lisa
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Posts: 22
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Post by lisa on Feb 6, 2012 8:49:20 GMT -5
This whole thing is just such an interesting -experience-, quite aside from how uncomfortable it can be.
It's difficult to enjoy entertainments; on some level, I -know- I'm burying myself in avoidance. That drive, that push to things "spiritual", it never really goes away. I put 'spiritual' in quotes because at least at the moment advaita seems to me to point towards the most mechanical possible existence of the universe, with no need for any kind of god. If death = oblivion of even the 'listening awareness' and not just the body/ego/personality, then there's no such thing as 'spirit' at all.
Though I can't help but wonder. I am prepared to -swear- I've seen two ghosts in my life, one of which I had objective evidence for the existence of. If there's no such thing as spirit or personality-after-death, what is a ghost? (Perhaps just a figment of my imagination after all, and I am wrong about what I percieved?)
Overall, it's uncomfortable, it really is. It's messing up my sleep patterns. What is this 'sleep schedule' you speak of? lol Fortunately I have neither job nor family obligations, and that permits me the luxury of whatever-this-is.
Don't the teachers say you won't find whatever-it-is by seeking for it? But I can't not seek. That drive doesn't -stop-.
Then there is the conflict between that drive and the desire to more seriously attempt manifestation to be financially independent forever. I recognize the contradiction between what seems to be a drive towards advaita, and the desire to live a materially comfortable life. Even if my life is just a dash between a date of birth and a date of death on a tombstone. But what's the point of manifesting a comfortable life?
Gah. I'm impatient with -everything-. It's difficult to focus.
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Post by zendancer on Feb 6, 2012 9:56:13 GMT -5
Too much thinking and reflection takes us away from a condition of relaxed being. In the distant past, at a time when I lived almost totally in my head, I once went to a piano concert by Van Cliburn. I couldn't enjoy the music because I was reflecting too strongly about my reaction to the music and my ideas about hearing such a wonderful pianist. I knew that something was screwed up, but I didn't know what it was. If someone had told me, "Look, listen, relax, breathe, be," I wouldn't have understood. It would be ten more years before I discovered that a calm mind can be a wonderful thing.
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Post by desertrat on Feb 6, 2012 13:22:28 GMT -5
On the ghost , if it is just there causing you no harm , then I dont see why you should lose any sleep over the ghost . A ghost can be sevral things , The conscious of a human that wants to remain on the earth plane for some reason , the left over energy with out conscious , a living human in there astral body , as in this story posted my me on another forum halfway.oceanfalls.org/index.php?topic=2688.0 To go to sleep , do slow deep breathing , and let your mind go blank , or focus your mind on a point of white light in deep space . desert rat |
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lisa
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Posts: 22
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Post by lisa on Feb 6, 2012 19:24:07 GMT -5
The ghost experiences both date back about 16-17 years, to around 1995 or so. I would have been 19 or 20 at the time. They're not current events, so they aren't bothering me in any sense other than wondering about their existence in the light of personality survival-after-death, which every advaita teacher asserts does not happen.
I am very hesitant to accept that line of explanation what ghosts can be. It's one I'm quite familiar with since I was avowedly "Wiccan," then generic pagan, for about 13, 14 years. During that time, I accepted so many things that I read in books like that as true, and I was so sure I knew so much. I was a fount of knowledge and 'facts.' It never really occured to me to question where all those authors got -their- certain knowledge from. heh
These days, all that has gone, and I am left in the uncomfortable position of being pretty sure I don't know anything at all for -sure- other than that I tend to believe things I read too easily, and that as an extension of that the only thing I know for -sure- is that I am currently aware of existing.
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Post by kate on Feb 6, 2012 20:22:33 GMT -5
Too much thinking and reflection takes us away from a condition of relaxed being. In the distant past, at a time when I lived almost totally in my head, I once went to a piano concert by Van Cliburn. I couldn't enjoy the music because I was reflecting too strongly about my reaction to the music and my ideas about hearing such a wonderful pianist. I can relate to this sort of thing. I also have a friend who makes it very difficult to have a good time in his company due to his constant pestering about whether or not you are having a good time and how much of a good time he is having. Hehehe. |
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lisa
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Posts: 22
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Post by lisa on Feb 6, 2012 20:35:23 GMT -5
I couldn't enjoy the music because I was reflecting too strongly about my reaction to the music and my ideas about hearing such a wonderful pianist. ... It would be ten more years before I discovered that a calm mind can be a wonderful thing. What did you do to get yourself out of your head? |
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Post by desertrat on Feb 6, 2012 22:21:16 GMT -5
Do we have a soul that survives death is an old question . I believe we do , but to prove it is almost imposable . I would think meeting up with an intelilgent ghost would almost prove life after death .Or some one that got bad headaches until he he went back to a life where he was killed by an axe blow to the head , proof of reincarnation www.new-age.net.au/showthread.php?t=484 Read some of the posts on the thread on what happens when we die , started by Arisha , it covers a lot of this .desert rat |
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Post by exactamente on Feb 7, 2012 3:08:05 GMT -5
I couldn't enjoy the music because I was reflecting too strongly about my reaction to the music and my ideas about hearing such a wonderful pianist. ... It would be ten more years before I discovered that a calm mind can be a wonderful thing. What did you do to get yourself out of your head? Can't speak for ZD, but usually it's seeing that it's not your head that does the magic. |
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Post by zendancer on Feb 7, 2012 4:02:11 GMT -5
