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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jul 4, 2018 18:34:31 GMT -5
We can also go back to the cube and marble model to describe time as experienced by a sage. I call it Jesus time or (American) Indian time. One is never in a hurry, it is a kind of timeless time, there is no concern for the passage of time, the amount of time is right for what one needs to do. It is "becoming like a little child", not-knowing time or being concerned about time.
So, the sage has emptied his cube of marbles (he has memories of the past, as necessary, but they are not a burden, they are not the source of ~who/what "he/she" is~, as a self). So the sage goes back to experiencing time as a child does, no marbles/recorded memories-as-self to ~take up ~ time, no cube full of marbles speeding up time (as in the earlier post, space of cube packed with marbles makes time go by quicker).
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Post by zendancer on Jul 4, 2018 19:21:54 GMT -5
Yes, a sage lives in a kind of timelessness because s/he has rewired the brain to remain focused on whatever is happening in the present moment. There may be some occasional self-reflection, but it's minor, and quite different from the usual self-referential way of interacting with the world that Charles Tart has called "the concensus trance state" and which some neuroscientists refer to as "the default mode network." Tolle probably writes and talks about the eternal NOW more than any other non-duality sage. When the mind is quiescent (not ruminating or thinking self-referentially), life is a kind of flow from activity to activity, and the passage of time is rarely reflected upon or experienced. They function much like little children who don;t worry about the future or reflect upon the past. One of the reasons little children are happy is because the intellect has not yet become a dominating influence. They live in a state of mind analogous to what Zen people call "no mind"--a state of being in which the body functions appropriately without reflection. The intellect appears within awareness, and awareness is the fundamental reality. People who have deep CC experiences realize that if the entire universe disappeared, awareness would still be present because it supersedes all else and is infinite--beyond space and time. In fact, time and space are solely products of thought, and are based upon the cognitive idea of separation. After so much time here (on st) I did begin to see most of self-referentiality as a burden. However, I am still curious about other people! I like to hear their seeker-stories especially. Yes, identity is a burden, whether it's realized or not. It's actually hard to write about its absence. Nothing changes, yet everything changes because there's no longer a personal self at the center of whatever is happening. There's no longer a distinction between "inside" and "outside" because that kind of distinction is gone. One realizes that whatever is happening is the activity of something that is intellectually incomprehensible, ineffable, impersonal, unpredictable, yet also inherently logical. One might imagine that a sage would not accumulate wealth, yet Tolle now has a net worth above 15 million, and I'm sure that his only thoughts about that are something like, "Well, that's what THIS does. Who knows what IT will do next, or how this will all play out?" The body/mind still has likes and dislikes, but they no longer have any intensity or inner propulsion, and there's a basic willingness to "go with the flow." Life has a matter-of-fact quality, so there's no psychological resistance to whatever happens. Rumi says it perfectly: "For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness. Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, that work is over. Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting. The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw blown off into emptiness. These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning: Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw: Words and what they try to say swept out the window, down the slant of the roof."
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Post by laughter on Jul 4, 2018 20:37:16 GMT -5
Thinking is slowest relative to action. In other words, actions that are thought-out, are deliberate, whereas action that isn't thought out, but instead, spontaneous, are more fluid. At the extreme, sports and some vocations involve conditioning the body/mind to respond quickly, typically by repeating the same action many times. There is a decided lightness of feeling the expression of these kinds of conditioned movements as they happen. Emotional conditioning is a different matter altogether. Leaving emotional heaviness behind might involve changes to conditioning, but conditioning is only secondary and incidental to leaving it behind on a permanent basis. This thread coincided with my interest in 'fragments and whole', so I think that the thinking function which goes on by words is slow because words are fragments. Also looking for cause/effect is a fragmentary act. I may be seeing everything from this pov now but thinking about me/others is so, too (I mean, slow). But someone experienced in thinking on a certain subject might do this quickly (make some calculations quickly for example). But there is a beauty in thinking, too, and I don't exactly know why this is so : )
Oh, of course, these 'centers' have common points with each other, if we talk in Gurdjieff-teaching terms. I mean, there is an emotional part of intellectual center, etc.. I like to read on them but it may sound as tmt! Yes, the thinking is a step removed from the happening. This step is a sort of fragmentation. It's a double-edged sword. It enables us to get a big picture before we act -- like assembling the ingredients for cookies or the parts to fix a sink. It also enables us to learn new skills. But eventually, in the doing, there can be a wonderful magic in the flow, and thought can interrupt that. I don't think describing this is tmt at all.
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Post by laughter on Jul 4, 2018 20:39:51 GMT -5
ah, ok, I see what you mean by that now. On the other hand, passion and a consciousness of our own mind aren't always necessarily mutually exclusive! As Explorer implies, it's all muddled up together and probly not meaningful to try to separate. Not so much interested in that, but how we form our subjective experience of time is more interesting. Well, if someone's often angry or sad then getting present to the underlying thoughts can sometimes change that situation, and that's an example of separating out the thought from the emotion.
