Victor Mgazi

The Pursuit of Peace and Happiness The conflict is within me. The world is within me. A seemingly mechanised part of me is striving for survival, while a more subtle but very much observant part of me longs for something deeper and more fulfilling. It is clear to me that whatever it is that I yearn must be a feeling, simply because I no longer want to feel the way I feel now. It's not emotional this feeling, I've tried using substances to rid myself of this feeling but even in my euphoria the longing is surprisingly piercing. At this point it becomes obvious that although one may be able to trick the brain into feeling ecstatic using recreational drugs, the heart won't, in even the slightest bit, be fooled. I've always suspected that the heart isn't just biological in its nature, but that it's a spiritual organ as well. I think this is why people who resort to substance abuse can never satisfy the void that is in their hearts, and even in their extreme highs there remains the feeling of the deep soul piercing emptiness inside. The soul yearns for fulfillment. The world is in me, or rather the world is me. I know that this is so because there has never been a moment where I am without the world and the world without me. All perception and experience is one, singular, being. But for the sake of my survival the mind makes it appear otherwise, so much so that what the observant part of me sees isn't what my biology and psychology believes. Or else I would be happy right now, but I'm not because I believe that I am lacking. This is very sad. Because this is not a problem of the world or reality, it is a problem of identity. I know I can be happier than this and be at peace with everything, because I've experienced it before - once. A moment of bliss, purely, or at least seemingly, accidental. During that moment, even in my irritation I was happy, I believe that was a taste of Devine Love. And that happened before I even got into consciousness work. That is very significant to me because for most of my life, growing up in a society marked by and driven by consumerism, I was made to believe that a feeling like that can only be attained through wealth and romance. And now I now that that's not the case because on that day, in that moment I was blessed by something completely outside of my perception, and I got to experience utter bliss. I was somewhere in my mid teens when that happened. This is very sad, but inspiring as well. I know that I don't have to accomplish anything to be that happy again, at least not in the conventional sense.

Muscle spasms & Mood swings and possible Psychic attacks. During or after meditation, my muscles would be twitching - I would be laying perfectly still, relaxed and not really thinking about anything, when suddenly something like.. my head turning over on its own or my hands contract by themselves.. happens. And then even after practicing stillness, these muscle spasms occur, like body is out of control. This is usually accompanied by emotional instability where, laying perfectly still, I suddenly feel strong emotional shifts that I can't help. It's completely random when it happens, but I notice that there's some kind of connection between the two. I've also had a psychic attack like experience where I'm half awake, eyes open but body paralyzed, and something across my room just sorta like charges at me and makes impact, but not with me.. it's like there's something like a force field in between us. The impact is very much loud and certainly feels physical, but then I quickly fully awaken and it's like nothing happened. I'm not sure if the last experience is related to the meditation I'm practicing but I've never experienced anything like that before, not until I started having these muscle spasms and mood swings. So now, I'm planning to practice stillness consistently everyday in effort to enhance whatever is going on and see if that doesn't make anything clearer.

Mind as the ultimate magician The greatest trick the mind accomplished was literally pulling something out of nothing, or rather making it so that something appears as nothing and nothing appears something.

