How to embody an insight

[Neorez]

I recently had an incredible insight in to my own workings. I went to my therapist for the second time, nothing really deep happened. When I was driving home I was contemplating some dualities i'm strugling with. Basicly I like two extremes which don't seem to be able to coexist(this is what I believe about it so was unable to exept it). Then I asked the question "why do I like these extremes, why am I like this?" And then out of nowhere this voice said "I just like it this way". I know this doesn't sound like much but at that moment the duality collapsed, my brain exploded, my heart exploded with energy, I basicly cried the entire way home, hyperventilating and being euforic as can be. When I came of it the duality was back and I'm now strugling to embody the insight I got. Any tips on how to do this? 

[Anton_Pierre]

@Neorez Why not get an insight into how to embody your insights?

[Neorez]

If I only knew how these insights come about, then I could summone one right now ?

[Anton_Pierre]

@Neorez Maybe not knowing is the only way to know.

[Neorez]

@Anton_Pierre I don't think I'm at a level where you're advise makes any sense to me. But thanks anyway!

[Anton_Pierre]

@Neorez It's non-sensical

[Forestluv]

@Neorez Thats a good question. . . I wish I had the answer, then I would be an embodiment machine 

Just a few thoughts about my experience that are appearing in my mind:

1. Conditioning. An insight and glimpse of direct experience doesn't always swipe the slate clean. The mind-body has been conditioned it's whole life to see in dualities and that generally doesn't go away with a nondual insight. For example, "good vs bad", "right vs wrong" and "perfect vs imperfect" dualities. I've had nondual experiences in which these dualities have collapsed. It's an amazingly fresh and beautiful perspective. Yet the next day my mind may be getting immersed into judgements of what is right or wrong "he is too this, she is too that, he needs to do yabber dabber, she needs to stop gibber badder" etc.

2. Part of the recurrent perception pattern is due to subconscious conditioning. The mind has simply been conditioned to see things a certain way thousands and thousands of times of its life. It can take a while to recondition. I think awareness is a big key. There are still thoughts that arise in my brain due to previous conditioning of what to notice in the world and how things should be. I've become much better at recognizing this and letting it go. In the past, I would get immersed into these thought patterns and not even notice it. After days or weeks of being immersed in it, there would be a realization "Whoa, I totally fell asleep into that old conditioned thought pattern". Rather than taking days or weeks, my mind generally recognizes it within seconds or minutes. Occasionally hours. Yet it's been years since I've gone days immersed in old thought patterns. 

3. Conditioned thought patterns can give a sense of grounding, stability and comfort for a mind-body. A mindset of "I'm right and he is wrong". Can give a sense of grounding. "This is what's right. This is how things should be". It can feel sturdy. An ego and mind-body will like that. However, this is only a surface level of grounding and stability. It is a cover-up. Deeper down, the duality is untenable. Here there can be groundlessness. If everything isn't simply "right" or "wrong", what is it? Now I don't know. Could something be partially right and partially wrong? Could a person be both a good person and a bad person? At what point does good become bad? These questions reveal uncertainty and groundlessness and many minds will resist that because the ego seeks grounding to protect itself and the mind-body.

4. Get curious. Trying to reject the duality and embrace transcendence into nonduality can create a new duality: that is, duality vs nonduality. Yikes. . . This is a form of going from one extreme to another. Because the mind is conditioned into duality and spends 99.99% of it's life in duality, I find "flipping over" to the other extreme of nonduality to be helpful. Some nondual concepts, mostly in experience. Yet be aware of the minds tendancey to push away what it considers dual and grasp what it considers nondual. There is a lot to explore between the two. Take whatever duality you have been working with - rather than reject it, get in there and explore it. For example, how are perfect and imperfect related? How are they relative? Can something have aspects of both perfection and imperfection? Can something be more perfect than something else? Is it possible for something like a painting to be midway between perfect and imperfect? How does viewing something perfect feel? Go out in nature and observe, is the stream, birds, insects, plants etc. all perfect together? Or does the hot humid weather and mosquitoes make it slightly imperfect? 

