swan_Joshua

@sarapr I hope you have a slight intuition from my previous posts and your contemplations that consciousness is the true nature and basis of all reality, apparently creating this world and a finite body/mind. Our minds arise in this consciousness , and the duality of mind divides the consciousness (only apparently, never actually) into two apparent aspects. First an apparent separate self that is considered to be the knower, and consequently, an apparent objective world out there, for it to be known. Altho ugh both are the one and the same. The being is knowing. Its so intimate that I cannot even begin to describe in words and I don’t want to. The knower and the known are the same. In fact all there is - is just knowing or just pure consciousness, the being and knowing, of itself, by itself, in itself, in an infinity of space and time. These concepts of space and time don’t apply to consciousness. Infact, it’s the limitation of our finite minds that we see the infinite dimension-less consciousness as 3 dimensions of space and one dimension of time- Our apparent world. So let’s take about your experience. Really try to feel this consciousness in your own direct experience that you have and question it- your only true guide, that which you can trust, your consciousness, actually its the consciousness that has you, or even better- you consciousness. Yes that sounds about right. You awareness, You consciousness. Ask yourself- Am I aware ? Who is the I that is aware ? Can you locate it anywhere in your body or in your mind? Try now with your attention to attend to something just outside Consciousness. Can any of you find that place? Can any of you find an edge to the field in which your attention is wandering? Can you find a boundary to it in which it can be contained? Have you ever been in an experience where it was not present ? Have you ever witnessed the appearing or vanishing of it? (Even when you are asleep, your consciousness is present to know the dream world). Just contemplate. Pause now and contemplate every single question in your experience and then only answer. All you know of the world is sensations and perceptions. Same goes for your mind and body, a cluster of thoughts, sensations and feelings. And all these sensations of seeing hearing touching and thinking are appearing in you, and by you I mean, you-Consciousness. How can you be sure of that when these sense perceptions are gone, as when we sleep, the world still stands as it is. In other words, how do you say that the objective world out there can exist on its own accord without consciousness. Has anyone ever or could anyone ever experience a world without consciousness ? If yes, then what would that be that is knowing the experience ? It can only be consciousness. Yet we are so sure that there is an objective world out there. It never is. Infact it’s Just an activity in consciousness that is giving rise to the apparent body-minds and the apparent worlds. In reality, the world is made up of consciousness. The mind is made up of consciousness. All thats happening is just consciousness knowing consciousness. Even that will be a concession to the truth, which can never be stated in words. There are infinite number of ways to try and fail putting it into words. It cannot be said because it cannot be known by mind. Mind is not present when you identify yourself with this pure openness, allowance, ever present, infinite, unimpaired, loving, full of acceptance, knows no resistance, knows no fear, peaceful, beautiful, simply knowing or being that is consciousness. The separate limited finite self, this body-mind, which you identify yourself with, the root of all your apparent troubles and sufferings, it dissolves or melts into this infinite consciousness, and ceases to be when you identify yourself with your true body- Consciousness. It was never even there in the first place. Just an apparent thought in the mind that is dividing our utterly unified seamless experience of unity into duality of subject-object relationship. A beautiful saying by Rumi- In the existence of your love, I become non-existent. This non-existence linked to you is more beautiful than all existence. Now you might pick up on- since we all see the same tree and the same sun, there has to be some reality to this world. why do you use that as an evidence that there is a universal objective world for all of us. In fact its the other way round. Since all our minds are made out of and appears in the same infinite consciousness, that we all see the same trees and sun. To me, it sounds even more sensible when I start putting all pieces of my experience together. Forget about what the majority of world culture says. Sadly, people generally subscribe to the materialistic model. And just so we are on the subject, let me tell you we have never found this stuff called matter. We just go deeper and deeper, and all we know today is a family of leptons and quarks, that give rise to all of the world. But these elementary particles and the way we think about them- as stuff called matter with