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Post by justlikeyou on Apr 20, 2023 12:35:41 GMT -5
A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part Nisargadatta Maharaj Yes. Now, that said, there can be a sort of "bounce" off of the infinite after experiencing one of the intervals zd has written about. Dunno' for sure, but you may or may not recall some of the hyperminding I did over on the Tolle form all those years ago now.  (you were there for the tail end of it) .. all mind-spin on the existential question ...  Ah, yes, ancient history.  |
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Post by justlikeyou on Apr 20, 2023 12:47:20 GMT -5
OK. You clearly have a set of beliefs/principles that you adhere to. How did you come to believe in them? Step by step. I was never religious, nor attracted to spirituality. At some point in my life I felt a strong need to get some answers. Looking back, I believe I (as everybody) was always guided by my inner-guide, offered lessons and choices. Some of those I misunderstood, others I missed completely, until I eventually discovered self-hypnosis, and one day I got my first direct contact with my inner-guide. I asked everything I could think of, and received answers. In time I realized that the answers I received had multi-level meaning, and the more I understood, some of the answers had deeper meaning, that some of my interpretations needed adjustment. I know a thing or two about hypnosis so you caught my attention. Can you share some of your experiences with self-hypnosis. Where did you learn about it? From whom? How do you do it? |
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Post by inavalan on Apr 20, 2023 13:11:19 GMT -5
It seems that part of the argument is caused by the different meaning people give to "thinking". I don't include in it daydreaming, mind chatter, feelings, ...
I never had a problem paying attention, and I believed this to be normal. Even before I discovered self-hypnosis, I was always able to focus on what I was doing, as long as needed.
To some degree, unaware of doing that, I always worked with my subconscious. When I was working on a difficult problem and I encountered a roadblock, I took a break, took a walk, had a chat with a friend, then when I returned to my problem I found the way through.
Paying attention differs from one activity to another. It is related to the degree of immersion into the physical-reality.
Once I started using self-hypnosis, I could optimize my trance level for each activity by directly asking my subconscious to do it. Although trance is a multi-dimensional state, immersion is easier to estimate.
For example, for driving the optimum immersion is about 87%, for reading (visual, comprehension, retention) about 60%, for contacting inner guidance about 35%, for dream recall less than 5%, ...
Training and learning are multi-dimensional processes that involve the use of the inner-senses, which for example, aren't bound by physical time and space.
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Post by zendancer on Apr 20, 2023 13:22:42 GMT -5
Just to throw a spanner in the driving works, Abraham has actually said that the reason that there are relatively so FEW accidents on highways is because people enjoy their car space, relax, and allow themselves to often drift into happy thoughts while driving. This is probably less true in cities, when our attention is demanded a lot more on the roads, and actually people are then grumpier drivers. I've done tons of driving in my life, often drift into thought, and yet my alert responses seem to be amazing...they often surprise me... perhaps because I'm NOT focusing that much on the road. My responses may be better when the attentive 'I' is only slightly focused on what's happening. I have done still mind exercises while driving, but I usually enjoy listening to music more, and the music often takes me to interesting and good places. I remember the first time I turned my attention inward years ago. I was walking on a beach and suddenly noticed how incredibly noisy and out of control my mind was. TV Commerciala and other non-sense, non-freaking stop. I was horrified and immediately became motivated to find the off switch. One of the things I would do back then was while driving is I would shift my attention from the head noise to noticing my hand on the steering wheel. I would just notice it, feel the feeling of it there. It wouldn't be long before my attention was caught up in mental noise again but as soon as I noticed that I would shift attention back to the feeling of my hand on the wheel. It was the start of a beautiful thing. I can relate to what Socrates in the Peaceful Warrior when he says " It's taken a life time". Yes. I had the same kinds of experiences. When I first began shifting attention away from thoughts to breath exhalations, I was astonished at how frenetic and incessant the random thoughts were. Zen people call this "monkey mind" because the thoughts are like a monkey continually jumping from limb to limb or tree to tree. When I first began shifting attention away from thoughts while driving, I focused on the feeling of my hands on the steering wheel, the sounds of air rushing past the window, the sound of the truck engine, the sight of other vehicles on the road, etc. Initially it was quite frustrating because thoughts were so incessant, they kept carrying attention to some past conversation, or business issue, or something planned for the future, but if one keeps shifting attention away from thoughts, it's like taming an unruly beast. The mind eventually quietens sufficiently so that looking, listening, feeling, etc. can occur without the mind jumping in and commenting on everything. |