I couldn't enjoy the music because I was reflecting too strongly about my reaction to the music and my ideas about hearing such a wonderful pianist. ... It would be ten more years before I discovered that a calm mind can be a wonderful thing. What did you do to get yourself out of your head? I only began getting out of my head as a result of shifting attention away from thinking to what I could see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. I didn't know that my "problem" was incessant thought, but I had no peace of mind, and I wanted a respite from the voice in my head that had run amok. I began spending an hour each day walking around a gymnasium while counting breaths, an exercise that reportedly could calm the mind. The idea was to count ten breath exhalations and then start over again at "one." Ha ha. I couldn't get to "three!" Nevertheless, I persisted, and after a few weeks, I noticed something that I had never seen even though I had driven by it every day. That surprised me, and I wondered if the breath awareness exercise was changing the way I saw and interacted with the world. I then added a second hour of looking and listening to my daily schedule. After work, I would walk down a country road and just look and listen. Each time thoughts pulled me away from what I could see or hear I would gently return attention to what the eyes could see or the ears could hear. Again, I had some surprising experiences. For example, I saw animals and birds that I had not seen in many years, and I smelled honeysuckle and new-mown grass for the first time in over a decade. I began to realize that I had lived so totally absorbed by the thoughts in my head that I had been blind to the real world. With this realization, I added a third hour of breath awareness exercises at night (counting breaths, following the breath, feeling the breath, being the breath, etc). After five months, I began falling into deep states of samadhi in which selfhood disappeared. Shortly thereafter I had a big woo woo experience during which seven of my main existential questions were answered. After that I became a spiritual fanatic (ha ha), and started going on weekend silent retreats. The more silent I became the more I understood, and eventually I ceased being a spiritual fanatic (a fortunate thing for the people around me!) and became an ordinary person. Gradually I became what we might call "a person of action" rather than a "person of reflection, and life got very simple. Eventually, the mind became seen as a handy tool rather than an enemy, and it no longer mattered whether thinking occurred or didn't occur. It's important to understand that I did not "get myself out of my head." I reached a point where I saw that the one wanting to get out of its head did not exist, and that there is only one thing here--THIS. But that's another story. The bottom line? If you did nothing more than walk around looking at the world in silence, you would discover more about what's going on than if you read ten thousand books of philsophy and science. One year of attentive stillness is worth more than fifty years of incessant thought. |
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lisa
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Posts: 22
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Post by lisa on Feb 7, 2012 6:46:29 GMT -5
Thank you -so much,- zendancer. Your answer is exactly the real-world pragmatic approach I'd hoped for. I've done a little of that myself (particularly the walking and just being aware of the world), and I will apply it more, now.
BTW I admit I'm quite curious what those seven questions you had answered were, and what the answers were. Is it too forward if I ask?
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Post by popee2 on Feb 7, 2012 8:40:42 GMT -5
One year of attentive stillness is worth more than fifty years of incessant thought. Only 50 to 1? Do you really think any comparison can be made at all? I'm fairly convinced that until incessant thought is broken, progress is impossible. |
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Post by zendancer on Feb 7, 2012 10:04:27 GMT -5
One year of attentive stillness is worth more than fifty years of incessant thought. Only 50 to 1? Do you really think any comparison can be made at all? I'm fairly convinced that until incessant thought is broken, progress is impossible. Yeah, it's probably a million to one. LOL. Is a comparison valid? Probably not, but it's just a way of pointing to a different sort of interaction with the world. In truth, progress is an illusion (there is no one who can make progress), but we use that word while understanding the limitation of it. |
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Post by popee2 on Feb 7, 2012 10:41:59 GMT -5
nevermind ...
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Post by zendancer on Feb 7, 2012 10:44:27 GMT -5
Thank you -so much,- zendancer. Your answer is exactly the real-world pragmatic approach I'd hoped for. I've done a little of that myself (particularly the walking and just being aware of the world), and I will apply it more, now. BTW I admit I'm quite curious what those seven questions you had answered were, and what the answers were. Is it too forward if I ask? Lisa: It's been over twenty-five years since that happened, but some of the questions that got answered included: 1. Is there a God? Yes, but He/She/It/THAT isn't what anybody thinks. The Absolute is beyond comprehension. 2. How did life begin in an inanimate universe? The universe is not inanimate; the whole thing is alive. 3. What are things, really? For example, what is a tree, really? There are no things; thingness is an idea. What we call "things" are actually a unified whole--oneness. "Tree" is an idea. What a tree IS is THIS. There are no boundaries anywhere; all boundaries defining things are imaginary. 4. What could "explain" the miracles recorded in all religious traditions? Oneness can do whatever it wants to do; all scientific laws are ideas, only. 5. What is mu? This is a famous Zen koan. After the woo woo experience, I could answer the question for the first time. This is a formal public koan, so I can't provide the answer. 6. Is there a heaven or hell? Not in the way that most people imagine. There is no past present or future; there is only now. 7. There were some other koans that got penetrated at the time, but I've now forgotten what they were. One other piece of advice that many people have found helpful is the use of this question, "What must I be doing this moment, not in the future, but right now?" Anytime a thought occurs, such as "I wish that I was......" or "If only I could be doing such and such.....or "I ought to be sitting on a mountaintop getting enlightened rather than doing this mundane job," etc, simply ask yourself, "What must I be doing this moment?" This question helps stop mental fantasies in their tracks and brings one back to ground. If you find yourself stuck in a traffic jam and late for an appointment, and you think, "I can't afford to be late. What will they think? I should have taken a different route," etc. Ask yourself, "What must I be doing this precise moment?" You will realize that you must be sitting in a traffic jam. You will relax and you will begin to accept how reality is manifesting in each moment. Cheers. |
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Post by sharon on Feb 7, 2012 11:38:11 GMT -5
What did you do to get yourself out of your head? Can't speak for ZD, but usually it's seeing that it's not your head that does the magic. Are you talking of seeing that magic is alive in the body? |
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