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Post by Reefs on Jul 5, 2018 10:40:04 GMT -5
I like to think I know that direct experience you're referring to, and I'm very happy to respectfully agree to disagree on it being the only way to that understanding. Well, I was specifically referring to the idea that NS after SR would necessarily result in that kind of knowing, because there's nothing revealed in NS, either before or after SR, that would lead to the knowing that awareness is infinite. I'm also curious to know what other kind of non-dual experience would result in that kind of knowing. One of the problems we encounter in the field of non-duality is that very few people have been able to describe in ordinary language specifically what they experienced when they encountered the infinite. Tolle writes about the "aliveness," but I don't remember him mentioning the infinite. Ramana, to the best of my knowledge, never attempted to explain what he encountered when he encountered The Self, but perhaps the sustained NS he apparently stayed in for several years resulted in the same kind of knowing that occurs during a CC experience. It's an interesting subject for sure. I think the problem here is that many of the eastern gurus rely on the established terms and phrases of their respective traditions. And that's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, a standardized language can help bring order into the conceptual chaos of the seeker's mind, but on the other hand, well-established words and phrases like 'satchitananada' or 'karma' or 'non-doing' are so commonplace now that people don't realize that these are not exact descriptions but just pointers.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2018 11:24:11 GMT -5
After so much time here (on st) I did begin to see most of self-referentiality as a burden. However, I am still curious about other people! I like to hear their seeker-stories especially. Yes, identity is a burden, whether it's realized or not. It's actually hard to write about its absence. Nothing changes, yet everything changes because there's no longer a personal self at the center of whatever is happening. There's no longer a distinction between "inside" and "outside" because that kind of distinction is gone. One realizes that whatever is happening is the activity of something that is intellectually incomprehensible, ineffable, impersonal, unpredictable, yet also inherently logical. One might imagine that a sage would not accumulate wealth, yet Tolle now has a net worth above 15 million, and I'm sure that his only thoughts about that are something like, "Well, that's what THIS does. Who knows what IT will do next, or how this will all play out?" The body/mind still has likes and dislikes, but they no longer have any intensity or inner propulsion, and there's a basic willingness to "go with the flow." Life has a matter-of-fact quality, so there's no psychological resistance to whatever happens. Rumi says it perfectly: "For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness. Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, that work is over. Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting. The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw blown off into emptiness. These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning: Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw: Words and what they try to say swept out the window, down the slant of the roof." ZD, do you experience emotions, say fear, or sadness. How are these different for you after SR?
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Post by zendancer on Jul 5, 2018 12:19:50 GMT -5
Yes, identity is a burden, whether it's realized or not. It's actually hard to write about its absence. Nothing changes, yet everything changes because there's no longer a personal self at the center of whatever is happening. There's no longer a distinction between "inside" and "outside" because that kind of distinction is gone. One realizes that whatever is happening is the activity of something that is intellectually incomprehensible, ineffable, impersonal, unpredictable, yet also inherently logical. One might imagine that a sage would not accumulate wealth, yet Tolle now has a net worth above 15 million, and I'm sure that his only thoughts about that are something like, "Well, that's what THIS does. Who knows what IT will do next, or how this will all play out?" The body/mind still has likes and dislikes, but they no longer have any intensity or inner propulsion, and there's a basic willingness to "go with the flow." Life has a matter-of-fact quality, so there's no psychological resistance to whatever happens. Rumi says it perfectly: "For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness. Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, that work is over. Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting. The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw blown off into emptiness. These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning: Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw: Words and what they try to say swept out the window, down the slant of the roof." ZD, do you experience emotions, say fear, or sadness. How are these different for you after SR? This body/mind is rather disgustingly happy 99% of the time. Haha. Other than some minor short-term irritations (one old car has a defective security system and keeps locking me out--grrrrr!), there's rarely any pessimism or fear. I'm incredibly optimistic, so I occasionally get disgusted when people express negative outlooks. When I hear someone say something negative, I often feel like saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" haha. Emotionally, I cry rather easily when watching sad movies, or hearing about a sad situation, or reading a sad story in the newspaper, and I often tear up when listening to music that evokes feelings about the pathos of life. The subconscious, however, involves much more mysterious terrain than what I'm consciously aware of, and I'm occasionally surprised when feelings arise that seem to have no conscious connection to any thoughts. When building a recent project, for example, I woke up once or twice feeling a vague sense of fear regarding upcoming inspections, schedules, or potential issues that could arise because of my general "looseness" (I'm not a detail-oriented person). When that happens, my response is to get out of bed, write down a list of things to do that would preclude any problems or resolve any potential problems, and then go back to bed. This kind of thing makes me aware that the subconscious is aware of a lot of stuff that only rises to the level of conscious perception from a sleep state. ITSW, I'm occasionally surprised if a "down" feeling arises because it happens so rarely, and because I have no idea what triggers such sporadic feelings. The big difference between before SR and afterwards was that prior to SR I didn't feel emotionally free. I literally felt "bound," as if I were an entity trapped with its emotions inside a body. Afterwards, the demarcation between inside and outside---which I attribute to a strongly-felt sense of identity--dissolved, so that there was then a free flow of energy in all directions, including emotional energy. It's hard to adequately describe, but once psychological freedom occurs, no one would ever want to exchange it for the past sense of constriction.