seeking_brilliance

@non_nothing oh ok, here it is simple: the voice is an invisible unicorn that farts rainbows and lives in a parallel universe and communicates telepathically telling you all its wants and desires.

@non_nothing@non_nothing how can there be two separate entities if all of one? Perhaps it's better to say you don't cease to exist if the voice ceases.

This is to complete a though experiment proposed by @non_nothing , in one of "his/hers" thread. What is emotional pain? When I feel emotional pain, I feel it in my heart center. Such a heaviness. Or a sharp pain. It's weird because it's kind of indescribable, or perhaps trying to describe it from memory is hard to do. But I'm definitely not asking to experience it anytime soon, no thank you. I'll just enjoy not being able to describe emotional pain from memory very well. One thing it does include is racing irrational thoughts, and this is perhaps the worst: " oh my God, this sucks!" " oh my God, I want it to end." "I don't ever want to feel this way again!" " If I could just go back in time and change this or that, this would have never happened." " everything sucks right now." "oh my God, I just want to die." But it always gets better. Wow, everything I said above about not feeling emotional pain lately was untrue. I feel it nearly every day. Whether it's with an upset customer, a spat with the hubby, or getting my feelings hurt. I actually do feel emotional pain quite often. Also when I fuck up, which happens way too often. There is a tightness in the chest, I'm able to feel it now. Even the top of the stomach area twists up in knots. But I still would say the racing thoughts and narrow mind are the worst culprits. The physical feeling sucks, but it's actually not excruciating. It's the alteration of consciousness that truly sucks ass, and honestly I think that's pretty unecessary to put us(ourselves) through this. For whatever evolutionary need that was to firewall the mind when experiencing emotional trauma or anxiety, I truly hope the body starts dropping that trait soon. There's no need to inhibit clear thinking, when experiencing these things. If anything, thinking should be enhanced. An opening of the mind should occur, not a closing. Soon I will inquire into what is a mind. Not sure how long it will take to unravel that one, but I better get started.

@Shakazulu hmm well I dunno. You hear things like theres really no such thing as gender outside of physical universe, but you have to wonder why not even animals, but plants as well evolved into male and female. As above, so below, they say. I had been tinkering with the idea of when did gender evolve sometime past the one cell organism, but haven't looked into it and am not sure if it's provable. Id be interested to hear anything you find regarding your question

@Shakazulu you have to also consider culture, because being a man may have different meaning in united states, compared to the Middle East or a country like Japan.

I have to admit, I didn't do exactly as asked, and instead I set the stopwatch and spent 35 minutes in total. Here's what I wrote in my notebook : ----------___--------------¯¯¯---------------___----------- What's my fear? Or in other words, what fear arises from ego? Well, of course there is the popular one: pain / suffering. I suppose I also fear missing out on something. Being late to the party, so to speak. I fear I won't even make it to the party. I'm sure somewhere down there I have a fear of dying, even though I've convinced myself otherwise. I also think I have no fear of losing myself, but it's possible it's hiding somewhere very sneakily. I fear being mocked, although I've convinced myself I can handle it. I fear not being liked, largely in part to years of being bullied. I have forgiven the bullying, but the fear remains. I have forgiven the ego, but the fear remains. But truth be told, I don't even know what fear is. A strong emotional response/feeling, sure. But is that all it is? An elixir of chemicals which flood body, and nothing more? A prison warden who turned out to be a cardboard cutout? Like really, what is fear? Does fear exist outside the body which "feels" it? I don't even know what "to feel" even means. Not fully. I have a rough idea of it based on my upbringing but I couldn't truly tell you what feeling is, who or what feels, or if it's just another figment of imagination. So those are the fears of ego, and I'm sure not even a tenth of them. You asked: what is pain and suffering? Once again, what the hell do I know? From this one's head, pain can be both (or individually) physical and emotional. Physical pain causes much suffering, even though this one I'm pretty sure of is no more than a rush of signals and chemicals to the brain. To live pain-free is many people's desire. Look at all the opiate addicts. But I don't necessarily believe pain is bad. Pain is necessary for survival of the body. It would be nice to have direct control over the level of pain, as when say, you break your leg and have already had it set. It is important to feel some pain as a reminder, so one doesn't step off the bed and try to do jumping jacks on it. Such a thing would not ensure survival of species. But it sure would be nice to turn it down to a low hum, since such a (for lack of better word) painful reminder is no longer needed. I digress, but to sum up, physical pain is an evolutionary asset to the body of most animals, to ensure survival of species. Ego fears it because... well, it hurts. It doesn't feel good. Ego wants to feel good, so it has developed an irrational fear of it to prevent pain from happening. And yet, I think emotional pain could be worse in some ways. But I'm well over my 3 minutes and this one would take a while to unpack. Perhaps I will do it in the journal section. --------------—--------------—-------------—-------- Ok, I read your words in small print. No I don't believe in religion's hell and had a huge problem with the whole eternal pain and suffering of hell, even back when I was a good little Christian soldier going around trying to save people from it. Pain comes and goes, this is true. This at least I can trust my direct experience of because I am glad to not be in constant pain.

