Telepresent

Actually, re-reading this: how would you describe the ego mechanism, @DoubleYou? I always useful to get these things out of my head by writing them down.

Screw it - a boy can always eat, even if he has to run laps to burn off the calories...

Good, great, wonderful! Probably the only reason I'm so wary about anything that looks like an answer (or an attempt to short-cut to one) is that I've fallen into many belief traps myself, so I hope I can help people avoid the same thing! Motivation, though, holy mackerel that's the critical factor, and however it works for you dig into it by the bucketful! You know, I'm not sure I agree with you there. I know where you're coming from, and perhaps when I get 'there' (yes, yes, I know...) I may agree with that statement; but right now I find the fact that I want to KNOW, not believe, not imagine, not create a working model, but to strip fucking everything apart until I KNOW - even if that means tearing apart what I thought I knew yesterday - that's my motivation. Don't dismiss wanting to know the answer until you KNOW it's 'wrong' to want to know the answer. Don't take anyone else's word for it. I'm sure as hell not going to. Huh, that feels really weird to read - probably because I don't feel advanced at all! But if I come over that way... that's good news for me, I suppose! Getting on-topic, though, you're absolutely right again: you have to believe before you can not-believe, otherwise you would never do the work necessary to start questioning belief! I still stand by the idea that - for some, at least - the danger of asking for definitions of enlightenment is that you're digging another pit to fall into at some point, but as long as you keep questioning, questioning, questioning, and you know at some point that pit needs to be addressed, it seems you can't go far wrong

Can we have a little more info? How do you meditate (what sort of positions)? What kind of pain, located where in the body?

You know, I'm a bit inconsistent with this forum. I come and go, chime in like I know everything, and then make apologies for knowing nothing. But one of the things that really bothers me is that there seems to be this ongoing stream of definition. All the time people asking 'what does this mean?', 'is this enlightenment?', 'is this true?', 'is enlightenment x or y?' And you know what I see in all of that? Attempts at definition. New models of reality being built with every word. Now, don't get me wrong, I've done the same thing loads myself, and @YoungSeeker is absolutely right: it is a good question. But it's a question you have to ask yourself, over and over and over. You have to pull apart everything that supports that question as even being a question. Do you have any idea how many assumptions, beliefs, and expectations are holding that question up? You need to pull every single one of them down. Stop talking about ego: work out what ego is, and talk about it from your own point of view. What do you mean by disidentification? 'Not identifying'? Ok, well what constitutes identifying, then? And with what? With ego as you have stripped back and fully understood? Or with a more vague, undefined idea you carry around that has attached itself to the label 'ego'? Apologies if this comes off as harsh or rude: it's not intended to. But I think @DoubleYou starts this thread with a really important idea, but the reliance on an 'answer' to the question asked is ultimately counterproductive.

It is a useful power to have, but it's a short-term strategy. Good for dealing with moment-by-moment issues, not life as a whole. It feels to me like you're making thought into an enemy - which is actually adding another layer of thought (i.e. thoughts = bad). Probably not surprising - I'd be surprised to find anyone working this stuff out who hasn't done that - but ultimately you need to make peace with what thoughts are, and then decide whether or not you are going to take the hard road to dis-identify from them. You're doing good. Keep going.

