How do i stop identifying with the body?

[Sine]

12 minutes ago, Kalki Avatar said:

Be careful with this one. 

Why?

[Thought Art]

18 minutes ago, Sine said:

It annoys me because the identification as the body and not the whole universe, creates a sense of seperation which is not true. It creates a belief of duality, which is not true. 

But, wouldn't not identifying with the body be a duality you are creating? I think what I am saying is to find that balance because you may be swinging really far into one side of the map.

 I don't identify with my body, or my sex. I identify as the entire universe. But, It also depends on the context and circumstance. The body is a microcosm and reflection of the entire universe. For a human, in some way the entire universe is actually held within your body. 

I think I see what you are saying. I don't disagree with you that it's probably a useful thing to no longer identify with the beliefs and self image you have about your body and it's traits. 

I am interested to see how this works out for you.

I personally just think from direct experience of trying this that this isn't a solution entirely, but only a piece of a larger puzzle you are doing. My thought is that fear of weakness, loneliness, pain, need for protection, fear of what people think of you, your identity... These are pretty human things to work through and I don't think they have to do with your body but your cognitive health, spiritual health, self image, and your connection and cleaning of you Qi (a lack of balance in the body can lead to these mental and spiritual health issues). 

I just think that all those things you want to get rid of... They contain treasure in them if allowed the time and space. 

Letting go of our identifications is useful. So is allowing what is. So is changing our relationship to...

Hope that it gets through I am not disagreeing I think that what you are doing is going to reap benefits for you.

I just think that you can be the body but change the way you relate to it in a healthy way instead of totally unidentifying with it. Your body is your most direct access to the universe and it seems dualistic to not identify as it.

I will remain open minded though. 

I probably don't see what you are saying we likely have different maps and operating systems and use of these words.

Edited December 3, 2021 by Thought Art

[ValiantSalvatore]

There is one fundamental issue with Vispassana meditation. It fosters shadow material\spiritual bypassing.  @Sine

You keep detaching and detaching from sensations depending which kind of Vispassana you are doing. I asked about this issue on a forum and can link a forum post of a women who has 38 years of experience etc. Explaining some of the connections. There are also other opinions. 

I also don't like to constantly experience the ego-identification process of my body. I also never truely went beyond the body-mind problem. 

I found this interesting article http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/309

Unsure if it helps I really wanted to resolve this issue while doing psychedelics I had more shadow level kind of experiences and it basically forced me to experience it all. In order to even get the feeling of having let go of the body-mind problem. 

I am not talking about Mahasamadhi that is absolutly to much. 

TLDR;

The article get's into some depth and describes the corelate of what happens with a full Integration of emotions e.g fear, pride, anger at a spiritual level. 

Edited December 3, 2021 by ValiantSalvatore

[Sine]

15 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

But, wouldn't not identifying with the body be a duality you are creating?

Haha, I see. I did not think of it like that thank you for pointing it out. 

17 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

I just think that all those things you want to get rid of... They contain treasure in them if allowed the time and space. 

Yes I can see how this post would seem like I am trying to get rid of something, this was not actually my point. But maybe, even though it wasn't my intention, I have maybe created a feeling in my self of wanting to get rid of something. I will look into that. 

20 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

Letting go of our identifications is useful. So is allowing what is. So is changing our relationship to...

I just saw this quote from Ram Dass and it relates to my topic. "the fear dissipates you are feeling at home in the universe. Meaning your identity with your separateness isn't overriding your feeling of connection with everything to the point that you're feeling cut off and vulnerable - which is where the root of fear is"

changing your relationship to. Yea this could also be a key. Maybe understanding the body as part of of something instead of the whole.

Im not sure. There is something with fear being the opposite of love and this quote. But I'm not fully getting my mind around this right now. 

[Thought Art]

The Tao Of Fully Feeling

Night friend 

Let us all allow this process to unravel as we walk each other home.

Edited December 3, 2021 by Thought Art

[Guest EmptyVase]

7 hours ago, Sine said:

If I am the whole universe concept like abandonment and loneliness would cease to exist.