@SgtPepper just part of the journey, I guess. Hopefully a small part ?

@non_nothing ok, I'll do as you ask when I get home from work. But just to clarify, do you mean what is the fear of trusting direct experience? Or just basic fear?

@non_nothing im struggling right now with even trusting direct experience, much less what I hear from others. I think the best answer is we just don't know. It would definitely suck if your proposed scenario were true, but sucking is relative, right? From the view of this being who tortures us for fun, it didn't suck, it was fun. And to that being, our opinions wouldn't matter, as long as it had fun right?

To sit here and tell you any different would be pushing indoctrination onto you, right? Even if you have direct experience of no-self, or being one with universe, how can you trust its not just placebo effect? Just daydreaming. Are you having doubts or is this just for fun?

Currently my emotional feelings are only a ghost of what they were as a child. Over years of fear and pain, I built a wall to protect me- to numb the unwanted feelings. Unfortunately, I guess little child me didn't know how to build walls correctly and numbed the wanted feelings as well. Disappointment was one of the hardest feelings to have as a child. I could probably name many of "my" action loops that were built upon preventing the feeling of disappointment. And I should. Why is it such a bad feeling? When I was a kid, I had strong emotional responses to being disappointed (compared to now, where it may still sting but I mostly react with, "oh well, should have guessed.") but yeah, strong reactions to not being able to go to the pizza parlor after all. Or the toy I just got for Christmas broke on the second day. Disappointed when I sold my beloved Gameboy and collection of games, to buy a new game which turned out to completely suck. Getting sick and not being able to go to Disney World. I had no buffer on these emotions back then and god, they hurt. Pure emotional pain. And that was just disappointment. What else caused the strong emotional feelings? Fear Excitement Guilt Pure, childlike joy And each of these are accompanied with an intense physical feeling - an expanding or Contracting of the heart area known as the heart chakra (or whatever if such a thing exists.) Sometimes the worst pain can be feeling your heart crumpling like a piece of paper, and you'll do anything you can to stop and prevent it from ever happening again. Strong emotional pain can often times trigger a physical pain-- a physical sense which evolved early on, I presume, in the beginning of animal life. The heart doesn't literally crumple up like a piece of paper, though maybe there are some physiological responses to the emotional pain which causes a contraction of the heart muscle itself, but it would be minimal compared to how it feels. Emotional pain amplifies that feeling depending on the level of pain, until the point where it feels like even a black hole sucking your heart out completely. I wrote a post on where in our body do we feel these strong emotional feelings, because I was curious if it could be verified to be a common place to feel it, or if it varied by culture(i.e. Beleifs). For example, I was taught as a kid that the Hebrews in the bible felt emotions in their bowels, based on some Bible verse in the old testament. So I don't know if I worded it wrong, if it was the wrong topic- feeling of Love - but I got no serious response of where the feeling is felt in the body, even though I restated my question a few times. All I got were responses about how there is no " I" to love, but no one would answer anything about where the feeling of Love, or other strong emotional feelings that spring up physical feelings in the body--- where they are felt. I thought it was a simple question but I swear the answers felt like they were written by a few sheeple just parroting off something they believe in. Exactly how dream characters react sometimes. If they wanted to tell me that there were no such thing as physical feelings, then that would have been an interesting rabbit hole to explore. But apparently I can't feel love because I don't exist. Then who feels love? No one? Then what's the God damn point? I say if Samuel wants to feel love, who is there to say he can't? Doesn't he deserve it? Even in his own little pocket universe it thinks it exists in? But if Sam is only an idea, what is an idea? Can ideas think? Did Sam create this pocket reality, or did I create it for him? Co-creation perhaps? That's not to say that I believe Sam exists. Truth is I don't freaking know. To say he does or doesn't are both beliefs. Even if I had a direct experience of Sam's non-existence , it would still be a belief. Perhaps they are both wrong. Or true. Who the fuck knows? Why should I listen to anyone about it? This is where I'm lost, because I don't even know if direct experience can be trusted, much less other people who can't be directly verified from this (possibly not) locked position. So if I can't trust others' words, and I don't know how to trust direct experience, I don't know how the hell to go forward.