some form and mass and charge is a flawed view. Now since the pseudo-scientific community cannot directly observe the particles, so they rely on the physical effects and interactions of these elementary particles, study their properties and make xyz theories to explain all the observations. But never really contemplate on what are these fermions and bosons actually made of or the reality of stuff called matter. We still don’t have a quantum field theory of gravity. Einstein’s General Relativity breaks down in the quantum realm. And quantum mechanics breaks down when dealing with super massive black holes. I have an intuition that the GR is flawed because Quantum physics is too beautiful to be wrong. The Big Bang theory is also just another invention of modern science to support Einsteins relativity. Still some of the mathematics do work out and so does the physics for most of the engineering applications and thus we get sleeker and smarter iphones. But the scientific foundational beliefs are wrong. For two and a half thousand years it seems to have passed our civilization by that we have never found anything outside Consciousness. Physicists are still looking for the nature and cause of this stuff called ‘matter’. They’ve been looking for it for two and a half thousand years; they’ve never found it, and they never will. It’s not there. The realist/materilaistic approach is wrong. There have been many great scientists who on their scientific career realized and even acknowledged that matter can never be the true reality of nature. But anyway, things are improving. String theory seems to be a step in this direction of understanding that universe is made up of nothing but vibrations. And they are yet to realize that these strings are nothing but the infinite Universal Consciousness iteself. Okay so I had to get these things out in the open before I could talk about your fear of future and worrying over things. I will get to that with time. If you have any queries or doubts regarding this consciousness paradigm, let me know. I never say to simply believe whatever I or anyone is saying. Rather turn inwards and see your own experience of everything till now. Its always wise to trust your own experience rather than believes. Contemplate upon it and let me know what you think. And something about fear- you fear this fear but never take the time to see clearly who is the one that is afraid of it and what is he/she afraid of? (or) Who are you and what is fear really made up of? With love, Joshua

@sarapr Sorry for the late reply. I will check notifications more often.

Let us proceed slowly through your description of your experience and try to explore it more thoroughly: You say: “When you contemplate on your perceptions and sensations, you feel them and understand that concepts just translate what you feel and these concepts are not real.” Like you say, you feel there is a wall between reality and your perceptions of it. It is true that, as you say, thought translates or interprets these sensations and perceptions and forms a new concept out of them. These concepts are considered to be accurate descriptions of the reality of our experience in case of majority of people lives, including you a few days before (the sensation or the perception) but, in fact, they are not, as you have clearly seen now in your own experience. The concept simply abstracts an object such as a body, a person or a world from our experience and, as a natural corollary to this, abstracts a personal subject as the knower of the object. The object known and the subject that supposedly knows it are, in fact, both abstract superimpositions upon the reality of our experience. Neither are ever in fact experienced. The reality is something completely different. Although you are right in saying that these concepts are not real, in the sense that they do not describe the reality of our experience. However, thoughts, like sensations and perceptions have a reality to them. The reality of thought is the same as the reality of sensation and perception, and the reality of you and the reality of everything that is, it is the same infinite Consciousness, ever present, always knowing itself. You feel that you are that which sees through the eyes of this body, hears through the ears of this body. It is true that you are that which sees, hears etc. However, you, Awareness, don’t see or hear through a body. In other words, Awareness is not located in a body, looking out through the eyes, or behind the ears hearing. The idea that we see through the eyes or hear through the ears is simply another mistaken interpretation by thought superimposed upon the reality of our experience. Let us take the experience of hearing. Normally thought conceptualises a ‘me’ inside the head hearing a sound that is considered to be outside the head. Take a sound that you are hearing now, for instance, the traffic. And take the experience of the head, in which hearing is supposedly taking place. Our only experience of the head is a tingling mass of vibration. Now is it your actual experience that the sound of the traffic is taking place inside the tingling vibration we call ‘the head?’ I would say Go directly to the experience. Or rather is it your experience that the tingling vibration called the ‘sound of traffic’ and the tingling vibration call the ‘head’ both appear in Awareness? Or we can ask ourselves, do we experience the Awareness that is hearing the sound of the traffic as being located in the tingling mass of vibration called ‘the head?’ In other words do we experience Awareness inside a sensation but outside a perception? In order to find the answer try to look at this Awareness…..do you know where to look for it, can you see it or find it? No! Whilst Awareness is undeniably present, it cannot be located anywhere. Therefore it is our simple, direct experience that Awareness is not located in the sensation we call the head and therefore it is also our simple experience that hearing, which takes place in Awareness, is also not located in the head. Our only experience of the head is through sensing and our only experience of the sound of the traffic is through hearing, and sensing and hearing both take place in the same place, that is, in the placeless place of Awareness. In fact, it is not even true to say that hearing and sensing take place in Awareness. Rather, Awareness as it were, takes the shape of sensing and hearing from time to time. Awareness then takes the shape of a thought which conjures up a fairy tale about an individual entity that lives inside the head which hears a sound which supposedly takes place in an imagined space outside the head. However, this fairy tale doesn’t change the fact of our experience which is that there is only Awareness, which sometimes takes the shape of thinking, sensing and perceiving, thereby giving birth to the appearance of the mind, body and world. so basically I am what I'm aware of or maybe the awareness itself which includes everything else so all there is, is awareness . am I in the right path here? Is this what's described as being one with everything else ? Whatever it is that is seeing these words and experiencing whatever else is being experienced is what we refer to as Consciousness or Awareness. That is what we intimately know ourselves to be. First of all ask yourself if you can see, feel or touch the Consciousness that you know yourself to be and that is seeing these words? And if the answer is no, then how do you know that it is located inside your body. After all, your body is just a cluster of sensations and perceptions with a concept attached to it. Do you find Consciousness inside this cluster of sensations or perceptions, or inside a concept? Don’t be too quick to answer with a yes or no. Go deeply into your experience. Take each sensation as it appears and see if you can locate Consciousness in it. Now take this sensation that you call ‘me’ the body and compare it with a perception that you call ‘not me,’ for instance the sound of the traffic. Ask yourself whether the sensation is closer to that which knows it, that is, to Consciousness, than the perception. See that both take place equally close to Consciousness, that neither is closer to or further from Consciousness than the other. If you go even more deeply into each of these experiences you will see that the sensation called ‘me,’ ‘my body,’ is made only out of sensing and the sound of ‘the traffic’ is made only out of hearing. And if you go deeply into the experience of sensing and hearing you will find no substance there other than Consciousness. Therefore it will be your own direct, intimate and immediate experience that sensing (the body), which we call ‘me,’ and hearing (the sound of traffic) which we call ‘not me,’ are in fact made out of exactly the same ‘stuff,’ that is, they are made out of Awareness, myself. Explore your experience very deeply in this way, taking time with everything that seems to be both ‘me’ and ‘not me,’ and you will find that there is and has always only ever been one substance in your experience, Consciousness, and that one substance is simultaneously that which knows and that which is known. In other words to know something and to be that thing are the same experience. It is not enough to understand this intellectually. We have to explore our sensations and perceptions as well as our thoughts if we want to FEEL this rather than just KNOW this. It is the patient, detailed exploration of our actual experience that makes this understanding come into life. All negative feelings associated with the separate self such as boredom, anxiety, fear , etc. comprise of a bodily sensation plus a psychological element, i.e a thought in which the separate ‘I’ entity is always present as a belief, either implicitly or explicitly. These two elements, the ‘I’ thought in the mind and the ‘I’ feeling in the body, are the two aspects of ignorance….the belief that I am separate and the feeling that I am separate. Of these two, the feeling that I am separate is by far the larger component. It manifests as uncomfortable feelings and, more subtly, as the apparently innocuous