If I am not the body why should I be afraid of it getting hurt? Why should I be afraid of loosing it. Fear would end.

If I am not the body I would not feel weak

If I am the whole universe I would need no protection, why should I need protection from myself? fear would end.

If I am not the body I would care less about what it felt like/looked like/what other people said or felt about it, because it would not matter as much as it do now.

If I am not the body I am not limited by my sex 

Is your body telling you this, or your thoughts? Perhaps you wanna go the extra mile and utilize the emotional scale. 

Your body is the most amazing vehicle to ride you through this life. It really is a divine temple.

[Raptorsin7]

@Sine I think consistent meditation is the way to realize and embody your understanding that you are more than the body etc.

Also, I think inspecting and understanding the mechanisms and cause/effect of your traumas can be very effective. I like Dr John Demartini's break through experience methodology.

It's not as simple as just recognizing that the body and emotional trauma is illusory. I think there is a lot of trauma stored in the body, and our emotional traumas are felt in the body so it makes sense that you would seek to transcend the body entirely. But your framing is inaccurate imo. It's not about transcending the body perse, but more so about understanding why our body's feel the way they do, and taking steps to remedy whatever traumatic experience we have been dealing with

[axiom]

18 hours ago, Sine said:

Basically it feels like a lot of growth would come from me learning to let go of this. So, If you have any recommendations of practices that helps one identifying less with the body and more as the whole universe I would really like for you to share them with me.

A lot of this can come naturally with practice over time. The visual stuff will probably melt away as you approach more subtle states of mind. Frustration due to slow progress will itself hinder your progress, unfortunately. Remember that Vipassana is the art of equanimity - that means no biases, no frustrations. Perfect equanimity allows you to transcend the body. God, or God consciousness, is a state of no biases.

You can't really force it, since this is the opposite of equanimity. In any case, here are some things to consider:

1. How is your diet? Eating as cleanly as possible can improve focus, and helps to move attention away from the gross sensations of the body.

2. Once you've mastered keeping your eyes still (this will happen unintentionally at first), try to nudge things in this direction a little more when you are scanning. Moving your eyes around during Vipassana keeps reinstating the idea of the body, or a map of the body, in your mind.

3. If you're sitting very comfortably during Vipassana to the extent you are perfectly comfortable for the entire hour, try to get a little less comfortable. It can help with practicing equanimity. 

4. If over the course of the hour, you find that you move slightly, even if it's just a finger twitching, then that's definitely something worth trying to improve. The idea is to completely lose awareness of the body because you haven't moved it *at all*. You probably know that already if you practice Vipassana, but it's one of the most difficult parts of the practice. Just mastering this alone can give you some amazing results.

Hope that's of some use...


 

[Sine]

2 hours ago, axiom said:

A lot of this can come naturally with practice over time. The visual stuff will probably melt away as you approach more subtle states of mind. Frustration due to slow progress will itself hinder your progress, unfortunately. Remember that Vipassana is the art of equanimity - that means no biases, no frustrations. Perfect equanimity allows you to transcend the body. God, or God consciousness, is a state of no biases.

You can't really force it, since this is the opposite of equanimity. In any case, here are some things to consider:

1. How is your diet? Eating as cleanly as possible can improve focus, and helps to move attention away from the gross sensations of the body.

2. Once you've mastered keeping your eyes still (this will happen unintentionally at first), try to nudge things in this direction a little more when you are scanning. Moving your eyes around during Vipassana keeps reinstating the idea of the body, or a map of the body, in your mind.

3. If you're sitting very comfortably during Vipassana to the extent you are perfectly comfortable for the entire hour, try to get a little less comfortable. It can help with practicing equanimity. 

4. If over the course of the hour, you find that you move slightly, even if it's just a finger twitching, then that's definitely something worth trying to improve. The idea is to completely lose awareness of the body because you haven't moved it *at all*. You probably know that already if you practice Vipassana, but it's one of the most difficult parts of the practice. Just mastering this alone can give you some amazing results.

Hope that's of some use...