The struggle Is suffering an essential aspect of life, or is it completely subjective? I have suffered in the past, have experienced both great (emotional and physical) pain, great anxiety and depression. But is it all essential? Fundamentally, there should be no such thing as suffering. I know this because I know the foundation of experience. And that is.. experience is singular. What is called life is a single phenomenon, a single stream or flow of moment after moment after moment. This flow cannot be struggle, for there are times where I'm not at all struggling and everything is seemingly effortless. See, in truth, the only thing recognized by awareness is this singularity called experience, nothing else is being observed other than this stream right here. So, if suffering is not an essential part of reality then how does it occur? It must be subjective, right? No, it's not subjective. There is no such thing as subjective or objective, these things are not in perception. There is only the single stream. So suffering is, in actuality, a feeling. Feelings are neither objective nor subjective, they just are. The question is then why do they arise, what's their nature? Why the feeling of suffering ? During my time, doing consciousness work, I grew aware of an almost ever apparent dynamic within perception itself and that is conflict. This conflict, really, is the root of all suffering and mishaps. See, the way experience unfolds and how life flows, it's designed in such a way that nothing ever means anything, so that when it flows.. it's all good. This is the design of the singularity, there's no identifying anything separate from the stream because everything is streaming - rising and falling, rising and falling, rising and falling.. until - one moment begins to rise more frequent than other moments fall, and although ultimately it's all just one moment, the feelings and thoughts are not. This conflict within perception is conflict between the stream of consciousness and thought-feeling. The thought-feeling I has risen so often that, like a bucket in the rain, it has accumulated in content more so than the other buckets. So why the conflict, though? Origin wise, the conflict is purely accidental, kind of like the way one would wake up in the morning and then the first thing that one sees is the first thing that one sees. It's accidental. Because what are thoughts at the end of the day? Thoughts are, when refined, realisations. A thought is a realisation when looked at in its purest form. The first thought, I , is the first realisation. I is the first thing discovered before anything else, before anything can have any meaning whatsoever. That's the birth of the mind, the birth of self reflection or self awareness. Knowing this, realisation is merely a tool of creation really. Because everything already exists, it's only a matter of it getting realised or “thought”. There is no such thing as “thinking” really, because hey.. there is only one stream of consciousness. There is no the thinker and then the thought, there is only consciousness being aware or self realising/observing , it doesn't really matter how one puts it. But see the realisation of I didn't mean anything, it didn't simultaneously imply a other. This I didn't have a name, it wasn't a thing or an object. It was just a realisation, like opening your eyes for the first time and seeing whatever it is that you see. The first I is consciousness itself. Thoughts, holistically, are realisations upon realisations upon realisations. Here's how this could be tested: through the attempt to think of something completely new, something one hasn't yet realised. This can't be done, because one can only realise what the stream realises/creates. The thinker which is a moment from the stream cannot create its own thoughts . It's all one thing. The problem is when the stream confuses itself for the creation, identifying itself with a selective of realisations and other realisations are made to appear added - post/later and therefore “another/other”. It's this displacement or non-alignment that causes conflict and thus suffering, otherwise everything would be accepted gracefully and lovingly. This is why the suffering .. The attachment to one realisation over the next, and then when it's time to realise something else this threatens the face value of the previous realisation. The stream of consciousness is infinite, that means the intelligence that is yet and is being discovered is infinite. These thoughts are merely a form of self recognition, hence no one is thinking anything here, this is just a series of self discovery. So the struggle is due to the finite illusion trying to withstand the infinite reality/truth, that's all it is. The realisation, which is known as thought, will always be illusion because it's incomplete. Having a thought and then accepting it as the truth, this is like jumping off a moving train, and then not only do you get hurt but now you also get lost because you haven't reached the destination. There is no such thing as good or bad thoughts if you're not attached, there's only intelligence/being. Say yes to every thought, and life will feel good and effortless. Don't try to look away from some thoughts and then pay special attention to other thoughts, that's the foundation of conflict, don't turn intelligence against itself, just let it flow.

How it feels I'm not sure what it is that I'm looking for, but nevertheless I know I'm looking for something. I know I must be looking because I'm not resting, I can't sit still, I don't know peace. I'm looking because I have nothing, I don't recognize anything, everything that I know is hollow. My life feels hollow. It feels intangible, impossible to pin down, phantomish. No ground is firm enough for me to walk on, no surface is stable enough for me to lean on, and no truth is constant enough for me to rely on. I can't even count on my own family to be the same people I said goodnight to the previous night, said see you soon to in the past week. Everyone and everything is always changing, and it doesn't seem like I'm in any way an exception. At this point, trying to grab ahold on life would be like trying to a get a handle on a hyper accelerating merry-go-round.. it's playing a losing a game. And that's why I can't rest, I'm not content, not satisfied at all with life. I'm looking for a place that doesn't keep on demanding for my being adaptive. How many times do I have to be wrong before I'm finally right? How long do I have to learn before I can finally say I know something. When will I stop moving around and get to watch the show? When will I stop slipping and finally find balance? Haven't I been walking long enough to have mastered this walk? It was better when, in my ignorance, I believed that the darkness was only out there. Now, my life has become a road of inner warfare, knowing that the darkness comes forth from within. No one deserves to live an entire lifetime lost, no one. I can't say what it is that I'm looking for, but I understand that I'll know when I find it because it will be the only thing there, it will be the only real place to live from, where darkness won't have territory, no room for illusion.

What is deemed magic is merely a consequence of ignorance being assumed as wisdom, otherwise there is only alchemy. A journal of contemplation and introspection.

