Forestluv

At first, I tried to get rid of the story and thoughts. It didn’t work. What worked for me was to become aware that the story is just a story. It’s just beliefs and self concepts conditioned into me. It was like I “POPPED!!” out of it and could see that this story I called “me” was just one story of billions of stories. There was no attachment or identification with the story. There was no judgement or criticism of the story. It was an neutral observer of some character. . . at first, these were fleeting glimpses into truth. I would pop back into the story. I would keep popping outside the story - in meditation, spiritual videos and readings. The “observer” mind state got more common and it felt more distant from the story. Then one day, the story was no longer the Main Act in town . It was merely a side-show.

I would say there is an immature understanding and a more mature, truer understanding of emptiness. This is one reason meditation is so important - if the mind quiets down, you can get glimpses of this truer emptiness - which is nothingness, stillness, peace. Most people first notice it as small gaps between thoughts. The gaps get longer and deeper. Once you can drop below thoughts / feelings into that stillness, you will start to see attachments / identification with thoughts and feelings. Yet, this can be uncomfortable to the ego.

You are mixing up two different levels for understanding emptiness. At the surface level, emptiness is associated with a sense of lacking, being incomplete and loneliness. A deeper understanding goes beyond the self. This mature understanding of emptiness is associated with stillness and peace.

@drextez I’ve gone through similiar dynamics. It’s seems an actualizer is continuously learning how to integrate insights into their life, including social interactions. From one perspective, you probably do have a higher conscious level than your peers. Yet, this can become a problem when the self “takes ownership” of it and turns it into a self concept. Then, value judgements enter and the “I Am” becomes “I am more advanced”. People pick up on this. It usually comes across as arrogannce. IME, it boils down to discovering that my self is identifying to something it values - in this case, being more advanced. This sense of being “more than” others can provide relief to a deeper sense of being incomplete. Yet, the Real You is already whole and doesn’t need these types of identifications to become whole. When one hears a bird singing, they don’t think “I am a birdsong”, because they don’t identify their self as the bird singing. The self doesn’t take ownership of the birdsong and think “My birdsong is more advanced than their birdsong”. Rather, there is simply the awareness of birdsongs - some are more advanced than others. Thoughts, ideas and concepts are like bird chirps, one doesn’t need to identify with them. In our case, there is simply awareness of problems in shallow paradigms. A self likes to personalize that non-personal awareness and think “Since I am aware of things they are not, I must be more advanced”. Yet, there is only the awareness.

Must be overcome for what?

I like to think of it as One giant bowl of perspective soup.

IME, language and concepts break down on 5meo - it's prior to all that. Upon returning, the expanded mind will contract and try to conceptualize the experience - yet it is beyond that. It's like asking "Will a jakire taking a pinambe of zulfrix get a hanipip as a tunlet would have?"

Along the path presented by the OP, I think Amoda Maa is one of the best teachers from a heart-centered approach.

Those who hear not the cosmic music, think the dancers mad.

@Nahm Yea. . . When the guard rails of the timeline are dissolved, an infinite number of movies are converging on Last Friday. My doc wrote me a script for “more cowbell” and now I get the feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. . .

@cetus56 I was recently a spectaotor at a soccer game. On the car ride home, I was imagining how one of the goals was similiar to a goal I scored when I was a youth. Then, there was a realization that there is another similarity between the two memories. Both memories are not Now. The construct of time dissolved and the two memories became equivalent in a sense.

I hear ya. My parents also think I’m losing my mind when I explore existential ideas beneath the surface. I think they get uncomfortable and don’t want to put in effort to contemplate at deeper levels. They would rather play on Facebook and watch reality TV.

If I showed your posts to my parents they would have the same reaction ? ?

@phllip103 Your question can explored in a practical sense and in an existential sense. From a practical perspective, we would assume the existence of a finite self that continues as a self through time. This exploration would incude areas of personal improvement, goal setting, skill development, making healthy decisions etc. Greater awareness could help a person discover the root of personal problems, one’s own “shortcomings” (such as judgements, criticism and insecurity), attunement to the needs of others, increased attention etc. From a self actualizing perspective, we would question the assumptions that: a finite self is real and that there is a timeline of past, present and future that is real. Assumptions can orient perspectives into different exploratory spaces. Yet, they are not mutually excusive.