As a kid, you had fewer mental models about how the world worked. Now you have many. The trick is to learn to see them as that: models, not truth. This actually ties in with Leo's latest video on beliefs, but rather than going and watching that, I'd recommend you sit down with a piece of paper, and start listing what you KNOW to be true, and then start interrogating it: asking yourself if it's REALLY, REALLY true. Can you argue against it? Can you look at it from another perspective? Can you be CERTAIN that your thoughts are correct? And keep going and keep going and keep going. As much as whatever thought-wondering you have while you eat might be what 'is in the present moment', it's not really the thoughts that are your problem right now: it's your emotional reaction and attachment to them. Now, I have a big respect for meditation, but I also seem to disagree with a lot of people in that I feel meditation on its own is not enough. That it's through conscious and intentional inquiry, investigation, and deconstruction of our experience that we can come to disabuse ourselves of our belief systems, and decide whether we want to re-program our thoughts (so we can get back to that kid-like state), or move beyond them. I worry that, for a lot of people, meditation is too unstructured or random (without a 'debriefing' period where you can consolidate your experiences) to be able to do this. What's my point? You're thinking a lot while you meditate, that is frustrating you, which leads to more thinking, and clearly meditation on its own is a bit of a painful cycle. I wonder if you should either step back to some more fundamental self-help work (to get past various limiting beliefs, etc.), or if you should investigate other forms of self-inquiry other than (or to accompany) meditation.

Hello all the people! So... I hit a realisation and due to the nature of it: a) don't want to describe it, and b) any description would be false. Suffice it to say it was about how much I rely upon words, and what words mean and where words come from and what words REALLY are (maybe... but I suspect I'm naive on this point!) What led me to this was the challenge to what I expect Enlightenment to even mean. As an exercise based on my experience, I would encourage people to interrogate every word they have that they think is important ("job", "work", "family", "love", "enlightenment", "truth", etc.) and just spend some time examining what is there. Thanks for your time x

Thanks. Telepresent now gonna play

And honest emotion is a whole other thing

I entirely get what you're saying. About translation. About there being a deeper layer. But I feel what most of what I have been reacting to in life HAS been word based. Learned and translated and taken as fact. And the removal of fact from words is Revolutionary. And the words we apply to emotions (including "I", which opens a whole can of worms) Is subjective and limited And the reason I choose to type like this (and maybe you?) Is to disconnect thoughts into constituent parts and words And right now I'm identifying them because I've only just realised that the world I relate to is translated through language and concept before I even realise and that mostly I respond to words with words which means to concept with ideal concept and not to is with is. I guess

@Mr Lenny I would recommend Do Nothing in combination with something that allows you to actively challenge your reality. Do Nothing can be an increibly powerful experience, and can make you feel great, (and please read everything I say here as one traveller to another: I am no expert nor teacher) my experiences with it in an attempt to reach a greater understanding of my experience / consciousness depend upon something else to provide a contextual understanding within which I can appreciate Do Nothing. For me, that's self-inquiry/spiritual autolysis. I suspect Do Nothing on its own is a very powerful meditation. But if you're trying to break down You, I doubt it will do it on its own. Still, that's one amateur to another

Hello! I want to precurse this by saying that my intention in replying is to enhance discourse, not to argue. I say that because I have seen too many discussions on technique, understanding, or whatever, turn into arguments. I don't pretend to know everything and can only talk from my perspective, and I hope that by sharing I can not only give you an added perspective, but I can encourage you to share your experiences with me and give ME an added perspective So... from my point of view, the idea you offer of self-inquiry is very limited, and limiting, a I think that - by the way you describe it - you recognise that to some degree. The problem of self-enquiry is that it needs to be continuous, ongoing, and constantly negating itself. You need to always treat the answer you came to yesterday as questionable at best, and false at worst. You need to accept that you are going to become stuck again, and again, and again, and again, and that becoming stuck is not a PROBLEM of the process, but an inherent part of it. And you need to accept that you have been wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and no matter how right you feel right now, that probably means that you are wrong right now. I have probably heard this best described by Jed McKenna's accounts of spiritual autolysis, but those are still very limited, as the self-enquiry/autolysis account is inherently subjective and cannot actually describe the problem with description iteself. So I suppose my argument here is that the description you have offered of self-inquiry suggests a very limited approach, most likely provoked by the fact it's bloody hard! I've offered McKenna as a reference here, primarily because it's about writing which allows you a separation from subject/object of your writing/enquiry, which is much harder when you try to keep it all mental/meditative. I should point out that I have skewed away from McKenna's apparent 'instructions' on many points, and taken time to find what is right for me to deconstruct me. Which nobody can tell me / work out other than me. If you've rejected self-inquiry, I would suggest it's worth another approach. I've recognised things through it that I cannot imagine I would hit through meditation other than through luck

