Sacred space

[tsuki]

I found this link today on the forum, it's very important:
https://www.bibhudevmisra.com/2017/11/yoga-mudras-in-orthodox-christian-art.html

Yesterday I noticed that doing prithvi mudra empties the head instantaneously and, hmm... leaves it vast, spacious and attentive.
This is very important.

On 26.02.2019 at 1:38 PM, Hellspeed said:

Mudras: your hand fingers are interlinked with the chakras.

pinky: muladhara
ring finger: swadhishthana
middle finger: manipura
index finger: anahata
thumb: wishuddha 

Edited August 27, 2019 by tsuki

[tsuki]

So, I ventured out to incel forums to see how it's like over there.
I spent 10 minutes reading posts with full awareness of how they lock negativity and still came out feeling like a creep.

Edited August 27, 2019 by tsuki

[tsuki]

Yes, my concern about other people is experienced as inner emotional tension.
Yes, by helping other people I want to dispel this tension and my urge is selfish.
Yes, if my help is rejected, I am hurt twice over.

The only way that I can help myself is to pray for the well-being of those that don't let me help them.
I will no longer exchange my human spirit (fragility, care) for comfort.

Edited August 27, 2019 by tsuki

[mandyjw]

 Not selfish at all, you just get blinded by your own light when someone tries to block it with a mirror. 

[tsuki]

Thanks @mandyjw.

As a teenager, I used to view people that tried to reach out to me as selfish.
I knew that they were 'merely' reacting to their instincts and I was very proud that I saw right through them.
Most of them were actually unaware of what they were doing, so explaining it was completely pointless.
It only recently occurred to me why this selfishness is actually selflessness, but not for the reasons unaware people think it is.

Edited August 27, 2019 by tsuki

[tsuki]

The world is my subconscious mind. It starts at the mind-body surface. I need to take a better care of my body. 

I think I'm starting to appreciate the importance of physical exercises experientially. I knew that, of course, but I'm starting to notice how the condition of my body affects my intelligence. To be continued... 

[tsuki]

I need to be more aware during my sleep. There are moments when the egoic mind reassembles, but there is no meta-perspective yet and it runs rampant in it's thought spirals. Today it was raining outside and a distressed cat was meowing terribly. That created a lot of fright in my subconscious and got magnified out of proportion. Cases like that are numerous.

I suspect the it is fueled further by the fact that I don't exercise and my body is not strong enough to lay down for 8 hours comfortably. I started going for walks and I'll see where this will lead. Stretching could do some good here.

The biggest daily struggle is the morning when my mind is not running on 100% capacity. That is correlated with shoulder and neck pain. I may get to see physiotherapist so that he suggests some stretching exercises on top of my neck ones.

Edited September 2, 2019 by tsuki

[tsuki]

Alright, I made up my resolve.
I will sink my awareness down to my body and expand it to my subconscious mind.
I am going to rest my awareness on my breath and increase the frequency of my cognition this way.

Living thoughtlessly is scary, but I know that this is the way if I want to expand. It's been bugging me for ages.

[Truth Addict]

1 hour ago, tsuki said:

Alright, I made up my resolve.
I will sink my awareness down to my body and expand it to my subconscious mind.
I am going to rest my awareness on my breath and increase the frequency of my cognition this way.

Living thoughtlessly is scary, but I know that this is the way if I want to expand. It's been bugging me for ages.

You will not regret this, trust me 

[tsuki]

Nobody to regret within silence.

Edited September 2, 2019 by tsuki

[tsuki]

Sinking the mind in the breath: day #1

It is difficult to confuse focus with relaxation. I need to relax the energy down to my belly and keep it in a lump there by letting go.
Focus is like shooting the energy up to the mind and back down to the belly as a single point. That is exhausting and contracting.

When I'm in this relaxed-belly way of being, the body is a field of impressibility. Everything I come in contact with leaves an imprint that resonates up the spine and 'bubbles' as a linguistic thought. If the environment is too stimulating, I lose the grip of relaxation and get back to processing thoughts.
It's very, very sneaky. I suspect that thought-processing is simply a conditioned response to the today's modern technological world that bombards us with stimuli. I can keep this completely thoughtless state up for long periods of time in a quiet environment when I'm seated. I can talk, move and engage with activities, but if I start walking it get's tricky very quickly. If the environment is quiet, like the forest today, I can manage it. Walking past the street when people go to work is too much for me.

