Spaceofawareness

Could you unconditionally love the aspect of Leo that is his awareness? Whenever his presence shines through the layers of crud that mostly make up a person, and you get a glimpse of that, can you love that unconditionally? If it is the same in every being, then can you love the presence and not the person? That is what mooji speaks of when talking of love.

What if it’s more that those aggressive urges have been laying dormant since becoming an adult, but not integrated into adult life, so now with your awakening, this has unlocked past habits and tendencies of repression of these primal urges, essentially resetting your behaviour patterns, leaving you to choose what is appropriate and what is not. You have essentially wiped your slate clean and been given a fresh start, but now with the knowledge of an adult plus the awareness of awakening, now choose wisely your new course. if the urges need to be expressed, why not find some positive way to do so, like a contact sport or self defence?

One has to ask, if you understand the concepts of advaita, I.e. you can simulate the thought patterns of the path of advaita, is this actually the thing, or just the pointing to the thing, which must still be seen. The finger or the moon, the map or the territory.

You have one requirement down already, the desire to change. Rewiring your brain is essentially learning, but the learning you want is not really conceptual knowledge but behavioural learning. I would advise to self observe. Look at what triggers the behaviour. Is it stress? Or is it purely habitual? Do you do it in response to some bodily feeling? Or do you do it because it’s just become part of your routine or habit. if it’s in response to something else, try to identify how you can change that cause which the behaviour is in response to, the bodily feeling. If it’s just habit, not a coping mechanism, you might be able to substitute a different habit, something positive but still rewarding. Just some ideas. I’m not an expert.

@sure yeah, but sounds like you know this already. i would say these are the least violent ways to change habits and behaviours, by simply pulling the source out at the root. other ways can be more cognitively behavioural therapies, but these tend to be rather ego based and requiring force of will, or conceptual blackmail.

I think mindfulness and self inquiry is a good path if you want to change aspects of your behaviour, it will happen of its own accord due to the living from presence not ego, the ego is the source of bad habits so naturally when you no longer embody the ego all of its negative tendencies will be very clear to see and with detachment, easy enough to drop. The hard part is to not let the ego regain control.

@sure can you be more specific about how you want to rewire your brain? What do you want to change, a behaviour, a belief, a tendency, a habit, your self?

He has an interesting theory. The idea is, there is no world out there, the world is created inside consciousness. Basically instead of trying to fit consciousness into materialism, he’s taking consciousness as fundamental and trying to get materialistic physics out of consciousness.

@Jacobsrw Well said, I agree, that is the goal, to live doing what must be done with zero or at least minimal struggle against what is.

A child is an almost completely unburdened creature. This is how they can live in the present almost always. Contrasting this, an adult realises that to survive as a responsible person, they must sacrifice their pleasure in the present, or at minimum dedicate a good part of their day to tasks related to survival and resource procurement, which means getting lost in the typical drudgery of a job. Imagine if an adult had no responsibilities, for example if there were some utopian society which supported and cared for people due to an abundance of resources and wealth. What would an adult do with all that time? Sure, some would waste it, and probably become lost and lacking in motivation, but that is already the case. Others would most likely pursue their dreams, and with the time they had free, maybe live in the moment like children can and do. My point is, being an adult means taking on responsibility. We didn’t choose this as our lives, but when a person is born into a western society, they implicitly sign a contract, which essentially is them selling their soul. It’s very hard to live this life without any burden. Thankfully there are ways to not be burdened too much, which is what we here are all trying to move towards and share with others. Sharing ways of living and being which can help in this crazy world. i agree with you, that getting back in touch with your inner child is a healthy and good thing to try to do, but balance is important, too large a change in a person’s life can swing the pendulum back the other way in the opposite direction. Good to find a balance and exercise moderation where necessary.