So I guess the chimp paradox perhaps isn't going to teach me much about feelings, despite what I thought I read in the free preview... Maybe it will but haven't gotten that far yet. So, @seeking_brilliance (oops phone bug) So, @Telepresent , you are the one to ask me what are feelings. I could give you two types of answers. I could say what i believe feelings are based on how I was raised to believe them I could say what I'm tempted to say which is I don't freaking know what the hell they are. But then where does that get me? Do you know of any books that could at least get me a basic understanding of how to put into words what feelings could be?

@Shin maybe perhaps read a section in the book, or watch a video, and then rephrase it in your own words and understanding. These will be more powerful when you go back to read them, and perhaps make a note in your rephrasing about where this comes from so you can easily go back and read/watch the source material as needed.

my other argument is that this could be correct, but forgetting that you already have millions of "you's" in las vegas, perpetuating it's existence, without @Gligorije actually needing to be there.

but when you say that, what about 'my' experiences over here in central florida? do they cancel out @Gligorije 's experiences, wherever 'he/she' is? Or are they one experience, so to speak, happening in two different places? Then you have to determine if I'm actually in a different place than you, or does it just feel that way? when zoomed into the earth, they appear to be separate, but if zoomed out to the perspective of the universe, they would appear as a single dot in space, or perhaps even no dot at all because it can't be conceived as a point in space, depending on how far you zoom out. (I'm not saying this is correct, because ultimately I have no idea and I'm such a newbie. Just trying to work it out on this end too.)

How to spot the misinterpreted preaching? Without you having to name any of them? How do I try (put on trial) the preachings with my own direct experience? Or must I experience no-self first. Well I may have answered myself.

@Recursoinominado yeah try it... It took me a while to get to a week and lately I've reverted back to every other day or so, but I also use very little per day. It also helped me through some tough shit... But it's like a two egded sword because it can sometimes hinder as much as help. The best method to use it is to get the insights and then make yourself apply them while sober. Even if you've lost the motivation, make yourself do it anyway. (unless it's the insight of something like "I should run around the streets naked to make a huge blow to ego." yes, there's ultimately nothing wrong with doing that, but you will end up in jail and scare the neighbors.) One should also attempt to get in touch with insights you get while sober. Sometimes I think it's a matter of paying much more attention to them while intoxicated, as if they didn't exist while sober.

@MM1988 hi, I have never been able to bend over and touch my toes my whole life. My hamstrings are just super tight and rigid. But this would be an excercise for Maha mudra to help loosen those up. I also can't do maha mudra without bending the knee, but the theory is that if you do it enough even with bending knee, the body will eventually respond correctly. Another stretch I do is throw one leg up on a table, the higher the better, and then lower your butt slowly and stretch all that out while your opposite leg bends.

I've come to the conclusion that love is at least two things : an idea and a feeling (or at least the body interpreting love as a feeling.) For now I want to focus on the feeling of love. So what is love? It makes me feel something, right? Like a piece of my own heart is divided amongst the things and people I love, and even the thought of them makes the pieces feel more whole. There's a swelling of warm, tingling pleasure in the area that is known as the heart chakra. But is there? Or do I only believe that? If I believed it also made my right big toe ache in agony, would I hobble around every time I hug my mom? It sure would make hiking (which I love) quite difficult. But suppose I had been taught since an infant that the feeling of Love brought great pain in my big toe. I would either feel it every time I feel love, or I'd be depressed, thinking that I can't feel love because I feel the pleasure in my chest but no agony in the toe. And if I did feel it, it makes it true because in my direct experience, those would be the two main factors of the feeling of love. Even if the person who taught me this was just an evil asshole who thought it would be funny. Also, I wonder if agony were a major contributor to feeling love, if I'd even want to ever feel it. But love isn't all sunshine and rainbows. There is a pain in love. Just ask a love sick 16 year old who's been freshly dumped. Or a father who just bailed his son out of jail. This love has several emotions factoring into the overall feeling, but the unique concoction is still love, and a painful kind of that. So it's actually kind of hard to pin down an exact feeling of love, but it does seem to be heart centered and can be a swelling or contracting feeling, depending on circumstances. This I have direct experience of. Although I can't know if I was misled into believing these to be the feelings. Perhaps a feeling of love could be in the stomach, or the left arm. Or the head. Perhaps it pervades the entire body. Perhaps its completely outside the body in some kind of auric field. Perhaps there's no feeling at all. Or perhaps it feels like everything and we mistake it to feel as nothing. Or as something. And something can't be everything, after all. Everything is everything (and something, of course). So what creates this feeling of love? If the feeling even exists? A concoction of chemicals in the brain? Something in between the atoms? Purely imagination? Gosh it would help if I knew what the hell feelings are! But suffice it to say, I do feel love, and my body can also get very tingly like a cool electricity is firing through my skin. Like today when talking to a client about the new season of Doctor Who, and how exciting it was for a new doctor, (who's female!) , and the future of the series. My skin started pulsating like a million tiny fireflies were buzzing around even in my head. It felt good... weird, but good. And maybe it's a combination of excitement and love, because I don't often feel this tingling, but I consider it the feeling of love. Expressing my love for this television series changed something in my body. I couldn't help but smile. I wonder if she felt it too. But I still don't really know what love is. It's got to be more than a feeling right? (not considering the option that it's an idea, which I haven't fully explored yet) But what else could it be? I could easily say it's a learned response, or even gene-inherited response, fueled by lifetime of risk and reward opportunities, releasing an elixir of chemicals into the bloodstream like a special cocktail. How could I possibly know if it is more than that? For all I know it's the shining pinnacle of evolution. A gift from our ancestors to learn to cope with reality. And nothing more. What if? So my question is how do you feel love? Where do you feel it? I'm interested in how much is cultural influence, and how much is a common feeling.