I told my wife what I'm experimenting with and she told me some time after that, that she's feeling the same thing herself.
She was surprised that I didn't know that people's auras are connected when they are in a relationship. The sensation was annoying her.

[Zigzag Idiot]

4 hours ago, tsuki said:

It is difficult to confuse focus with relaxation. I need to relax the energy down to my belly and keep it in a lump there by letting go.
Focus is like shooting the energy up to the mind and back down to the belly as a single point. That is exhausting and contracting.

When I'm in this relaxed-belly way of being, the body is a field of impressibility. Everything I come in contact with leaves an imprint that resonates up the spine and 'bubbles' as a linguistic thought. If the environment is too stimulating, I lose the grip of relaxation and get back to processing thoughts.
It's very, very sneaky. I suspect that thought-processing is simply a conditioned response to the today's modern technological world that bombards us with stimuli. I can keep this completely thoughtless state up for long periods of time in a quiet environment when I'm seated. I can talk, move and engage with activities, but if I start walking it get's tricky very quickly. If the environment is quiet, like the forest today, I can manage it. Walking past the street when people go to work is too much for me.

Wow! I just now read this!

it is Very synchronous to what I posted a few minutes ago in HC Resources,,,,,,

[tsuki]

1 hour ago, tsuki said:

@Zigzag Idiot Thank you ?

I swear, it feels like you are posting this for me, specifically. Belly quality, huh?

@Zigzag Idiot

[tsuki]

Sinking the mind in the breath: day #2

Staying thoughtless is difficult if not impossible, but I made my resolve. My intention is to be able to process the constant bombardment of stimuli without them seeding my thoughts. This resolve is not caused by fear that I'm not the master of my mind, but rather by seeing that it is not necessary for everyday life. I want this 'everyday life' to be the stable basis for my happiness, and the mind to be a cherry on top. Being obsessed with the cherry is having life ass-backwards, which creates dishonesty, imbalance and subconscious fear originating from 'shakiness' of the tower.

Being in contact with language is a direct stimulation of the mind. Writing thoughtlessly is difficult. I do not think what to write, but letters flash as I am writing. Funny how I think that I'm all grown up because I don't read out loud lol. I guess that 'loud' is a matter of perspective.

Yesterday evening and today morning I was feeling severely malnourished with respect to touch. That feeling always used to creep up on me, and I would get pushy and angry for "no reason". The fact that I can recognize it and ask for it explicitly is a huge step forwards. I can't even say how grateful I am to my wife that she understands this need of mine and likes to provide. My solitude in the past has caused me to believe that this undernourishment is my temperament and I learned to resolve it by gaslighting myself down to apathy. I'm slowly recovering from this kind of ignorance, but my touch-o-meter only shows up when I'm dangerously close to becoming an enraged 3-year old.

I'm still conflicted about the mind because I know that disposing of it is not the way to go. I need to shift my center of gravity down to my belly and 'resort' to thoughts when the time is appropriate. Still, I feel like a hardcore reset of the mind is in order. Rest in the belly and relax.

Conscious breathing has lost some of its effect because I became conscious of why breathing is something that is in-between physical and mental. Just like the mind became imprinted with sounds and mimics language to think, it has learned to mimic the sound of breathing and it is juxtaposed with the actual breathing. That kind of stimulation does not exhaust the capacity of my beast and it does not stop me from thinking lol. Thoughts are usually on the verge of being 'audible' mentally, bubbling on the boundary of my subconscious.

Edited September 4, 2019 by tsuki

[tsuki]

Sinking the mind in the breath: day #3

Emotions started coming up. Yesterday, I had a release in the morning while being touched, and in the afternoon while watching trees being moved by the wind. Self-doubt and self-criticism started coming up as a response to my emotional state. The content of those thoughts circulated around my perceived rejection by two members of this forum. I started doubting my capability to help people and if I'm really qualified to give them advice. I've seen this movement many times and rested it on my habitual tendency to underestimate the amount of work I've put. 