Hi all, I know this is basic and intellectually obvious, but sometimes we need visceral reminders. I've just been watching a docu-drama about the Sept. 11 attacks from within the WTC. The moment at 54:45 minutes caught me. You don't know what today will bring. Make sure you are doing what you want. Know what it is and find out how to get to it

Something I've not seen/heard anyone talk about before is object permanence: the idea that we learn to conceptually understand that an object, despite being out of our sight, still exists. We're not actually born with this - children below a certain age don't have it, and have to develop it. Now, in purely existential terms, permanence is not true. If you look at a cup then look away, as far as your direct conscious-experience goes, the cup does not exist any more. Look back, there it is again. Same cup? I'll leave that debate alone for now. Suffice it to say that a concept of object permanence is crucial to our navigation of existence. But, ultimately, it's a concept. Just another concept: an idea, a story in the mind. Now, let's turn inwards for a moment. There are two areas this seems to relate to: patterns found in the 'negative space' of reality, and the permanence of the sense of self. First, the negative space of reality. Much of what we 'know' is in fact an inference we are generating from a few points of data. Much like the optical illusions where you see a shape that doesn't 'actually' exist, the majority of our understanding of the world is formed from shapes we're interpreting from the 'negative space' of life. We get a few data points, and infer the rest (often calling upon prior experience) - which is how two people can interpret the same circumstance extremely differently. However, there seems to be a parallel to object permanence here - something we might call 'concept permanence': that once a particular pattern has been identified, it is EXTREMELY difficult to shake, and often becomes set in the mind as 'true', rather than an interpretation of negative space. We often then find further patterns to reinforce it. This seems to be particularly true of patterns relating to one's self-identity: a belief in the concept permanence that nobody likes you, for example, will lead to identification of negative space patterns 'proving' that belief. Other patterns may potentially have been seen, but the permanent concept of your unlikability DEFINED what pattern you saw. The idea of concept permanence is at its strongest when it relates to the sense of a permanent self. It's a lot like looking at the cup: you look away, look back, and it's the 'same' cup. I-thoughts appear to be the same. We move from one thought calling itself 'I', to another, to another, to another, and make the foundational assumption that they are all the same thing, coming from the same source. A permanent I. Concept permanence. But where's the evidence for this? Isn't the I contradictory? Doesn't it believe multiple, irreconcilable things at the same time? Doesn't it want one thing one moment, and another the next? Perhaps it's not that there is a constant I at all, but that our propensity to conceptualise permanence is pulling off a hell of a trick... This is still an area I am exploring, but it's proving very interesting to question what patterns are being inferred from negative space, and particularly to question the apparent permanence of the conceptual I. All thoughts, reactions, responses etc. welcomed and valued!

Oh, God, Journey is incredible. Gaming - as we've just seen - has this stigma of being a waste of time, a distraction, blah blah blah. And yeah, a lot of it might be. But then some of it is ART. And this absolutely is. It's no more a waste of time than going to a gallery, or a concert. It's gorgeous, heartbreaking, meaningful on so many levels, and it's a shame to see people instantly dismiss it without even investigating what it is.

