snowyowl

@Blackhawk what is prior to the thoughts 'this is real', 'this is hallucination'? As soon as you put a label on awareness you are creating an abstract relative map, you've moved from Absolute Being (Truth) to relative dualistic theory (truth). Obviously that's true of this post too

Working my way through TMI (The Mind Illuminated by John Yates / Culadasa). Just finished Step 2 Interrupted Attention and Overcoming Mind-Wandering. I am gaining new insights about awareness - mentioned above about the attention / peripheral awareness distinction (cf Diana Winston's 3 types of awareness: focussed, choiceless and natural awareness). In meditation I'm exploring the concentration style of mindfulness of breathing. Sensations are always present, in the sense that the feelings involved in breathing are always there, even when I'm asleep but I'm not always conscious of them. Even when I am conscious of something like a breath, a sound, or the feeling of sitting on the cushion, it moves between foreground and background (focus and periphery). It could be that conscious awareness is like a kind of torch shining light on what is otherwise unconscious. Breathing is a quiet sort of sensation, not as bright as some others like thoughts which come crashing in from the subconscious and take over like a loud noise or bright light in my mind which outshines my awareness of breathing until it runs out of energy. Then the quieter background is once more visible. This is telling me something good about how awareness and consciousness works, but I'm only seeing it indistinctly at the moment, I need more time observing.

You're perfectly right of course, but for different reasons Thing is, the Buddhist 'lists' are shorthand to help you remember the headlines of the teachings, but they're more nuanced when you look at the detail. The full teaching is (from Wikipedia page on Three Marks of Existence): sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā — "all saṅkhāras (conditioned things) are impermanent" sabbe saṅkhārā dukkhā — "all saṅkhāras are unsatisfactory" sabbe dhammā anattā — "all dharmas (conditioned or unconditioned things) are not self" So unconditioned things can be permanent, according to Buddhists. Conditioned, to me, means something like subject to the law of cause and effect, operating through time. In that case, this truth of impermanence is a kind of truism, saying that time-bound things are impermanent! At least if I've understood this right. How to realise the unconditioned - that's the real work.

It's impossible to verify from this distance historically, but I would like to know more about what 'miracles' were commonly believed in 1st century Jewish culture. Maybe local folklore was conflated with the Jesus narrative by the early Jesus movement. I like to compare with recent miracle workers, eg Sai Baba who supposedly healed, manifested objects, bilocation etc. Allegedly all his feats can be replicated by illusionists, but if there isn't proof of modern day "miracles", what hope is there for 2,000 year old ones?

This is a good one to contemplate. What is, who is, trying to and intending to? I like to watch the process of apparent free will, the energy of intention and concentration. How this is connected to the apparent ego self.

I think a flexible attitude to your path is a help. If you're not making progress, start to question if you need to make changes to techniques, even maybe a radical change. You want satori - suggests a Zen path? Some people stay in the same practice for years and decades making little progress. Taking responsibility yourself rather than offloading to a teacher helps, imo.

How important is the heel under perineum part? There is a variation of siddhasana without it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhasana (half way down). That's the posture I usually do (Burmese style with cushion & bolster to raise me up), and I find it really comfortable.

If your starting point is a materialistic belief in the brain, consider that every time you open your eyes, you are actually looking directly at your brain, not the external world. Sight is a process happening in the brain, what you can see is energy after it has entered and been processed by the brain. The external world is a thought deduction from that. Same with the other senses too.

Form is consciousness and consciousness is form. You and I are different forms (holons), within the continuum of existence, so our points of view are different. My hand is also a form, it has its own consciousness within the greater holon of "me". To use an analogy, you and I are like two hands on the same body, they have the left and right handed perspectives, are holons in their own rights, but belong to the greater holon of the whole person. Is the left hand conscious of the right hand's pov? I don't think so, in my experience. But my whole body awareness can see both perspectives.

@Mason Riggle Did I get my grammar wrong? Not me doing everything, everything is doing me and all the other trillions of things. I mean, it takes the whole universe just for a butterfly to flap its wings. No separation. Yeah, trying is an interesting one too. It feels like I try hard to do stuff, but in fact all I'm doing is tensing up and furrowing my brow. Instead: relax, breathe, let it flow.

I find it easier to contemplate in terms of 'everything' rather than 'nothing'. Eg, I am a doing of everything, the whole universe, vs I emanate from nothingness. I guess they're both equally true. Or even to say simply, it's a mystery beyond my rational thought, which can be seen through pure being.

So who recognises? We use the analogy of dream/dreamer, which you state is an illusion, so in that case awakening is also unreal. Maybe I'm playing the game of trying to find a ground, but it just seems impossible. Your style reminds me of Jim Newman, do you watch him? I do, in moderation, because he drives me a bit crazy, but I keep going back.

I guess a similarity with Meghan is that they were both trapped by the cultural difference with life in the royal family and didn't feel welcomed. But there are some differences too; Charles was the heir and felt under pressure in his early 30s to get married and have children to continue the line. In hindsight Diana & Charles wasn't a good love match, as Charles still held a candle for Camilla and both Charles & Diana started having affairs. Harry and Meghan are really in love aren't they? The Royal family is slowly modernising, but more slowly than the rest of society so it may appear (to people in stage orange & above) that they're out of date. Back when Diana got married, the heir to the throne wasn't allowed to marry a Catholic or divorcee (the Monarch is the head of the Church of England), and the oldest son inherited the title, as was the old aristocratic tradition. That's been relaxed now so it's not as bad as during Diana's time.

ha ha you got me, hoist on my own petard Relax, dial down the conditioned monkey mind to notice the background. But that needs spiritual practice of something like meditation, yoga or whatever. I guess that aligns with @Breakingthewall blending in etc. But we're already blended in, the conditioned illusion is that we aren't.