Yesterday, for the first time, a spontaneous thought came up that said 'thinking feels unnatural'. Relaxing thoughts down feels like a cold liquid is sinking down my body-sponge, towards my belly. The best way to describe how it feels when this liquid is absent from the head is: 'clarity'. When my awareness is not occupied with relaxation, the center of gravity keeps being down, but thoughts start whispering. They are not like my regular way of thinking: they are very subtle and hmmm... blurred. They stop "sounding" like language, but they keep conveying meaning somehow. That is good, I want to keep the meaning, but dispose with "verbalization".

I also started being interested in the operation of my body. Today I will be skipping coffee and I will avoid overstimulating my nervous system. Music is still off-limits: it is so violent that memory-ripples it creates are unbearable. Fortunately, relaxing the mind started to be more effective and silence is much more pleasurable anyways. Some time ago I tried on noise cancelling headphones and immediately fell in love with them. They are very expensive and I don't feel comfortable buying them because my wife is trying learn to be frugal. Still, I think that they are not a whim, but a genuine need given the circumstances I'm in. The only doubt I'm having is that I want to keep practicing relaxation in a stimulating environment to build the habit. These headphones are like side-wheels for a children's bike and ultimately - an obstacle.

[tsuki]

Today's walk to the forest was very noisy with thoughts, I could not relax myself properly. At some point, after struggling I saw that the struggle itself is the problem and I let go. Every day when I wake up, my system is all messed up by sleep and I have to wake up twice. The second waking up is when the mind gives in and relaxes to the will. It's like it suddenly becomes flaccid, malleable, relaxed. Sometimes it feels like the inside of my body relaxes, expands, almost with a ripping sound. This time around it happened during a walk. With a newly found clarity, I remembered that I skipped my coffee today and that my neck hurts because I haven't been stretching it properly. This is what spiraled out to create the mess. 

Struggle in itself is a sign of contraction. Expansion is due to grace.

[tsuki]

Sinking the mind in the breath: day #4

Today it took me 4 (!) hours to wake up properly. Today was pretty hectic because my wife was preparing for a challenging day at work while keeping to her resolve to cook healthy food. No walk to the forest today, but I did go to the grocery store and meditated. Thanks to yesterday's turmoil, I was mindful enough to stretch my neck and remembered that skipping coffee is apparently a big deal for my body. That calmed me a bit and gave me space to notice that today's turmoil is fueled by... horniness . Taking care of that was a relief.

When I was driving my wife to work, I noticed that there is always something missing and that we are always in reaction to a need that is present at hand. The point of the thoughtlessness is not to be devoid of needs, to bypass them, but to resolve them without hesitation! My will to relax needs to be informed by the world, not to be clung to in itself. I want to be a superconductor, not a capacitor.

Unfortunately, these insights are only obvious when I look back from a point of clarity.
When I'm struggling, I'm not sure whether I'm clear or not and that is a sure sign of a lack of clarity.

Edited September 6, 2019 by tsuki

[tsuki]

EUREKA! My mind is supposed to focus on deep breathing.

[tsuki]

 

[tsuki]

Sinking the mind in the breath: day #5

Today I woke up well-rested, without neck pain. I spent the first half of the day with my parents and my sister, and the second half alone in meditation and sleep. Today's zazen sit was very peaceful, I was able to relax myself very easily and deeply and focus on the breath. I found a new pleasure in performing dhyana mudra deliberately because I understood its symbolic meaning that relates to focus. During the sit, the most immediate sign of tension is my eyelids flickering when I'm trying to close them halfway. At some point, the body gives in and there is stable, peaceful, state from which meditation can happen. Again, it is important to not confuse focus with relaxation. Trying to control the body only makes it more tense.

When it comes to quieting the mind during the day, I'm doing my best to keep my body relaxed and using the breath as a focal point when I'm not occupied with doing anything. A long forgotten truth came up that meditation is the only thing worth doing when I'm not working.

I started reading Bhagavad Gita (as it is) and I'm in love. There is a part of me that still rejects it as dogmatic, but I rest that rejection on my actual understanding of the book. Absorbing it as a belief system can only work when religious knowledge (gnosis) is not fleshed out with mystical experiences. Human understanding is, at some point, transcended into inhuman brilliance that can be easily mistaken for religious zealotry. The way to ground this ecstatic spark is by understanding that it does not invalidate scientific pursuits, the modern world, or its technological advancements. 

My coffee addiction is still under control. Unfortunately, I had some sugar today but I gave in for social purposes (family).