SOUL

Yepperz

How would anybody know what you are doing from just by looking at you? Since someone can't tell just from appearances it must be that you're talking about it to others. Maybe have the mindset that it's satisfying enough in doing it without having to tell anybody and you wouldn't have to deal with any judgment or attitude from others not that it should bother you anyway.

The doing is to undo all that was already done or at least what we do is let go of what was already done so we can get on with just being.

The activity that happens in the subconscious mind is hard to qualify as thoughts since the subconscious mind talks with itself as processes in fragments of information according to the functions associated with the region of the brain. Different parts of the brain store different information and a thought is a collection of many bits of information from different parts of the brain that have been arranged in a coherent way for our conscious mind to recognize. If we were conscious of all the activity of the subconscious mind it would overwhelm us to the point we would never be able to focus on anything because of the constant cacophony of gibberish from all the communicating of incomplete information that happens within the brain. It is only after the information and stimuli has accumulated to a substantial degree of relativity for us do we become aware of it in our conscious mind, Awareness as we currently experience it is a part of consciousness but there is the philosophical and spiritual idea that awareness is the origin of all conscious being, so before there was even biological organisms to house consciousness there was awareness as consciousness without embodiment. This awareness of origin was the entirety of consciousness before the manifest even existed and the subsequent unfolding of the manifest existence produced the varying expressions of conscious activity that we currently acknowledge as consciousness.

Meditation is merely being aware of the space in the mind in between the thoughts

@Eastbranch Duality is an ancient concept conjured up by a primitive mind, it's monkey mind magic.

Except that him believing mathematical waves are eternal is just another illusion that he fails to be aware of.... nice try emo Leo but lulz

It seems you think we are unaware of something that you wish to enlighten us...... ironically delicious.

@Gopackgo Undoubtedly the mind works with concepts but I am attempting to filter out the ones that we would project onto the matter and limit my comments to the self evident ones on the matter. You are doing the opposite, in figuring our mind uses concepts you seem intent to just fill up the matter with conceptualizations and you seem especially infatuated with projecting them...... given that you have also projected onto me the false notion I am offended by your words or ideas. Since that the topic is awareness and free will I directed my comments in a way that touched on the thread topic. I'm not conceptualizing it, I just referenced our ability to focus our attention and through that we will influence what the subconscious mind receives in the present moment experience through our awareness. This isn't a concept projected onto what's happening, it's a fact established through research and the evidence is found in many different branches of science, I just spoke to it. You are welcome to conceptualize, believe any way you want and act on them as you see fit.

What makes you think that there are unconscious thoughts? Aren't thoughts by their very definition something we are aware of in our mind? If we aren't conscious of them, are they even thoughts at all? What you seem to be pointing to is that if everything is consciousness why is there unconsciousness, or seemingly unconscious matter as well as why is there the subconscious mind. All of which is very interesting to contemplate. My answer is.... I know that I don't know...... haha.

@Gopackgo Just reading the last reply from each of us illustrates so much. You are critical of conceptualizing yet that's all you offered, more and more concepts laden with buzzwords projected onto everything but adding very little insight. My reply was a simple and practical examination of how our conscious and subconscious mind coexist and work together with very few concepts projected onto it. If you don't like projecting concepts, stop doing it.

@username We can keep piling on more and more concepts, ideas, methods and techniques which have their place in our inner work but lost in all of that can be the simple experience of presence. In this present moment with our appreciation of it by awakening our awareness to the experience of just being the hunger is satiated, desire is quenched and our life is fulfilled.

You are trying too hard....... just let it be.

@Gopackgo Yet you calling something an illusion is your mind trying to project just another concept onto something the mind wants to understand, this is just another attempt to control the story so it's makes sense to the mind, so that we can influence it. I know it is a popular concept, one that in spiritual circles is accepted way of viewing it and will find many supporters chiming in agreement but it isn't any more of an accurate representation of reality than any other. Just being present in the moment our awareness doesn't need to make judgements about existence in terms of real or illusion beyond whether it is really a tiger in the grass waiting to eat us or if that bus is really coming at us. The thoughts in our mind come and go and they are as real as we allow them to be, they are as empowered in our mind in making them as "real" as we give the power and allow them to be. The mind and the thoughts in it didn't arise from nothing, it arose from experience and it reflects that experience of the past in the present to orient our self for it's survival. By giving our attention or not giving it, in using this awareness at the core of our consciousness we mold the mind through the present moment, we give it the experience that becomes the source of future reflections. Is it an illusion? Is it real? Our awareness is free from judging and our mind will reflect that which our attention entertains. So we lead our minds by focusing our attention, our awareness is the seed in our consciousness that will bear fruit in in our mind. Does it matter if this experience is real or an illusion? I guess to the mind and it's nature of trying to identify and label it may need to view it this way but is it the mind that only reflects the past or is it awareness in the present that fills our consciousness? In that is where the freedom of our will can be explored.