From my experience - which is incomplete - the issue here is that you're approaching questioning with the intent of finding 'the' answer. So you're intellectually approaching your enquiry, with the hope of finding an intellectual solution. So you've been given a pre-packaged answer. You've landed on the problem when you say "I already THINK I'm nothing or awareness..." You think, rather than experience. The thing is, this is a very nuanced and progressive work, and it involves depth and subtlety. As you've mentioned sensations, let's start there. Have you sat down to really, deeply, investigate what a physical sensation IS? What the texture, tone, shape of it is? What part is actually being felt, and which parts are accompanying thoughts (for example, your finger hurts. It's the whole finger. So the pain is in the shape of a finger... is it? Or are you PICTURING a finger because you know that this sensation corresponds to the visual/mental image you have of finger?) Where do thoughts happen? In the plane of experience you have, where do thoughts exist? Where does pain exist? Is it even possible to talk about "where" as if there is a 'true' space within which everything occurs, or is space simply a reference system used to codify the contents of awareness? You have an emotional reaction - is that reaction the deepest truth of itself (for example, yesterday I briefly got angry. I could believe the anger if I wanted, but digging through it, it became clear that I was angry because I felt ashamed, because somebody said something that made me feel stupid, and I have a programmed need to NEVER appear stupid, so the anger rose as a defence mechanism against the vulnerability that was being exposed...) What is sound? What is colour, or shape? And here's a big one: what is nothing? I mean, you've used the word - do you know what it means? Really? Picture nothing right now: you're wrong. That's not it. You CAN'T picture nothing, but you can get a taste of it: click your fingers. Wait a moment. Where is that sound now? Partly it's a memory-thought, and partly... What about with your vision: what is JUST out of your range of sight? You know, that bit that we never really pay attention to, but just in the corner of our eye, the SOMETHING we are seeing disappears into... (You'll know when you hit this for the first time, because it will scare the crap out of you). I hope this helps in some way - I realise it's a bit of a rambling incoherent thing, but there we go. If you struggle with doing this mentally, I suggest writing it down. I find it much easier that way.

Reminded me of this: and then I found this: Fantastic!

This is really important. Frankly, to most people, what we're talking about here sounds kind of nuts - and if you're coming out of a depressive episode, starting to talk about cultivating consciousness or higher awareness or anything like that IS going to sound like you're trying to avoid reality, or looking for magic pills . You can't drop people in the deep end here: I think back to my mindset two years ago, and I'd have thought you're nuts too. But getting to where I am now wasn't one big leap, but lots of little steps. So if you're aiming to reassure people who are worried about you after a depressive episode, I'd suggest you need to talk in their language. I often use mindfulness or CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) as a starting point: both have the advantage of being 'respectable' in established terms, while containing essences of what we do here. And sometimes I may leave it at that, sometimes I may take things deeper - depends on the person, my relationship with them, and how the conversation naturally progresses. Like Arik said, I've been surprised at the amount of friends I have who are open to these ideas, but you have to feel your way along that path in each conversation, and respect how far other people are willing and able to go. If it's primarily about reassuring people you're ok, though, a lot of the time I'd recommend leaving 'spiritual' stuff at the door and finding a more straightforward way of saying "I'm ok, I know it seems like I haven't been, but I know why that is and I'm working on it: it just takes some time"

@Travis This is something that has run me around in circles a lot as well, and it seems to me the problem comes down to what your idea of 'you' is. You know people say there's no such thing as an 'enlightened person'? It seems that's because the 'person' is the thought-construct, the collection of ideas, impressions, etc., that you mentally carry around with you and designate "I". So when you say "I like this, I don't like that, I want this, I don't want that", it's actually coming from this collection of thoughts, ideas, worries, desires, etc. That's the I, the person, the ego. Then there's enlightenment, which is (broadly and roughly speaking) transcending that / not believing in it any more. I'm starting to see glimpses of this: how a lot of the time when my mind talks about "I, I want, I like, I need..." it's little more than a thought, and doesn't have any real substance. Which taken to an extreme suggests the whole person has no substance. Doesn't exist. So how can that collection of ideas - that person - want to not be believed in any more? To not exist? And to top it off, a great deal of our emotional attachments - whether goals, or relationships, or whatever - are directly tethered to that idea of 'I'. So once it's surpassed, how can you guarantee the things you like/want/need now, will remain that way? So I think that's the issue: they're literally talking about two different beings. The one that can never be enlightened, which cannot want what enlightenment really is. And if you're more or less content in your emotionally-attached life, why should you want to mess with that? You're going to die anyway, right? It's not going to last forever. So why not enjoy it while it's here? All of it, all of experience, the ups and the downs? It's a privilege to have them. The other being, the one that is enlightened - which is not the you who is translating and interpreting these words - well, that's a whole different state of affairs. But it seems like it can never believe in the trials and tribulations of 'normal' life ever again. And maybe, despite whatever goodies enlightenment may bring, that might also seem like a bit of a wasted opportunity? All of this is supposition, of course, but that's the sense I've managed to make of it!

