundamentally an absence, and on the deepest level they are pointing to the same. Neither Peace nor Love can actually be understood because understanding requires the presence of various defining qualities, and as an absence, they have no qualities. Qualities are tools of separation, and so the absence of those qualities naturally merges with the self to become what one IS. Hencely, one IS Peace/Love. One knows Peace/Love in the way that one knows self, which is to say, by being rather than knowing.
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Post by enigma on Sept 23, 2014 12:10:39 GMT -5
you misunderstood what I asked, I know this stuff which you explained already and I refuted that this seeing is not possible in some other thread,because through 'seeing' you are generating another thought pattern which would be recreated. Now My question to him here is, Whether more than one thought is ready before it arrives in the surface of our consciousness ? What's your experience? Mine: when I am mindful, or attending the actual, putting focus and attention physical sense-perceptions, there's a way that it's like the surface of a swamp. There's a focus on physical sensations, and always a lot going on there (breathing, sounds, tactile sensations...). And then there's awareness of the mental environment and often a perception that there is something just below the surface. And periodically of course becoming aware of having been 'lost in thought.' But my experience is that even with attention/focus on senseperceptions there is a shimmering mental surface, where thoughts could arise and 'take over' or not, depending. Not sure if they are formed below the surface, it seems like they are formed in consciousness. But maybe that's just the process of trying to articulate them.Yeah, it's just a metaphor. The deeper levels of mind that constitute the unconscious or subconscious are still consciousness. By 'conscious thought', I mean a thought that you are actively engaged with, but there's a lot of movement that occurs prior to that about which you know little or nothing. That's why it's almost impossible to prevent thoughts from arising. You're not consciously aware of those deeper movements until a thought 'intrudes', or floats up to the surface of mind, and then all you can do is follow it or reject it. The tendency is to follow it because it gained momentum from your own interest in it.
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Post by enigma on Sept 23, 2014 12:20:01 GMT -5
And elsewhere, he says existence doesn't even know it exists. Yes, I know what you are saying. I think he would say the Absolute does not know it exists. He tends to use the word "existence" and "consciousness" interchangeably, and refers to them as a temporary states of affair. Anyway, I found the original quote using the word person a bit odd, but then it occurred to me that he is likely referring to the true self behind the personality as that which does not lose identity as it merges. Which raises its own questions, but I'll leave it alone for now. I took it to refer to a mental shifting of identity from personhood, to witness, to awareness, to pure being. I don't know what he means when he says identity is not lost since pure being is not really an identity.
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Post by figgles on Sept 23, 2014 12:23:17 GMT -5
Yes, I know what you are saying. I think he would say the Absolute does not know it exists. He tends to use the word "existence" and "consciousness" interchangeably, and refers to them as a temporary states of affair. Anyway, I found the original quote using the word person a bit odd, but then it occurred to me that he is likely referring to the true self behind the personality as that which does not lose identity as it merges. Which raises its own questions, but I'll leave it alone for now. I took it to refer to a mental shifting of identity from personhood, to witness, to awareness, to pure being. I don't know what he means when he says identity is not lost since pure being is not really an identity. Seems that's where the 'yet' comes in.
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Post by enigma on Sept 23, 2014 12:35:09 GMT -5
I took it to refer to a mental shifting of identity from personhood, to witness, to awareness, to pure being. I don't know what he means when he says identity is not lost since pure being is not really an identity. Seems that's where the 'yet' comes in. He seems to be saying identity changes in the process of all this merging stuff, and yet remains an identity as pure being in the end.
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Post by figgles on Sept 23, 2014 12:48:20 GMT -5
Seems that's where the 'yet' comes in. He seems to be saying identity changes in the process of all this merging stuff, and yet remains an identity as pure being in the end. Yes, and crazy as it may sound, it reminds me of a conversation I had with my brother the day after he passed. He was saying that very thing... that although seemingly in opposition, those can exist simultaneously (identity AND pure being).....but with that, that from our position within physical experience, we simply cannot know precisely what that is like or how it can be.
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Post by laughter on Sept 23, 2014 13:05:37 GMT -5
Well, you're probably right that my description of emotions was short-sighted. I'm certainly no expert. In my experience, most emotions are related to my thoughts and beliefs - i.e., if I think something's sad, I get sad. But I have experienced seemly random emotions too, so there's that. And I agree, mind/body/spirit/essence are not independent of each other. My point to laughter was just that when I referred to body, I wasn't talking about emotions, just to a felt sense of the body. I don't know who's manipulating emotions. Yeah, same here, except I've noticed that emotion can either follow or precede conscious thought. There is what we could call preconscious thought, and together with that is preconscious feeling. IOW, there's lots of stuff going on below the water line that has to build up some intensity before it reaches the surface. Feeling is still associated with thought on some level and doesn't actually show up for no reason at all. As you once pointed out -- and I've looked for myself -- underlying either that first thought or emotion is interest. My description of witnessing this during sitting meditation is sort of like observing a chaotic, disjointed and yet essentially undifferentiated blob of mental noise, like static on a radio or TV in between carriers.
