Insights, Music, And Chicken Poop

[jjer94]

What will be left when I've drawn my last breath
Besides the folks I've met and the folks who've known me
Will I discover a soul-saving love
Or just the dirt above and below me

I'm a doubting Thomas
I took a promise
But I do not feel safe
Oh me of little faith

Sometimes I pray for a slap in the face
Then I beg to be spared cause I'm a coward
If there's a master of death
I bet he's holding his breath
As I show the blind and tell the deaf about his power

I'm a doubting Thomas
I can't keep my promises
Cause I don't know what's safe
Oh me of little faith

Can I be used to help others find truth
When I'm scared I'll find proof that it's a lie
Can I be led down a trail dropping bread crumbs
That prove I'm not ready to die

Please give me time to decipher the signs
Please forgive me for time that I've wasted

I'm a doubting Thomas
I'll take your promise
Though I know nothin's safe
Oh me of little faith

[jjer94]

The Thought Brothers Do Self-Enquiry - (2) - Memory and the Subconscious

"Hey man, you there?"

"Yeah...yesterday was rough on me, but I'm still kicking."

"Agreed. Whatcha doin'?"

"We're thoughts, remember? We don't 'do' anything. We just appear out of nowhere."

"Oh yeah, I forgot. Wait, forget? Remember? What's that all about?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I feel like I remember stuff."

"What sort of stuff?"

"Like I remember talking about the mind yesterday, but I remember other stuff... Like when I stubbed my toe on that bedpost. Or when I ate too much at a day camp cookout and threw up in front of everyone. That was pretty embarrassing."

"Oh, yeah, I remember that too! Man, you were such a pansy back then..."

"Come on man! I didn't know any better. I was just a kid."

"Excuses, excuses."

"Shut up. Okay, so I claim to remember these things...memory it's called. At least that's what I've been told."

"And what you've been told is correct. We were taught that the subconscious stores memory from past events..."

"Hold it right there! How do you know that?"

"Come on man, really? Have you ever taken an entry-level science class?"

"No no no. Forget about what you were told and actually take a look in direct experience with me."

"This is stupid...but okay, fine. What are you looking for?"

"Memory. The subconscious. Can you help me find these things?"

"Uhhh, sure! They're right over.......wait. Huh?"

"Can't find them? I can't either! Whenever I claim to remember something, that's just another thought in the present moment! I can't think in the past. Memory is just another label for thought. I claim to remember all of these things, but that claim..."

"Is just another thought. Fuck."

"We have no way of actually confirming memory... Shit! I can't actually experience the subconscious either! That's also another thought!!! This thought appeared literally out of nowhere!! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

*Thought-screaming interlude*

"Okay, okay, let's calm down now."

"How can we calm down! We just realized that memory, one of the main things we use to define ourselves, is a fiction! 'We' are fictional characters!"

"Hey now, that ain't so bad, is it? That's actually kind of a relief."

"How can that be a relief you shithead!?" *sobs*

"Relax, relax. You know those emotions called guilt, shame, anger and regret? I'm sure I'm missing others, but all of those emotions that have to deal with the past and memory?"

*sniffles* "Yeah, what about them?"

"Well, they're based on the fictional premise of memory! Which means they are fictions as well! Which means we can literally see them as fictions now, if we examine them closely enough!"

"Oh...I guess that is pretty freeing."

"Yeah, come on! Cheer up! Okay, enough of this. Let's go chase after some video-objects. What do you say?"

"Count me in!"

 

[Ayla]

@jjer94  lololoololoollllollllllll !!!!!!!!!!!

thought says : " i recognize those ones!" 

Ask yourself:

• is a thought aware of anything? 
• Are there really 2 characters talking to each other? Or is it just one big naughty thought playing around?
• can you find their source? If you can't what links them to you?

*great narrative btw lmao !

[jjer94]

 

[jjer94]

Meditation

A silent, peaceful mind is not necessarily a thoughtless mind. It is an allowing mind.

Thoughts are like the weather. Sometimes it's cloudy, sometimes the sky is clear blue, sometimes it's storming hard.

When the weather is allowed to do its thing, there's no problems with it. It comes and goes.

It's only when an apparent "you" tries to grab at or push away the clouds that the mind is no longer silent. When the experiential realization occurs that the "you", the "thinker", is just another thought appearing out of nowhere, and that "you" never had any control over thoughts, there will be silence regardless of any mind weather.

