Open contemplation, get involved if you dare!

[Hero in progress]

This post

I'm calling " open contemplation " 

It's a chance to make this forum less about telling each other about how things are, and more about some deep collective introspection right now. So anyone is welcome to comment. 

The aim of this is something similar to a consciousness workshop. Where a group of people get together and start questioning there own experience. 

This is for people who have the intelligence to realise that they are deeply ignorant and do not know! And from there we have the space to actually look. 

If there is a specific experience or distinction you want to look into here I am happy to contamplate with you here and see if we can both come to some sort of genuine insight or realisation together.

If you want to get involved but don't have anything in particular that you want to contemplate here, then have a look at the suggestions for topics of contemplation below. 

This post may be your chance to actually contemplate for yourself, in your own experience, without any authority from anyone. Your shooting for direct evidence. Buddha can't help you here, Jesus can't save you now. YOU contemplate, YOU desern YOU find for yourself what's true. 

To help people to be more effective in there contemplations I have outlined some guiding principles. 

Pre contemplation components 

1. Presence: Put your attention on the present moment.

2. Clarity: clarify what you are going to contemplate. 

3. Possibility: hold that it is possible to become conscious of whatever it is you are contemplating.

contemplation components: 

Intention: intend, right now, to become conscious of the truth.

openess: Allow yourself to deeply not know, and be open to whatever may be true. 

Focus: keep all your attention on your subject; when you wander off, immediately bring your attention back. 

Question: Truly wonder; keep a steady questioning that's related to your intent.

 

So let's get started 

suggested topics of contemplation- 

what is a distinction? 

What is self?

what are emotions, why do they exist? For what purpose? 

what is self image?

what is thinking? 

What is separation? 

How does space exist in your self experience?

how are you stuck in time? What does it mean to be timeless?

fear & desire?

what is authority?

what is a person?

what is culture? What assumptions, beliefs and ideas has culture got?

and so on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Leo Gura]

Hehe, that's not contemplation, that's mental-masturbation.

Notice that you're just trying to escape from doing the actual work.

You cannot do consciousness work as a team effort, lol.

Your desire for companionship in life is part of the whole problem here. You think companions exist but they really don't. You are all alone. That's something for you to sit with and cope with, not to escape from through fraternization.

[Joseph Maynor]

@Hero in progress Great idea.  

What is truth?

Does truth apply to meanings or thoughts?

If so, what justifies that application?  Culture is the only way we get ideas.

What is Truth?  Let's contemplate that.  Is it meaning, thought, language?  What are meanings, thought, and language though?

[Leo Gura]

It only feels lonely when you're out of touch with yourself.

Find your True Self.

[Martin123]

5 hours ago, sweater said:

No wonder it all feels so lonely sometimes. "In the end it all feels so lonely" - Kanye West

I should read more about this Kanye guy. Been hearing about him left ans right yet this guru still seems to escape my awareness... he truly must be great, and leave other enlightened masters in the dust... 

 

ok lets do this!

What is love?

x

x

x

Baby dont huurt me!

[Torkys]

It would be like a forum game if we chose a question and used the Socratic method for contemplation

[Dodo]

@Hero in progress I like the idea. I've had a similar one with a topic "Contemplative questions",  but it didn't work out.

I feel like the body is a pleasure and torture instrument. I don't know who I am and why I am experiencing exactly this body. The body I'm experiencing is way more a torture instrument than a pleasure one, making it a thing I want to get rid of, perhaps replace with a better version. 

How do I get rid of the cross? 

[Nahm]

@Dodo what’s up with your body? Whatcha talking about?

[Dodo]

11 minutes ago, Nahm said:

@Dodo what’s up with your body? Whatcha talking about?

It's inadequate for dealing with the world it has been popped into.

Inadequate to get into a proper relationship,  inadequate to succeed financially,  inadequate for enlightenment,  inadequate, inadequate, inadequate. 

The pleasures of this world are reserved for those blessed with looks/talent/luck. 

Give me money and a good girl and you wouldn't see me seeking,  because there wouldn't be any suffering. 

God can make anything,  but cannot make this happen. God is inadequate. I trully am made in his image. 

[Nahm]

@Dodo ok.

[Dodo]

1 hour ago, Nahm said:

@Dodo ok.