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2018 12:38:36 GMT -5
ZD, do you experience emotions, say fear, or sadness. How are these different for you after SR? This body/mind is rather disgustingly happy 99% of the time. Haha. Other than some minor short-term irritations (one old car has a defective security system and keeps locking me out--grrrrr!), there's rarely any pessimism or fear. I'm incredibly optimistic, so I occasionally get disgusted when people express negative outlooks. When I hear someone say something negative, I often feel like saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" haha. Emotionally, I cry rather easily when watching sad movies, or hearing about a sad situation, or reading a sad story in the newspaper, and I often tear up when listening to music that evokes feelings about the pathos of life. The subconscious, however, involves much more mysterious terrain than what I'm consciously aware of, and I'm occasionally surprised when feelings arise that seem to have no conscious connection to any thoughts. When building a recent project, for example, I woke up once or twice feeling a vague sense of fear regarding upcoming inspections, schedules, or potential issues that could arise because of my general "looseness" (I'm not a detail-oriented person). When that happens, my response is to get out of bed, write down a list of things to do that would preclude any problems or resolve any potential problems, and then go back to bed. This kind of thing makes me aware that the subconscious is aware of a lot of stuff that only rises to the level of conscious perception from a sleep state. ITSW, I'm occasionally surprised if a "down" feeling arises because it happens so rarely, and because I have no idea what triggers such sporadic feelings. The big difference between before SR and afterwards was that prior to SR I didn't feel emotionally free. I literally felt "bound," as if I were an entity trapped with its emotions inside a body. Afterwards, the demarcation between inside and outside---which I attribute to a strongly-felt felt sense of identity--dissolved, so that there was then a free flow of energy in all directions, including emotional energy. It's hard to adequately describe, but once psychological freedom occurs, no one would ever want to exchange it for the past sense of constriction. Thank you. There's a lot to chew on here. It makes sense.
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Post by explorer on Jul 6, 2018 1:06:03 GMT -5
I agree with Z that the key difference is the feeling of FREEDOM. It is not that feelings and thoughts and reactions no longer occur but they are no longer so real, so pressing. One is no longer identified with them. Everything in the world of form comes and goes including one's health, one's relationships, even one's beliefs, certainly the politics of the world, but more and more they can be seen as an unfolding drama, even as beautiful. Maybe it's a bit like changing the sound-track of the film we are watching or acting in!
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Post by laughter on Jul 6, 2018 9:14:33 GMT -5
I agree with Z that the key difference is the feeling of FREEDOM. It is not that feelings and thoughts and reactions no longer occur but they are no longer so real, so pressing. One is no longer identified with them. Everything in the world of form comes and goes including one's health, one's relationships, even one's beliefs, certainly the politics of the world, but more and more they can be seen as an unfolding drama, even as beautiful. Maybe it's a bit like changing the sound-track of the film we are watching or acting in! How could the end of suffering be anything but personally elevating in terms of our everyday experience? Intensely so. The movie metaphor is quite apt and powerful, but for peeps still suffering it can sound like we're not interested in their plight anymore.
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Post by Reefs on Jul 6, 2018 10:08:21 GMT -5
Interesting discussion about the speed of thinking/feeling/doing.
What do you guys think, how does this guy do it? Thinking? Feeling? Or just doing?
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jul 6, 2018 18:41:06 GMT -5
Interesting discussion about the speed of thinking/feeling/doing. What do you guys think, how does this guy do it? Thinking? Feeling? Or just doing? Muscle memory. Like learning to drive a straight drive, he has learned to 'drive' the R cube. He gets a few seconds to look at the cube, so he Is mapping his moves. He has ~programmed~ his hands to respond to the position of colors. This is also an example of perception + the moving center faster than the intellectual (abstraction could not keep up with the moves). But he does use some abstract thought to map and plans his moves (It seems). ...I think it was about '82 (or '83?) when I bought a Rubic's Cube. I remember being at it for 8 hours straight at the beach. (My brain literally gave out, my mind stopped functioning properly, the next day it was OK). I eventually solved it. Not that week. Two corners were the hard part, everything else correct. But I got the corners by accident, I couldn't repeat. (I could repeat everything else). So I started mapping the last two corners, so I could repeat what I had accidentally done. And I devised a formula to repeat (it can be done in 4 moves, I think, I haven't done it in probably 20 years). Holding the cube in a certain position the formula was: back right; left back, and then all 8 corners are in the right position. ...