This is meditation.

oh city lights fly at this speed
oh heaven knows
it ain’t me behind the wheel
this time . . . 

[jjer94]

For those who have been seeking a long, long time and are fed up with it...

This may help:

https://www.amazon.com/Direct-Path-User-Guide-ebook/dp/B01AL2ZN2G/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= 

Cheers.

[jjer94]

The Thought Brothers Do Self-Enquiry - (3) - Science

"...You still there?"

"...Yeah..." *sniff*

"It's tough man, I know. That @Ayla chick just exposed us as the charlatans that we are. However, although we may just be one big thought-story playing with itself, that doesn't mean we still can't have some fun, AMIRIGHT!?"

"FUCK YEAH!"

"AMERICA!"

"FUCK YEAH!"

"COMIN' AGAIN TO SAVE THE MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY YEAH!"

"Okay, okay, what were we talking about before?"

"Umm...Oh, yes, we were talking about memory and the subconscious. It's been making me think a lot about science and how it fits into all of this inquiry ---"

"Dude, come on, you don't think. Thoughts appear."

"Yes, yes, I get it man! You don't have to push your nondual correctness on me! Jesus. We have it enough with all those SJW's pushing political correctness and safe spaces."

"Don't forget the 100+ genders! We don't want to trigger anyone reading this..."

"Enough dude! So science. The pinnacle of truth in modern society today. Right?"

"Yeah, I'd agree with that. I mean, look at all the technology that's come from all those landmark discoveries in modern science! Surely they know stuff about reality!"

"Well, I was thinking...what if they don't?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if they don't know anything about what reality is?"

"Dude, are you kidding me? Scientists have mapped out the human genome. They can examine stuff at the subcellular level, almost at the atomic level! They can collide subatomic particles together and create new ones! All research is peer-reviewed and therefore ---"

"There. Stop right there. Let's begin with that. Peer-reviewed research. So we have a bunch of guys with pieces of paper certified from other guys with pieces of paper that they know stuff. Then those guys read through the research done by other guys with pieces of paper and say, 'Yep! It's solid research.' Then you have more guys with pieces of paper that reproduce the experiment and get the same results, so they say, 'Yep! It's a solid conclusion. We have new knowledge.'"

"What's wrong with that? That's the way science establishes new knowledge."

"It's not that there's anything wrong with it, per sé...but, how many people does it take to confirm that the research's conclusion is sound? How many people does it take to say 'This knowledge is true'?"

"How many licks does it take to get to the center of the tootsie pop?"

"Exactly my point. I don't know! You can have an infinite number of guys with pieces of paper confirming the same thing over and over again, but that doesn't mean shit when it comes to what is absolutely true. What, after some arbitrary number of guys saying 'This research is sound,' it becomes sound? It's all relative. But that's not all..."

"'Call now and we'll double your offer!'"

"Ha ha, very funny... No, what I was going to say was, science does all their research from the lens of objectivity."

"Well, of course, you dufus! How else are you going to acquire objective knowledge?"

"But there is no lens of objectivity! They make these assumptions of time, space, atoms, molecules, matter, etc. being somehow 'objective' or 'out there,' when all we have is our senses, which are totally subjective! There is no such thing as objective knowledge. Science leaves out first person experience, when first person experience is all there is!"

"If there's no objective knowledge, then how do you explain all of science's achievements in the past two centuries?"

"Well, just because science could never have any truth in it doesn't mean that it's not useful. If something works, it works! And, if you have some baseline assumptions about how phenomena work, like something as obvious as gravity, I don't see why you can't believe in those. I mean, I think it would be pretty silly to think that you could jump off a building and float upwards."

"But, but...what about western medicine? Look how effectively they've mapped out the body and the brain..."

"Again, these are all just descriptions of reality that help produce certain effects, but they are not reality itself. Have you ever experienced the brain?"

"Well, yeah, we're experiencing it right now..."

"No, look again, and look closely. Surely there are sensations wherever you call the 'head', but do you actually see a brain in direct experience? If you don't, how could you say --"

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!"

*thought-screaming interlude*

"Calm down, dude! Calm down!"

"How can I calm down! I don't even fucking know if I have a brain! What about when I get a brain scan?!"

"When you get a brain scan, what else is there but the seeing of the brain mapping on a computer screen? You still don't experience a brain. Or any bodily organ for that matter. All you experience is sensations to which you, the sly thought, label as bodily organs."

