Ramblings

[StephenK]

The transcendental has no shape, no form, no agency, no morality, no meaning, and is unitary and non-dual. It is only through awareness that qualities manifest as finite perspectives. It is in seeing the contradictions between the finite perspectives and absolute that the bondage to said perspectives is dropped. This shifting in and out of different perspectives leads to an awareness of what lies beneath the perspectives.

This mind cannot know the absolute. And this is alright; it always was alright. To have a perspective is to create falsehood. This mind can only be born from a perspective – it has no other option. I now see this. And seeing this, how can I judge? How can I hate? How can I authentically feel anything other than acceptance for what is? Do I judge a baby for being born? Do I judge the tree for not being a bird? I can't judge mind for being mind. Yet, as time goes by, my perspectives will change, this body will grow old, falsehoods will be spoken as they must, happiness will wax and wane, but the transcendental nature of acceptance will be ever present between every shift in perspective. It is in the quiet space between moments that the nature of acceptance shines through. It is in seeing impermanence that maya becomes apparent, and it is in seeing impermanence that maya is loved for what it is, in all it's manifestations.

 

Perspective Phasing and Embodying the Meta-Perspective

When a perspective is let go of, there is a natural inclination within the mind to simply lock into another perspective or another 'self' identification. One might go from 'I am the body' to 'I am the mind' to 'I am my family' to 'I am my nation' to 'I am my race', to 'I am this moral ideal', 'I am this idea' etc. This often leads to a situation where we drop perspective X, only to replace it with perspective Y and fall back into bondage. The Meta-Perspectives is that which is present in all sub-perspectives. The Meta-Perspective notes that all sub-perspectives are falsehood. The self and other duality is fully dropped.

[StephenK]

What arises as a question is: “What is causing this perceptual-lock to take place?” First, there is a constant use of pronouns, such as I, Me, Mine, Yours, Ours, Theirs. This leads to a view of doership and ownership of reality. Language is foundational to how we cognize the world, and so dropping pronouns from the internal narrative should loosen the grip of self/other dichotomy. Instead of saying “I am X”, acknowledge reality and realize that, “X is occurring.” To presuppose the notion of 'I' is to create the illusion of duality, as it then implies 'other'.

Second, one needs to cognize what the world looks like absent the notions of self and agency. Absent the notions of self and agency, as reality really is, positing causal relationships such as “A caused B” are seen to be illusory, as A could have never been without B and C and D. That is, in an interdependent universe, causal agents don't exist.

Third, one must acknowledge that objects do not exist because of the causal relationships between everything. Objects are merely hyper-processed abstractions that the brain uses to navigate reality. For example, we think of a chair as a 'real' thing. However, without the ground, we would not be able to sit on a chair; without gravity, sitting would make no sense, and in general, without the laws of physics, the chair wouldn't be able to exist. Additionally, to call it a 'chair' is to take a utilitarian view of reality, which is completely illusory. To a dog, a chair is not a chair, as the dog can not sit on it! To a termite, a chair is food. So this thing we call 'chair' is only so as we have defined it to be so! So, what really is this thing we look at called 'chair'? Absent the inference of a utilitarian view, it is simply color and form! As such, we realize that what we call a 'chair' is actually an abstraction of the universe itself. Maya is infinite and in every perspective we can take!

 

[StephenK]

Arguments from Assumed Spiritual Authority

Because of the wide spectrum of views on this forum, there seems to be a form of one-upmanship going on between members to validate their world-views. I've noticed that one may ask a question and get two completely different responses from two people, yet both people that gave an answer proceed to say that the question is silly. More times than not, these discussion devolve into statements such as "you'll only know from direct experience. You're just not there yet. But believe me, I'm right". Members play this card against each other constantly and everything then just devolves into some form of an appeal to spiritual authority. To me, it seems that the most authentic people on this forum do not dictate what is, but just suggest practices, or posit a question that can be dwelled on. Ultimately this spiritual journey is only validated through personal experience, and so amount of self-assumed spiritual authority by others means anything for your subjective experience. Ultimately, you can't know who is correct on this forum until you validate insights for yourself. For all you know, everyone here is completely missing the ball... or not... These are the rules of the game it seems.