tsuki

My fingers don't disagree like we do! Knowledge, honey, how is it possible to share it if everything is one?

They are not identical. The ego is the appearance of personal will that is independent from the actual momentum of the present moment. The body-mind-person is a piece of organic memory that stores the momentum collected by intentional interactions with the world. The body-mind-person is your subconscious mind. To identify with the body is to take all of its impulses as imperative and act in conformity. The body has authentic impulses, but most of them are conditioned (organic memory) by society or your ignorant actions backfiring. As it turns out, all of the authentic impulses of the body are good and surrendering to them is experienced as flow. Entertaining the impressions that come from ignorance results in suffering. Purification of the body is the process of learning to surrender to the good ones until only the biological momentum of life remains. "the natural state" The body-mind-person is not a view as I see it. Can you have a view if you don't think and rest in the instinct completely?

Sinking the mind in the breath: day #16 The mind is the sneakiest in the morning by either providing amazing insights, or spiraling down in subtle fears. Noticing fears became very easy when they reach a certain threshold and thanks to meditation, my 'I don't give a fuck' muscle is strong enough to release them. Being lured in by insights is much more deceptive because it is so awesome that I forget that peace is the highest bliss. Surrendering this creative energy is so counter-intuitive that fall into this trap over and over again. Today's session was short, but powerful. I started as the person, AUMing my voice-tube, tuning it, and releasing various tensions. When I close my mouth at M, there is this weird nasal reverberation that I could never put my finger (tongue?) on. As it turns out, I can actually steer the sound with my throat and have it expressed through my mouth, or my nose without using my tongue. Having the air exit through both openings gives a very pleasant sound and a very smooth transition between the 'letters'. Speaking of letters, once the sound is properly set up, the mind can be tuned against it by contemplating the meaning of the mantra. The more mechanistic the chanting is, the less surrendered the mind is. The chant needs to be a smooth, pure and uninterpreted sound, without any linguistical distinctions. The reflex to recognize letters, change facial expressions rapidly, move the tongue, and all bodily tensions need to be surrendered until, what Allan Watts calls "am I doing it, or is it doing me?" happens. Of course, this tuning process is mechanistic in itself, so grasping it tightly can give its own set of needless tensions. At some point, devotion came up and I stopped being a person tuning my voice-tube, and recognized AUM to be the name of God. At this point, deep flow happened and I surrendered in a semi-religious/mystical trance. Yoga sutra was immensely illuminating today. It theoretically answered my questions regarding confinement to particular body, but I will need to stay grounded in direct experience and perhaps, become enlightened to this facet of reality: I was also watching some of the RSD material because I'm tempted to get my social skills in order. While I gained very little theoretical understanding, I felt a shift in energy after watching these videos and I know that projecting it in social situations would be beneficial. There is a part of me that is in resistance because I view these kinds of interactions with strangers as shallow (in the sense of depth, penetration). I do not mean this in a derogatory way, they are simply a beginning of something deeper. It is probably a form of impatience that I must work through. Maybe, my 'lack of order in social skills' is simply a wound I need to heal. My next LSD trip will be a massive shedding. I'm excited.

@Mondsee That realization was my first spiritual mindfuck 5 years ago. How is it possible that there are other people with their own experience?

@DrewNows I thought that practicing OOBE or astral projection may get me out of this identification. Ever since yesterday's meditation, this boundary is no longer solid and closed so I'd say it has gotten better. It's like my center of gravity is firmly seated in my belly and properly open. I feel like I'm permanently connected with air as an organism, that it is my internal organ in which other people reside as variations of density. Strangely enough, I had a semi-OOBE while watching Leo's video on what is Truth. I felt as if my point of view shifted downward to the right from where I usually experience. @DrewNows @Aakash Thank you for your comments.

@Aakash So many actualities, which one do I choose??

Small head solipsism na na na na.

Sinking the mind in the breath: day #15 Yesterday, I kept reading yoga sutras and meditating on the breath. Every other week I'm alone in the office when I work late shifts and I had the opportunity to chant OM out loud for half day. This is the most pleasant thing I've done in a while and I learned a lot about how to use my voice-tube. I'm starting to zero in on to what I want the OM to sound like, how it is supposed to feel. It is absolutely amazing how every twitch of the mind, any minuscule fear gets reflected through this sound. When I'm very still, I can even hear my heartbeat. The pleasurable part is the vibrations of the body. The sound originates from the belly, passes through the heart and out via the throat. The three stages correspond to the deep "A", middle "O" and the nasal "M". Feeling the vibrations seems like the Kriya initiatory practice of scanning the spine. Today I decided to chant during morning meditation and after initial resistance, my wife decided to join. After I tuned her, she relaxed and started sounding 'right' to the point where she felt good. I even caught her humming throughout the day . After some reading, I started to contemplate the feeling of "I". I started to touch walls and observe the boundary of my flesh. This boundedness is what I take to be the designation of 'me' being 'inside' of the body. Having practiced my voice-tube, I noticed that this boundary is not only the external skin, but it is actually also inside of my body. I literally have a channel down to my lungs through which food and air come. This skin is then split into myriad of fractal tubes that connect me to the 'outside' air. The same thing applies to food, it is digested and incorporated into my body and the waste is released in the other end. It is all a matter of subtlety - I am the air and food as much as I am the bounded flesh. There is this question that keeps bugging me for quite some time: "why do I experience everything just through one body?". Why can't I experience through the eyes of another AS WELL as mine? I guess that this is a more general form of question relating to "why am I confined to this particular body?" and that is ultimately a question about life purpose. Why is awareness localized like this? Why is it not a uniform field and some things seem to be more intelligent? Coffee is still off-limits. I'm looking fondly towards tea, but I know that it's a gateway drug!

