Is the mind just a thought?

[Jordan]

I might be rambling a bit but if you have any insights on this topic please share. I am a bit curious about it now.

I have an idea of there being a mind that produces auditory and visual thoughts. Emotions could be considered to be produced by another type of mind. I noticed that I have not been able to notice where the mind is, it's size, how it works, much like consciousness. How can you even distinguish the mind from consciousness if you can not put your awareness directly on either of them? If neither exist the same way an object does, how can you know anything about them. You can just look at experience of thoughts and find patterns to develop an understanding of what the mind is indirectly. Could the mind be a thought we use as a ground but not actually have any substance itself? Thought is being used to ground another thought.

How can I be conscious of how thoughts are being generated? You see them appear without being able to tell where they came from, how they were produced, how long they will continue to be produced. Their seems to be patterns in thoughts that are effected by your body position, how you breath what you set your attention on. Let me know about how you think I can understand this better and ground my understanding in my experience.

[axiom]

You've got it right, pretty much. The mind can be pictured as an energetic contraction. If you meditate enough you'll notice that the mind and objects of awareness do not rise independently. The mind is its own object of awareness also. Abiding in this state is what many consider to be the end point, but the real end point is in dissolving the mind altogether... becoming the nothing which is also infinity.

[RMQualtrough]

3 hours ago, Jordan said:

Could the mind be a thought we use as a ground but not actually have any substance itself?

This is absolutely and certainly the case. There's no such thing as substance. Like the Bible's God figure, substance is another infinite regress that could never end in nothing. But nothing "IS", LITERALLY it "IS". Nothing can get behind or before nothing. Not God, not anything.

I think that's why Neo-Advaita people parrot that "nothing is happening"... Which I had a really deep insight on yesterday but I no longer remember it, which is frustrating... Maybe it was to do with the fact that all these appearances surround me yet "behind the curtain" if you could peel them back to see the truth behind the illusion, there'd be literally nothing there.

Nothingness is very alluring and intoxicating, as becoming it is undeniably true. But perhaps nothing and something, consciousness, formlessness and form, distract from the underlying fact that there is just reality itself alone and all encompassing.

[Carl-Richard]

Your "conscious" or articulated mind is. There are also "unconscious" or inarticulated aspects of the mind, i.e. thoughts that have yet to be ("preconscious"), or structures that will never arise in the form of a conscious thought, but which nevertheless have an effect on your mind ("the Unconscious", karma etc.). If you prefer, the Unconscious can be stretched out to include all of the universe; transpersonal aspects, not just personal aspects. In that case, by some nondual poetic beauty, the Unconscious becomes synonymous with the mystical conception of "Consciousness", or "phenomenal consciousness" in philosophical terms.

[AtheisticNonduality]

The mind is subtler and less easy to observe than physical objects, for example, because you're attempting to think of it with the "lowest" senses when it is its own entity. The only substance is Nothingness/Everything.

[Leo Gura]

Everything is Mind. Thoughts and material objects alike arise within Mind.

It's like you are asking, Is a fish the ocean?

[Jordan]

Ok thanks for responding everyone. I have many things to consider now.  I will have to go over this a bit more to better understand I think. I will meditate tonight and tomorrow morning and see if I have a better understanding.

[axiom]

3 hours ago, Jordan said:

Ok thanks for responding everyone. I have many things to consider now.  I will have to go over this a bit more to better understand I think. I will meditate tonight and tomorrow morning and see if I have a better understanding.

I recommend upping your practice to 2 hours a day for at least a couple of months if you want to really get somewhere. The trick is to reach a complete boredom threshold (usually around 35mins in) and just keep going - that’s when the real work begins. 

It’s not really worth meditating in sessions shorter than 45 mins.

This whole endeavour is tricky as people associate different states with different words. Some would say the  word “mind” is a particular flavour of consciousness involving awareness for example. By this definition the substrate is beyond mind - it is absolute nothingness, which is also everything. Impossible to understand with logic.