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Post by laughter on Apr 20, 2023 14:01:51 GMT -5
I'm reminded of one the most practical bits of advice that Polonius had to give. Which advice? I'm not much into Shakespeare. Funny, I typed the name into duckduckgo and one of the first hits is wikipedia: "Generally regarded as wrong in every judgment he makes over the course of the play ..." So if you answer, I'll still have to deal with possible irony. In these matters, I prefer be simple and not overly clever. There's enough room for confusion already. You believe wikipedia opinions?  |
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Post by zendancer on Apr 20, 2023 14:19:25 GMT -5
It seems that part of the argument is caused by the different meaning people give to "thinking". I don't include in it daydreaming, mind chatter, feelings, ... I never had a problem paying attention, and I believed this to be normal. Even before I discovered self-hypnosis, I was always able to focus on what I was doing, as long as needed. To some degree, unaware of doing that, I always worked with my subconscious. When I was working on a difficult problem and I encountered a roadblock, I took a break, took a walk, had a chat with a friend, then when I returned to my problem I found the way through. Paying attention differs from one activity to another. It is related to the degree of immersion into the physical-reality. Once I started using self-hypnosis, I could optimize my trance level for each activity by directly asking my subconscious to do it. Although trance is a multi-dimensional state, immersion is easier to estimate. For example, for driving the optimum immersion is about 87%, for reading (visual, comprehension, retention) about 60%, for contacting inner guidance about 35%, for dream recall less than 5%, ... Training and learning are multi-dimensional processes that involve the use of the inner-senses, which for example, aren't bound by physical time and space. Now we're on the same basic page, and you've described the same process many of us have been describing by shifting attention away from MIND CHATTER and ruminating thoughts to whatever is happening in the present moment. Most of us use the word "thinking" to refer to mind chatter--the internal dialogue. We use the phrase "subconscious mental processing" to refer to everything that's happening beyond the intellect or below the surface of consciousness. When you wrote, "When I was working on a difficult problem and I encountered a roadblock, I took a break, took a walk, had a chat with a friend, then when I returned to my problem I found the way through." This is exactly what Einstein was pointing to when he wrote, "I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me." That's what I did when trying to find answers to existential questions. I knew what the question was; I mulled it over; and then I shifted attention away from the issue by taking a walk in the woods, or doing other things that focused attention upon direct sensory perception. The answers to my questions would periodically pop to the surface of conscious awareness and those realizations informed the intellect about that issue. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2023 15:01:28 GMT -5
Which advice? I'm not much into Shakespeare. Funny, I typed the name into duckduckgo and one of the first hits is wikipedia: "Generally regarded as wrong in every judgment he makes over the course of the play ..." So if you answer, I'll still have to deal with possible irony. In these matters, I prefer be simple and not overly clever. There's enough room for confusion already. You believe wikipedia opinions? No. I mean that his lines, which I don't know well, are complex, multilayered, and open to wide differences in interpretations, so even if you give me the quote, I still won't know what you mean. Forget about it. |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Apr 20, 2023 17:12:39 GMT -5
Speaking off the cuff (or, of course, you can choose a different metaphor) and without actually having read either of them, my impression is that Jung's idea of the subconscious expanded on and went sideways to Freud, with interesting results. Did a little digging. There's some debate on the matter. Not that it's relevant. I don't think it's a concept that is common in advaita vedanta. It seems to me that's all there is. The conscious component is just a color commentator and at times an interloper that gets in the way. I mean you can consciously fart, but where does the idea to do so come from. But I don't want to turn this into a Lincoln-Douglass debate. It's not relevant to practice which is all that those of us on this side of the Styx can do. Dogen and Ramana(savikalpa samadhi) and zd(ATA) say so. Good enough for me. A friend just did an ayahuasca ritual. He says he'll speak to me about it soon. I'll give you guys a brief report. There's this guy, I think he comes on Vice, but he's basically a Red Neck from Tennessee who took ayahuasca and it basically fixed-his-problem. So now he gives it to people who come to him with problems. I watched several episodes about a year ago. He seems very sincere, helps people. Yea, would like to hear a report. Thanks. |
