A Nice Inquiry

[karen]

Good one!

[alpha]

To follow on from ZD,s excellent post, this is a good documentry re Ramana,
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7390375386934930566#

[zendancer]

Alpha: Thanks. I didn't know that video was on the web. That's the price I pay for being such a Luddite!

[klaus]

zendancer,

Thanks for the back story on Ramana.

alpha, great video.

Did either of you experience anything while watching?

I experienced a very powerful continuous current of energy beginning in the heart and rising to the top of my head and back to the heart.

[karen]

Back when I 1st started seeking, I ran across this video elsewhere, and I thought about his death inquiry as rather lame. I thought this, as when I did it, it had no effect.

But only last year did I realize that every-time I would inquire about that, it was like me sitting at a table inquiring about a sock puppet's death in front of me - with the me (the common me) in the darkness unknown and that death inquiry had never actually taken place. It still hasn't. I haven't been able to face it no matter all my protestations to the contrary.

Ramana actually did face and inquire about his death.

Thanks for the link alpha.

[alpha]

Feb 5, 2010 23:29:12 GMT -5 klaus said:

zendancer,

Thanks for the back story on Ramana.

alpha, great video.

Did either of you experience anything while watching?

I experienced a very powerful continuous current of energy beginning in the heart and rising to the top of my head and back to the heart.

"Current of energy" is a good description of what happens whilst studying Ramana in any form, but also I feel the grace and renewed energy to continue "abiding as the self" , in the best way I know/don't know, I always carry an image of Ramana on my phone and often ask him to be present during meditation,
Its amazing that two of the most enlightened teachers of modern times-Ramana and Nisargatta- lived so close and at the same time,on this planet, we are privileged to have them now in spirit, as in their teaching,

Am I correct in saying that "seeking" in the most simple form, is to ask oneself every night, what percentage of today was I aware? not how much I understood/achieved/prayed, but to limit it to the one question, for me it used be about five percent, but now its about twenty percent and already there are changes taken place,as in shifts in awareness, I feel "It" feeds on itself, as the more I'm present the more I want to be present,

[zendancer]

Alpha: Yes, you've put into words exactly what I was thinking earlier today. I have seen other videos of Ramana in the past, but for some reason the video yesterday affected me very strongly, as it did Klaus. It almost put me into samadhi. I knew that Ramana had sat in samadhi for many years, but yesterday, during the video, as I contemplated how deep he must have gone and the nature of the force that was pulling him inward, it put my mind out of business for a long while (good riddance!)

Today, it was snowing and cold as hell, but all I wanted to do was go hike up a distant mountain and get lost in presence. I started off using the "Karen technique" (staring intently at a tree or rock formation in front of me, and then focusing on another one after passing that one), and after about thirty minutes, the mind silently dropped away. On the steepest part of the mountain the wind was howling and I was alternately listening to the wind, the sound of boots and hiking poles crunching through several inches of ice and snow, and universal sound. When I got to the top, however, the wind died down and then finally stopped completely. The woods became totally silent--as if everything had been muffled by the snow. I stopped, again and again, and just stared. It was utterly surreal.

Later, on the way down, I thought, "I should post something about the time factor for people who are interested in this, because the more time I spend in silence, the more time I want to spend in silence, and the easier it gets to stay in silence." As you put it so aptly, "It feeds on itself." I have often told people that breaking the habit of reflective thought gets easier as time goes by, but I need to add that this is directly dependent upon how regularly we shift from thoughts to presence. I don't think thirty minutes of presence per day is enough to counteract the effects of fifteen or more hours of thinking per day. I suspect that two or more hours per day is what begins to shift everything in favor of increasing presence.

Probably the reason birdwatchers find that activity so enjoyable is that they predominately shift from thoughts to what they can see for long periods of time. I suspect that hunters and fishermen enjoy their activities for the same reason. They become silent and either listen or watch what's happening intently--something quite different from what they usually do on a daily basis.