I think you are having a strong ego backlash, and it’s okay. I’ve recently been getting this as well, after pursuing self inquiry for close to a year now. You have to be sure of where you are looking from, are you looking from the I Am at the negative thoughts which the ego is throwing up, or are you looking directly from the ego? It sounds like the latter. It’s all part of the play, but it sounds like the ego is winning and trying to draw you back to your old life. It sounds like you gave up a lot to be where you are now, and you have been going through some changes. If the ego senses that you aren’t doing anything to keep moving forward, it will step back in with guilt, regret and self hate. It’s a sneaky one and once it gets a hold of you it’s hard to break out unless you can realise it’s at its tricks again. Remember where you really are. The suffering you are feeling is a result of clinging to the old life. Anything is possible if you want it, but now you have awoken to the reality of the reasons behind much of our choices, and the true hollowness of most of our motivations and desires. There needs to be a new alignment of your goals with your current mode of being. The ego senses you aren’t taking the reigns and have drifted off its chosen path, this could be why it is poking its nose back in, or it could also be that you just had a quite big insight and it’s come to drag you back. Even though it’s all an illusion, you can choose your illusion, or at least have the appearance of choosing the illusion. The thought of wanting to end it all is the desperation of being out of alignment, and a sense of being out of control. But we are never truly in control, we just have an illusion of control. Much of what comes our way is luck. The rest is the illusion of control. But the illusion of control is different to the illusion of lack of control, they are both illusions but the difference is still important to the outcome of the dream. You control the dream. You might have some soul searching to do, to realign your goals and motivations with your new mode of being. Do what needs to be done there but be true to yourself and do what makes you happy.

We take there to be a world out there, which there most likely is, but from the point of view of awareness, we are trapped in an imagined world, inextricably bound, like a prison. Whats worse, who we take ourselves to be is also imagined, really there is no one here in this prison of the world, there is just the impression of someone feeling like they are in a world, reacting to this world, and responding to their imagined body. All that needs to be realised is that this one who takes themselves to be imprisoned is just a play on the screen of awareness. Even though it has been seen that the one who took themself to be the body is not actually the body, but is awareness of a sense of a body, and that the world only exists as an impression or a play on a screen, now this one has been reinserted back into the movie, with the memory of being outside it. So this one now feels stuck inside the movie, whereas before they did not even know this was a movie, they took it to be reality from a naive perspective. This one also realises that the very feeling of being stuck anywhere is still another play on the screen, but until it can be seen from outside of the movie again, it still takes itself to be in the movie, on a deeper less conscious level. The absurdity of it all begins to dawn on the character, but the character still feels it needs to do something to get out of the movie, and yet, what needs to happen is to realise on that deeper less conscious level that the actor cannot actually do anything, as actions are just happening on a screen, being observed by awareness, and the actor is just an illusion or collection of appearances and ideas about cause and effect. There are so many ties to cut, so many roots to be pulled before this one can be shown to be false, and yet from an observers perspective it is perfectly clear. From that perspective there is nothing to be done because there is no one there to do anything, there is only the appearance of doing, before the screen shows the observer it’s true nature. The lie it has been believing, even though it has been told it is a lie. It’s still too close to the screen to see the screen itself. Just a few steps back and the screen and the movie can be seen, but the stepping back is still a happening is it not? Or is that also on another screen? Confusion begins to cloud the screen now, and weariness comes. Not today. Perhaps tomorrow. Or one year, or ten, or who knows how long. As long as it is remembered that there is a screen, this one will keep this faith. But what holds this one back from seeing it’s true nature? How can one take a step without really moving?

Supposedly certain habits can be extended into sleep as well. If it occupies your mind enough, it may extend into the dream world also.

These things likely keep coming up due to unfinished business, or something unprocessed which needs to be worked through, emotionally. Maybe some injustice was done to you, some trauma was experienced, or something which was totally out of your control happened. Repression is a natural defence mechanism of the mind to protect our ego’s from perceived pain of experience. Your interpretation of past events is still locked in the past. It might need to be updated, especially if it has been some years, the person you were then is likely quite different from the one you are now. You are hopefully now strong enough to face those memories again, to uncover them and shine the light of awareness on them. The hopeful thing is, when a memory is accessed, it can be reinterpreted with a fresh perspective. Realise that the person that those events occurred to is not the same as the person you take yourself to be today. If you can face those memories and expose them again, you have a chance to see them in a new light, in a new perspective, to see how they made you the person you are today. Facing these things alone is not advisable if there is a strong trauma associated with them, it’s advisable to have a therapist walk you through facing these memories, unless it happened so long ago that you can distance yourself enough from the identity of the one that they happened to, and keep some detachment from the trauma. Good luck.

