Spaceofawareness

Some people (Loch Kelly for example) say that awareness has a natural self knowing about it, so if you can rest in this naturally self knowing awareness, that might be what they are getting at.

I have had tinnitus since as long as I can remember. As I was so young when I first noticed it, I developed a relationship of curiosity as I didn’t know what it was. As the years went on it never bothered me too much, just a slight annoyance sometimes. Now I go weeks or even months without focusing on it. It fades into the background, even during meditation, it has become just the sound of being, but only when I notice it.

@zeroISinfinity as Ramana Maharishi says, “the I removes the i, yet remains the I.” You will still remain, but as what will you remain.

@zeroISinfinity all you would be doing is covering up what is, and that which is seeking to be covered is that which is covering already, so giving in is giving in to the delusion. But maybe that’s what you need, as you said. Maybe it’s time to come down from the mountain, but you say you want to come down as what you were before, that can be done, it is natural for thoughts to be believed again, but there will always be that little light shining through that sees all this and knows it to be lies.

@Maxu I would say the characteristic of self reflectivity or self awareness is lacking in many people, either due to constant distractions from the world or if their life plans are always unfolding the way they want, even though they are not very self aware, allowing them to form some kind of comfort bubble and enclose themselves in useless 1st world distractions. On another note, it might also be down to personality, as introversion is actually a variable personality trait, so people might be more world focussed than self focussed.

The thing is, to even get on the path towards awakening, you have to have had this sceptical mindset, or at least, that has been my path. Life threw great big road blocks towards the easy life, and, some of those road blocks were actually put up by myself, out of ignorance and fear. And as I realised how my life wasn’t going to plan I was thrown into a Great Depression and from this, a searching, which went on for years. Skepticism was an outgrowth of the searching, as the more I searched, the more I found which wasn’t what I was looking for. it got to a point where nihilism seemed like the only path, a dead end of all dead ends, no meaning in life, no joy. then, life threw another challenge, children, and with that, I was inevitably forced to face my selfish ways, my ego driven behaviours, as they were thrown back at me, and great chunks of what I had taken to be myself had to be stripped away, until I felt like there was nothing there that I was, I felt my identity was gone. then, a few years later, I was granted some view of a different kind of way, a different mode of being, and with that, my life has changed, and a path opened itself up to me. Not a predefined path someone else had chosen for me, or one which I had to pay someone to get more information about, but, a path back to my self, which it turns out, has been here all along. I still have a strong sceptical attitude, but, to balance this, I have this openness, which itself is sensitive to truth, which it instinctively knows when it is there. So, I am sceptical, until truth reveals itself.

Only thing that can change that is direct experience

I keep tension around my head when I get stressed, around the temples sometimes in the neck. When I first discovered I wasn’t my thoughts, all the tension was released as I entered a very peaceful state, and while I remained in this state of not identifying with thoughts, all of these tensions remained released. There is definitely something there.

I think technically @Leo Gura you are right, nobody is awake. The term ‘No one’ would imply a person, but, a person cannot awaken, only awareness can be fooled into believing it is a person. You cannot awaken, because, the you that would awaken is already awake, but, only dreaming that it is asleep.

I think to begin with, the labelling is helpful for beginners, but, eventually it’s better to drop the labelling completely as they are still thoughts, and just be aware of whatever it is you are aware of.but then, if the goal is to realise the one who is aware of thoughts, it doesn’t really matter I guess, as long as you realise that.

@isabel Are you aware? If you are, then ask you self, who is it that knows you are aware? That is the one who is aware of awareness. Likely you have never really noticed this one, because it is always been so close to you your entire life, but, it is that one in which all of this has been arising in.

@andyjohnsonman if you are able to collapse the distinction of self and other, essentially non dual awareness, you will be awareness AND everything it perceives, supposedly. I haven’t experienced this so I can’t confirm, though that is what others say. So, there are two options, you are nothing, but awareness, or you are everything. It seems the self other distinction is strongly tied to the conceptual world, which is a world of things, a thing being something separate and distinct from the self. This might be why those who are steeped in non dual teachings seem to have such contradictory ways of communicating, as, when self and other become non dual, contradictions and impossibilities unravel. But then, that is from a limited dual perspective, from that non dual perspective (if a perspective is possible, as that would entail a single point projecting out at a world) it might be totally consistent.