5. Observe the resistance that arises in the mind when dualities are explored. Allow curiosity and exploration of the unknown to guide you - rather than the mind's desire to create rigid rules for a sense of grounding. Observe how the mind resists and holds on to simple dualisms. Discover why your mind does this. What purpose does it serve your ego, mind and body? Once you discover how and why of this psychological dynamic - you will be able to recognize and release it much easier and the tendency will dissolve. It probably won't dissolve 100%, but even a 20% reduction will have a huge impact. A 60% reduction would liberate the mind-body into a whole new world of openness, exploration and discovery.

6. Rather than striving to go 100% nondual, I found it helpful to have a more practical goal. Last summer, I estimated I spent about 90% of my time within a dualistic mindset. I was immersed within the story of me and what life is. My mind-body was telling me it was too much. I knew I couldn't just "shut it off" completely, so my goal was to get up to having about 50% of my time beingness "outside" of programmed dualities. After three months of practice I felt like I was in this "space" about half the day and it changed the way I related to reality. Each day, I set aside time to simply be Now. To observe things appear Now. To be aware of what's happening Now. At first, that was mostly through sitting meditation. Yet then I could do it while mowing the lawn, walking through the neighboorhood or riding my bicycle. As well, I spent some time contemplating the relationship, nuances and inter-connections between dualities as I described above. My mindset was that of curiosity and exploration to discover - not a mindset of analysis and trying to figure this thing out. Over time extreme dualitstic conditioning began to dissolve and my mind just naturally started noticing inter-connectedness and nuances of dualities. I would say now my thinking/imaginary mind is roughly 80% within space "between" the dualities. Sometimes attachment/identification with a duality arises - for example "I am right on this issue", they are generally more inquisitive - for example I will notice my mind making a distinction between a tree and the earth it is attached to. Then I'll get curious and may ask "Is that tree and the earth really two separate things? Where exactly does the earth end and the tree begin? Could it be an "earth-tree" in which the tree and earth are One and the tree is simply an extension of the earth?". How interesting. These types of exploration journey and be magnificent. . . 

[Neorez]

@Serotoninluv Thanks for the depth of your answer, it definitely clears some things up. It was an incredible experience which fades like a dream the more you think about it, the more it slips away. I now understand what they mean when they say you can't speak about it, only around it. Because when you do, you again conceptualise and cut it up to bite size pieces. Will definitely work on it with you advise in mind! 

[Inliytened1]

@Neorez these things are tricky because you will often have a deep insight or realization and then it's gone.  Your ego does not like change so it will distract you from embodying that insight.

It takes regular daily work to embody an insight.  Keep a journal and review it daily.  That way you can track your insights and review them regularly to ensure you are making an effort to embody them.

Your ego would love for you to forget it ever happened that's why this spirtual stuff is called work

 

[Lister]

@Neorez Do you think you might have attached a lot of erroneous meaning to that experience? For me, all that happened is you felt the struggle of struggling against your own ego collapse for a moment. You were honest for a moment, but because you have been conditioned by spiritual teachers you maybe interpret this as some kind of enlightenment experience? You can even go overboard and create a whole conceptual model called "ego backlash" based solely off an experience that wasn't properly understood, and then use that to interpret falling back into states of struggling against your subconscious? Worth a consideration?

 

 

Edited May 8, 2019 by Lister

[Consilience]

What Ive noticed is that sometimes I will have glimpses into certain truths but then the ignorance returns, much like what you’re describing here. But over time, the glimpses seem to slowly percolate back into direct experience. So the embodiment occurs slowly over time, rather than it being this immediate, decision to do so. 

[Neorez]

@Lister I wouldn't go that far as to say that I'm attached to the experience. It was a incredible experience though, nothing more nothing less. It showed me something I needed to see and come to accept. I would also not categorise it as an ego backlash, more an unablement to describe the experience. The ego does want to hang on to it or at least wants to understand it. 

@Consilience I think you're right. it's been more than a week now having had the experience and I notice small things that don't bother me anymore which did before. Trust is key here I guess in that everything eventually will fall in to place. 