 

Yes thank you this is very helpful, especially that about they eyes.

Actually I do feel that the "map of the body" starts disappearing towards the end of the meditation. I am going to my third retreat soon - my goal is to become able to sit through the small breaks also, so the meditation will be consistent for more than just 1 hour. 

[flume]

12 hours ago, Sine said:

If I am the whole universe concept like abandonment and loneliness would cease to exist.

If I am not the body why should I be afraid of it getting hurt? Why should I be afraid of loosing it. Fear would end.

If I am not the body I would not feel weak

If I am the whole universe I would need no protection, why should I need protection from myself? fear would end.

If I am not the body I would care less about what it felt like/looked like/what other people said or felt about it, because it would not matter as much as it do now.

If I am not the body I am not limited by my sex 

I know not identifying with the body would be a convenient way around all this. In my experience though, you can't meditate your way out of feeling unsafe, loneliness & eating disorder stuff. Trust me, I've been there & tried it for years.

I thought that, if only I could meditate a little more, a little longer, I'll "pop out" of this illusion, get to "the other side of it" and none of that stuff will ever bother me every again. Just breathe through it, let it pass... Right?

No.

It didn't work.

At least not for me.

I had to take that spiritual nonsense of "identifying with who/what" and throw them out the window for a while, allow myself to turn to the parts of me that are so angry and hurt, finally take them seriously and really embrace the unsafe & hurt child that is still living inside of me. The one that never got any attention, so it thought no one would really enjoy spending time with her. The one who wasn't nourished & care for by her mom, so every time she ate, she felt like she was doing something wrong and threw up again. Striving for perfection in my body, intellect and even spiritual pursuits... Just to deserve to live because deep down I felt so unworthy.

And believe me, I looked pretty regular on the outside.

"Had my shit together".

Years of yoga and meditation.

I know you said you've done shadow work with psychedelics. Have you tried IFS? Or primal therapy? Inner child work where you take those feelings seriously, let yourself feel the hurt and acknowledge what happened to you is the most effective way I've found so far. I know it seems immature and counter-intuitive but oh the changes...

I could have never meditated myself to the peace of mind I'm feeling after doing trauma work.

Not that meditation isn't great. It is. I just found that it's pretty useless in working out underlying emotional patterns that are deeply engraved.

I would meditate for an hour, then still eat a bar of chocolate, then still body check, then still feel shitty about myself & judge myself, forcing myself to let these thoughts go & then set a more rigorous meditation schedule.

12 hours ago, Sine said:

Then I will be even less afraid to really look into the traumas that hurts, because I will not identify as them. 

It's the other way around actually. You need to be brave now, go into them, totally identify as them, really feeling the hurt, and the tail end of that will be you not identifying with them anymore. But this takes some work. "The only way to go beyond the person is to get really personal", Matt Kahn said.

Here's a great video of him talking about the feeling of being one with everything, and what it really entails:

 

4 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

It's not as simple as just recognizing that the body and emotional trauma is illusory. I think there is a lot of trauma stored in the body, and our emotional traumas are felt in the body so it makes sense that you would seek to transcend the body entirely. But your framing is inaccurate imo. It's not about transcending the body perse, but more so about understanding why our body's feel the way they do, and taking steps to remedy whatever traumatic experience we have been dealing with

This!

[Space Lizard]

If you want to stop identifying with the body, this universe and incarnated life are probably not for you. Maybe the Metaverse will live up to its promise and become the Matrix, where you can live full-time in a simulated world of pure mind. Good luck.

[DocWatts]

The mind is the body.

The body is the mind.

There's no hard and fast separation between the two. Considering your mind and body as fundamentally separate from one another is a duality and an illusion that can be traced back to the a-priori assumptions of the Western philosophical tradition that go largely unquestioned in our society.

Convergent evidence for this can be found not only in contemplative wisdom traditions that use meditation to examine that nature of direct experience, but also in contemporary cognitive science, both of which are in agreement on this point.

The only reason you're able to have an inner life with thoughts and feelings is because your mind is embedded within a body that is itself embedded within an environment.