sense of being located here in and/or as a body, sitting in a chair, looking out through the eyes etc. So you have to investigate the beliefs, both at the level of the mind, that we harbour about being a separate individual and also explore the feelings at the level of the body, that seem to confirm and substantiate such beliefs, which is basically what true meditation is all about. Once it is clear both in the realm of our thoughts and in the realm of our feelings, all that remains is to live this experiential understanding from moment to moment. Live as the Consciousness or Awareness that you know yourself to be. Take your stand as that. Think as that, feel as that and act as that. In so far as you feel you choose or decide anything, do so on behalf of this impersonal, unlocated presence of Awareness. As much as possible, before thinking, feeling or doing anything, take your stand first as this Awareness. BE it knowingly and then think, feel and act as that. Live this understanding. And you wouldn’t want anything else in life. Just this understanding. And the bliss and contentment that comes with this. No material desire can even begin to compare with the happiness and love that is in the knowing of - Our Own Being - Our Own Swaroop. It takes time though. And a little effort as well. It's not a matter of time. It doesn't matter how much time it will take. It all depends on your doings - what you have done in the past, how you are doing now and what your nature is. It all depends upon that. How much pure and natural you are from inside, that much faster it will come to you. This is because only your false identity and your false ego are stopping you from understanding your true self. This is so deep in you that even while you are saying that this is false, still you are in the false state. Reality is something very different and people don't know how to handle it. Meditation helps. So does contemplations like these on a forum. With love, Joshua @sarapr @sarapr

@sarapr ABOUT ADDICTION AND MEANINGLESS-NESS OF LIFE Addiction of any sort, be it to inappropriate sexual behaviour, alcohol, drugs, smoking or any milder form of behaviour, always has its origin in the belief and, more importantly, the feeling of being separate, limited and located. The most common form in which this belief and feeling of separation manifests is in the subtle and not-so-subtle rejection of the current situation - that is, “I don’t like what is going on” and “I want something other than what is going on.” These two attitudes - traditionally referred to as fear and desire - are the two faces of the apparent separate self. They are two of the most common forms of ‘resistance to what is.’ In other words, ‘the apparent separate entity,’ ‘resistance to what is,’ and ‘the search for happiness’ via various objects, substances or experiences, are synonymous. These three states are, in fact, one and the same state and could also be called ‘ignorance’ or the ‘ignoring of the true nature of experience.’ Therefore, ‘the apparent separate entity,’ ‘resistance to what is,’ and ‘the search for happiness’ are incompatible with the experiential understanding of the non-dual nature of experience. So, let us go to the origin of this ‘resistance to what is’ because if we start anywhere else, for instance, if we were to start with a secondary cause, we would not be going to the root of the problem and, sooner or later, our search will reappear, often in a more virulent form. In fact, the term ‘addiction’ is used precisely to describe this more virulent form of the search that has become chronic and destructive. The origin of ‘resistance to what is,’ is the belief that what we are, Awareness, is limited to and located within a body. This imaginary identification of our Self with a limited object (which, upon investigation turns out, itself, to be imaginary) creates an apparent entity. The real ‘I’ of Awareness seems to become the limited ‘I’ of the imagined separate entity. That is, we think and feel that we are a body. This apparent entity, being apparently made out of an intermittent object is, by definition, unstable, always threatened with change and disappearance. Hence the fear that resides at its heart and its natural corollary, desire. The fear comes from the feeling that when this intermittent sensation (the form in which the body is appearing in this moment) disappears, ‘I’ will disappear with it. And the desire comes from the apparent need to substantiate this fleeting entity we believe and feel ourselves to be, in order to perpetuate its apparent existence. To begin with this fear and desire manifest in the most innocuous forms of behaviour, the most common of which is unnecessary thinking, the almost constant chatter or commentary that most of us are familiar with.This innocuous commentary is the simplest form of ‘the rejection of what is.’ It is the repetitive background chatter which ensures that attention is almost always diverted away from ‘what is.’ This is the primal addiction. ‘What is’ is deemed too boring, plain and uneventful to be worthy of attention and thinking provides an alternative dream world into which we can escape from the boredom or discomfort of the moment. One honest look at our thinking will show that the majority of it serves no practical, intelligent or creative purpose whatsoever. It is simply a sort of filler that serves to distract attention from the boredom of ‘what is.’ The vast majority of our thoughts about the past and future serve only to legitimise and perpetuate this type of thinking. However, precisely because this type of thinking is deemed innocuous (in the sense that it has no harmful effect on the body or on society) it passes, for the most part, unnoticed and is indeed encouraged by our culture in general. For this reason, it is the most common and effective form of addiction that almost everyone is engaged in, for the most part unknowingly. And therein lies its efficiency at keeping the sense of separation alive. Hence it is the perfect refuge for the apparently separate self. However, as we grow up this subtle thinking is no longer sufficient to keep the anxiety, dis-ease and discomfort of the sense of separation at bay and we begin to turn to stronger forms of avoidance. These stronger forms of avoidance are the common forms of addiction with which we are familiar - over working, over eating, excessive activity, addiction to money, excessive use of TV, excessive use of alcohol, smoking, drugs, pornography etc. etc. All these forms are simply strategies of avoidance - avoidance of ‘what is,’ avoidance of ‘this,’ avoidance of ‘now.’ They are the familiar refuges of the sense of a separate self. Society draws a line based on whether the addictive activity in question is of immediate danger to itself, as to the legitimacy of each of these activities, thereby condoning some and condemning others. However, from the point of view of ignorance, they are all simply strategies of avoidance and denial. In fact, each of them is simply a variation of the root avoidance - incessant thinking that revolves around the ‘I’ thought. If we go honestly, as you have done, to our experience, we will always find this thinking and its deeper counterpart in our feelings at the level of the body, underneath or behind all subsequent forms of addiction. It all begins with ‘I,’ the body. That is the root of all suffering which our addictions seek to alleviate. If society condemns one form of addiction more than another, for whatever reason, we may be persuaded to change horses, but in our hearts this fire of discomfort, avoidance and rejection, and its inevitable counterpart in the search for happiness (which is just another name for addiction) will continue. And we will not truly rest until we have gone to the root of the matter. To go to the root of the matter means to go to the source of the apparently separate ‘I,’ not just the belief of the separate ‘I’ but, more importantly, the feeling of such. It is only when the whole mechanism of the apparently separate self has been seen clearly in all its subtlety that we are free of it, that is, that Awareness stands ‘knowingly’ in and as Itself, un-apparently-veiled by the belief and feeling of separation. It is not enough, as you have discovered, to wash a veneer of “Oh well, everything is equally an expression of Awareness and therefore nothing matters” over our beliefs and feelings. This kind of superficial thinking is one of the safer refuges for the apparently separate self in those that have added a veneer of spirituality to their persona. The sense of separation is a master at appropriating anything for its own purposes of self-validation and justification, and superficial spirituality is one of its less easily detected forms. you should be aware to clearly and honestly see that this addiction is a symptom of a deeper and subtler malaise - that of the separate self. You should clearly see that the mind’s attempts to justify this behaviour with convincing and seemingly watertight spiritual or rational or nihilistic arguments, all are basically means to manipulate and appropriate your understanding so as to validate its addictions., and are not expressions of true understanding. So, what to do? Go to the heart of the matter - the apparent separate self or the apparent veiling of Awareness. They are the same thing. Explore it both at the level of the mind, that is, the beliefs we have that seem to support the existence of a separate self. You have a good mind. Use it to explore your experience and come to your own conclusion. See that there is absolutely no experiential evidence for such a belief. This conviction will initiate a much deeper exploration of the sense of separation at the level of feelings which is the true residence of the apparent self. Words wont be the best means to convey this deeper exploration and this is not the place to embark on it in detail. Suffice to say that without this deeper exploration, everything remains, in most cases, a belief, and not in your experience. You remain in a false state and its so false that even while your mind even in saying this is false, remains