@Pablo Neirotti I've been wrestling with similar issues: I'm in the third quarter of an immensely long and difficult project, which has been a huge emotional burden and now realise I first went into it (three years ago) because I thought it would make me important and special and clever and blah blah blah. However, it's also in a field I love, and I've often said to people that if I was given all the money in the world, I would still want to work in this area, simply because it fascinates me and I find so much beauty in it. So now I'm trying to orient my exit from this project so that I'll still be working in this field (as Mal says, got to eat!) but not nearly with such hyper-intensity, or such ego-driven goals in mind. Just to work in it to play with it, explore it, and enjoy the opportunity to do so while I'm here. Yeah, there's ultimately no point to it: that doesn't mean that it can't be enjoyed while it's happening!

There's a really important question here that you need to answer - for yourself - about why you're meditating. Everyone will have their individual reasons, and those reasons are what will keep you going in harder periods. BUT, in order for that to really keep you going, your reasons have to be strong enough to keep you slugging through when it's not smooth. So if you're into it because you're curious about some cool or interesting insights, maybe that's not enough for you. Or maybe you pictured a fast turn-around in terms of results, and you're starting to feel frustration that it doesn't seem to be happening (if that's the case, I completely get it - I've been plugging away at various self-improvement areas for YEARS and it sometimes feels like I haven't taken a single step. That can be immensely frustrating, and yeah I sometimes want to throw in the towel. It's countered, though, by moments when I suddenly realise how far I've come!) So I think the answer has to come from you, in terms of how important the potential pay-off could be for you. If you haven't already watched it I'd recommend Leo's 'Be Fucking Patient!' video - certainly helped me out last time I was flagging