If you don't take care of your body this will effect that quality of your direct experience. If your hormones are out of whack or you're in immense physical pain this will have a direct impact on how you percieve reality.

Edited December 7, 2021 by DocWatts

[Arcangelo]

On 12/2/2021 at 10:24 AM, Sine said:

BUT LEO I DID THEM ! 

More.

[Sine]

On 3.12.2021 at 2:37 PM, flume said:

I would meditate for an hour, then still eat a bar of chocolate, then still body check, then still feel shitty about myself & judge myself, forcing myself to let these thoughts go & then set a more rigorous meditation schedule.

Haha this, yes. 

Thank you for the video. I love the way Matt Kahn explain things and the way he helps one open up to self love, I'll watch it. 

On 3.12.2021 at 2:37 PM, flume said:

I had to take that spiritual nonsense of "identifying with who/what" and throw them out the window for a while, allow myself to turn to the parts of me that are so angry and hurt, finally take them seriously and really embrace the unsafe & hurt child that is still living inside of me. The one that never got any attention, so it thought no one would really enjoy spending time with her. The one who wasn't nourished & care for by her mom, so every time she ate, she felt like she was doing something wrong and threw up again. Striving for perfection in my body, intellect and even spiritual pursuits... Just to deserve to live because deep down I felt so unworthy.

Yes. I feel so weird sometimes, one day feeling totally aware and developed and conscious, and then the next day - or even the next moment, doing something - like ED-stuff, that seems totally like someone who had never started this path would do. And that makes me feel very lost sometimes.

Yea I guess maybe "I am not the body, I am not the mind" is not the best entrance point to God from where i am at the moment. There are many entrance points anyway. 

[Sine]

On 7.12.2021 at 3:30 PM, DocWatts said:

If your hormones are out of whack or you're in immense physical pain this will have a direct impact on how you percieve reality.

No, not necessarily, at least to my experience it is possible to transcend this. 

On 7.12.2021 at 3:30 PM, DocWatts said:

The mind is the body.

The body is the mind.

Yes, but I am not the body or the mind? but then again @Leo Gura said "you are also the body" - so I just don't know anymore. Well I guess it must be because my body is part of everything that is? but then it's not my body more than your body is my body? Okay I thought I had thought more about this but I'm really still very confused.

 

[Sine]

8 hours ago, Arcangelo said:

More.

Yea. i just did LSD. But it went terrible and I can't even remember it. The thing is that it always becomes so intense that it almost feels like it's too much and then days or even weeks after I actually can't feel my body at all, like the sense of touch is gone. Like the psychedelics shocked my body or something. Well the majority of my trips have been good and helpful, but it feels like they bulldoze my body. 

[DocWatts]

52 minutes ago, Sine said:

No, not necessarily, at least to my experience it is possible to transcend this. 

Yes, but I am not the body or the mind? but then again @Leo Gura said "you are also the body" - so I just don't know anymore. Well I guess it must be because my body is part of everything that is? but then it's not my body more than your body is my body? Okay I thought I had thought more about this but I'm really still very confused.

Well to be fair there's a difference in opinion / perspective between myself and Leo on this issue, so consider this as just an outside perspective from someone considering this from a different angle.

Leo's perspective (to somewhat over simplify for the sake of brevity) is that consciousness is the ontological environment which contains everything else that exists, and that the idea that you have a physical body is a projection of consciousness.

My own perspective is that reality as we experience it is a codependent interaction between consciousness that's embedded and embodied within an environment.

Your body is a part of this environment, so there's no hard and fast separation between your mind and your body because your body is a necessary part of your mind (and vice versa). Your brain interacts in mutually dependent ways with the rest of your body, and that body-mind both shapes and is shaped by its environment.

This view could be called a form of embodied realism, non-reductionist and non-exclusive physicalism, or a form of neutral monism. There's converging evidence for this view both from contemplative traditions such as Buddhism and from second generation cognitive science.

But again this is just one perspective with its own strengths, weaknesses, and baked in assumptions (which to be fair are part of every ontological system).