[Buba]

On 5/6/2019 at 8:48 PM, Serotoninluv said:

5. Observe the resistance that arises in the mind when dualities are explored. Allow curiosity and exploration of the unknown to guide you - rather than the mind's desire to create rigid rules for a sense of grounding. Observe how the mind resists and holds on to simple dualisms. Discover why your mind does this. What purpose does it serve your ego, mind and body? Once you discover how and why of this psychological dynamic - you will be able to recognize and release it much easier and the tendency will dissolve. It probably won't dissolve 100%, but even a 20% reduction will have a huge impact. A 60% reduction would liberate the mind-body into a whole new world of openness, exploration and discovery.

In order to escape enslavement of mind I focus on sensations - generally visual ones.

I have obsessive compulsive disorder, where I feel I have to do this or that, achieve this or that, otherwise my life is miserable, I am unworthy and etc. The pain is so strong I instantly start to think and try to prove that these thoughts, feelings are absurd.

So to break this pattern I try to focus on sensations and be in the now, no matter how painful it is.

So you say, Observe how the mind resists and holds on to simple dualisms. Discover why your mind does this. What purpose does it serve your ego, mind and body?

How can I discover it? Solely with observation or with intellectual analyzing as well? Does not intellectual analyzing lead to reinforcement of ego/mind-body?

Quote

6. Rather than striving to go 100% nondual, I found it helpful to have a more practical goal. Last summer, I estimated I spent about 90% of my time within a dualistic mindset. I was immersed within the story of me and what life is. My mind-body was telling me it was too much. I knew I couldn't just "shut it off" completely, so my goal was to get up to having about 50% of my time beingness "outside" of programmed dualities. After three months of practice I felt like I was in this "space" about half the day and it changed the way I related to reality. Each day, I set aside time to simply be Now. To observe things appear Now. To be aware of what's happening Now. At first, that was mostly through sitting meditation. Yet then I could do it while mowing the lawn, walking through the neighboorhood or riding my bicycle. As well, I spent some time contemplating the relationship, nuances and inter-connections between dualities as I described above. My mindset was that of curiosity and exploration to discover - not a mindset of analysis and trying to figure this thing out. Over time extreme dualitstic conditioning began to dissolve and my mind just naturally started noticing inter-connectedness and nuances of dualities. I would say now my thinking/imaginary mind is roughly 80% within space "between" the dualities. Sometimes attachment/identification with a duality arises - for example "I am right on this issue", they are generally more inquisitive - for example I will notice my mind making a distinction between a tree and the earth it is attached to. Then I'll get curious and may ask "Is that tree and the earth really two separate things? Where exactly does the earth end and the tree begin? Could it be an "earth-tree" in which the tree and earth are One and the tree is simply an extension of the earth?". How interesting. These types of exploration journey and be magnificent. . . 

I believe in my thoughts and emotions so much that I just cant make myself not believe in them. "I could have become a perfect person, but I did not, now it is too late, I lost the life" and the like. They prevent me from being in the now. What can I do?

[Buba]

On 5/6/2019 at 2:13 PM, Neorez said:

I recently had an incredible insight in to my own workings. I went to my therapist for the second time, nothing really deep happened. When I was driving home I was contemplating some dualities i'm strugling with. Basicly I like two extremes which don't seem to be able to coexist(this is what I believe about it so was unable to exept it). Then I asked the question "why do I like these extremes, why am I like this?" And then out of nowhere this voice said "I just like it this way". I know this doesn't sound like much but at that moment the duality collapsed, my brain exploded, my heart exploded with energy, I basicly cried the entire way home, hyperventilating and being euforic as can be. When I came of it the duality was back and I'm now strugling to embody the insight I got. Any tips on how to do this? 

Even before I got acquainted with meditation and etc, I saw that sometimes I was very clear about life and was sure that this new paradigm will last forever and I will be happy, but the old Buba was back soon.

[Neorez]

@Buba I wonder if it's resistance to the insights that snaps you back or the mind trying to figure it out and by that numbing down the experience? 

[Buba]

1 hour ago, Neorez said:

@Buba I wonder if it's resistance to the insights that snaps you back or the mind trying to figure it out and by that numbing down the experience? 

It happens so automatically, I cannot figure it out.