Ofcourse i dont have those problems when im high on weed, but god made sure to make it illegal. What a jackass :-D 

[Hero in progress]

@Dodo @Joseph Maynor 

Thankyou for your contributions. And my apologies to the few who bookmarked this post, indicating that they too were interested in the "open contemplations" post. But after logging on I feel that the post has already been contaminated by other peoples projections, so I will leave it there. I was hoping for a more direct, specific, and constructive questioning. But instead I am getting told I am lonely, and this is nothing more than mental masterbation. Joseph I would say to your question that absolute truth is beyond meaning, language and thought. And that if meaning, language, thought was to all be eliminated from reality the truth would still be the truth. Truth is inherent in the thing itself, that why its different from opinions, beliefs, words. If you wana carry this topic on another time feel free to message me. Cheers.

Dodo, it seems your having a pretty tough time with it at the moment, if you want to talk about it further, feel free to message me sometime and we can look into the stuff your going through. Cheers

[molosku]

@Leo Gura Oh don't be such a meanie ; D

[OneLittleHumanMind]

@Hero in progress I would be interested in this. I don't care what other people say before I see whether it works or not.

[Hero in progress]

@OneLittleHumanMind

I like your approach, what would you like to contemplate?

[OneLittleHumanMind]

@Hero in progress Lots of uncovered questions in my head, but let's start with this one.

Why is it that consciousness must be one and the same "thing" but it seems to be divided? Like I'm conscious of these things here that you can't be conscious of there.

[Hero in progress]

@OneLittleHumanMind

I would like you to consider that I feel no sense of separatness "AT ALL" with you. That in some inconceivable way right now I am in the very same place as you right now! If thats the case then really grasp the magnitude of what I am saying! Like yeah its that crazy!

Your sense of separation is because you experience yourself as a entity and so do I, BUT this very experience it needs to be understood and very carefully considered. 

The self, by its very nature is a isolated phenomenon. Living inside its own internal walls, separate, isolated and self oriented. That's its job, it runs on the principle of survival and that's another thing we should into, what is survival???

Let's really look into this together As if for the first time right now. Let's really get into it for real now.

[OneLittleHumanMind]

@Hero in progress

I assume that it is like you said, you with your experience are at the same level as I am with my experience. Then it's interesting, how consciousness is formed as a separate self (or a sense of it)?

To be very precise, I cannot evidence that I'm a separate self. Nothing in my experience demonstrates any limit, because my feeling of a limit is also an experience! 

Survival is ego's feeling of aliveness. It feels good to an ego to be an ego, so it has to make the grade. Life is dangerous from that perspective and it ends to death. So ego needs its brief moments of being alive, which is survival.

[Hero in progress]

@OneLittleHumanMind @OneLittleHumanMind

If we look at survival as a principle. And understand that by necessity all organisms from simple to complex have the drive to survive & persist. And that your emotions, social concerns and management and so on are all in service to this purpose.

If you could look at life like its a game, you see that its a open world full of infinite possibilities. But beyond that consideration, also consider that nature although beautiful and awe inspiring, is dangerous and full of potential threat. 

Consider that your mind has developed in such a way that your very perception itself is not a true reflection of reality but is in service to your survival and needs. And that your mind is a information processing machine. And is the way in which you know the world. Consider also that your very perception right now is what I am talking about. That perception itself is in service to the one you are and your needs. But that may be difficult to become conscious of. Would need further contemplation.

Consider also that what you experience as yourself is a distinction, that the very feeling/ image sense you have of yourself is conceptual in nature. And that its possible to go beyond this by first becoming aware of it.

If you move your lips, raise your eyebrows, turn your head can you spot that when you do these activities you also have the sense of you doing them, almost like a movie of you doing these activities, although intimate and familiar can you desern that they are conceptual?  

Its almost like your mind has the quality of reflecting your faceback at you. And gives you a sense of what your face looks like when you do these movements, take a look.  That's the distinction Self I am referring too. Hence no mind no self.

[OneLittleHumanMind]

@Hero in progress

I can see it with myself. My mind is structured to take care of the balance: that everything is in its place. If something feels too threatening concerning the future, it has to be fixed now. Otherwise, mind is too upset. It must know the future, at least the short-range one. It's almost like the mind should be alert of the possible chaos coming, though the ultimate chaos is that we really don't know any future.

So, the mind is in service of survival, and it's duty is to avoid the possible chaos.

For the sake of survival, mind seems to need its imaginable perceptions of the body. Mind knows what we look like when we laugh or scowl. Furthermore, these expressions seem to service our needs in social environment. Imagination of moves and posititions has to exist in order to manage ourselves in space and time, also the qualities of this world of survival.

It's still a nasty possibility to be able to see ourselves as objects, because that way we may imagine what others see in us, maybe there is something wrong with us, shame comes. Also the great desire to make an illusory self-picture: how I must be like and look like.