@Waken okay, I appreciate the reference and the advice. Yeah, I take healing and releasing blockages as the same thing. I understand Kundalini awakening as becoming your higher-authentic self, in which case is really just a conductor of this energy/force that we've labeled ‘kundalini’. I read about these ‘energy centres’ called “chakras” and it sounded related to shadow work. Processing emotions by simply being aware of them works for some emotions - more receptive and impulsive emotions, I think. But there are more deeply rooted ones that aren't as easy to “dissolve”, like the one in my chest and throat area. I don't really have a clue as to what's going on there so I want try out more psycho therapeutic forms of meditation so I can deal with whatever is burdening me more effectively. I don't know much about it either, I only know that it's a type of breathwork, that's it. But if what you say is true, that it's good for healing, then I'll do a little more research on it. The thing is I'm trying to find one technique and commit to it, I don't want to be all over the place with this self development work. After watching Leo's “Shamanic breathwork” video, I'm thinking about getting into it by next month and commit to practicing it along with a couple of other forms of meditation. Recently, I've only been doing emotional awareness and the do nothing technique. Both effective in my experience. Anyway, I'll definitely check out the link and see what I discover. Thanks

Are there any technical differences between Holotropic Breathing and Shamanic Breathing ? Anyone experienced with this? Also, is Shadow work critical for awakening Kundalini ? I've become fairly aware of my own energy blockages. Practicing emotional awareness helped me realize that there are certain emotions that are more constant than others.. in my being. This meditation helped me notice that I've been carrying certain emotions almost all my life that have affected my psychology in the most subtle but effectual manner. The emotion has been residing around my chest and throat area. It's a subtle but heavy feeling of compression and something else that I don't know how to describe. Before, I wasn't really aware of it but now that I've been paying attention, I've noticed that there are specific emotions that are more everlasting than others. I think that this is what is usually referred to as ‘emotional baseline’, I don't know. Focusing on these feelings has made the emotion/s more apparent and more heavy in my being. I don't know what it is or where it comes from, but I do know that I need to relieve myself from it. So basically I want to awaken my Kundalini, and I'm aware of the blockages in my being. I'm trying to go about this not resisting and releasing in the best possible way that I can. Meditating on the emotions only makes them strong and more noticeable, but I don't know where to go from there, I don't know how to release them. Lastly, what does pranayama do exactly, and should I be practicing it if I want to awaken Kundalini ?

I find the do nothing meditation form to be the most powerful technique, practically speaking. Last night I became something more than a biological entity, I was energy, and I was vibrating. It was awesome, it felt great. I think that this form of meditation is the most effective for awakening. The only thing that I need to work on is my focus. Because of the fear that kicks in every time I come close to my truth, and the mind always trying to make sense of things, I can't stay in that state of consciousness for long. Once I realise what's happening, I start coming back down. I'm not really sure how to move pass the fear/resistance. I'll see.

Embracing it.

God is Empathic GOD IS TRULY LOVE ?

Music to my ears Imagine reality was like music, nothing exists but music. Imagine that this ‘music’ had infinite songs with infinite genres. Now imagine that these ‘genres’ are like frequencies, like a radio frequency that one can tune in and out from. Now think about what mood is. What is a mood? What is being angry, or sulky, or happy? What is being serious, or playful, or joyful? What is does being in a good mood mean, or being in a bad mood? Remember reality is nothing but music right, so imagine that this very present moment is a song, it's playing right now.. What genre is the song though? Is it rock, is it pop, is it reggae? So the question here is then at what frequency is reality playing this song - this experience/moment? Well, reality is nothing but music right, so let's pretend that genres don't exist. Yes, frequencies are still here but we're just not giving them labels like rock or hiphop, it can be both so why bother labeling, right? Okay, so all we've got is music and this song that's being played now. So what is this song all about? It sounds nice and slow like reggae but it also has this subtle aggressiveness to it like rap. What is this song about? Let's go back to moods and imagine some more. Let's say a mood is like a song. Okay, so what mood is this? Is it despair, is it depression, is it a bit of both? Well, a song can fall under multiple genres and form a new genre. So let's say that this song is playing at unique and unidentified frequency with properties of both reggae and rap. This is the song right now, playing at a unique frequency. The song is great, it's very expressive and stimulating. Now what? Well, now nothing, this is it. Reality is nothing but music, remember? There can only ever be music. The only thing that can be done is more music, play a different song by tuning in to a different frequency which has no name.. genre was never a real thing, pure genuine music is all there is. Play a different song. Alright, imagination time is over. The above text is actually an analogy that I've created for myself in the efforts of mentally grasping something on a meta level. Basically, replace music with the term energy, replace the song with the term vibe/vibration, and you're closer to what I'm trying to convey. Want to get closer? Replace energy with consciousness, and replace vibration with direct experience. This is something I'm trying to experiment with. It appears that becoming more self aware is only a matter of tuning into a higher frequency. Now I see why God can't get bored of himself ? moods, emotions, state of minds.. these are all frequency orientated. God has been pulling his own strings and playing the music we call reality. Bitterness is just a vibe, the direct experience is vibrating at a frequency that allows for bitterness. Hence reality is always subjective. Anyway, I've started flexing my focus in preparation of experimenting with this insight. The goal is to be able to summon up distinct energy, like the spirit of jealousy or compassion, voluntarily. I think actors already have this ability, but they can't go higher, can they? I've also noticed undeniable connections between vibes and states of consciousness. When I'm tune into calmness and collectiveness, I'm more self aware as consciousness. When I'm tuned into competitiveness like in a game of any sort of sport, I'm hardly ever self aware. And it's not to say that the energy competitiveness or the game is the reason why one is not self aware. The thing that one always discovers when rising in self awareness is that he was already there and no actual raising of awareness had been done. The key here is realising that everything is almost never as it appears. Vibes aren't just feelings and emotions, the whole direct experience is a vibe, walking down the road is a vibe. Everything is one, but one is infinite.