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Post by zazeniac on Apr 20, 2023 22:27:18 GMT -5
Did a little digging. There's some debate on the matter. Not that it's relevant. I don't think it's a concept that is common in advaita vedanta. It seems to me that's all there is. The conscious component is just a color commentator and at times an interloper that gets in the way. I mean you can consciously fart, but where does the idea to do so come from. But I don't want to turn this into a Lincoln-Douglass debate. It's not relevant to practice which is all that those of us on this side of the Styx can do. Dogen and Ramana(savikalpa samadhi) and zd(ATA) say so. Good enough for me. A friend just did an ayahuasca ritual. He says he'll speak to me about it soon. I'll give you guys a brief report. There's this guy, I think he comes on Vice, but he's basically a Red Neck from Tennessee who took ayahuasca and it basically fixed-his-problem. So now he gives it to people who come to him with problems. I watched several episodes about a year ago. He seems very sincere, helps people. Yea, would like to hear a report. Thanks. My friend said it was the most horrific experience of his life. 20 people in a room on mattresses either throwing up or diarhea. You're incpacited so if it's the latter, you have to raise your hand and they help you to an open bathroom. He described it is as "traumatic". But he had quite a trip. Very personal so no details, but he described traveling the cosmos and examining his life back to his birth. He said his old self died. His past dissipated, the pain, angst. He felt reborn. Plus some back pain he was experiencing that required surgery according to his ortho, went away. I'm curious, but not enthralled. Happy with my path as it is. |
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Post by laughter on Apr 21, 2023 2:38:44 GMT -5
You believe wikipedia opinions? No. I mean that his lines, which I don't know well, are complex, multilayered, and open to wide differences in interpretations, so even if you give me the quote, I still won't know what you mean. Forget about it. Relax dude, it's just banter. Did you watch the clip? It's one of the most seminal monologues in the English language. The source of at least three cliche's that I can think of off the top of my head. One of them is: "beware entrance to a quarrel".  .. that's about as simple as it gets.  |
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Post by laughter on Apr 21, 2023 2:51:52 GMT -5
Speaking off the cuff (or, of course, you can choose a different metaphor) and without actually having read either of them, my impression is that Jung's idea of the subconscious expanded on and went sideways to Freud, with interesting results. Did a little digging. There's some debate on the matter. Not that it's relevant. I don't think it's a concept that is common in advaita vedanta. It seems to me that's all there is. The conscious component is just a color commentator and at times an interloper that gets in the way. I mean you can consciously fart, but where does the idea to do so come from. But I don't want to turn this into a Lincoln-Douglass debate. It's not relevant to practice which is all that those of us on this side of the Styx can do. Dogen and Ramana(savikalpa samadhi) and zd(ATA) say so. Good enough for me. A friend just did an ayahuasca ritual. He says he'll speak to me about it soon. I'll give you guys a brief report. There's probably a Hindu diety that can be roughly mapped to the "collective subconscious". Shiva, perhaps? Dunno', as I said, this is all out of my cuff ... Certainly, there's aspects of Jung's CS that can be likened to the Holy Spirit. |
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Post by laughter on Apr 21, 2023 3:01:49 GMT -5
Step by step. I was never religious, nor attracted to spirituality. At some point in my life I felt a strong need to get some answers. Looking back, I believe I (as everybody) was always guided by my inner-guide, offered lessons and choices. Some of those I misunderstood, others I missed completely, until I eventually discovered self-hypnosis, and one day I got my first direct contact with my inner-guide. I asked everything I could think of, and received answers. In time I realized that the answers I received had multi-level meaning, and the more I understood, some of the answers had deeper meaning, that some of my interpretations needed adjustment. I know a thing or two about hypnosis so you caught my attention. Can you share some of your experiences with self-hypnosis. Where did you learn about it? From whom? How do you do it? It occurred to me this morning that trances and ego (in Tolle's meaning of the word) are very similar. These can be witnessed, as they happen, but any movement of mind beyond the witnessing is an engagement with and therefore creation of the same. Interesting to notice that Tolle's pointing is from an impersonal perspective. As is some of the writing about the consensus trance on this forum. I'll have to meditate as to whether this is an exception to the rule of inevitably creating a new trance, or it's just that a metaphor might apply. A metaphor about clarity. |
