That which awakens, is already awake - An experiment

[Marblehead]

12 hours ago, Lost in Translation said:

 

... I don't know. That's a funny feeling. It's "me" but in order to define "me" I need to pull out to another level and when I do that... poof, it's gone!

LiT does magic.

 

Poof!  He is gone.

 

[Marblehead]

7 hours ago, rene said:

Not even that.

At least awareness?

 

[Lost in Translation]

3 hours ago, Marblehead said:

LiT does magic.

 

Poof!  He is gone.

 

I was watching MMK on TFC. I'm sure @Earl Grey knows what I'm talking about! Which reminds me, how close is the nearest Chicken Joy...?

[joeblast]

15 hours ago, dwai said:

So would it be fair to say that the sense organs gather sensory input, and that gets processed by the mind in form of objects and something (consciousness) makes sense of these thought objects by pattern matching and labeling them as x, y or z?

 

That's an intimate part of sensate experience, but what's left when all of that is removed or otherwise sufficiently attenuated?  Bit difficult to describe 'thusness'....I've tried to explain it before, but words have perhaps as many limitations as the senses, or more, depending on the subject   I understand the prompt to thwart the graymatter's self reinforced importance, but really, attenuating its noise to a significant degree at the neural level is the only thorough way to experience its quiescence and other things that would otherwise be ill defined, e.g. 'thusness.'

Edited August 28, 2018 by joeblast

[rene]

9 hours ago, dwai said:

Who observes that? 

You asked us to look, I looked and told you what I found.

 

3 hours ago, Marblehead said:

At least awareness?

 

Nothing there to be aware of, including awareness.

 

[rideforever]

If it is already awake, then how can it awaken ?

Two kinds of monkeymen exist on the planet.
The first will respond to this question by saying : exactly !

The second will respond by saying : "yes you know that's a good point perhaps we need to be more intelligent".

Never !   Why we need to be intelligent when life is such great yabba dabba fun ?

 

 

[rideforever]

Take a good look at this beautiful image of New York.
A good long look.
Look to the left, look to the right.
Look at the sky, look at water.
Do you see yourself anywhere ?
Well do you ?
Do you ?
No - you see, you don't exist !!!

 

[dwai]

1 hour ago, rene said:

You asked us to look, I looked and told you what I found.

 

Nothing there to be aware of, including awareness.

 

But what cognizes that there is "nothing to be aware of, including awareness"?

[dwai]

1 hour ago, joeblast said:

That's an intimate part of sensate experience, but what's left when all of that is removed or otherwise sufficiently attenuated?  Bit difficult to describe 'thusness'....I've tried to explain it before, but words have perhaps as many limitations as the senses, or more, depending on the subject   I understand the prompt to thwart the graymatter's self reinforced importance, but really, attenuating its noise to a significant degree at the neural level is the only thorough way to experience its quiescence and other things that would otherwise be ill defined, e.g. 'thusness.'

What constitutes attenuating its noise to a significant degree?

Can you try another experiment?

 

With all your attention, wait for a thought to rise in your mind. Watch your mind like a cat might watch for a mouse.  Tell me what you get?

[neti neti]

On 8/27/2018 at 10:49 AM, dwai said:

Try and see who you are, in a fraction of a second, without thinking.  Don't try to guess what the answer will be, but in YOUR EXPERIENCE, see who you are, without thinking. What do you get?

 

I don't know.

 

The I AM poses as a Witness of that emptiness, but there is a know-er of that I AM.

Therefore, the I AM, the witnessing and the emptiness are all the same consciousness.

 

There can be no experience of who I am, for in that attempt of recognition, I necessarily miss myself. At best, I seem to cognize reflections which reveal my nature. However, "the sun's image in the dewdrop, is not the sun."

[dwai]

17 minutes ago, neti neti said:

 

I don't know.

 

The I AM poses as a Witness of that emptiness, but there is a know-er of that I AM.

Therefore, the I AM, the witnessing and the emptiness are all the same consciousness.

 

There can be no experience of who I am, for in that attempt of recognition, I necessarily miss myself. At best, I seem to cognize reflections which reveal my nature. However, "the sun's image in the dewdrop, is not the sun."