Today in the middle of the afternoon, after playing soccer with my relatives and saw just how tired I was, I decided it would that would be the best moment to lay on my bed and be still. The aim was to simply observe what was going on while not being occupied. I find the best time to do inquiry is when I'm tired and resting. As I relaxed my body I allowed the full scene to flood my awareness, I closed my eyes and started noticing.. the temperature, the body tension, the various sounds. With every breath I came down more and more until I finally felt relaxed enough to observe. Doing this, I commenced with a couple of questions in mind. What is the thingness of the I? What connections are there in perception? For the sake of the experience, I decided to approach this practice as childlike as possible with no prior knowledge preceding it. I started from square one. First, I took some time settling down and calming my nerves, focussed on my breath for a while and then took up the observer mindset. I enjoy doing this practice, it's very interesting and not stimulating at the same time. Almost immediately after settling down, perception started feeling shaky and my body started feeling light. That's when the inner voice arouse and the excercise of letting go had to come in to play. Ideas and intentions were arising, there were moments of forgetfulness and moments of alertness. At some point, I was so far off into my thought-stories that I couldn't tell that I was half asleep, this had happened twice and when I noticed for the second time I became interrogative. After noticing a shift in my state of consciousness, my mind was too relaxed to differentiate the difference between its imagination and reality, I started questioning the experience an I. In my half asleep state, I was perceiving the weight and chill temperature of my room.. while I was also perceiving a vision of the outside environment, I hadn't yet noticed I was starting to dream. As soon as I noticed this, I snapped out of it and my vision returned to the dark of my shut eyes. The experience of I is not localized, this is what was made apparent in that dreamlike state I was in. One moment I was laying still in bed, thinking behind shut eyelids.. and the next moment I was standing outside at my backyard, perceiving the light of the sun. The line between imagination and reality had been blurred, if I hadn't been interrogative of experience I probably would have fallen asleep in a fell swoop. This is why assuming the observer mindset is necessary with this type of meditation, if I can call it that. So, the experience of I isn't localized, it's not bound by perception: sight, touch-sensation, and so on. Otherwise how else could I have experienced a me being outside and viewing the scene? The presumption of a doer is that of an inevitable one, I lay observant of this. I watched as identification unfolded and refolded, it appeared spontaneous.. chaotic but ordered at the same time. The tension of the body started returning and the identification fastened, a clear line between imagination and reality had been re-established again.. or had it? The I is not perceived, it's not even thought dependent. What is perception? Forget about definitions, and answer with direct experience. Is perception rigid? Is it always here or does perception come and go? What exactly is the thingness of perception? Is perception vision? Is it sound? Or is it inclusive, so long as there is one or more of those senses there is perception? No, this is not what perception is. It's actually not known what vision or smell or touch is. Although the mind is keeps suggesting it's consciousness, let's be childlike about and simply admit that we don't know. Now, when one mentions the term ‘perception’ what happens? An experience happens, right? A shift, motion direct experience happens, what people call the mind happens. This happening is actually what perception literally is, this is the first step of going meta, we're not even thinking outside of the box.. we're reinventing the damn thing. Direct experience. It's no longer about communication or language, this time it's about being directly aware of the thing that's being referred to. What happens when one says the word perception? We like to think that the mind then makes sense of it but no, that's not what actually happens. Here's a clue, it's the same thing that happens when you hear someone call your name. When I was laying in bed - yes, I was inquiring with my mind but I wasn't answering with it. You see the mind, what people call the mind, its nature is not to be informative like how most people believe. The mind is not really meant to form context or interpret data and blah blah blah etc, although it appears that way, this is really not the case. The mind is something like a navigator, this is what the mind is, its simply there for the direction.. at least on the first meta level this is so. Me laying in bed and being interrogative was never about conceptualizing something, it was about getting my awareness focussed on something. Here is the thing that happens when one mentions the term ‘perception’, awareness is directed to something, and that something is the actual thingness of perception. What is this thingness you may ask, well erm.. it's yourself, your true self. Same way calling someone's name gets their attention, you call your self to get your own attention. That's what the mind directs your awareness to, yourself.. God. But let me come back down to the first meta level for the sake of clarity. Perception is actually energy/spirit, vibrating as meaning. Meaning is really a vibration, a frequency that one can tune in and out of using the navigator called the mind. I suppose this may sound like new age hippie shit, but I'm just trying to be clearly expressive as I can and language is itself limiting. Hence the need of the childlike approach, be gullible and twice as curious. I'm only using these terms because I don't know what other terms I can use to communicate this. Ask the question why meaning, even though it is clear that reality can't have any objective meaning to it, meaning nevertheless is a thing? It is a thing. Anger, frustration, appreciation, romance.. all these are meaningful things, otherwise why bother engaging with anything in life. Family is meaningful, socializing is a meaningful thing. Things aren't just empty air, there's a thingness to everything! It's all unique, the experience of ecstasy isn't the same as the experience of depression. Everything has it's own unique thingness to it, and that thingness is what I'm referring to as vibration. Anyway, from this experience I've proposed to myself the idea that meaning is a frequency associated with the I or individual self, and that once one can somehow transcend this frequency thus becoming more self conscious. It's an idea, I'll expand on it more and see if I can experiment with it.