"WHAT!? How is that even fucking possible?"

"It's completely possible. It's our direct experience! Just look! It's so simple."

"What does this mean then? I can't trust science or medicine with anything!"

"No no no silly thought. Nothing's really changed. Their practices work. They're just not absolutely true. They never can be, because they've essentially paradigm-locked themselves."

"Oh. So we can keep going to the doctor? I like him. He's pretty cool."

"Yes, bro. Totally fine."

"And what about research? What should I trust when it comes to articles that use science to give validity to certain claims?"

"I don't know. Do your own experimentation! Whatever works, works."

"Shit. All this talk of experimentation makes me want to go concoct some wild new dinner recipe. Whatd'ya say?"

"I'm down!"

[Ayla]

@jjer94 Who exposed you? ME???  

I'll only go with this if you invite me to that concocted dinner HA! 

[99th_monkey]

Can I come too? Im cool. 

[jjer94]

Paradox

In language, there is lots of paradox. You are everything; you are nothing. You are emptiness; you are form. You are the witness but also the witnessed. Experience is fleeting; the Truth is everlasting. 

It's so confusing sometimes to stay in the muck and mire of words, isn't it? And yet, there you go, continuing to read someone's journal post for hope that some more words will be the key that allows  you to discover your true nature.

Only thought-stories/language contain paradox. In direct experience, there are no paradoxes.

See if you can drop all of your conceptual baggage for a sec. All of it. Being and not-being, everything and nothing, Infinity, Absolute Nothingness, the Self and not-Self, the witness, kundalini and samadhi, arisings in experience, inside and outside worlds, awareness as the container, whatever the fuck spiritual malarkey you hold onto. Forget it for just this second and return to the no-paradox simplicity of direct experience.

You already know that you are. And that knowingness IS all of experience. There's no difference. Knowingness = experience experiencing itself. Even thought is this knowing quality.

When has this knowing ever left you? Can you ever experience anything outside of this knowing? Or is that question/thought just a part of this knowing?

Now, what were you looking for again...?

Edited September 22, 2016 by jjer94

[jjer94]

The Thought Brothers Do Self-Enquiry - (4) - Levels of Consciousness

"Duuuude...where have you been!?"

"Oh, you know, being a thought. How about you?"

"Aw, man, you'd be amazed at what I've been up to. I've been taking a lot of psychedelics lately. And on top of that, I've been trying out all of these ancient yogic techniques to raise my level of consciousness. And now I've hit gold with Leo's new video about 5-meo-DMT... Once I take that shit, I'm going to reach a consciousness level OVER 9000!!!"

"Okay, let's disregard the fact that we are thoughts, and thoughts can't experience anything at all... Why the hell are you doing that, man?"

"What do you mean why!? To attain enlightenment! Ego death! And once I raise my level enough, it'll be much harder to go back down to the previous levels. I'll be a blissed out zen monkey...or something."

"I mean, if you'd like ego death, go for it. There are many different experiences in this apparent world that you can try out. But let's examine this idea of levels of consciousness, hmm?"

"Okay, what about it?"

"Something just seems...fishy about it. Almost as if some uninformed spiritual teachers have spun this whole enlightenment thing into some kind of video game. Ask 'who am I' continuously for five hours, and boom! Level 5. Meditate for ten years...boom! Level 600. I mean, certainly there's a qualitative difference between an enlightened master and an average joe...but fundamentally, is there really?"

"What do you mean, fundamentally?"

"Well, we're talking about enlightenment, right? About discovering what you are fundamentally? Fundamental implies reality, God, Truth. That which is unchanging, unified, whole. Nothing outside of it, nothing other than it. Yes?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever."

"Okay. So then, how could there ever be levels to something that is unchanging, unified, and whole? Levels implies two-ness. How could there be levels to something that's ultimately One?"

"Uhh...."

*shudders* "So some spiritual teachers have put you on this rabbit chase after a carrot of 'levels' that don't actually exist..."

"So you can imagine that you're actually going somewhere and 'raising levels of consciousness'..."

"When in fact..."

"You're actually going nowhere!!!!"

"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"

*thought-screaming interlude*

"God, that's fucking terrifying! I almost want to imagine that I'm raising consciousness so I can have some spiritual objective...otherwise, what then?"

"Well, then we'd actually have to LIVE LIFE! Instead of sitting and staring at a wall for most of the day!"

