Can direct experience be trusted?

[Knock]

Your direct experience is filtered through your senses and your brain to become your perception. Without a brain, there is nothing to witness the experience. All of our experiences are filtered this way, even if you try and to not attach any labels to it, all experience is partial truth. Hence, we cannot fully trust our direct experience, but it is the best thing we have got. Just know that our brains and perceptions can be tricked, and its prone to being deceptive at times. 

 

[ValiantSalvatore]

It mostly comes down to what one experiences, for instance when I sit down and meditate my direct experience is thought, emotions, flowing emotions, the quality of emotions, depth, broadness, (anger, happiness). 

The quality of tranquility or equanimity, flavour of concentration. Flavour of unconsciousness etc. 

Emotions that seem more intuitivly as dirct experience can be very strong emotions or pain. Since it is difficult to deny that.

Take crying as an example, for instance of laughter as some sort of clarity in a situation. 

Or crying to deal with emotional trauma in order to come to terms with the experience being processed. 

I can name a personal example, yet I won't do it till I see more of them here. 

Where is the direct experience? I can also conceptualize and speculate instead of giving a frame of reference. From personal experie ce. 

 

 

[CreamCat]

Just now, Shiva said:

can you trust it even if you are unaware of it?

Can you trust anything you are not aware of or anything you don't know? You can only trust something if you can bring it to your attention.

[ValiantSalvatore]

1 hour ago, Shiva said:

In that case you shouldn't trust direct experience unless you already have a certain level of awareness, right?

100%, this is what I perceive. 

It is a dichotomy or a bifurcation. You can intuit what is unconscious and what is not. The difficulty is trusting one's own perception, it is difficult and also to follow through with that.

Leo's episodes of self-deception covers that quite well, between for instance shallow emotions and higher and deeper emotions, that in a certain sense bring more clarity. 

Not trusting direct experience could also be a sign of awareness, the question is does the inner skeptic feel conscious or unconscious.  

 

Edited May 23, 2019 by ValiantSalvatore

[Nahm]

Trust is just another thought which you are directly aware of. 

[now is forever]

5 hours ago, mandyjw said:

There's a kind of positive mistrust of direct experience that is Nirvana I think. It's neither trust nor mistrust. 

don’t you think you are conflating nirvana with a concept of nirvana?  sounds quite comfy that nirvana.

the thing about trust is, either you trust everything and get some scars, then you know something about experience or you don’t and you don’t get scars but you also don’t know about experience. trust is only provable through experience, if you have it or not.

Edited May 23, 2019 by now is forever

[Shin]

4 hours ago, CreamCat said:

Can you trust anything you are not aware of or anything you don't know? You can only trust something if you can bring it to your attention.

With faith yes,

Sometimes you really don't have a choice.

[Nahm]

4 hours ago, CreamCat said:

Can you trust anything you are not aware of or anything you don't know? You can only trust something if you can bring it to your attention.

There isn’t even actually “direct experience”. 

“I don’t know” is literally all you can “know”. 

 

Look at your hand.

Notice “my hand” is not what you’re seeing, “my hand” is a thought you are aware of. 

If you touch or feel with your hand, notice, you are aware of the sensation. 

You are aware of the thought “my hand”, and you are aware of a sensation. 

As you look at your hand, notice, you do not know what that is. 

This is because the fact is, that all there is, is you, and you can’t know what you are, because you are you. 

But you sure can create thought & sensation, and use them to make it seem like you’re CreamCat.

[Aeris]

5 hours ago, ValiantSalvatore said:

It mostly comes down to what one experiences, for instance when I sit down and meditate my direct experience is thought, emotions, flowing emotions, the quality of emotions, depth, broadness, (anger, happiness). 

The quality of tranquility or equanimity, flavour of concentration. Flavour of unconsciousness etc. 

Emotions that seem more intuitivly as dirct experience can be very strong emotions or pain. Since it is difficult to deny that.

Take crying as an example, for instance of laughter as some sort of clarity in a situation. 

Or crying to deal with emotional trauma in order to come to terms with the experience being processed. 

I can name a personal example, yet I won't do it till I see more of them here. 

Where is the direct experience? I can also conceptualize and speculate instead of giving a frame of reference. From personal experie ce. 

 

 

"direct experience" is this feeling that you are on your own, alone, like on a trip of LSD in my "direct experience".
means, my direct experience right now is writting this, for you, the direct, is reading me, just, about, making sense of the word that is just right here on your eyes.

that is what I call "direct experience", so it is to be trusted or not ? it depend. 

[Truth Addict]

25 minutes ago, Nahm said:

There isn’t even actually “direct experience”. 

“I don’t know” is literally all you can “know”. 

 

Look at your hand.

Notice “my hand” is not what you’re seeing, “my hand” is a thought you are aware of. 

If you touch or feel with your hand, notice, you are aware of the sensation. 

You are aware of the thought “my hand”, and you are aware of a sensation. 

As you look at your hand, notice, you do not know what that is. 

This is because the fact is, that all there is, is you, and you can’t know what you are, because you are you. 

But you sure can create thought & sensation, and use them to make it seem like you’re CreamCat.

?