AAR while driving the forty-five minutes back home after leaving the mountain, I was absorbed in presence in an extremely tangible way, and it seemed to have something to do with watching that video yesterday. It was like an inward pull was occurring, and it produced some strange physical effects that I remember occurring many years ago after doing some seriously-intense meditation (leg muscles rippling and twitching, etc).

Like you, Alpha, I'm probably in the twenty-percent range per day at this point, but today I wondered if this might not increase in the future. I can imagine that at some point, this body/mind might just chuck a lot of activities requiring thought and go for forty, fifty, or eighty percent. As always, it will be interesting to find out what IT decides to do. LOL

In the case of this body/mind, there is no "seeking" (in the way that I usually think of that word), and I never second-guess what's happening, so I would never think to check at the end of the day how much time I spent in presence as opposed to how much time I spent in the mind. It is more like an overall impartial observation and fascination with what's going on, and this may or may not be what you are referring to. This is a great subject for future discussion. Cheers.

[klaus]

alpha, zendancer,

alpha,has this video affected you in any way?

After watching the video last night had a cigarette; just sitting in silence. The room became as best as I can describe it became transparent to the edge of disappearing; went to bed, but couldn't sleep as the current became stronger, tried to fight it and gave up, decided(if that's the right word) and surrendered into the current.
For the rest of the night I sat on the couch alternating between the mundane and what I can only describe as bliss(and I have never used that word before).

Must have been an alternating current. lol.

I have had similar experiences at the Adi Da Center here in Chicago and in darshan with Sri Chinmoy.

I find my awareness being in the present more than not,and catching myself when I'm not.

[karen]

It's odd that I dreamt of Ramana all last night. I don't know the narrative of the dream, but it seemed like the majority of the time.

[Portto]

Feb 6, 2010 19:38:31 GMT -5 alpha said:

Am I correct in saying that "seeking" in the most simple form, is to ask oneself every night, what percentage of today was I aware? not how much I understood/achieved/prayed, but to limit it to the one question, for me it used be about five percent, but now its about twenty percent and already there are changes taken place,as in shifts in awareness, I feel "It" feeds on itself, as the more I'm present the more I want to be present,

Interesting!
How do you estimate the amount of time spent being aware?
What do you remember about that time?
Are you referring to being self-conscious, aware of your own existence?

[zendancer]

Porto: We are not talking about the time spent in awareness because we are always being aware. Most of the time we are aware of thoughts and the conversation going on in our heads--the internal monologue. What we are talking about is the amount of time spent in non-conceptual awareness, or direct sensory perception. When we are directly experiencing reality, there is no self or other, so there is no self-consciousness. We are lost, so to speak, in presence.

I would guess that the average adult spends more than 99% of his/her daily time in the mind (thinking, imagining, internally talking, etc). To spend 10% of the day looking and listening in silence would make a huge difference, but it would require considerable effort. If someone practiced breath awareness thirty minutes per day, for example, that would only amount to about 3% of their waking hours spent in non-conceptual awareness. 96-97% of their time would still be spent in the mind.

Being in presence, non-conceptually, is sometimes called "relative samadhi." We see the world around us, but there is no reflectivity--no naming, thinking about, or mentally talking about what we see. In that state there is seeing but no one who is doing the seeing. What Ramana did, that is so astonishing, is that he sank into "absolute samadi," a far deeper state, in which there is pure awareness but no objects of perception. The inside world and the outside world both disappear. It is impossible to describe that state because it is non-dual and it has no attributes at all. When it occurs, it is like a gift, but we can't even say why it seems like a gift because words like "pleasure" or "happiness" or "contentment" just don;t apply. For anyone who has ever experienced "absolute samadhi" it is mind-boggling to think that Ramana stayed in that state for several years. It is easy to see why he remained in non-duality afterwards and why he never again had any vestige of selfhood or separation from the Absolute.

[Portto]

Feb 7, 2010 10:33:38 GMT -5 zendancer said:

What we are talking about is the amount of time spent in non-conceptual awareness, or direct sensory perception. When we are directly experiencing reality, there is no self or other, so there is no self-consciousness. We are lost, so to speak, in presence.