As we all know, discussion of this stuff is massively hampered by the problem with the word 'I', and its relatives: you, me, my, etc. And I've (ha) come to realise that this is a much more important and difficult hurdle than I've been giving it credit for. In fact, it may be pivotal. The big problem is that we're hearing someone say "your true nature is...", and we translate that through the matrix of our own internal "I". But the "I" doing the translation is not the "you" being referred to. And this is a major issue, because no matter how much one meditates, no matter how much one contemplates or journals, no matter how many articles are read or videos watched, if the "I" re-interprets things in its own terms, everything will remain concept and everything will not be true. And the thing is that we seem to have it ass-backwards. We conceive of this "I" somewhere behind the eyes, between the ears, which does the watching and the listening and the thinking and all the rest, which makes decisions and blah blah blah. But where is it? Where is it? Where is behind the eyes? Where is between the ears? Point it out to yourself. Find it, right now, in your experience. Where actually is it? And now, where is everything else that you experience? It's right there. You don't have to try, you don't have to search or look or anything - it's just there. And yet we tell ourselves we are not that stuff, but somehow we are this thing that we can't find. That, right there, is - I think - the crux of this "you/I" problem. The message refers to one, but is received and interpreted through the lens of the other. The I that I think I am is not awareness. It is not one-ness, or god-mind, or infinite. It's even weirder than that: it's not there at all. I believe I am it and yet it doesn't exist! Except - and this is crucial - as concept. But what concept? Why? As best as I can fathom right now, it's a reference point. THE reference point. Everthing we understand is understood in relativity, and all relativity ultimately leads back to "I". It's the lens through which the body/mind can interpret, understand, and abstract. Can learn "this feeling means I'm hungry", "if I put my finger in fire I'll get hurt", or "if I go over there and try to take that guy's stuff, he'll hit me in the face". Through which we understand past, present, future. Through which we can empathise with others. It's very necessary to the functioning of the organism. But the crazy thing about evolution is that it doesn't favour truth, it favours fitness for survival (there's a really interesting TED talk about that - he's talking about vision mostly, but you can extrapolate the concept out to the very notion of self). What this is leading me towards is two very interesting conclusions. The first is that I have so far mostly been attempting to resolve ideas, concepts, and experiences through a conceptual relationship with this imagined "I", in the realm of "behind-the-eyes": it's a deeply ingrained habit which is extremely tricky to break, because all references lead to "I". So everything that I've come to recognise, even some fascinating experiences I have had, have ultimately been interpreted back into the imagined I. If it's not now, if it's not simply and directly experienced, it ain't the thing. The second conclusion has to do with effort, and resistance. I've been trying, and trying, and trying to see through the illusion of I. And that seems so, so foolish: reality is right there. Right there. Don't have to try. Where is this effort going, then? Understanding, understanding, conceptualising and bargaining. Trying to reconcile direct experience with conceptual self. The silly thing is, the more effort I'm putting in, the more I'm digging into the realm of imaginary concepts. Madness. If anything, I now have to learn how to do, while dialling back the effort... Everything is backwards: the interior "me" is not, while the exterior experience (which I currently still designate "not-me") is. Effort, which I am so used to being the path to results, is pulling me further away from reality. The I that wants cannot have, and the I that is does not want - it already is. Madness!

@Leo Gura Hi Leo. Thanks for this reply - it's really helpful encouragement. It's that eternal trap of trying to understand, isn't it? Trying to turn this awareness thing into an IDEA, because I seem to think that's the only way I can grasp onto it... And I suppose maybe that's the point - "I" can't grasp onto it. Ah, got lots of nothing to do!

@Travis If you can allow the time for this without damaging your life circumstances, I expect it will be hugely useful. I put that caveat in there as, if your life is anything like mine, we have commitments and responsibilities and so on which may bring problems if we neglect them. It's all well and good talking about what is real and what is not, but while I still physically and psychologically rely on my work, I'd better do my work! I've had a couple of periods in this journey where I've become really excited about something, and neglected to keep on top of my work and social/relational obligations for a week or two, and it's always come back to bite me: more stress, more upset, more running around trying to pick up pieces. So I'd say beware of that! The other thing I've come to realise is that practice does not have to involve epic sitting and nothing else. This certainly has its place, and if you can make the time (or recognise when it might be a more valuable use of your time than, say, playing computer games or watching crappy tv) then I expect it can only be positive. But there's also something to be said for recognising the constancy of experience: that it's always there to be noticed, no matter what. I've certainly noticed that I can fall into a habit of focussing very deliberately when meditating/contemplating, and then as soon as I get up all that goes out the window and I'm right back in the middle of monkey-mind-ego. Which is a bit silly really. So I suppose I'm talking about the need for a kind of witnessing: certainly in the last couple of days as I've been feeling around this area, I've been keeping an eye focussed on this idea of effort while going about my daily routine - that if I'm feeling strong resistance or emotional effort, then that's worth stepping back and witnessing and just questioning where my psychological energy is going. And yeah, just trying to softly observe without defining, without relating to rules or ideas or boundaries. I'm becoming very wary of words like 'presence', 'non-attachment', 'non-judgement', as each of those brings forth an idea in my mind, and if I'm not careful I become more focussed on that idea than the reality it attempts to represent (and ultimately fails to). But on the other hand, they're decent words for communicating that free, gentle observation, which is clearly of central importance. I suppose so long as we keep ourselves oriented towards the doing, rather than the idea of the doing, then we're doing ok... I have no idea if that last bit makes any sense!