|
Post by enigma on Dec 8, 2014 10:30:32 GMT -5
I hear there's a vino tinto bar there too. Hmmmm..... You think they got drunk and then went to Mt. Woowoo instead of No-Mountain? Could be. It's an easy mistake to make, which is why a no-mountain Sherpa is a must.
|
|
|
Post by zendancer on Dec 8, 2014 10:51:54 GMT -5
It doesn't mean no sense of existence, just no sense of being a separate self. So you get your thoughts confused with the thoughts of passersby? 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.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2014 11:07:41 GMT -5
So you get your thoughts confused with the thoughts of passersby? The ability to make distinctions remains intact. Is this the process for making distinctions? Given various random thoughts happening: passerbyA Thought: "buy eggs, increase anna's life ins policy (B!TCH!!)...sharpen axe....maybe I should use a hammer, less blood ...hmm....rope, milk, xmas cards, sh!t!...take out the garbage ... i'll TAKE OUT the garbage BEEATCH!" passerbB Thought: " perdu, lost, hace, there is, naranja, orange..." passerbyC Thought: "one more acorn... then bury, car! " enigma thought: "......what profound topic area can I b ring up in today's squirrel satsang to report to ST?..." the Intelligent Universe pairs this particular body/mind with the correct thought. Sort of like Sesame Street's which one of these things doesn't belong with the others?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2014 11:39:46 GMT -5
So you get your thoughts confused with the thoughts of passersby? 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 it 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. It seems to me that there could be a situation where there is no sense of a personal self who is having thoughts and also no conclusion about where the thoughts originate from. This would be an agnostic position. There would be an acknowledgement that thoughts often refer to thoughts, as is the case with self-referential thinking, where the self is recognized as conceptual shorthand for a set of sense-perceptions (bodily sensattioins, name, experiencces revolving around roles like parent, spouse, friend, stranger...) and not actually existing in its own right. The question "what acknowledges this?" would be left unanswered and seen primarily as unnecessary. The gnostic position, on the other hand, would answer this position like you have. It's comforting to assign awareness to an intelligent universe and not just the epiphenomenon of having the right set of organs.
|
|
|
Post by zendancer on Dec 8, 2014 13:20:29 GMT -5
The ability to make distinctions remains intact. Is this the process for making distinctions? Given various random thoughts happening: passerbyA Thought: "buy eggs, increase anna's life ins policy (B!TCH!!)...sharpen axe....maybe I should use a hammer, less blood ...hmm....rope, milk, xmas cards, sh!t!...take out the garbage ... i'll TAKE OUT the garbage BEEATCH!" passerbB Thought: " perdu, lost, hace, there is, naranja, orange..." passerbyC Thought: "one more acorn... then bury, car! " enigma thought: "......what profound topic area can I b ring up in today's squirrel satsang to report to ST?..." the Intelligent Universe pairs this particular body/mind with the correct thought. Sort of like Sesame Street's which one of these things doesn't belong with the others? Most people never question the idea of making distinctions because they are already indoctrinated and conditioned to imagine thousands of distinctions, such as, "That is a chair," "this is an ink pen", etc. When scientists began to speculate upon the composition of matter (matter and energy are distinctions), they imagined that matter was composed of atoms, a distinction. Then, they imagined that atoms were composed of smaller particles, such as electrons, protons, and neutrons, other distinctions. As they built machines and played with math, they realized the usefulness of imagining that those particles were composed of still smaller particles, such as mesons, muons, positrons, quarks, etc. All of these newly-imagined subatomic particles were new distinctions. Later, they began to imagine that quarks exhibit qualities, such as strangeness, spin, etc. More distinctions. Notice that quarks did not exist until they were imagined. The word "quark" stands for a concept, and the word, like all words, quickly becomes equivalent and carries the meaning, like a substitute, of the concept. If we look at the world with a totally silent mind, we see "what is" without distinction. When we make a distinction, we imaginatively divide the oneness of "what is" into at least two parts--the thing and that which is not the thing. This is why we say that the act of distinction creates imaginary boundaries with an inside and an outside. No such boundaries actually exist except in the mind, but the power of imagination is so great that most people believe that their ideas about reality refer to separate self-existing things. This is why the Buddha talked so much about "dependent arising," and this is also why he refused to answer questions about existence. He knew that existence arises in imagination, and that prior to the exercise of imagination all is one. I used to tease people about this by telling them that I would create a new distinction that they would not be able to forget--to demonstrate the power of imagination. Steve did the same thing in a post today about the white and red rocks. My example? I would say to people, "You know how it seems that no matter which line you get in at the bank or the grocery store the other line seems to move faster? Well, that's because your line had a 'glurch' in it. A 'glurch' is a person who stops the line from moving forward. It may be a person at the payout counter who has forgotten his checkbook and has to run out to his car to get it, or, it may be a person at the bank that has twenty rolls of coins that the teller needs to check. Now that you know about glurches, I'll bet that you run into them everywhere, and I'll bet that the next time your line doesn't move and the adjacent lines do, you'll think, 'Da*m! My line has a glurch in it." Carol and I have been laughing about glurches for the last twenty years ever since I named them, and anyone reading about glurches will probably be unable to forget them. Notice, however, that until glurches are distinguished they don't exist. In the past you might have wondered why your line had stopped moving, but now you know. Arm, wrist, and hand are three common distinctions, but all distinctions have boundaries. If you try to locate the boundary between any of these things, precisely, you won't be able to do it. Is it here, or is it 1/4 of an inch one way or the other? Underlying all distinctions is the unified field of all being--oneness. Any distinction is one step removed from oneness. When we distinguish a word that will represent a concept/distinction, we are then two steps removed from oneness. When we use letters to represent numbers that represent concept/distinctions, as in algebra, we are three steps removed from oneness. Peeps become so habituated to words and ideas by the time that they are adults that they forget the underlying unified field of being from which all distinctions imaginatively arise. Selfhood is such a primary distinction that we become totally identified with "me" and "the story of me," but the "me" upon which the story is imagined is imaginary. Who we REALLY are is what is, and what is is NOT imaginary.