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Post by laughter on Apr 21, 2023 3:09:25 GMT -5
I remember the first time I turned my attention inward years ago. I was walking on a beach and suddenly noticed how incredibly noisy and out of control my mind was. TV Commerciala and other non-sense, non-freaking stop. I was horrified and immediately became motivated to find the off switch. One of the things I would do back then was while driving is I would shift my attention from the head noise to noticing my hand on the steering wheel. I would just notice it, feel the feeling of it there. It wouldn't be long before my attention was caught up in mental noise again but as soon as I noticed that I would shift attention back to the feeling of my hand on the wheel. It was the start of a beautiful thing. I can relate to what Socrates in the Peaceful Warrior when he says " It's taken a life time". Yes. I had the same kinds of experiences. When I first began shifting attention away from thoughts to breath exhalations, I was astonished at how frenetic and incessant the random thoughts were. Zen people call this "monkey mind" because the thoughts are like a monkey continually jumping from limb to limb or tree to tree. When I first began shifting attention away from thoughts while driving, I focused on the feeling of my hands on the steering wheel, the sounds of air rushing past the window, the sound of the truck engine, the sight of other vehicles on the road, etc. Initially it was quite frustrating because thoughts were so incessant, they kept carrying attention to some past conversation, or business issue, or something planned for the future, but if one keeps shifting attention away from thoughts, it's like taming an unruly beast. The mind eventually quietens sufficiently so that looking, listening, feeling, etc. can occur without the mind jumping in and commenting on everything. Perhaps Tolle hypnotized me with two ideas in his pointing: that "90% of most thinking is repetitive, negative, and either ineffective or even harmful" and that "you might chuckle at the antics of mind". Man. My little head hamster was quite the slapstick straight man. .. kinda' like this ... |
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Post by zazeniac on Apr 21, 2023 7:13:38 GMT -5
Did a little digging. There's some debate on the matter. Not that it's relevant. I don't think it's a concept that is common in advaita vedanta. It seems to me that's all there is. The conscious component is just a color commentator and at times an interloper that gets in the way. I mean you can consciously fart, but where does the idea to do so come from. But I don't want to turn this into a Lincoln-Douglass debate. It's not relevant to practice which is all that those of us on this side of the Styx can do. Dogen and Ramana(savikalpa samadhi) and zd(ATA) say so. Good enough for me. A friend just did an ayahuasca ritual. He says he'll speak to me about it soon. I'll give you guys a brief report. There's probably a Hindu diety that can be roughly mapped to the "collective subconscious". Shiva, perhaps? Dunno', as I said, this is all out of my cuff ... Certainly, there's aspects of Jung's CS that can be likened to the Holy Spirit. It's interesting. I do this wim hof breath hold thingy every day. You're tapping into the autonomic nervous system, but in a weird sort of way. The conscious component of what I am wants to assert control, but it's interference is just that. It deters the whole transaction. Best when it takes a back seat and just witnesses the body do it's thing. I (ordinary consciousness-the one writing this) sees there's something there beyond its grasp. I mean my resting heart rate goes ten beats slower than normal for hours after. I keep noticing more and more things beyond my grasp. Helps.me relax not being able to be in control. But really what's there beyond my grasp IS the holy spirit, something grander than anyone of us can imagine.. Like the monkey with its hand trapped with a handful of rice. I can't yet let go to free myself. That's the nature of ego, the incessant grasping, not necessarily a bad thing. It builds pyramids. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2023 7:27:15 GMT -5
No. I mean that his lines, which I don't know well, are complex, multilayered, and open to wide differences in interpretations, so even if you give me the quote, I still won't know what you mean. Forget about it. Relax dude, it's just banter. Did you watch the clip? It's one of the most seminal monologues in the English language. The source of at least three cliche's that I can think of off the top of my head. One of them is: "beware entrance to a quarrel". .. that's about as simple as it gets. Which part of my two lines did you assume were not "relaxed"? Rhetorical question.  I think it would be better now to drop the topic if you don't mind. |
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(you were there for the tail end of it) .. all mind-spin on the existential question ... 
.. that's about as simple as it gets. 
I think it would be better now to drop the topic if you don't mind.