Awareness And Free Will

[Gopackgo]

@SOUL Yea I get it. What I am trying to get across to people is that one day I saw that thoughts, decisions, emotion and all other sensations appeared in my mind. One of the things was a feeling of a self that thought it could control things, and actually thought it was creating the other thoughts that were arising, despite happening on the same level experientially. Then the thought came that if thoughts appear there was clearly no control, despite the experience, and in fact that feeling of control that was creating concepts to explain what is happening is a complete and utter illusion. There was a perceptual shift that has intensified. The thing is that what is happening doesn't give a fuck about what is projected onto it. Projections are just another thing that just happens. The illusion of control is what everyone is trying to awaken from, and when it is truly realized, it is beyond the self, and the self tries to explain it. It never will be satisfied with not having control, because it IS the feeling of control itself. But when this is talked about, the mind wants to pick it apart to disqualify it, because this is death. All of the discussions about it are fun, but what is really happening is that the mind is trying to grasp something that happens outside of it as a phenomena. It doesnt need to be understood or known to be what is happening. Our concepts are irrelevant. If thoughts and every sensation just appear out of nothing, there is no place for choice to be anything other than a complete illusion of the self. It is just distortion of what is instead of being. Yet, here I am discussing concepts, so who the fuck knows.

[SOUL]

@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.

 

Edited May 30, 2017 by SOUL

[Gopackgo]

@SOUL Yes, of course it is a projection anytime I commit it to language. It is impossible to communicate it in any other way. I think that is the difficulty. I think that a big part of this whole pursuit is realizing that there is no need to conceptualize being when you are it. For me, seeing the futility of the idea that there was choice was the catalyst for what is becoming the end of that need. From what i can tell, all calculations about what needs to happen is done outside of the conscious mind and then it appears in the conscious mind. When there isn't thinking, there is just action. I'm not saying that people shouldn't explore their seeming will, I am saying that the reason they are exploring their will has nothing to do with them. It also just happens. Claiming ownership over it is just another ego formation (for lack of a better term). It is just the "I" moving back into the mind a little further.

Also, I don't think prior experience has any relevance to this discussion. Learning is conditioning which is stimulus response, but another part of it is that past and future are projections. All we ever experience is right now, and there is zero control over what might arise. The self links it all together into context by creating a story. So again, I am saying that the space that is around you is it. It is all you experience. Everything that happens occurs inside of it (even the mental stories that seem to occur outside of it), but the second something is passed, it is gone and does not exist anymore. That's where the answers are. I am trying to advise caution about relying on concepts to explain this, because its available to everyone and reliance on concepts and thought are the only thing stopping anyone from realizing this and removing themselves from the conceptual reality created by mind. Again, I am not trying to be confrontational, I am just sharing in the best way I know how so that it is understood.  It is crazy how it is so simple, but conceptualizing makes it so complex. 

[SOUL]

@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.

[Gopackgo]

@SOUL  But how do I speak without using concepts? That's what I am getting at. What are we doing here? Are we really discussing who is projecting more of themselves onto a situation?  The whole Idea of awakening to no self falls apart when free will enters the equation. That's all that I am saying. It is a way to get stuck. The way I say it v.s the way you say it is unimportant because in the end it doesn't even matter, but in my experience, this is the sticking point and it creates a lot of fear. Once it is accepted that nothing can be known, there is more peace. I'm not here to compare how it is communicated, but possibly this isn't the format to even speak about it, because anytime it is put into words, the mind runs with the words and it becomes an argument about who's definition is correct. There isn't a way to talk about it without projecting. Even the idea of a subconscious v.s. a subconscious is based on the idea that we are the body, we are separate individuals, and we know something about consciousness. What I am trying to do is be very specific about what I have experienced, because that is what has been helpful to me. I don't really know how that sharing offended you, but the last thing I am interested in is talking about semantics, or supporting the idea that there is someone that has the ability to choose how they communicate. Maybe the particular words I use, or the language that comes out isn't as simple, or as eloquent, but all of it is just representing an utter amazement with what I have seen in this particular experience. It is in no way calculated, and it's not meant to start a competition about ideas, it is meant to make people question assumptions very deeply because they are very effective at hiding themselves and creating an unsatisfying feeling of separation.

[SOUL]

@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.

Edited June 1, 2017 by SOUL

[Paintballer]

You are thinking too much and intellectual insights are most the time wrong and of zero value. 

[Gopackgo]

. Thank you.

[Eastbranch]

@SOUL You make a good point with the dog exercise. We do and don't control our thoughts. We do and don't have free will. We are all one, yet we are separate. I completely buy into the concept of nonduality, yet all of our experience is set up on these fundamental examples of duality. The universe is obviously nondual, yet duality is the essence of our experience.

 

 

[Eastbranch]

@Gopackgo This reminds me of the story where there are five blind men trying to describe an elephant. One gets the leg and thinks the elephant is like a tree, one the ear and thinks it's a fan, etc. We all speak from our experience and are all correct, but nobody has the full picture. I've noticed my "awakening" experience is much different from most others, like I got the hair at the end of the tail. Thank you for the enlightening discussion.

 

[SOUL]

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

[AleksM]

From human being to  spiritual being.