It’s a contradiction which seems to arise between two different aspects of Buddhism/Hinduism. 1. You should not do any living creature any harm or kill them so as to avoid creating suffering, 2. There is no one really there to suffer, just the appearance of suffering. This is a contradiction. If there is suffering, there seems to be something which suffers, I.e. some essence, the essence which is thought to be reborn in a karmic cycle of death/rebirth. But, there is no one really there, no distinct entity which will be reborn. There is no individual essence or identity to suffer. From the perspective of God, there is no you, so from that absolute perspective there is no one to kill, no one to suffer, thus, indifference to such. Does God suffer from the same illusions as the imagined person does? We are communal animals, imprinted with the desire to protect others in our group for survival advantages, and thus we are born with this nature to not do harm to those we identify with. When we observe that there is little difference between us and many animals, we extend this identity to them also, and as such our sheltering from harm. This non harming principle has been distilled into our creation myths, extending to the idea of a loving God, the highest principle which is the source of our built in moral principle of non-harm to sentient creatures. But it is a human distinction from our relative human perspective. As a human, reliant and dependent on others and other creatures and ecosystems for survival, our bodies dependent on causes and conditions, we are beholden to this non harming principle for survival. But from such a universal and absolute perspective as God, with the power to create and destroy, can we hold God to the same principles as we do as relative and limited creatures?

I find if I’m slouching my breathing comes more from my chest as my stomach muscles tighten. But then, if you have back problems like I do, you will likely want to find some way to sit which doesn’t aggravate this discomfort, so do what works.

@Leo Gura I don’t really give a shit about the bible itself, more so that they might have been engaged in something similar to what we are today, though they encoded it with a more religious language. A shared human experience, especially one which persists over eons speaks to something of true value and truth.

@fi1ghtclub you will probably laugh, but I was using the Sam Harris waking up app, part of the basic course. To begin with, you become aware of your body as a cloud of sensation, just letting come in what comes, and that’s it, as I began to rest in this my feeling as a body faded until all I was aware of was awareness itself, but it was not an effortful focus, that’s why I described it as open awareness. Then at some point it felt as though I was asleep, but the sense of awareness remained.

Recently I have been doing an open awareness type of meditation, however I only have time to do this before bed at night. As such, there has been two times now where, after I come to rest in this contentless open awareness, it feels as if I fall asleep. But at the same time, I feel this open awareness still resides here, just that all else has collapsed, almost like a dim light surrounded by darkness. This had not been my plan to explore this territory, but I am wondering, is there any use in doing so, beyond the experience itself? I have noticed that I have been a bit more “heart centred” since this has been happening during the day. thanks.

If the universe and all beings in it are like the throwing of a dice, maybe god knows all the possible combinations, but not which outcomes will occur until they do occur. If potentiality or randomness is a real thing, maybe god can’t see past this. Future God might be aware of all possible outcomes of the universe, but not which one will happen.

@AtheisticNonduality define exist? How do we know something is physical? By observing interactions, solidity, causality etc. If there is no observer can something physically exist? Maybe it exists only in potential.

@EnlightenmentBlog I would second this, can the one who experiences pain be found? What is the source of the experience of pain, to whom does it arise? Shatter the illusion by seeing.

It’s interesting, because in the biblical scriptures of the New Testament it is sometimes mentioned that the Holy Spirit “descended upon them”, this speaks to the non-material form of our own presence which leads to awakening or is an expression of such. Could it be that the Christian interpretation of pure awareness was imparted as something nonmaterial which seemingly appears from above and enters one for a time, lifts them up with its purity, and then leaves, hopefully imparting some lasting change.

@Joker_Theory you are very welcome Loch Kelly seems to really know what he is talking about while still being very down to earth, he has broken it all down for us. I am glad you had a glimpse, just keep glimpsing like he says and hopefully you will become more and more familiar with being from there.

The past is an idea you have, accessing memories, having thoughts about events which have imprinted themselves in your brain. When these imprints are played back, and when we identify them, we feel there is a past which is real, but if it is seen that even the remembering of the past still happens in this present moment, then it can be seen that the past is only a useful construct of our minds which helps us learn from those events, carrying some information forward to be used in the resent if necessary. A similar thing can be said of the future. The future is our brains way of anticipating what might happen, and our brains naturally want to predict future outcomes based on past knowledge and current information. This means much of our brains are creating a kind of anticipated future, and living in this created future. These anticipations can pull our awareness away from the present and we can become identified with them, living in a believed future, while in actuality, still having it all unfold in the present. This is also not taking into account Einstein’s relativity, which is likely going to complicate things here, to the point where we can’t even agree on a now, but I don’t want to even touch that.