Children get conditioned into the predominant stage of their family and society. One can evolve above that, yet it takes work to rise above the average conscious level of one’s environment. Like crabs in a bucket. When a crab climbs up, the other crabs pull it back down.

I would focus more on principles rather than personalities. For example, someone who can only see in terms of objective morality would be at a lower level than someone who understands and has embodied moral relativism. Can a moral relativist behave like a jackass? . . . You betcha. So it depends on why you are criticizing the feminist. Are you criticizing them because they screamed at you, spit in your face and kicked you in the balls? Or are you criticizing them for the underlying principles, such as gender equality?

I think you still have dualities and are conflating relative with Absolute. Absolute/Infinite Love is pretty straightforward. It includes Everything, which is the same as No Thing. There is no separate love of a self, narcissist, rock, pizza, me, you, flowers etc. That is all relative.

@Arkandeus You seem to be conflating absolute Self with finite self (distinguished by upper case "S" and lower case "s"). They are very different concepts. A narcissist is immersed in self-centeredness and nowhere near being the One Self. A narcissist may experience self love (lower case), which is a more immature understanding of love than unconditional Absolute Love (upper case). It's like asking "isn't a cat kind of like a bat because the words rhyme?" Terms like: God and god, Self and self, Love and love have different meanings depending on the stage of spiritual development.

@VioletFlame It's Friday night and I'm the only one here at work. I'm sitting in my office blasting your song and grooving to the spooky beauty.

@Winter I've always lived within two miles of school/work and would ride my bicycle. Only about a 10min. ride each way, so not much time. What I did at work depended on the stage of my career: whether it was as a grad. student, post-doc or prof. @Outer I could have only worked 40hrs, yet what would I do with all that free time? . My life and identity revolved around work. My motto was "Work Creates Work". The more work I did, the more work it created. More experiments to do, papers to publish and grant money to get. Plus, advisors put a lot of pressure on me to get results, publish and bring in money. Looking back, I think they could sense that I had weak boundaries, was a people-pleaser and could be manipulated to work longer. Also, there was a subconscious fear that I wasn't good enough and I had to work extra hard so they wouldn't kick me out of school. There was one point in grad school I was working looong hours to get a paper out. Another lab was catching up on my work and there was enormous pressure to publish before them (only the first lab gets to publish). I was so stressed I couldn't sleep or eat well. I was getting severe headaches and stomach pain. I told this to my advisor and he said "If all the pressure and stress is increasing your productivity it is a good thing". That's the type of environment I was in. There were also some really inspiring, passionate, exciting times as well - yet I wouldn't say that was the default.

Very nice. I love those moments. One thing that came to mind when I read your post is the experience of life prior to the thinking. I like how you said "trying to explain the unexplainable". That's perfect. I was so analytical about everything. I was afraid of letting go and being taken as a sucker if this was all bullshit. Yet, I also sensed that there was something I was missing in life and I yearned to discover what that was.

@AceTrainerGreen I spent many years conducting research related to cancer and tropical diseases. 70-80 hour work weeks were normal. Always after the next result, the next discovery, solving the next problem, getting the next publication, the next speaking engagement, the next grant, the next promotion. I never had children - they would have taken up too much time. I never got married - she would have wanted too much time. I pushed and pushed scientific research until I reached the terminal end - and it didn't look like what I thought or hoped it would. . .

@ivory Facing oneself with naked vulnerability can be uncomfortable. It seems super common for people to experience various forms of anxiety, struggle, discomfort, frustration, avoidance, a sense of losing one's mind etc. Yet through that, there is an ineffable stillness, peace and love within whatever is happening in the present moment.

Indeed. Most selfs will resist dying. It seems natural to me.

A nice poetic concept