Zendancer: Yes, I see what you mean.

I asked the question because it seems to me that we cannot measure the time WHILE in non-conceptual awareness.

So, we probably look at the time spent in conceptual awareness and infer that the rest is presence.

Also, while in non-conceptual awareness time is completely different (more likely, non-existent), so a percentile comparison may not mean much.

[zendancer]

Porto: Not exactly. If I am silently walking along in the woods while looking around, I am simply seeing what is. I can also look at my watch and silently see what time it is. IOW, it is the same kind of awareness one experiences after learning how to speed read. The average reader has two habits that make reading slow. The first is subvocalization (which involves the throat muscles, etc). This habit is very easy to break. The second is mental vocalization, and this is a much harder habit to break. With practice, we learn to look at a page of words and get the meaning directly without any words or thoughts appearing in the mind. This is the same kind of non-conceptual awareness that can be present while walking in the woods. The mind is silent, but the body is highly aware of its environment. The mind is sufficiently silent that when thoughts appear, they are seen, but remain untouched. Attention simply shifts back to what is seen and heard. In this silent state of presence, mind-knowing is absent, but body-knowing is present.

Typically, when I go for a two hour hike and want some silence, the first hour is relatively "talkative" and the second hour is relative silent. At the end of the hike, I am not able to say precisely how many minutes were spent in silence versus how many minutes were spent in the mind, but I have a general sense of the duration because awareness was aware of what was going on, psychologically, during the hike. On a two hour hike I am probably present for about forty or fifty minutes.

Of course, sometimes I spend the entire two hour hike thinking about business-related issues, mentally designing a new residence, mentally thinking through dance movements, thinking about issues raised on this website, or a myriad of other things. That's okay, too, because that's what is and that's what minds do. Some days, IT wants to think and some days IT wants to be silent. When silence is desired, it often takes an hour of shifting attention before the mind quietens down and silence becomes dominant. At least that's my experience of it.

The bottom line is that there is no human being in control of this process. Some people will never get out of their heads. As DeMello says, they will live in a dream, get married in a dream, have children in a dream, and die in a dream. Others, for various reasons, will intuit what's going on and start trying to become free of the mind. My point was that thirty minutes per day is probably not enough presence to counteract the other fifteen hours per day spent in the mind. It will vary from individual to individual, but probably two hours per day is required to significantly shift an individual's focus away from the mind and toward increasing presence. Most of the people I know who are serious about this path spend a considerable amount of time in silence and enjoy being alone in nature. Of course, most of us on this path are admittedly a little weird. LOL.

[Portto]

Thank you for another delightful post, Zendancer! I do enjoy a lot being alone in nature - in fact, it is my favorite activity!

[alpha]

Feb 6, 2010 23:15:00 GMT -5 klaus said:

alpha, zendancer,

alpha,has this video affected you in any way?

After watching the video last night had a cigarette; just sitting in silence. The room became as best as I can describe it became transparent to the edge of disappearing; went to bed, but couldn't sleep as the current became stronger, tried to fight it and gave up, decided(if that's the right word) and surrendered into the current.
For the rest of the night I sat on the couch alternating between the mundane and what I can only describe as bliss(and I have never used that word before).

Must have been an alternating current. lol.

I have had similar experiences at the Adi Da Center here in Chicago and in darshan with Sri Chinmoy.

I find my awareness being in the present more than not,and catching myself when I'm not.

Klaus,you seem like you're well on the "path", look back, do you see a faint figure down the hill, thats me!

I have to say I cried while watching this video,but with that, came grace/love/energy,(energy torwards ---- "love" also the feeling that "everything is moving along together" with nothing left out,not even the negative,and at the center of this movement, also moving, was, what I perceive to be myself, I also had this movement feeling again a few days later,
you may say Im a "softy" about crying, but many years ago while working a machine I had part of my finger chopped off and within one hour I was back driving the same machine without one tear, I dont know the reason, but whenever I am in the company of what I perceive to be Greatness, the tears come,this could be a person/book/video/story...