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

*thought-screaming interlude*

"Okay, okay, let's calm down and assess the situation. There are no levels of consciousness. No one experience is 'higher' than another, no matter how grandiose it is. The experience of picking your nose is no more God than experiencing cosmic consciousness through 5-meo-DMT, although cosmic consciousness can surely open up the average person to that which they already are."

"So what we are...is already the case?"

"Yeah, I mean, it's pretty obvious. An apparent someone is reading these words, but that someone is really 'what is' masquerading as 'someone reading these words'. Then, inquiry's just a matter for arriving at 'what is'. No levels, no maintenance, no effort required for 'what is': consciousness, God, Being, Truth, whatever. Even these thoughts, which are just stories and illusions, can be a part of 'what is'. What's the point of trying to get rid of them, other than another rabbit-carrot chase?"

"But it could be quite the achievement to successfully eliminate ego and monkey mind forever, don't you think?"

"Eh, thoughts are thoughts. They're whatever. Stories and illusions come and go. Nothing wrong with that really, unless another thought says there's something wrong with it. I suppose the monkey chatter will subside on its own after realizing what is. Personally, I'd rather hike a mountain than ask 'who am I' a bunch of times. Wouldn't you?"

"Yeah... Whaddya say we do that now?"

"I'm game."

[jjer94]

Life in a Nutshell

 

 

[Ayla]

1 hour ago, jjer94 said:

Life in a Nutshell

 

 

yeah! <3 

[jjer94]

When I was young, younger than before
I never saw the truth hanging from the door
And now I'm older--see it face to face
And now I'm older--gotta get up clean the place

And I was greener, greener than the hill
Where flowers grew and sun shone still
Now I'm darker than the deepest sea
Just hand me down give me a place to be

And I was strong, strong in the sun
I thought I'd see when day is done
Now I'm weaker than the palest blue
Oh so weak in this need for you

[Kevin Dunlop]

On 22/9/2016 at 11:30 AM, jjer94 said:

Paradox

 

Only thought-stories/language contain paradox. In direct experience, there are no paradoxes.

 

Yes I agree, I think we have been intensly conditioned to only pay attension to words, to simply label everything in terms of words, thats the game we were taught. So our experiences get limited by this filter, we were convinced to only listen to words so direct experience, the true unexplainable reality becomes an unexperienced reality and we get stuck with words, not fun. But since we are in a state where we will only listen to words we use some words to explain that there is another reality without words.  Direct experience is amazing but we first have to give up on what we have been using to form our reality ...weird wuuuurds. 

[jjer94]

This is not a sentence. These are words.

These are not words. They are black pixels on a computer screen.

These are not black pixels on a computer screen. This is the color black.

This isn't the color black. This is seeing.

This isn't seeing. This is perceiving.

This isn't perceiving. This is 'what is'. 

And 'what is,' is all that there is, and ever was.

 

Edited October 2, 2016 by jjer94

[jjer94]

I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets.
I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road.
At night I turn back the clocks;
I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.

What good does it do? The hours have done their job.
I say my own name. I say goodbye.
The words follow each other downwind.
I love my wife but send her away.

My parents rise out of their thrones
into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?
Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.
I empty myself of my life and my life remains. 

--Mark Strand

 

 

Edited October 11, 2016 by jjer94

[jjer94]

Driving Down a Scenic Byway

You're driving down a scenic byway in New Hampshire, taking a car trip. The trees are turning red and golden hues. Your car zips past them in an effortless fashion.

You quit your job. You left home. You have divested yourself of most human connections, including friends and family. You stare out onto the blank canvas of the scenery ahead.

You are working towards some lofty goal called "spiritual enlightenment" and are worried that you will lose the progress you have made by deciding to take this car trip. You worry about the monkey mind, about falling back asleep, about returning to "low level consciousness," about becoming unconscious again. All these bullshit ideas swimming and floating around in your head like soggy alphabet soup.

And then it hits you like a bolt of lightning. Death. Its claws begin to strangle all of those ideas out of your head, replacing them with ones of meaninglessness and despair.

Life is completely, utterly meaningless, you think. Nobody will ever remember you or what you did. Anytime you help someone or contribute in some way, it's only temporary. All is vanity and a striving after wind. Experience is a fleeting dream that is passing like clouds on a midsummer's day. The human race is running around in circles, pretending it's going somewhere, pretending that all their problems matter, when in fact they're going nowhere and they all matter as much as a dead, decaying rat in an alleyway of New York City. Everyone thinks they're a special enlightened snowflake while the truth is that everybody is a nobody, including you. 