How could anyone know anything else? Is there anything to know other than stories?

[Aeris]

5 minutes ago, Truth Addict said:

?

How could anyone know anything else? Is there anything to know other than stories?

stories are true and non true.

even what nahm said, doesn't work in all situation.

it's so easy to explain non duality.

imagine aliens comes on earth, they have none of our biologic content and our education, they are made of particles of metal and still kind of talks with electronic waves and have no eyes or ears.

would they figure out what an "HAND" is ? how would you explain them what a concept is, even what a word is, a noise.

this is what is non duality, knowing that all there is in "reality" is nothingness, or whatever your mind put an attribut on.

in a litteral sense, mathematic truly doesn't exist. it just is a key we use to unscript what reality probably is at best, that's why the world is working upon theory of truth, not on "truth"

what alien would"see" is true non duality in a way. Unless their own tongue is paved in a duality realm and they got their own duality problems with their waves

Edited May 23, 2019 by Aeris

[Truth Addict]

@Aeris That's your version of non-duality, since it's not solipsistic.

You think it's easy to explain non-duality? How simplistic of you! You've already failed.

[Aeris]

damn, too sad for me then, no nonduality for me, my own vision of the word has been corrupted by my own conceptual projection

[ValiantSalvatore]

@Aeris It goes way deeper then that if I would make an abstraction it is sense perceptions and what is perceivable. 

I know where I am heading 100% for the next stage. It takes time and effort and I don't know how the experience is going to be or feel like or if I will experience another "state" experience. 

I was mainly mentioning my insights/point of view from my practice of meditation which is Vipassana version from Shinzen Young. I also will buy a Yoga-Course finally I found one, so I can practice some Hatha-Yoga and start from there since I really wanted a body-focused practice also. Working with subtle energies mainly and kriyas, also becoming more flexible.

The point is I feel I need a breakthrough via retreat or LSD etc. Day to day practice is too gradual if you can get what I mean. I am a bit impatient there. 

Who experiences aloneness? Where do you feel it? How does it feel ? etc. 

This is pointless to a degree since you are the one experiencing it feeling the aloneness. Yes, in a sense it is a direct experience, but not a direct experience of certain states.

There is a huge difference between the consciousness and state experience of LSD trip and ordinary consciousness or the level of consciousness after a meditation retreat. In that sense, you can distinguish between direct experiences.







 

Edited May 23, 2019 by ValiantSalvatore

[Forestluv]

Direct experience is Now. It is Free. It is infinite. 

The mind loves contextualization into an “experience” - which can have many forms. The mind may contemplate what it now calls “experience” and try to make sense of it. It may integrate that experience with other experiences. At the level of the human and human story, it may be beneficial to reflect and “grow” from constructs of experience. Yet the ego / personality structure can take ownership and create all sorts of stories and beliefs of these experience stories and get immersed and identified - and use it in egoic ways.

To ask if direct experience can be trusted is from the perspective of the personality structure. Yet there is nothing to trust and no one to trust or distrust. It’s like asking “can Now be trusted”?

At the level of the personality, the question is “can my personal interpretation of Now into an experience story be trusted”? “Can I trust the stories I am making up about reality?” I think it’s a good start to question the validly one’s own interpretation as this shines light on the personality dynamic, yet it’s still within the personality. The deeper step is to surrender the personal desire for control  and be Now. 

[TheOne]

nothing makes sense if the day light  requires a proof  

                                                                    Al-Mutanabbi

[ValiantSalvatore]

@Aeris Even a small breakthrough like crying or an insight feels different from ordinary "consciousness,"  I think the question is legit. Yet, difficult if beginners or newbs, noobs, etc. Are describing it. It will sound messy. 

The point for me is not to be deceived by, my own thoughts, emotions, projections from others, shadow elements, kriya feelings even now, projections from me etc. 

It's rare for me the closet I came through of what I can call direct experience (besides any sense perception) was through crying regardless if it was an LSD experience where I cried, a retreat, or a spontaneous event.
It brought in more clarity then I could think of literally! 

Or driving through the consciousness tunnel on LSD, where insights just came and drove me deeper and deeper for a couple of hours into insights of insights of insights.

[Nahm]

1 hour ago, Truth Addict said:

?

How could anyone know anything else? Is there anything to know other than stories?

There isn’t another thing, so you can’t know another thing. That’s why you made it so the thoughts and sensations you experience convince you that you are experiencing other things.

There isn’t another thing, so you can’t know another thing. There is nothing to know.  You can learn and remember things etc., useful things, but there is not a self which is the learner or the user.  This self is infinitely everything making it seem like it is a person. 

[Truth Addict]

1 minute ago, Nahm said:

There isn’t another thing, so you can’t know another thing. That’s why you made it so the thoughts and sensations you experience convince you that you are experiencing other things.

There isn’t another thing, so you can’t know another thing. There is nothing to know.  You can learn and remember things etc., useful things, but there is not a self which is the learner or the user.  This self is infinitely everything making it seem like it is a person. 

Everything makes 100% sense except for the bold statement.

[ajasatya]

If direct experience can't be trusted, what can we trust?

I think the question you're seeking is "What defines direct experience?".