@Stoica Doru We are intentional beings in cooperation with life using variables and dynamics that may be beyond our control.

@sgn So even though you were prompted to think of a dog by my request and then supplied with dogs through your mind's imagination by unconscious means you then directed the mind to imagine you petting them. Thus you have illustrated and example of how it is both conscious and unconscious that blends to create our thought process. It's not just either one of that we can control or we can't control thoughts, just like it's not just either we have free will or we don't. It's a unified experience of will.

@Gopackgo This is why I acknowledge that it is inevitably a blend of conscious and unconscious, of intentional and incidental, it's rarely ever just conscious or just unconscious. It's both that presents itself as one united process but if we are awake, the distinction can be examined in our consciousness.

@sgn Did you pet the dog in your mind? Does your mind dog bite?

I want you to think of a dog.... any dog you like, just think of a dog, picture this dog and see yourself petting that dog on the head in your mind. Ok.... were you able to do it? If you did do it you just controlled your thoughts, you produced that thought at will. I know, I know.... what does that prove? The same exact thing that is proven when somebody tells you to stop thinking anything, think of absolutely nothing, then if you can't stop the thoughts they use it as an example of how you cannot control your thoughts and thoughts simply arise without you willing them to. It's not as clear cut as we can't or can control our thoughts, it's both and they simultaneously can be happening. At the same exact moment we can be willfully directing our thoughts and have thoughts arising without us intending for them to so have both streams of thought crisscrossing and blending in our mind. With "free will" it's similar in that it isn't as clear cut as we do or don't in exclusivity, it's both and they can be simultaneously happening. In fact, in the same way with thoughts it's inevitable that we are experiencing the effect of both in our mind.

Being exposed to ideas, concepts and opinions that are different, even opposite of our own and how we react in being exposed to them will indicate how open minded we are. The mind by it's nature doesn't want to accept different even though it is very interested in different, meaning it won't accept different by brute force of imposing on it but through it curiously examining the different it will adopt some of the different, the part that fits in with it's already existing paradigm. So even though we may attempt to cultivate a disposition of being open to the different and in our awareness we are intentionally being open to it our mind may still continue to react to the different in the way that it has evolved to be predisposed to behave. It will take repeated and consistent intention in being open through our awareness for the mind to eventually reflect that pattern... to become open to and act impulsively in that "different" openness we are intentionally exercising in our awareness.

The mind is addicted to identification like the body is addicted to food.

B-b-but we are told we can't control our thoughts and we have no free will to change it!

I had never heard this term before but that isn't surprising since I am a spiritual autodidact. Although, just from the description of it I read on Wikipedia I can see why it isn't a favored way that is taught and even anathema for a majority of the teachers. If the way can be described in just a few minutes and doesn't require any of the knowledge, understanding, methods and techniques we may realize why do we need any 'teachers' for? When it is understood how simple exercising awareness to enlighten consciousness is there is little opportunity to sell books upon books or book lists or courses or lecture series or retreats or continuing education or build an empire of material substance on teaching something that any idiot can "be" without any special knowledge and training..... and trust me any idiot can just "be here now", I would understand this intimately since there are few more idiotic than me. Plus the mind just can't believe that this can be so simple... you mean for us to exercise awareness to enlighten consciousness doesn't need me?!? Not my knowledge, not my understanding, not any of my methods or techniques, none of my ideas or concepts... well sure, the mind will concede that it doesn't require my self or my ego in theory but cotdammit that's an idea and concept that the mind needs to believe it is needed! The mind cannot believe we can just be without it's machinations. There are infinite words spoken and written on something that doesn't require a single one of them to be.

There is a limit..... it's infinite. Heh