@Jack River It's been a long journey to understand self. I don't know what the confusion is either but hey, I love myself regardless. (oops maybe I don't) And I'm sorry, I don't mean to argue, I'm just trying to understand. Thank you for all your responses.

@TheAvatarState thank you so much for actually explaining this in your own words and it didn't sound like a tape recorder. What you say does make sense. I will contemplate it today while at work.

Ok, so you feel love as a warmth in all your chakras. The first to actually answer my question lol. Thank you

Thank you. Maybe I don't have all the context needed. I have felt this as you've described, usually in dreams, where love is such a strong connection - like a super magnet- and requires no words to describe it. In this thread I'm exploring where we feel love in our body. What sensations do we get, if any, when we notice we are feeling love? I'm curious to know if people around the world feel it in a similar way, or how much it varies. What is good and evil? I can't be sure such things even exist, so why would I put limitations on them? In your own words, could you explain to me good vs evil? Sure, I knew that when I typed it, but it's also a belief that they can't. You claim that it is just how it is, but how do you know that? I don't deny that self denies the wholeness of love, but that doesn't explain why a self can't love at all. Even if it's only a mediocre interpretation of it. Does that make it less real? @pluto so in your explanation, I can love and be loving while being myself, right? Sure I could probably explode in love if I shed the self, but if love is in everything, then it's in the illusion too, right?

@Jack River I kind of get what you are saying but your entire point is based on the belief that fear and love can't be in the same room. How sure are you about that? Does that mean that fear can't be loved? Do selfs deserve to be loved? Your description of them makes them seem completely antagonistic, but then again, they didn't ask to exist. And before you tell me they don't exist... Come on. They do. You know it. They exist, if only to themselves. But that's really all that matters to them- all these selfs running around, some of them posting on this very forum searching (perhaps in vain) for meaning. You say love cannot occupy self, but who needs love the most? Self or no-self?

It was fun watching this little thing build his web. (although this one's a little wonky compared to others I've seen). It made me start thinking about how they even know how to do this. They just know. All this knowledge downloaded into their tiny brains directly from their genes. How amazing is that? They just know. They were never taught to build this web. But they are masters at it. It made me wonder which part of all this "knowledge" I have in my own head was pre-programmed through genes, and how much was learned. We already know about instinct behavior like babies looking for a nip to suckle. Another one is the grasp reflex, where babies instinctively grasp anything that is placed in their hands. As we grow and develop distinct personalities, we begin to assume that any other behaviors are learned. Of course it would be hard to prove otherwise, but I don't believe that all behavior is this way. What underlying instinctual behavoirs do we exhibit on a daily bases that we mistakingly take as learned? If any of them are unwanted, can they be overridden? For example the fight or flight instinct: this gets triggered for me in any highly stressful event that shoots my anxiety through the roof. A large part of that anxiety is based on memories of past similar events, but how much is instinctual? Am I spinning tires trying to get to the root of this behavior or is it best to learn to cope? Can you think of other gene given instinctual behaviors?