Edited December 8, 2021 by DocWatts

[Mu_]

On 12/2/2021 at 8:08 PM, Sine said:

Ahhhh reading this was very helpful. THANK YOU! <3 Yes of course, haha, i totally believe that all the thoughts are about this "me"  

Another thing that may be helpful is to realize that when the thoughts or images of "your body" are happening, to simultaneous see, that this is noticed, and as a result, as being noticed, you are not them.

This isn't something you need to think about, just notice, when the thoughts of body images are happening, its being noticed as they happen......some might call this awareness.

This awarness is You, but your not in control of this, awareness is just awareing, always aware, with no action necessary.  Actions may feel like "doing", and at other times, it may feel like "not doing", but this isn't important either way, just notice and let go into awareing, let "doing" and "not doing" feel as they do when they do, and one could say unfold without getting caught up in figuring out am I this or am I that, am I doing or not doing, in control or not in control.

[Gregory1]

On 2.12.2021 at 5:00 PM, Sine said:

I have discovered that a lot of my issues would be dissolved from identifying less with the body. This being for example; abandonment fears, existential loneliness, fear of being hurt in genereal, feelings of being weak, feelings and beliefs about needing protection, eating disorder-stuff etc. and also a sense of me not being able to achieve the same things/reach the same levels of consciousness as men (a deep limiting belief that I have become more and more aware of recently). 

I'm very excited about having discovered this but I'm also frustrated because I want to move on now. 

Basically it feels like a lot of growth would come from me learning to let go of this. So, If you have any recommendations of practices that helps one identifying less with the body and more as the whole universe I would really like for you to share them with me.

I practice Vipassana meditation and have been on retreats - but my problem here is that I "see" a picture of the body parts in my minds eye, when I'm scanning the body. In this video (see the link) Frank Yang recommends to let go of those images. Everything he says resonates a lot with me, but I have anyway not been able to do it, no matter how hard I try, the images keeps being there. I feel like letting go off those images, could be the key to detachment? But it seems almost impossible. If anyone have had struggles like this, and maybe resolved them, I would like for you to share. I feel really frustrated at this point!

(I have done some different psychedelics too so don't worry) 

(It's not that I haven't had experiences of being "more than my body" - I have definitely had them, but I want to make it stick to my daily life)

 Please help me succeed! 

All the love xoxo

 

You can do anything any man has ever done.

In fact, you ARE every man that has ever existed.

You want to disolve identification with the body and that is an important step.

The FACT is: you are not the body. You are EVERYTHING. (That includes the Body)

Stop thinking of yourself as a seperate thing. Seperateness is a lie. You are everything. The more you think of yourself as part of instead of seperate or simply as the whole thing, the easier it will get ton realize your oneness on psychedelic.

For me LSD has worked great, I know the bad bodily feeling afterwards. Listen to your intuition. If your intuition tells you to take lower dosage, do it. High dosages can actually make your first God realizations harder, because they make you afraid and unstable. You can realize God on low dosages, for me 150ug where enough.

Most important thing to keep in mind while tripping: love yourself. Love yourself as you are. Feel yourself. Always do what feels right. See your feelings as Gods words. They ARE Gods words. They are Gods way (your own way sice you ARE God) of communicating with you.

You'll realize it, trust in yourself. You are much bigger and much more intelligent than you thought. Nothing stops God. Nothing stops You. Neither women nor men.

 

Edited December 16, 2021 by Gregory1

[Gregory1]

On 8.12.2021 at 3:58 PM, Sine said:

so I just don't know anymore. Well I guess it must be because my body is part of everything that is? but then it's not my body more than your body is my body? Okay I thought I had thought more about this but I'm really still very confused.

Exactly. You perfectly understood. You are YOUR body. Exactly in the same way you are MY body.

Stop believing lies. Don't think of yourself as a small person. Think of yourself as the entirery of everything that has ever existed.

In order to realize this, use more paychedelics. Do it more often. The more often you realize Oneness on a psychedelic, the easier it gets to realize it in everyday normal states of conciousness

 

Edited December 16, 2021 by Gregory1