How Best To Interpret The Visual Field Day-to-day

[Gavalanche]

Hi all,

I have a question about how one should think about the visual world they are seeing, as they go about their business every day, if aiming for enlightenment / more awareness.

During meditation and self inquiry practices I have much easier time of things with my eyes closed, distinguishing between different sensations and phenomena arising and falling away; the audio channel is the clearest for me and gets me closest to being able to focus on what I really think I am (the perceiver of these sounds). I find that whenever I open my eyes I instantly "snap-back" into the default mode of operating, pretty much all sense of inner spaciousness disappears and very much feel like "the world-out-there" is almost unquestionable. I'm not sure if I'm just to easily distracted by all the "objects" and motion that I see, or what.

I find myself trying to "flatten the illusion" often, as proposed by Leo, and find that helpful. However, I'm unclear what way I'm "supposed" to be seeing the world. Should I be looking for any and all evidence that boundaries don't exist, that everything is unified? Should I be interpreting what I'm seeing as "this is just an image in my mind"? Or "this is akin to a 2d image, like 3D scene rendered on a computer screen"? Or should I be accepting of the 3D appearance of the world. I find myself looking around and asking myself "what am I missing here?" and pretty much come up with a blank every time.

How do you guys interpret what you are seeing with your eyes, as you go about your daily activities? 

[key]

58 minutes ago, Gavalanche said:

I find myself looking around and asking myself "what am I missing here?" and pretty much come up with a blank every time.

That pretty much sums it up, there's nothing to "get"

Nothing extra to see, no missing ingredient, no special perception to see with, no tricky thought patterns to adapt, self-inquiry brings the recognition that seeing is just that, seeing. 

You seem to be doing self-inquiry practices, so maybe ask yourself questions like,

Do I see the ground? What is the ground? I can think about the ground but is that the experience of the ground?  I see my feet on the ground, that means I'm standing on the ground? Why do I consider the colours that make up my feet to be me and not the ground beneath me ? What does "beneath me" even mean? Where in my experience do the colours of "me" end and the "external world" begin? What is the difference from the world I see and the me I see? What is external to me? What is internal to me? 

Of course these are all thoughts,  it's good to recognise that now and then so you don't get to hung up on the answers, so maybe start of with recognising that you already have a belief system about seeing, so look around and ask, what do I currently believe about the things I see? 

[Gavalanche]

That's very helpful, thanks a lot! Also encouraging, as I do find myself asking what is external and what is internal to me. I think the question that comes up then is why do experience I everything from a certain perspective? I feel like the body is almost feeding awareness with sensory data from it's perspective / position in the world. How else would I see, for a example a wall from one side, maybe indoors, as opposed to from a different angle? (These are questions I ask myself, not asking you, as such )

Similarly for sound. If a sound appears in my awareness as more distant than another sound, why is that the case? My mind still seems very hung up on processing everything from a very object-oriented / geo-locational type of frame. I guess one genuine question I do have is: is this counter-productive to raising awareness, or is accepting some sounds as being "closer" or "further away" more accepting of reality? I suppose my questions are really about which way am I supposed to be accepting reality? Directly as is, from the default, regular human point of view, accepting of my labels for things or consciously trying to drop all distinctions and ask myself the difficult questions like you gave examples of? I am assuming the latter.

Thanks for the feedback!
 

[Leo Gura]

@Gavalanche Interpreting is the problem. What you really want to be shooting for is a non-interpreted, non-symbolic, "raw" experience of phenomena. This is called mindfulness. You see exactly what is, and nothing more.

The problem is that you've got many layers of interpretation running which create illusions such as objects, others, selves, dangers, good and bad, emotions, etc.

Practice more and more to see only what is literally there. And notice how much shit you make up and project onto what is there.

This is very hard to achieve without many hours of practice. The illusion created by symbolic projection is overwhelming. You are trapped inside an augmented reality.

I highly recommend you do a week-long meditation retreat, otherwise you'll never know how deeply augmented your perception is.

[Hunter Arrington]

@Leo Gura How many retreats have you been present at? I'm looking forward to doing many. 

[key]

28 minutes ago, Gavalanche said:

which way am I supposed to be accepting reality?

Accepting reality is a tricky thing, mainly because it's so simple

You're like a mime who believes in his invisible box so you remain trapped, while the whole time there was never anything stopping you from stepping out

Try looking at it from this perspective, your experience is complete because it is, there's nothing that needs to be changed, nothing that needs to appear, nothing that needs to disappear, nothing that should be like this or should be like that, no right feelings or wrong feelings, no right thoughts or wrong thoughts, no incorrect perspective, no truer perspective, more so each of these are spontaneous emergences out of and as reality. Action, creation, feeling, performance each is existence itself, there is only manifestation, "perfect" and unmolested.

So where do the thoughts claiming incompletion, wanting more, something different, pushing and pulling against reality come from? Why do they appear? Why are they so frequent? Why do they feel so real? Where do these thoughts hold themselves in experience? Do you ever notice how your heartbeat isn't confused, your breath doesn't question it's existence, your hands don't cry into the abyss looking for meaning, your hair doesn't wonder what it should do with it's life, but amusingly, you do question these things about your life, why is that? If you're already complete, but don't see so, what is making you think otherwise?