in a false state. The understanding should be experiential and if not, the peace and happiness that is inherent in the true understanding will remain elusive and will inevitably compel further bouts of seeking. Having said that and in order to facilitate the above I would also recommend one simple physical ‘discipline. Lets take a mild form of addiction of watching porn as an example, as the addiction is mainly at the level of thoughts and feelings and does not have a lasting effect on the body which, in the case of drinking, smoking and drugs, is often irreparable or, at least, lasts long after the impulse to indulge them has been dissolved. Every time you feel the impulse to watch porn, just pause. Even if, to begin with, it is only for half a minute, put a little space between you and the fulfillment of the impulse. As time goes on this period of time can be extended until you find yourself always as this space, as it were. However, don’t expect this space to be peaceful to begin with - it probably won’t be! Most likely, the impulse (which is, in fact, the bare face of the separate self, the separate ‘I’ in its raw form) on finding that it is no longer relieved, will probably display itself in full force. It will rebel. Be attentive not only to the thoughts that will try to persuade you that your impulses are perfectly OK, that you will only do it one more time, that it is all an expression of Awareness, that there is nobody there doing it, etc., etc., but more importantly to all the uncomfortable feelings in the body that rise up, demanding to be acted upon and relieved. See that the thoughts all revolve around a separate entity that is, when sought, found to be non-existent. It is necessary in most cases to carry out this investigation at a rational level thoroughly, in order to come to this conviction. If this conviction has not been reached, the apparently separate ‘I’ will still be very much alive in your thoughts and you will not have the resolve to explore your feelings fully, as a result. Relieved of the thoughts which seem to justify the existence of a separate entity, the feelings are exposed for what they are - raw bodily sensations. These bodily sensations are, in fact, neutral. They only acquire their apparent negativity (and hence their need to be avoided with addictive behaviour) when coupled with the belief in a separate self. Robbed of this belief they are seen for what they are, innocuous bodily sensations which, as such, have no power of us, that is, no power to make us act on their behalf. Being seen clearly is the one thing the apparent self and its entourage of strategic activity cannot stand. There may and probably will be tremendous resistance both in your thoughts and in your body to this gentle, non-interventive but firm approach. However, once the mechanism of the separate self, both at the level of the mind and at the level of the body, has been truly seen through, its foundation has been removed, and it is only a matter of time before the patterns of behaviour which depended upon its apparent existence for their survival, diminish and disappear. Having said that, these addictions are very powerful and in most cases this deep explorative approach is best facilitated over a period of time with one in whom peace and understanding are established. In the end it is not the exploration that facilitates the peace and understanding, but rather the peace and understanding which allows the investigation and exploration to unfold and slowly, in most cases, reabsorbs, as it were, the apparently separate self and all its patterns of thinking, feeling and acting, back into itself. One last thing: as we sit allowing these thoughts and, more importantly, uncomfortable feelings to arise, it is important not to have any subtle agenda with them, not to ‘do this’ in order to ‘get rid of them.’ That would be more of the same. Just allow the full panoply of thoughts and feelings to display themselves in your allowing and indifferent presence. In time their ferocity will die down, revealing subtler and subtler layers of thinking and feeling on behalf of a separate entity, until we come to the little, almost innocuous background thinking about which we were speaking earlier. This is the sense of separation, the ‘ego,’ in its apparently mildest and least easily detectable form. Be very sensitive to this. Be sensitive to the ‘avoidance of what is’ in its subtlest forms. It is the sweet, furry baby animal that later turns into a monster! As time goes on we become more and more sensitive and we see how much of our thinking and feeling, let alone our activities, are generated for the sole purpose of avoiding ‘what is,’ of avoiding the ‘this’ and the ‘now.’ It is this open, un-judging, un-avoiding, allowing of all things which, in time, restores the ‘I’ to its proper place in the seat of Awareness and which, as a natural corollary to this abidance in and as our true Self, gently realigns our thoughts, feelings and activities with the peace and happiness that is inherent in It. With warmest wishes and love, Joshua