@StripedGiraffe nice post. I especially like the thoughts you have about self self and other, as I have been contemplating that a bit lately. My thoughts on it are this. There are two ways I seem to look at what makes our experience. We are awareness, like a canvas upon which all our experiences are layered, our ego, thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, motivations, like layers in photoshop. We also have the self model, which is responsible for identifying which of these layers is part of us, or self, and which are part of the world, or other. When the self model finds a layer that it deems to be part of the self, it merges that layer with awareness, and in doing so, awareness can no longer look “at” the layer, but looks “as” the layer, identifying with that aspect of experience. But, if the self model can be trained to view the layer of experience as something exterior, as other, awareness can look “at” the layer. The self model will view that layer as other, for example, if we have a feeling of pain in our leg, and we manage to keep the layer as an objective other by observing and not “going in”, and then, whatever other layers still are present beneath will still remain as self, without us being aware of those. When we have the feeling of being this detached awareness with everything external to us, and we now make this feeling of awareness the focus, the self model is left to interrogate it’s image of awareness itself. This is the image which must then collapse. i haven’t managed to do this yet, but, this is how I have conceptualised it. These ideas aren’t my own, and even if they were, there would be no I for them to belong to, so, feel free to use them as you wish, or, do away with them completely, as in the end, concepts will become indistinct.

What if there is no you? There is the image of you, in the self model. What the concept of “you” is, is an essence or location from which awareness resides and a “who” to which awareness belongs. But, without a who or where as the source of this awareness, it is left locationless and universal not personal. The whole idea of a self is a concept which needs to drop away somehow. Before, you took yourself to be the ego, the sense of a person, which the self model had constructed to make its way in the world, an entity which has likes, dislikes, limitations, can run a certain speed, can jump a certain height, is a certain age, has a certain skin colour, a certain hair colour, eye colour, with a certain job, a certain demeanour. This was you, or what you took yourself to be. Mostly these characteristics were stable. But, thanks to memory, over time, it seemed like many of these aspects you took to be an essential part of who you were, began to change, so slowly you never realised until they had changed completely, and, as the self model continually updated these newer characteristics, you never questioned the “new” you, until you looked back at who you were, as a child, a young person, and compared it to who you take yourself to be now and realise the two have great differences. Yet, you still feel yourself to be the same one as that one back then. Maybe what you think you are isn’t that which you feel to be, but rather, what you are told you are by this self model. Maybe, there is no you, no essence, just a localised awareness believing it is a self.

I think suffering leads inevitably to looking internally. Without suffering, if all is going to plan, wants and needs being satisfied, the world is exactly as we have been lead to believe, as are we, a person with goals, wants and needs. When suffering happens, we become more aware of the source of suffering, wants, needs, attachments. As we become aware of these, they become more amplified, offering the opportunity to not be identified with them.

@Victor Mgazi what you probably already know is, there is no ego to transcend. You are already the self, just looking “as” the ego, through your self model which has taken the layer of ego superimposed on consciousness to be what you are. What needs to happen is for the self model to either be destroyed, or, to only reflect the you which is awareness, not all other things which appear within awareness. Here is the way I look at it. You, which is nothing but awareness, have layers of experience which are superimposed upon you, like layers in photoshop, you being the canvas. The layers of experience, thoughts, ego all get layered on top of the canvas of awareness, and the role of the self model is to determine which of these layers is the world and which of the layers are “you”. If it thinks thoughts, ego, feelings, are you, you will merge with those layers and look “as” them, or identify with them. If you can look at the layers rather than as them, you don’t merge, and the self model can view those layers as not you, leaving you as awareness. This is still a dualistic awareness. somehow, it has to be seen by the self model with the help of awareness, that these distinctions between you and not you are actually illusory, and the distinctions disappear, leaving awareness neither attached nor detached to the other layers. I don’t know how that could be, other than if the self model is either modified to not see any distinctions between the canvas and the layers, so it doesn’t have any option other than.... isness, no self, no other. maybe another way of looking at awareness and the “layers” is, rather than being separate from awareness, the layers are actually disturbances within awareness, like waves in an ocean. To draw a distinction between the waves of experience within the ocean of awareness is simply conceptual, it is all awareness. This needs to be realised by the self model.