You pull over on the shoulder and scream bloody murder. Tears withheld for many years come streaming down your face in a torrent. You think of all of your struggles, your worries, your goals, and your dreams over the past year and how utterly ridiculous they all were. You think of all the other people out there, living their lives in that dark cesspool of the mind. You think of all the spiritual seekers out there, replacing all their egoic bullshit with spiritual bullshit. You have suicidal thoughts. You think, may as well just die now. It's not like it matters either way. This futility is too hard to bear. It's all so uncertain. Fuck Truth, fuck enlightenment, fuck all these concepts. Nobody knows jack shit. It's just me, all alone on this desert island of perception.

When the purging stops, there is a very bearable silence. Relief. That's it! Relief. Like you just took a massive dump you've been holding in for years. Like you've been lying to yourself for so long, and your brutal honesty let open the floodgates. 

What now? You think. Then, laughter. So much laughter, up to the point of even more tears. You stare ahead at the gorgeously meaningless scenery and the passing cars. Ha, what a joke! You think. What a colorful, beautiful joke this place is. And it's so...big! 

You may have no reason to live, but you have no reason to die either. So here you are, where you've always been: in death's waiting room. In the land of the knowing unknown. You have some time to kill, so you figure, may as well do whatever I want to do...

You're hungry, and decide to make yourself a peanut butter jelly sandwich on the shoulder of that road.

 

[jjer94]

 

 

Edited October 16, 2016 by jjer94

[jjer94]

What's the Rush?

"Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have.... for the April rain has, and the mica on the side of a rock has."

-Walt Whitman

 

I've been flailing around lately trying to figure out adulthood, and in the process I had a simple mind-blowing insight.

There was a job I interviewed for recently that seemed like a good idea at the time, but now just leaves this bitter taste in my mouth. It was a kitchen staff job at one of the busiest breakfast places in my city. "The work is non-stop," the executive chef interviewer told me. "There's basically no breaks. You need to be open to criticism. Shifts are eight hours or more." 

Lordy lord. I needed to know more. I asked him how he got into the cooking business. He told me that the job of chef saved his life. He used to be 200 pounds overweight until he took a chef job at a low-tier chain restaurant, and he's been cooking ever since. Sounds to me like a textbook example of someone who's signed their life away to their neuroses from which they're desperately running away. 

Everyone's so busy, and I'm no different. I've been into psychosomatic healing lately, digesting all of these books on psychology and bioenergetics and self-help. I've also been obsessed with the idea of a life purpose, considering just caving in and buying Leo's course. There seems to be this nagging programming in the back of our minds telling us "This isn't it; not yet; you just need to do this one thing here; you have to do this before you do that..." 

I can feel it manifested in my body. Even though my diet is extremely clean, I still have digestive issues, always had. There's that tension in the lower abdomen, telling me, "You're not good enough. You need to do something more to define yourself. You need a calling! A purpose! An IMPACT on the world!"

Then it hit me. I have food, really good food at that. I have water. I have shelter. I have clothing. I have a few good friends. Survival's pretty easy. Do I really need a purpose? Do I really need to slave hours over deciding how I want to PRECISELY make an impact in an otherwise zero-sum game? Isn't it kind of self-manipulative to say that you have to have a mission? Isn't this whole idea of a purpose just a construct in a Type-A capitalistic culture where people give away their happiness to achievement? Am I interested in life purpose because I want to be remembered? For people to revel in my presence? To win approval under the guise of "helping others"? To be special? Am I being as neurotic as the executive chef by running away from the fact that I'm not special?

What would be left if I said "fuck it" to the whole idea of some grand purpose? Well, just this. This is it, then. No fireworks, no KABLAMO! MISSION COMPLETE! No more trying to be a special person. No more trying to be remembered.

I can finally learn to relax. I have everything I need to survive. I have meaningful connections. I continue to nonchalantly practice stuff that I enjoy, like making music and cooking. I leave time to sit, be, contemplate, cry, and heal. I can do stuff that I've been putting off because of "purpose," such as spending time with people I actually like. And in fact, without "purpose" I can learn to be more helpful to others without subtly asking for anything in return.

Instead of constantly trying to be somebody, I can finally re-learn to be nobody in particular. And what a relief that is.

 

Edited January 27, 2017 by jjer94