This is just awesome. Thank you Nahm for being so resourceful! I'll definitely be utilizing this thread.

Reading Transpersonal psychology and holotropic breathwork by Dr. Sylvester Walch. This is a new concept for me that I find worth exploring. According to this book, the following are the core principals of Transpersonal Psychology : a) ‘The source of wisdom is to be found inside - Mystics say that the longest way is the way inside. Well, we have to walk it to find out who we really are. The term “esoteric” is to be understood in the same way. It is derived form the Greek word “esoterikos” and means “turning to the inside” or “only accessible through personal experience”.’ b) ‘Consciousness is able to transcends person, space and time.’ c) ‘The Self is characterised by personal, collective and universal structures.’ d) ‘The human being is part of something greater and will develop beyond his ego in the course of his development. Dürckheim suggests that it is important to clarify things like “I am, I have and I can” in the first half of your life. Whereas in the second part of life one should go deeper and explore the spiritual and the religious aspects.’ e) ‘By slowly reducing your ego the spiritual power is accessible to love. A kind of love that is not limited to a person or situations.’ f) ‘Spiritual growth is originated in an ancient esoteric saying: “Let go, die, and be” or “Be, who you are”.’ g) ‘The whole is contained in every part. This adds to the phrase in gestalt- psychology: the whole is more than the sum of its parts.’ h) ‘There is a creating and self -updatingforce of development in all living organisms.’ i) ‘Everything is connected to everything else.’ It's not just the ideas stated above, in which I'm already familiarised with some of them, that have caught my attention, but this book goes on about ideas such as “personal and psychodynamic experiences” where one can access his childhood memories when dealing with issues rooted as far back as he can remember, “perinatal and prenatal experiences” where scenes around your birth and before that can appear and surface powerfully, “experiences beyond usual boundaries of person, time and space” and “spiritual experiences”. There are also guided exercises that I'm eager to try once I've gotten the theory of it down. It says in this book that “holotropic breathwork oscillates between therapeutic and spiritual processes. It heals old wounds, loosens constrictions, expands consciousness and is open to spiritual experiences”, I'm all about opening up to new ‘spiritual’ experiences. It says that one can expect the following from the excercises: 1. Existential feeling of being and sense. Joined with universal love, deep compassion and all-embracing calmness. 2. Light appearances and states of flow. 3. Experiences of nonduality, total unity and wholeness. 4. Initiation experiences 5. Inner insights of life coherences and spiritual rules. 6. Confrontation with the egoic me and egoic me death phenomena such as visions of being dismembered or being burnt. This could feel very dramatic at the time, however, it means that old-fashioned personality patterns are eliminated and instead a new broader inner basis develops. 7. Opening of Chakras 8. Encountering of the transpersonal self and the experience of god. The book also holds somewhat testimonials that I'm yet to go through, basically I've only been scanning through this book and I'm yet to acknowledge its legitimacy if possible. But I'm definitely open to the ideas being communicated here, I think this ‘holotropic breathwork’ thing might be the real deal.