Beautiful  

[Stosh]

2 hours ago, rideforever said:

Take a good look at this beautiful image of New York.
A good long look.
Look to the left, look to the right.
Look at the sky, look at water.
Do you see yourself anywhere ?
Well do you ?
Do you ?
No - you see, you don't exist !!!

 

I'm FROM New York ,...

it doesn't really look like that. 

[Lost in Translation]

Here's another experiment.

 

Pick up a large rock - three or four pounds is sufficient.

Hold the rock against your belly. Feel the essence of the rock,

    its ancientness, its nobility.

Allow yourself to blend with the rock, become the rock.

Now drop the rock on your foot.

 

What is it that is screaming?

 

[rideforever]

The greatest and last trick of the ego is to convince you that you do not exist.
So that you expend your life's energies in the destruction of your own soul.
 

Blessed is the lion which the man eats,

and the lion will become man;

and cursed is the man whom the lion eats,

and the lion will become man.

 

 

[Lost in Translation]

2 minutes ago, rideforever said:

The greatest and last trick of the ego is to convince you that you do not exist.

 

I wholeheartedly agree. The ego hides behind the illusion that the ego is destroyed. saying "I want to have no ego" is like a man cutting off the branch upon which he sits. I have no answer to this.

[joeblast]

1 hour ago, dwai said:

What constitutes attenuating its noise to a significant degree?

Can you try another experiment?

 

With all your attention, wait for a thought to rise in your mind. Watch your mind like a cat might watch for a mouse.  Tell me what you get?

 

I had a lot of time in before what I explained there happened - it was all approached from a perspective of "sensate input engenders the energy to resolve remainders via what would appear to be a sort of neural crosstalk; riding the myriad logical loopings of the midbrain to hitch a ride up into higher centers where thought manifests."  The actual tactic was streamlining until automatic regulation takes place, after which it was a matter of pedaling the bike a few times a day and it maintained momentum.  After a while it was no longer an exercise in regulating breath or anything else, but more a matter of simply keeping attention.  If I'm keeping my attention, then random thoughts arent happening, because there is no unresolved remainder of energy looking for an outlet.  If one's attention is poor, then "the attention is leaky" from an energetic standpoint, and disappears like sunspots when there's no longer sufficient field strength to manifest or maintain them.

 

What's my mind?    When there's no remainder, time went away too, and I was just "sitting for a little bit." 

 

Maybe I stumbled a bit upon your intent of the thread, because the maintaining of awareness is a significant part of awake

[rideforever]

4 minutes ago, Lost in Translation said:

I wholeheartedly agree. The ego hides behind the illusion that the ego is destroyed. saying "I want to have no ego" is like a man cutting off the branch upon which he sits. I have no answer to this.

 

The lion will become man.

[dwai]

14 minutes ago, Lost in Translation said:

Here's another experiment.

 

Pick up a large rock - three or four pounds is sufficient.

Hold the rock against your belly. Feel the essence of the rock,

    its ancientness, its nobility.

Allow yourself to blend with the rock, become the rock.

Now drop the rock on your foot.

 

What is it that is screaming?

 

Indeed...who "feels" pain? Awareness or the body?

[Lost in Translation]

4 minutes ago, dwai said:

Indeed...who "feels" pain? Awareness or the body?

 

It seems this line of thought is simply substituting one body for another. Where formerly the "body" was made of flesh and blood, now the "body" is made of a kind of disembodied awareness. I fully appreciate this kind of pursuit and find value in it, but ultimately I don't think it solves the problem. If anything it creates a new problem, that of ego fragmentation, or if you prefer "soul loss." In my opinion it is the integration of flesh, mind, and soul that coupled with the acceptance that we live as all three that is the path to liberation.