|
|
|
Post by zendancer on Dec 8, 2014 15:59:14 GMT -5
Silver: you psychologically die every day, but you don't realize it. Anytime you get involved in an activity and are not reflecting about a "me" the "me" isn't there. There is a body/mind involved in some activity, but there is no sense of a separate person involved in the activity. During the activity you and the cosmos are psychologically one. It is only when you reflect ABOUT yourself, as a person separate from the action, that the idea of a "me" arises. If you turned attention away from thoughts ABOUT yourself to the activity of life and what can be seen or heard, life would continue without a "you." If you did this for an extended period of time, at a certain point you might realize that your past sense of self identity was a thought-created illusion. This is what non-duality teachers are pointing towards. 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, from her perspective, 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 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 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.
|
|
|
Post by silver on Dec 8, 2014 16:01:47 GMT -5
Transix said: "when the message is sophisticated, the medium must also be sophisticated.. a one-liner or adage is so brief in written length that a single missed word can screw the whole thing up.. but if you read some of the posts on this forum you'd think we're all a bunch of zombies, as in literally zombified corpses raised from the cemetery.." Read more: spiritualteachers.proboards.com/user/1517/recent#ixzz3LLGmU7VSI couldn't find any that were gift-wrapped, but these have a nice blue-glow to them. Happy early Xmas!
|
|
|
Post by Transcix on Dec 8, 2014 16:18:30 GMT -5
I'm not sure if that's a slight or a test to see if I take it as a slight, or perhaps even a compliment.
|
|
|
Post by silver on Dec 8, 2014 16:33:50 GMT -5
I'm not sure if that's a slight or a test to see if I take it as a slight, or perhaps even a compliment. I thought your comment about zombies etc. here on the forum was funny. I figure you didn't include yourself in that number. I think everyone should be able to take a little ribbing now and then. Laughter is the best medicine. Yipes! Did I say that?!
|
|
|
Post by Transcix on Dec 8, 2014 16:41:59 GMT -5
Ah, but I found your ribbing ambiguous, so it was more confusing than ribbing.. I suppose I'm accustomed to much harsher ribbings!.. alright then that was a cute ribbing, thank you for the garnishment.. *mutley snicker*
|
|
|
Post by silver on Dec 8, 2014 16:54:46 GMT -5
Ah, but I found your ribbing ambiguous, so it was more confusing than ribbing.. I suppose I'm accustomed to much harsher ribbings!.. alright then that was a cute ribbing, thank you for the garnishment.. *mutley snicker* I thought it possibly could come across as ribbing via your comment about those on the forum who are like zombies, but I've failed! I often think I'm thinking from point A to point B, when it's really much more of a zig-zaggy sort of thing-y.
|
|
|
Post by Transcix on Dec 8, 2014 17:20:57 GMT -5
It's alright, I prefer zig-zags.
|
|
|
Post by tzujanli on Dec 8, 2014 21:54:45 GMT -5
So you get your thoughts confused with the thoughts of passersby? 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..
|
|
|
Post by enigma on Dec 8, 2014 23:52:21 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.. Yes, so why not just let go of all of the above?
|
|
|
Post by Reefs on Dec 8, 2014 23:54:36 GMT -5
You think they got drunk and then went to Mt. Woowoo instead of No-Mountain? Could be. It's an easy mistake to make, which is why a no-mountain Sherpa is a must.
|
|