Yeah, I suppose privilege is why this whole story is running in the first place. But on reflection, how many of us in a blue/orange society really want to challenge privilege, as far as voting for political parties which radically change the hierarchy? The Monarchy is just the top of a pyramid which has many layers of privilege and dis-advantage. And it's true that Harry & Meghan decided to move out of the UK jurisdiction for security & policing to a foreign country, so it's not really within the power of the authorities to provide it, unless as you say the taxpayer is expected to pay for a private security, or the US govt choose to provide it.

@Preety_India yes, it seems to me a very tight balancing act between getting good publicity and having a private life. It's part of the deal of being born into - or marrying into - all that wealth & power is that you have to surrender a lot of personal freedoms to the family firm. I think the Queen is an advocate of doing her duty over pleasing herself. Also Prince Philip had to give up his Greek nationality and surname, and become more British in order to marry Elizabeth (like previous generations had to give up their partly German identity at the time of the first world war). But they're the older generation, now the younger members are clashing with this Duty and stiff upper lip culture of their parents. @Danioover9000 Good points but don't be too hard on yourself, you can like a culture but be nuanced about its good and bad aspects - especially historical ones like Viking imperialism - I can't think of any human culture which is all good. Its not like a binary choice between being / not being a racist. I try to remind myself how mixed up cultures are, the idea of in-groups and out-groups is really just made up and collapses when you delve back into the history far enough. My own homeland of UK was uninhabitable during the last ice age (up to 10,000 years ago), so everybody here has migrated from abroad since then.

Reality show? Lol the Royal Family is a cash cow for the press & media, it sells copy very well indeed. Also the Royals need the press to keep their profile and popularity with the public, so it's a mutual benefit thing. Until it goes wrong - if this results in the end of the Monarchy it's not just the Royals who will lose out.

That sounds an active approach. Who is doing the taking away? The conditioning can't take itself away (where would it take it to?), so I need to do some work to access the unconditioned. Give the conditioning a rest and see what lies beneath ...

Sorry to hear you're going through this suffering. I don't know if it's true whether there's a solution, have you tried scientific medical treatment? What are your symptoms? The other option, if you can't change something, is to accept it and make the best of life with whatever limitations you have. Many people do live with disabilities etc, and life is far from perfect, but as long as you're struggling with the perceived gap between who you are and who you want to be, and make it into a problem, then you're missing out on the good things which are practically possible in the real world. Are you willing to change your beliefs? "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change." "What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly." Carl Rogers

From what I heard, Meghan never suggested the whole family was racist, there was just one un-named person who asked about skin colour, and we don't know much about the context of the conversation either. It's all very vague and there is nobody yet we can hear the other side of the argument from, so the fact that even mainstream journalists are jumping to conclusions already speaks volumes about how easy it is to push these buttons. If she wants to raise this issue in public then why not have a full inquiry and get it all out in the open? Edit. There is too much over-generalisation going on here, if someone's being accused then we need specifics. Otherwise, the only generalisation we should be doing is 'innocent until proven guilty'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_by_country It's not quite so simple because 'communist' countries like China and North Korea are counted as being less religious, and it also depends what you mean by 'advanced'. But I guess if you can get a combination of liberal stage orange development you're onto a good trajectory. I'm a bit confused by this, surely liberals are moderates?? I suspect there's a difference in definitions as in the UK, terms like liberal and social democratic means in the political centre, not left wing which is more like socialism.

"So how can I pay my bills then and go shopping for food if I don't have to make money anymore?" Have to >> choose to - without a chooser . Actions still have consequences, so if you don't pay the bills you'll become homeless, but it's all an expression of love. " how you guys know all this is true and not some cult? " I don't know anything purely from reading other people's descriptions, I need direct experience. Even my own memory of a past experience isn't reliable!

I tried it once with the wikihow technique but didn't get anywhere. It seems to come from either Hinduism or more modern sources like Theosophy / Anthroposophy, I'm not quite sure. https://www.wikihow.com/Access-Akashic-Records Could be, if time and space are somehow illusory or a mental creation, and if you can transcend space-time then your mind can access the past and future. But that's a lot of ifs

There's the duality of relative unity/diversity, which is a function of how we look at reality, where we draw the boundaries, to split up a whole (or holon) into parts. We can see unity as either good or bad, same with diversity. For example, totalitarian regimes and theocracies try to enforce unity and suppress diversity, which is just as hellish as people being individually selfish, so goodness is a wise balance of both. Absolute Unity is the source of the relative, but this brings in the third aspect - nothing, which is the same as Unity.

Meditation is (in the way it's mostly practiced) sitting quietly with ourselves, relaxing, ie switching off the usual distractions. When a difficult feeling arises it's tempting to blame it on the meditation and go back to the distractions, but in fact all the meditation is doing is revealing our deeper feelings which are usually masked by our absorption in thoughts and external stimulation. The Buddha warned us about this unsatisfactory feeling, but don't worry, this is all part of the process of self-realisation, so keep going. Although nothing wrong with trying different techniques which may suit you better.