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Post by laughter on Sept 23, 2014 13:08:21 GMT -5
Cultivated stillness is like farm raised salmon. Still nourishing ... but ... like, no comparison. Like. At all.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2014 13:14:50 GMT -5
Yeah, same here, except I've noticed that emotion can either follow or precede conscious thought. There is what we could call preconscious thought, and together with that is preconscious feeling. IOW, there's lots of stuff going on below the water line that has to build up some intensity before it reaches the surface. Feeling is still associated with thought on some level and doesn't actually show up for no reason at all. As you once pointed out -- and I've looked for myself -- underlying either that first thought or emotion is interest. My description of witnessing this during sitting meditation is sort of like observing a chaotic, disjointed and yet essentially undifferentiated blob of mental noise, like static on a radio or TV in between carriers. It's nice to hear other descriptions. I call it a shimmering swamp. When I first started trying ATA I found it hard to distinguish from thinking and wasn't sure whether to try and not attend to it or not. It's almost like a mash of whispering, incoherent voices.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2014 13:15:49 GMT -5
What's your experience? Mine: when I am mindful, or attending the actual, putting focus and attention physical sense-perceptions, there's a way that it's like the surface of a swamp. There's a focus on physical sensations, and always a lot going on there (breathing, sounds, tactile sensations...). And then there's awareness of the mental environment and often a perception that there is something just below the surface. And periodically of course becoming aware of having been 'lost in thought.' But my experience is that even with attention/focus on senseperceptions there is a shimmering mental surface, where thoughts could arise and 'take over' or not, depending. Not sure if they are formed below the surface, it seems like they are formed in consciousness. But maybe that's just the process of trying to articulate them.Yeah, it's just a metaphor. The deeper levels of mind that constitute the unconscious or subconscious are still consciousness. By 'conscious thought', I mean a thought that you are actively engaged with, but there's a lot of movement that occurs prior to that about which you know little or nothing. That's why it's almost impossible to prevent thoughts from arising. You're not consciously aware of those deeper movements until a thought 'intrudes', or floats up to the surface of mind, and then all you can do is follow it or reject it. The tendency is to follow it because it gained momentum from your own interest in it.Makes sense.
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Post by laughter on Sept 23, 2014 13:17:27 GMT -5
And elsewhere, he says existence doesn't even know it exists. Yes, I know what you are saying. I think he would say the Absolute does not know it exists. He tends to use the word "existence" and "consciousness" interchangeably, and refers to them as a temporary states of affair. Anyway, I found the original quote using the word person a bit odd, but then it occurred to me that he is likely referring to the true self behind the personality as that which does not lose identity as it merges. Which raises its own questions, but I'll leave it alone for now. There is a quote where Niz clearly and definitively states what he means by the word "person", and that is entirely consistent not only with the quote that sparked your line of discussion, but pretty much everywhere else he uses it. Are you at all interested in what that quote is?
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Post by laughter on Sept 23, 2014 13:20:58 GMT -5
Yeah, I think that's true for the most part. I also think there are some unexplained emotional energies that maybe relate to somebody's thoughts somewhere, but not necessarily the thoughts of the person experiencing them. Supernatural stuff, past-life stuff, group consciousness stuff, that sort of thing. So the relationship between thought and emotion can get blurry. Yes, there are collective influences because the individual perspective is a rather arbitrary distinction to begin with, although those individual dynamics have to align with those thoughts/feelings to some degree in order to be influenced, so it's not entirely 'unexplained'. To explain it all we would have to take into account all the movements in the universe, and we're not being quite that ambitious right now. Hehe. No, Peace and Love are not emotions, though the experience can produce such. They are fundamentally an absence, and on the deepest level they are pointing to the same. Neither Peace nor Love can actually be understood because understanding requires the presence of various defining qualities, and as an absence, they have no qualities. Qualities are tools of separation, and so the absence of those qualities naturally merges with the self to become what one IS. Hencely, one IS Peace/Love. One knows Peace/Love in the way that one knows self, which is to say, by being rather than knowing. It occurred to me this morning that most of the time the idea of inclusion comes up in a conversation, that the advocate for a description based on inclusion probably has read the word absence in statements such as yours here, as implying exclusion.
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Post by silver on Sept 23, 2014 13:22:15 GMT -5
As you once pointed out -- and I've looked for myself -- underlying either that first thought or emotion is interest. My description of witnessing this during sitting meditation is sort of like observing a chaotic, disjointed and yet essentially undifferentiated blob of mental noise, like static on a radio or TV in between carriers. It's nice to hear other descriptions. I call it a shimmering swamp. When I first started trying ATA I found it hard to distinguish from thinking and wasn't sure whether to try and not attend to it or not. It's almost like a mash of whispering, incoherent voices. ME-thinks you were tryin' too hard.
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Post by laughter on Sept 23, 2014 13:26:48 GMT -5
Yes, I know what you are saying. I think he would say the Absolute does not know it exists. He tends to use the word "existence" and "consciousness" interchangeably, and refers to them as a temporary states of affair. Anyway, I found the original quote using the word person a bit odd, but then it occurred to me that he is likely referring to the true self behind the personality as that which does not lose identity as it merges. Which raises its own questions, but I'll leave it alone for now. I took it to refer to a mental shifting of identity from personhood, to witness, to awareness, to pure being. I don't know what he means when he says identity is not lost since pure being is not really an identity. He means the same thing that you mean when you take an oppositional stance to his notion of taking an axe to the "I am". That one is, is self-evident, and what one is, defies any and all description. That defiance finds form in his resort to indefiniteness ("I am .. both, neither, and beyond both") in the face of a demand for the description. This dialog on the nature of identity is just such a demand.
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Post by laughter on Sept 23, 2014 13:30:40 GMT -5
He seems to be saying identity changes in the process of all this merging stuff, and yet remains an identity as pure being in the end. Yes, and crazy as it may sound, it reminds me of a conversation I had with my brother the day after he passed. He was saying that very thing... that although seemingly in opposition, those can exist simultaneously (identity AND pure being).....but with that, that from our position within physical experience, we simply cannot know precisely what that is like or how it can be. There is no such opposition in any given instant of experience, which is, inherently, ineffable.
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