[dwai]

4 minutes ago, joeblast said:

 

I had a lot of time in before what I explained there happened - it was all approached from a perspective of "sensate input engenders the energy to resolve remainders via what would appear to be a sort of neural crosstalk; riding the myriad logical loopings of the midbrain to hitch a ride up into higher centers where thought manifests."  The actual tactic was streamlining until automatic regulation takes place, after which it was a matter of pedaling the bike a few times a day and it maintained momentum.  After a while it was no longer an exercise in regulating breath or anything else, but more a matter of simply keeping attention.  If I'm keeping my attention, then random thoughts arent happening, because there is no unresolved remainder of energy looking for an outlet.  If one's attention is poor, then "the attention is leaky" from an energetic standpoint, and disappears like sunspots when there's no longer sufficient field strength to manifest or maintain them.

 

What's my mind?    When there's no remainder, time went away too, and I was just "sitting for a little bit." 

 

Maybe I stumbled a bit upon your intent of the thread, because the maintaining of awareness is a significant part of awake

I don't understand all this "mid-brain, logic looping, higher centers" etc...those are just conceptual things to me. I understand awareness/being and knowing. When we only focus on knowing, we forget being. Getting caught up in knowing, and being neglected, we jump through many hoops to find out how to just be

 

When my awareness illuminates my mind (an instrument for knowing), it activates my sensory apparatuses (my whole body). With it, I supposedly interact with a world. But all the interaction seems to happen only in awareness (the place of experience). I found out that "trying to find out" usually is the work of dissection. We try to take stuff apart to see what makes it tick. But that doesn't work for awareness. It is impossible to find out how awareness works, because in order to do that, we need awareness.

 

How do we know we have eyes? By the experience of seeing of course! 

 

How do we know what we are? By going down to the basic impulse that exists as pure being.  It is from there any knowing is possible. 

 

 

[dwai]

1 minute ago, Lost in Translation said:

 

It seems this line of thought is simply substituting one body for another. Where formerly the "body" was made of flesh and blood, now the "body" is made of a kind of disembodied awareness. I fully appreciate this kind of pursuit and find value in it, but ultimately I don't think it solves the problem. If anything it creates a new problem, that of ego fragmentation, or if you prefer "soul loss." In my opinion it is the integration of flesh, mind, and soul that coupled with the acceptance that we live as all three that is the path to liberation.

What attribute of that which is before the mind arises can we know? Does it have attributes at all? If so, where is the "body" really? If something is to be known, we must be able to find its attributes. Label it, categorize it. That "what is" cannot be labeled or categorized, except via negativa. 

 

[Lost in Translation]

Just now, dwai said:

If something is to be known, we must be able to find its attributes.

 

And what if it simply can't be known? What if our perceptions are all we have, and all we ever will have? We perceive we have bodies. That is very easy to do. It takes a lot of effort to force ourselves to perceive that we are disembodied perception. Maybe we are, I just don't know. I'm not refuting your line of reasoning, I'm just taking the Occam's Razor approach that the simplest solution is probably the best solution.

[rideforever]

If you are "everything" .... why can't you do anything ?
Look at what "everything" is doing : makes the Sun comes up, makes the seas, the wind, makes the planets, make the light.
And you ?   Can you go to the bathroom without making a mess ?
Do you think perhaps, you are a rather vain and non-too-bright monkey ?
Lost like opium pipe smokers, they'll still be debating (i.e dreaming) in a thousand years.
Except the clock is ticking, maybe you don't have a thousand years.
What does existence do to the acorns that didn't grow ?
What is their future ?

[dwai]

8 minutes ago, Lost in Translation said:

 

And what if it simply can't be known? What if our perceptions are all we have, and all we ever will have? We perceive we have bodies. That is very easy to do. It takes a lot of effort to force ourselves to perceive that we are disembodied perception. Maybe we are, I just don't know. I'm not refuting your line of reasoning, I'm just taking the Occam's Razor approach that the simplest solution is probably the best solution.

It is an effort at exploring and it's good. If we perceive we have bodies, doesn't that mean that we are somehow ontologically separate from them (bodies)? 

 

Now, one might very well argue that "is it even possible to exist without a body?". That is a matter for another discussion. Yet, experientially, when we get to the "what is" without thinking, it seems to exist without any attributes - hence independent of body, mind, etc.  Just alive, being. Is it not so?

[Marblehead]

4 hours ago, rene said:

Nothing there to be aware of, including awareness.

Well, seems we don't agree here.  Oh well.