Look at your experience without the need to intellectualise every answer or have some great insight or major perspective shift, because accepting reality, real radical acceptance, is simply an act of actlessness, of things being 

5 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

This is very hard to achieve without many hours of practice.

I appericate what Leo does for people but he also makes this work sound hard, like you need to go through a grueling, thorough, extremely deep process to recognise an illusion, while it simply isn't so, it's so simple, so natural, we miss it daily

33 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Practice more and more to see only what is literally there.

It's also literally impossible not to see what is "literally there" because all is reality, all is there, but still, there is thoughts saying otherwise, so maybe ask yourself why you think that, and then ask yourself why you believe in them

[key]

3 hours ago, Gavalanche said:

is this counter-productive to raising awareness 

Oh and no, it's not counter productive to think in terms of object-oriented / geo-locational, it's just another belief you hold which helps you understand things better your own way. Just let them be and don't be surprised if one day those beliefs start crumbling beneath you, if your ultimate goal is Enlightenment then no path/thought-process/technique/action/behaviour will help you more then the next, if your goal is raising consciousness, well then I have next to no clue about achieveing that  

Cheers!

[cetus]

@Gavalanche As far as "interpreting" the visual field, like most people your probably an expert at interpreting reality by now because "you" have been doing exactly that since birth. Which of course is a wrong way of seeing the world and must be thrown away. The straight up answer is what you are is the awareness of this field of reality. You are awareness without the interpreter. I believe that is what Leo is referring to when he speaks of "flattening the image". But that's not to say that from the minds point of view that 3d reality can't be experienced as a 2d flat field from time to time. It can! Reality can seem as if it is happening on a movie screen.

And at other times reality can be seen as being in super hi depth. Colors get brighter and more vivid and the clarity is enhanced as if it takes on a deeper dimension than what is "normally" experienced by the individual self. It suddenly feels as if God is seeing through your eyes. That is an amazing way to interpret the visual field. If you could call it that.

*I asked the about the same question as you ask here months ago. I was perceiving reality in a few different ways at that time (as mentioned above). I got no replies so don't bother searching it for answers. That was when I first experienced the "flat field" visual phenomenon happing so I figured it was just me that had experienced that. Or maybe nobody wanted to talk about it. Who knows? But I'm glad you asked too.

And here is yet another way my mind interprets the visual field of reality. Think of being at the bottom of an ocean of reality. Awareness being the water that surrounds everything you see. Just as everything in the ocean is surrounded and exists within water, so too is all of reality within awareness.

 

 

 

[Gavalanche]

Thanks all!

Definitely gotten some helpful new perspectives on this.

I am also planning to make some changes in my life to be able to attend retreats and practice more. Some people may require less hours of practice, but I think I am someone who probably needs a significant amount. I've spent many years in my head, so l likely have a huge amount of interpretations to shed! The problem is when I can't even fathom what the interpretations are and think I'm seeing things for what they are - but clearly am not!

"Raw experience" of the visual field / channel - I think that's what I was looking for clarification on and have now gained some better understanding. I feel like I can get a far better sense of raw experience when it comes to audio (less layers of interpretation maybe), but become far more easily distracted by the "contents" of any visuals, "looking too far into the image" if you will.

Thanks again!

Edited January 11, 2017 by Gavalanche

[FirstglimpseOMG]

I've been trying out that 'collapse the illusion', or 'flatten the illusion' thang a little bit lately. (Thanks Leo)

It isn't easy, but it's very possible, even for noobs like me.

It seems to take a few quick little 'jumps', like all within the first second or two that you look with that intent. I picked easy stuff in hopes of early successes inspiring me to install this practice more rigorously.

My early attempts here go like this: 

First, remember that you mean to try this. I keep forgetting about doing it. 

Pick an object heavy with symbols. Writing, geometric shapes, borders, simple blocks of colour as graphics, avatars to represent things (the men's & women's restroom symbols for example), traffic signs, municipal signs (the big 'H' that points the way to the hospital would be an easy one). The cover of the self-help paperback lying on your coffee table, the one without photos & detailed graphics on it, just a border and various sizes and types of fonts for the title.

You may feel naturally inclined to squint or blur your vision quickly and slightly to help get it started, but if you can resist, try to blur or squint in your mind quick, rather than trying to initiate the collapse by vision tricks. 

You can't really dwell on the thing, trying hard to flatten the letters or familiar symbols into lines and shapes only. Make it a few quick, light, purposeful little mind-shakes and dumb yourself down quick & easy - If you speak english, forget that you know what those letters spell. Looking at it upside down may help.

Quick quick, shift from knowing what that stuff says to checking out what shapes and colours those liney, chunky, roundy or jagged letters (Letters? What's a letter?  I see circles with holes in them and fat & skinny lines set beside each other & butted up against each other.) to just coldly and stupidly only seeing blocks & circles, lines or geometric chunks of colour.

Do it quick & light like you already know how to, if you dwell too long with hard intend it seems like the mind prevails and just wants to 'read' the cover. 

It's freaky when it hits, when it flattens down to coloured shapes & solid blocks & fat & skinny lines. On the topside of some rectangular object that seems like a neat stack of two or three hundred thin thin white leaves with lines of wee black marks on them. It's hard to maintain it, but you can look away, quickly exit the room, walk right back in & with tongue in cheek go "holy shit, it's a book!"

Edited January 13, 2017 by FirstglimpseOMG
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