Anderz

Whoa, I now realized that memories are concepts! Even memories of feelings are concepts. Notice how extremely trapped the ego is in its own memories. Memories and thoughts, those are all concepts, including all meta perspectives. One mistake I think Ken Wilber is doing, unless he is misleading us on purpose because "we can't handle the truth" or something like that, is to mistake meta-perspectives for trans-conceptual awareness. Wilber treats "pure awareness" as some separate state in practice it seems to me even though he talks about it as the ground of being, all there is. No matter how lofty conceptual perspectives, fourth, fifth person perspectives and so on, it's still on the level of concepts. It's still to be stuck in ego consciousness, because concepts are seeming separations. That's a pre-trans fallacy of believing that concepts are the highest possible level of understanding.

Leo has a new video about perspectives. What I came to realize is that the trans-conceptual awareness Shunyamurti has talked about, is a perspective! Trans-conceptual awareness is a perspective above concepts. In ego consciousness we are always trapped in concepts.

A modern day koan goes like this: Who is more powerful than Donald Trump? And the answer is: Nothing is more powerful than Donald Trump! Hint: think no-thing.

It should be possible to develop a new self! Not a separate self as the ego, but a self that is aligned with the Holy Spirit and therefore becomes a part of the Holy Spirit. It's just a matter of observing the ego and only move towards inner peace. The dysfunctional and delusional ego structures will dissolve because they are incompatible with inner peace. In practice mindfulness can be used for the development of the new self. And the practice is to observe both inner peace and agitation within oneself. In the beginning there may be no inner peace at all and then the practice is to observe the agitation until some inner peace starts to develop. Since the inner peace is aligned with the truth and the agitation a state of delusion, the inner peace will more and more replace the ego structures.

Wow, in this new video Shunyamurti goes in the opposite direction of the integral teachers like Ken Wilber and says that the ego is our enemy. It's almost a post-trans fallacy, haha. But I like it. Shunyamurti's message is very much like ACIM. The ego structure is false, and that's true for the whole world for it is still a collective ego. I still think the world will remain basically the same, so I take a position somewhere between Ken Wilber and Shunyamurti regarding the ego.

Oh my gawd! The integral teachers like Ken Wilber and Doshin Roshi have fallen into a huge pre-trans integral fallacy. Not only the sneaky regression back into personal free will belief, but they fall all the way back to ego consciousness! It's in my opinion a lack of integral perspective to do as they do to talk about nondual pure awareness in one moment, and then start talking about themselves and others as separate doers in the next moment. That's a lack of transcend and include. And it's also more than a pre-trans fallacy. It's sheer regression back into ego consciousness. True integral transcend and include of the ego to me means actually transcending the belief in being a separate doer. And while A Course in Miracles may lack an integral approach, the kind of integral spirituality promoted today is worse than ACIM in this regard because of the regression back into ego consciousness. I still think Ken Wilber and others have contributed with a very important and necessary element which is the integral approach. So it's still useful to learn about integral approaches, but I also think the recognition of fallacies like this is needed.

Doshin Roshi is teaching integral Zen and is talking about personal responsibility in this video. I have only listened to the beginning of the video so far, and came up with the idea of how to integrate personal responsibility while at the same time transcending the ego, meaning transcending the sense of being a separate doer, which in principle means transcending personal responsibility. It's probably an idea I have already heard others mention, but anyway my idea is that responsibility becomes included in the total movement of life. The responsibility becomes an intrinsic part of one's life, instead of being something one can have or not have. It will be interesting to find out if Roshi has the same understanding.

Why do I focus so much on death? Because what if the death drive needs to be healed for there to be a stable inner peace. Look at all the spiritual teachers. They may be enlightened but I sense some agitation within them. And they all take physical death totally for granted! So a possibility is that the death drive is the root of fear that needs to be healed. To only "accept" death could even be counterproductive and result in a severe split between a "spiritual self" and a hidden ego core of the death drive.

I find it useful to seek inner peace first before thinking about what to do etc. Of course, this is what Eckhart Tolle already often has mentioned. And Jesus said seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, which sounds like something similar. A Course in Miracles says:

Not only the shadow, but also the whole ego needs to be included correctly when it's transcended. The ego is a very high level of development on the conceptual level, meaning the ability to think, basically. And artificial intelligence (AI) is taking conceptual understanding to a new level of order, and even future AI needs to be integrated along with the ego.

In this video Ken Wilber has an amazing explanation of shadow if I understood it correctly, where the shadow is a result of failing to include lower stages of development correctly. So then shadow work is then more about integrating the shadow material correctly rather than removing it.

Not much from QAnon recently that I have found interesting, except a post about the Clinton Foundation and crimes against children. I don't know if those are connected though, but that made me think that John Durham may be publishing his report soon. It's time for a Spygate scandal I think.

I disagree with Jon Kabat-Zinn that it's good to catch anger when it arises before one acts on the anger and for example say something harmful or stupid. Because that's exactly the ego control conflict I have posted about. It's even worse, since it's the ego modifying its own behavior which is a double form of control based on an inner conflict. I understand that it's necessary in practice to catch anger, but fundamentally it shows a severe double conflict in the ego. But he also said something interesting about experiments done where the activity of the brain is measured when people are trying to do nothing. Then there is a lot of activity in the brain, and it's thoughts and concerns about the self. A lot of energy and effort is spent on dealing with the self, he said. I found that interesting because it indicates a lot of friction and basically neurotic activities going on in the brain all the time. So there is a lot of potential for improvement through for example mindfulness practice.

Kernberg said in the video that the death drive is a result of psychological affects. I found this paper: That's consistent with my idea of the death drive, which is the result of a disconnect and isn't a function in itself. And what is called psychological affects are the results of the disconnect. And my idea is that it's this disconnect, such as blocked heart feelings, that results in the whole ego construct. The ego is like a separate construct without any foundation (a disconnection is not really a foundation).