Because without it, the original question is nonsensical.

I am not talking about the 'ego' at all. Notice that I referenced 'the ego' to remove it out of the picture. Nothing positively descriptive was said about it. The ego is something only through appearance. In actuality, there is none. It is a pointer, if you will, but pointing towards nothing.

https://youtu.be/gcmkmOqT63Y Sadhguru on the memory of the body. Very, very interesting.

The present moment is what it is for a reason that does not originate in the egoic mind. The body-mind-person is there for a reason as well, it is a puzzle that fits into what is. The mission called "purpose of life" does not come via egoic construction, but acceptance and surrender. This is why developing vision seems like remembering things that were forgotten.

It seems like this is the core issue of the discussion. Maybe it stems from misunderstanding of what devotion is? When I hear the word "devotion", what comes to mind first is give-yourself-to something which I find to be misleading. In Polish, devotion is poświęcić, which is the same word as consecrate. To consecrate means to move something closer to that, which is sacred. To consecrate the mistaken belief in a separate self means to make it closer, more similar, to God. That, in turn means: to surrender it. This surrender is not done through acceptance of dogma, but through removal of ignorance - through growth. That is how the idea of a guru comes together with knowledge, wisdom, elevation and teaching. Worship here is a voluntary method of releasing arrogance, and love is the end-result of the process - selflessness. The person devotes itself to God because it acknowledges its own ignorance, its suffering. To say that it is really God playing trick on itself is true, but only from the vantage point of the end-result of the process. That is how a guru sees a student that devotes himself/herself to it. The student sees it differently.

The idea that there is a separate entity that needs to be liberated (enlightened) is just that - an idea. While the idea is believed in, it appears as real, solid and concrete, but it cannot be liberated because it is mistaken. In actuality, there is nobody there to liberate. Not through any form of effort coming from that illusory idea. The person, while it appears. I said that Gurus are middle-men of God, the symbol of God. Devotion is a way of stilling the mind. I did not mean Guru as a title passed down the tradition, but rather whatever one finds elevating. In some traditions, people are Gurus because seekers find traditions to be elevating. I would suspect that this is mostly present in blue countries, but the appearance of a teacher is helpful regardless of stage of development.

@electroBeam

@Calmness You, as an ego, cannot liberate yourself. If you experience yourself as God, then there is nothing to liberate. How about deciding that you are not growing fast enough on your own and decide to find a self-proclaimed shaman over the internet that will take you places if you just trip with him? How about stumbling upon a suggestive video on YouTube when you are in a vulnerable state? My point was than no power is safe, this is not specific to psychedelics. I am not defending devotion, it is very powerful as well.

Then what is the solution? Sticking with simplicity and hiding in plain sight? Avoiding powerful tools condemns you to obscurity. If 5-MEO is as powerful as you claim, it will be (and it have been) co-opted by devil. Putting the responsibility on the user does not prevent the devil from working. I can easily imagine people being brainwashed by psychedelics into joining cults. Even making the platform open-source does not solve the problem because there will be people of power. Can't you see that human effort is not enough? You cannot liberate yourself. It cannot be manufactured. Devotion to God is the final method and Gurus are the middle men, its symbols.

Your point only makes sense because you omitted half of the quoted sentence. Putting Hitler on the same level as Jesus is just juvenile.

Humans do not become enlightened merely through human effort. Devilry is not a bug, but a feature. That is why devotion is one of the most powerful tools of spirituality, but some people require a guru that will not confuse his persona with God.

@Skanzi I had a dilemma similar to yours until I understood that direct experience is not in conflict with knowledge developed collectively. If you commit 100% to live by your own rules, you will be able to master yourself but that mastery is barren unless you are able to act it out in the world. Unless you are satisfied with influencing everything yourself, you will need understanding that is shared among people. That is the purpose of tradition (and that includes science). Once you understand everything, nothing will sound wrong except for suffering. Knowledge that is not fleshed out with understanding is useless, but once you understand you can share it using any language. Study any tradition of your choosing and use it for the benefit of everyone. Pick the splinter out with another splinter, or so to speak.

You are arguing against something that is live and kickin' on the basis that it will make a lot of hassle when it will be dying. When people talk of religion in context of Actualized, your response is: 'this place will never turn into a cult as long as I'm here. After I'm gone it's up to you' (I'm paraphrasing). What is the way out? A noose?

That is how religions die, not how they live.

Sinking the mind in the breath: day #14 While reading the yoga sutras, I became inspired to fill my mind with the sound OM. On every breath out, I imagine that sound. Firstly, it occupies the mind and stops the restless chatter. Secondly, it helps to give the reference point for the intensity of breath and helps to notice the moments when the mind becomes scattered. I need this to become my second nature. Today, I decided to start chanting OM and listen to the reverberations of the body. My throat is very tense, it's like I have never learned to use my instrument properly. The voice originates in the belly, that is where the "A" of AUM comes from. Since all human sounds are modifications of the "A", my voice is needlessly weak. It all comes back to the scattering of the mind. When I speak, I need to focus on the instrument. Lack of awareness is the cause. The chanting is very powerful. When I stood up after ~20 minute practice I was happy to the point of being light-headed. It also struck me that the lesson of AUM is different from the lesson of AMEN, even if the latter originates from the former. The Yogic AUM has no beginning and no end - it is eternal, while the Christian AMEN is about death and rebirth. AMEN is about the path of the individual being while AUM is God.

@Synchronicity I have another question. You said that "inanimate" objects such as walls have their own experience. Do thoughts have their own experience as well?