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Post by Deleted on Dec 9, 2014 4:19:30 GMT -5
No. Thoughts occur to the body/mind, but there is no sense of a personal self who is having those thoughts. The universe is intelligent, and it is aware of what's happening, but it doesn't have to be aware of what's happening through the perspective of a personal self. The body/mind is quite aware of its individuated perspective, but that perspective no longer belongs to a person in the way that it did in the past. This cannot be imagined or understood through imagination; it can only be experienced and understood directly. Suzanne Segal was totally freaked out by her inability to regain a sense of personal selfhood after it disappeared, but most people are not thrust into that situation quite so dramatically. For most people it is a subtle realization that is accompanied by many subtle changes in attitude and perspective. After one has lived with an illusion for a long time, it is quite surprising when the illusion is seen through, and personal selfhood is the biggest illusion that most people harbor. The Universe is alive, 'intelligent' is the observer's projected religious conditioning, replacing one God story for another..
The Universe is altered by the influence of its 'part'icipating selfs, exerting the force of the evolving self's mindscape on the interactive happening.. something the 'ZD' self does by writing books..
"That perspective" still belongs to the individual, the catalyst that transforms the experiencer is clarity and understanding, not more stories, not swapping one ideology for another..
The biggest illusion most people harbor, is the belief that they know the 'truth' and that their ideas are right.. that is the most prevalent obstacle to a fluid dynamic experience of existence, the unwillingness to say "i don't know" and just pay attention..
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Post by earnest on Dec 11, 2014 16:45:51 GMT -5
Hi ZD,.. just wanting to explore your response to silver a bit if that's ok. I wrote most of the stuff below while I was at work - a slow day - so the tense is a bit mixed up. The exploration itself happened several hours ago. --- At times, I experience a considerable amount of anxiety - now being one of those times, I've got a meeting at work coming up that I'm not looking forward to. In this moment, there is a constellation of strong physical sensations, and if attention goes to the sensations, thinking subsides and vanishes, and remains absent for blocks of up to 10 seconds. Flickers of neutral thoughts come back in, and then fade away leaving just the sensations, what I can see hear etc. The strong sensations of anxiety are still present. So in that cycling, would it be accurate to say that I'm observing the "death" and "birth" of identity with the subsiding and arising of thought? If the thoughts are absent, and the fight/flight response is still activated, what is it that is feeling threatened? It seems like there is still something caught up in imaginings if the stress response is triggered (by an imagined event, because the meeting isn’t happening right now, I’m just sitting alone in my office) Earnest: I was simply telling Silver that selfhood is a product of thought, and that for all practical purposes selfhood is absent when attention focuses so strongly upon "what is" that reflective thought ceases. In this sense Silver appears and disappears all day long as her attention shifts back and forth from thoughts about herself to whatever is happening in the present moment. If one is totally engaged in some activity, one often forgets oneself, and if the attentiveness/forgetfulness is sustained, the condition/state of "flow" may arise. Flow is not cognized while its happening, but afterwards it becomes apparent that something unusual happened--unusual in the sense that typical self-reflectiveness was absent for a period of time. Athletes who experience flow often describe their experience afterwards in mystical terms and with a sense of awe. It is obvious to them that for a period of time they were not there as entities separate from the action. They became one-with the game. This is probably as close as people get to an enlightened state of mind without being enlightened. One major difference between flow experiences and living an enlightened life is that the state of flow becomes one's ordinary condition and is not regarded as unusual except when compared with how one lived when a sense of personal selfhood was dominant and reflexive thoughts continued seemingly all day long. The body/mind is intelligent, but also complex, so emotions, anxiety, depression, physical sensations, and much more may arise without any obvious source. Sometimes the source is stuff going on in the subconscious, sometimes it may be a biochemical thing (lack or serotonin, flood of endorphins, hypoglycemia, etc), and sometimes it may be due to structures of thought that have been activated but have not yet risen to the level of consciousness. In the case you described, the anxiety probably arose in response to thoughts about what you would encounter in the business meeting. When attention was shifted to the physical sensations, you stated that they continued even in the absence of noticeable thought, but you were probably subtly checking on your condition in order to notice this. The next time this happens try shifting attention to external sights or sounds and find out what happens. One of the reasons that Dr. Weill and many other physicians recommend shifting attention to breath awareness as a major stress/anxiety reducer is that it both shifts attention away from thoughts, and also also triggers what docs call "the relaxation response." The next time you feel significant stress or anxiety, shift attention to your breath and find out what happens. As a long-time meditator, the immediate somatic changes are obvious to me, but they may not be as obvious to people who have not meditated significantly. Have you ever noticed the somatic phenomena that immediately follow a near-crash/emergency in an automobile? Well, that response is usually much faster than thought, so it is not triggered by thoughts of personal danger; it is triggered by the body's innate intelligence and awareness of the situation. This is just one minor example of how the body may directly respond to an event in the absence of self-reflective thoughts. Another good example is when someone jumps out from behind something and causes a scare. The scare response is much faster than thought, so it doesn't come from reflections about danger or reflections about personal safety. This is sort of a rambling response, but hopefully you'll understand what I'm pointing to. FWIW, I have a good friend who is self-realized, and he continued to have severe panic attacks even after self-realization. Thanks ZD, that makes sense. On reflection, my noticing of the physical stuff associated with anxiety wasn't a bare looking at it. I'm well familiar with the near-crash/emergency somatic stuff
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