Even if you do accept that Awareness or consciousness can somehow float free of the brain, which seems unlikely, it is the brain which ties you to this universe; no brain, no experiences, no memory, no imaginary self. There has been no recorded evidence of awareness affecting the world without going through the brain. If you believe there is something outside of this universe that we observe through our senses, then maybe that might be a possibility for you, but, it could also be that that world you perceive when you take psychedelics is another construct of your brain, just as the waking world you perceive is, but with the exception that, we have a shared collective agreement that this world is the way it seems, whereas, the same can’t be said for any extrasensory worlds perceived. But, if you are so averse to the limitations of this brain, this body, and this world, then maybe you are willing to risk everything for a chance at something beyond. I take the good with the bad in this world, I am learning to not cling to the good so much, and not push away the “bad” so much. In that, it is the concepts and interpretations which accompany these perceptions which are being modified. The world still remains as it is, with the exception that, what I thought I was has changed, as well as the way the world has to be taken.

We are a pot of water with very few bubbles, maybe one day, something will heat up the water and cause more bubble to form and eventually, turn to steam. Maybe one day, the heat will be applied properly, if there is good enough reason to. Until then, keep searching for more bubbles, and let the light that shines within fill others, even if they don’t quite know what they have come across, you might awaken something within them.

Once the reality of the person as an illusion is seen and finally realised, and all attachments are severed, there should be no reason fear of death would affect the self or awareness. If somehow, fear of death did arise, it would be seen to be arising, and with no attachment to life, it would not take root.

If you think you can help more with your mind than with your actions go right ahead, just know, when a car is careening toward a cliff, better to hit the brakes than pray.

The thing is, it’s actually possible for us to be awareness, and still be generated by the brain, and, as far as we know that is the case. I presume when I die, my awareness goes with it. If it remains in some form, I will have no memory to know about the continuation, so essentially it won’t matter.@Mongu9719 I agree that brain damage is an example of brain anatomy functionally affecting consciousness. You can sever the corpus callosum, the connecting tissue between the two hemispheres of the brain (done to stop epileptic seizures), and essentially have 2 separate consciousness’, one verbal, the other non verbal. The non verbal side in specific scenarios, can act independently to the verbal side, and when it does, the verbal side will make up or confabulator reasons for actions when it doesn’t actually know why it does them. Let me ask, if I have a machine that acts exactly like a human does, would it be conscious in the same way we are? Do you think our machinery could somehow tap into this “universal consciousness” and use a localised piece of it? Or do you think it would be devoid of any experience and be what philosophers like to call a philosophical zombie? I think, it would be conscious, if it’s artificial brain did the sameness functions as our human brain. Fact is, you don’t know till you die, and when you do, it’s too late to change anything anyway. Best just to live this life the way you want, because there is no coming back (unless you believe in reincarnation), but then, what would reincarnate anyway, other than awareness. No memory, no personality, just the same universal consciousness.

Its a bit of wishful thinking. Do your best to stay as the self, to enrich and help those around you, your loved ones and community, as they are the ones you will be relying on.

@Romer02 the most important part of your meditation, or enquire is, who am I? When you notice you are observing your own internal states, see if you can turn it back around to the one observing. Does this one get bothered by anxiety, or feel attached to warmth or feelings of love, as they arise and subside? Or is all of this seen by this one. And if it is seen that this one sees, then, who is the one who can see the one observing internal states? Can the observer be observed? Once you can effortlessly be resting as this observer, you should turn the enquiry around on the observer, and as you do, ask who is this one who is observing, can this one be perceived? The more you stay as this, the more layers you are uncovering to be not yourself, you are clearing away the lies that have been believed about who and what you are. Good luck.

They say being a good meditator is about being relaxed, so maybe the best meditators are the most relaxed with their facial hair. also, we shave due to societal pressure, if you don’t give a toss about society you won’t cave to such pressure.

Maybe it’s a form of cause and effect, law of attraction, and moral justice rolled into one. It doesn’t have to be mystical or otherworldly.