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Post by Reefs on Jul 7, 2018 9:13:19 GMT -5
Interesting discussion about the speed of thinking/feeling/doing. What do you guys think, how does this guy do it? Thinking? Feeling? Or just doing? Muscle memory. Like learning to drive a straight drive, he has learned to 'drive' the R cube. He gets a few seconds to look at the cube, so he Is mapping his moves. He has ~programmed~ his hands to respond to the position of colors. This is also an example of perception + the moving center faster than the intellectual (abstraction could not keep up with the moves). But he does use some abstract thought to map and plans his moves (It seems). ...I think it was about '82 (or '83?) when I bought a Rubic's Cube. I remember being at it for 8 hours straight at the beach. (My brain literally gave out, my mind stopped functioning properly, the next day it was OK). I eventually solved it. Not that week. Two corners were the hard part, everything else correct. But I got the corners by accident, I couldn't repeat. (I could repeat everything else). So I started mapping the last two corners, so I could repeat what I had accidentally done. And I devised a formula to repeat (it can be done in 4 moves, I think, I haven't done it in probably 20 years). Holding the cube in a certain position the formula was: back right; left back, and then all 8 corners are in the right position. ... Yes, muscle memory is a big part of it. He's basically mastered all the possible moves. I watched an interview with him where he explains how he did it. He basically looked at the cube and somehow saw the first three to four first moves, then he made sure he 'got into the zone' and the rest was automatic. This is an interesting case of flow and non-doing. Reminds me of Zhuangzi's story about the cook and his knife.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jul 7, 2018 9:51:28 GMT -5
Muscle memory. Like learning to drive a straight drive, he has learned to 'drive' the R cube. He gets a few seconds to look at the cube, so he Is mapping his moves. He has ~programmed~ his hands to respond to the position of colors. This is also an example of perception + the moving center faster than the intellectual (abstraction could not keep up with the moves). But he does use some abstract thought to map and plans his moves (It seems). ...I think it was about '82 (or '83?) when I bought a Rubic's Cube. I remember being at it for 8 hours straight at the beach. (My brain literally gave out, my mind stopped functioning properly, the next day it was OK). I eventually solved it. Not that week. Two corners were the hard part, everything else correct. But I got the corners by accident, I couldn't repeat. (I could repeat everything else). So I started mapping the last two corners, so I could repeat what I had accidentally done. And I devised a formula to repeat (it can be done in 4 moves, I think, I haven't done it in probably 20 years). Holding the cube in a certain position the formula was: back right; left back, and then all 8 corners are in the right position. ... Yes, muscle memory is a big part of it. He's basically mastered all the possible moves. I watched an interview with him where he explains how he did it. He basically looked at the cube and somehow saw the first three to four first moves, then he made sure he 'got into the zone' and the rest was automatic. This is an interesting case of flow and non-doing. Reminds me of Zhuangzi's story about the cook and his knife. Yes.
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Post by zin on Jul 8, 2018 7:46:25 GMT -5
............. I got curious, aren't "doing things consciously" and "self-remembering" the same thing?
The last, self-remembering and self-observation are both conscious efforts. So no, they don't mean exactly the same, in all cases. (I will try to be more specific next time). Also, conscious breathing is a practice, so you could say in conscious breathing you are working consciously, but not necessarily remembering-self. But ideally, self-remembering is simultaneous with any practice. Gurdjieff covers this in In Search of...the why. [And there are levels of self-remembering, but the deeper (levels) ALWAYS include the "beginning" level]. Are you 'in' the centers at self-remembering? This sounds like a strange question but otherwise, what is the difference between self-observation and self-remembering?
We hear the expression "be here now" a lot and this usually reminds me of being in the environment, being aware of sense-impressions (maybe mine is a limited view).. In self-remembering it sounds like specifically being in the psyche.
About attention and being in different parts of centers: I wrote elsewhere, I was interested in fragments and whole. And this includes the concept of 'me/others', too. I thought some on it. In the mechanical parts/scattered attention, people are like 'things' to us. In emotional parts, we are related to people through our likes and dislikes; *that* is what keeps us related. But when it comes to intellectual parts, to me it astonishingly seems like we become aware of our 'sameness' with people. On the one hand there are the differences coming from the structure of each body/mind... on the other, there is this sameness. But it is easy to get lost in the play of differences. Maybe writing like this seems to go nowhere : ) but I'd like to know what changes with self-remembering.
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