Wow. This mainstream presentation about the death drive is really impressive. Some mainstream psychologists even deny the existence of a death drive, but this presentation clearly shows the effects of the death drive, including destructive behavior and extreme sadism. Is the world insane as ACIM says? I would call our world a young civilization instead of saying that it's insane. And even our universe is likely young if the multiverse is a tree with more and more branching. The recent universes are the most numerous in the multiverse tree, so the probability that our universe is young is very high.

A Course in Miracles says that death is an illusion. Great! Because reality is one. So the Course says that death is an illusion, literally, including physical death. Because there isn't any heavenly realm that is a separate reality from the material world. Reality is one. So I take even physical death to be an illusion. A new earth without death in the Bible is the same earth as today, only in a higher evolutionary stage.

The coronavirus crisis is still going on! That seems to indicate an incredible shift after all, marking the death of the world "caterpillar". I still believe that things will return to normal soon but the claim that it will be a new normal is likely true, and society will take a new direction such as global development even though things will remain basically the same as before the crisis when it comes to practical everyday living during the next few years. The G20 meeting in November will give hints about the future global direction. Global digital taxation? That's huge. It probably requires a global digital currency. And instead of being some Orwellian New World Order plot, it could be aimed primarily at corporations who today are able to avoid huge amounts of tax through all kinds of incredible legal stunts. But sure, it's a big deal even for us individuals and potentially Orwellian but I think it can be managed for great mutual worldwide benefit for all people.

Even when people say that their soul or consciousness is eternal, they still behave as if their physical life is the only thing that's real. People are terrified of loneliness and they can't be sure that death will solve that problem. People say rest in peace when someone has died. Rest in peace in heaven? Sounds boring as hell. So the ego is completely fake and phony when it comes to claims about death, except that to the ego only death and taxes are actually real, to exaggerate a bit. Even spirituality becomes a schizoid endeavor for the ego. The ego is materialistic and a product of material reality so the belief in inevitable physical death only drives the ego more insane than it already is.

Why does A Course in Miracles say that our current world is so horrible? In general I think ACIM is talking about the same thing as the fallen world in Christianity and Kali Yuga in Hinduism. And one horrible idea that came to me is that when babies are born their hearts are already hijacked by the ego and it's causing tremendous pain! So the babies scream until the pain in the heart becomes numbed out, and after many repetitions of this cycle, the pain in the heart becomes disconnected by the nervous system in a process of self-preservation. The result is that the pain in the heart becomes subconscious in the child and continues that way throughout the person's life until death. The physical body is literally tortured to death subconsciously. And the ego has to put on quite a facade, a persona, to at least hide some of that grim reality within.

Does the law of attraction have any real effect? Leo said that when we focus on negative outcomes we tend to make those happen, even catastrophic ones. That made me think that if we focus on our own death we cause death to happen. And what is the average Joe always focusing on? His or her own death! Career, family, retirement plans etc, are all based on the belief in inevitable death. The belief in inevitable death is then a self-fulfilling prophesy that causes us to die. That would explain why no spiritual teacher, not even the most enlightened ones, has any solution to offer when it comes to death other than cop out slogans such as "die before you die" which has nothing to do with physical death but is only some mental thing claimed to be profound pure awareness or something like that.

A curious practice I discovered which is almost like meditation is to unite conscious and subconscious breathing. The way I do it is to wait for the automatic breathing to take an in or out breath and then I join from there with my conscious volition of breathing. This kind breathing exercise feels a bit awkward in the beginning for me. I will try it some more to see if it's useful for bringing harmony between the conscious mind and the subconscious.

Aaron Abke has an interesting take on desires in his new video and explains that there are different kinds of desires. That's a new idea to me that I will think about.

I have notice some automatic relaxation in my spine. That's a miracle! Because it's outside ordinary experience and it's not something that I practiced at the moment. Another thing I came to think of is that fundamentally automatic happenings and conscious volition are the same one reality. There is a difference between voluntary action such as taking a conscious breath and the usual autonomous breathing, but seen from all of reality it's one whole process. So I will experiment with recognizing conscious and automatic actions as a whole movement.

How much mindfulness practice is needed? Does it take 10,000 hours of inner body awareness practice to achieve significant results? I think it depends. For those of us in the front line, the pioneers, well the pioneers were probably the sages thousands of years ago, but for us early adopters, it might indeed take a lot of practice to achieve significant results. There is probably also a kind of 100th monkey effect, and a collective morphic field so that when some people have mastered inner body awareness, it will become easier for others to achieve the same results. Isn't that unfair? Should those of us who struggle more be matched or even surpassed by others who put in very little effort? Haha. That's fine, because we want all of humanity to rise in inner peace as fast and efficiently as possible. And also, I'm open to the idea that miracles will boost the inner peace in us. As time progresses, the level of complexity increases. Actually, what the Law of One calls density increases. And that can result in sudden evolutionary leaps, both individually and collectively.

Then what about the need to meditate? Shunyamurti talked about that. I find it too tedious to do formal meditation. The good thing is that cultivating inner peace through mindfulness practice is similar to meditation. And mindfulness can be practiced anywhere and anytime during the day, including when standing in line at the grocery store, which is a good opportunity to detect anxiety and restlessness within oneself, and even in relation to feeling stuck and the subconscious anxiety related to money and death. Also before going to sleep I find it useful to practice mindfulness by simply feeling the inner body. And even when there is anxiety and restlessness, after a while my inner state becomes more calm and I fall asleep that usually results in a good rest. So mindfulness is a very flexible method. Formal meditation might be more effective, but for me simple mindfulness practices will be sufficient I think.