[Jordan]

7 hours ago, axiom said:

I recommend upping your practice to 2 hours a day for at least a couple of months if you want to really get somewhere. The trick is to reach a complete boredom threshold (usually around 35mins in) and just keep going - that’s when the real work begins. 

It’s not really worth meditating in sessions shorter than 45 mins.

This whole endeavour is tricky as people associate different states with different words. Some would say the  word “mind” is a particular flavour of consciousness involving awareness for example. By this definition the substrate is beyond mind - it is absolute nothingness, which is also everything. Impossible to understand with logic.

I have been meditating 45+ min in the morning and 30+ min at night and 2-3+ hours on the weekend days over several sits. The longest I have sat was 1hr 35 min. I work until 10:30pm so the night time meditation I am often a bit tired to do more than 30 min. 

My understanding now is there is a mind that has the internal thoughts, emotions and external see hear feel arise within it. What determines what is being experienced within the mind is not determined by one thing. It is due to many causes and effects. There is no one in control of what thoughts, emotions, environments take place. There are thoughts that try to create fragments that believe they are separate beings and try to control and dominate the rest of the experience to serve itself but fragment is one with the rest of the experience.

I will see if I can better understand what "mind" and "consciousness" revers to when I and others use those terms while meditating for the next week or so. 

[Leo Gura]

You will never understand consciousness through meditation.

Consciousness is way more dynamic, tricky, and radical than meditation can show you. All your meditation just keeps you locked within a very narrow band of consciousness. It's like seeing only shades of red, but none of the others colors. You cannot understand color that way. You need the full spectrum which meditation cannot offer. All your notions of spirituality and awakening will be limited to within a very narrow band of consciousness -- which hardly deserves to be called awakening at all. And thus you get weak stuff like what Tolle or Spira teach. They teach what they teach because they have no method by which to access higher dimensions of consciousness.

[Jordan]

24 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You will never understand consciousness through meditation.

Consciousness is way more dynamic, tricky, and radical than meditation can show you. All your meditation just keeps you locked within a very narrow band of consciousness. It's like seeing only shades of red, but none of the others colors. You cannot understand color that way. You need the full spectrum which meditation cannot offer. All your notions of spirituality and awakening will be limited to within a very narrow band of consciousness -- which hardly deserves to be called awakening at all. And thus you get weak stuff like what Tolle or Spira teach. They teach what they teach because they have no method by which to access higher dimensions of consciousness.

Ok so most people will not understand consciousness thought meditation because the range the average person can experience is too narrow to determine much from it. You seem to believe accessing higher dimensions though psychedelics then spending more time directly embodying what you picked up is a better to go about understanding which does make sense to me. Correct me if I am misunderstanding this.

I have been taking 5Meo dmt every once in a while. Maybe average once a month. It does seem to help me understand more deeply but I have had a feeling that I should not do it too often so I have time to digest what happened which meditation seems to help with. It did take a few times to get get an idea of what to expect and slowly increase my dose to a safe but potent amount. I may be ready for increasing my frequency a bit.

[ValiantSalvatore]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

You will never understand consciousness through meditation.

Consciousness is way more dynamic, tricky, and radical than meditation can show you. All your meditation just keeps you locked within a very narrow band of consciousness. It's like seeing only shades of red, but none of the others colors. You cannot understand color that way. You need the full spectrum which meditation cannot offer. All your notions of spirituality and awakening will be limited to within a very narrow band of consciousness -- which hardly deserves to be called awakening at all. And thus you get weak stuff like what Tolle or Spira teach. They teach what they teach because they have no method by which to access higher dimensions of consciousness.

By which method is it possible to access higher dimensions besides psychdelics are psychdelics themselves a tool for what you'd deem higher dimensions of consciouness? 

Also my experience with psychcedelics and meditation retreats differ. Ulitmately I don't know what is possible and I am still curious as to what method allows access to higher dimensions of consciouness. With better health I am pretty confident I can fully follow what you want to teach even when I fail alot and form an understanding of what you'd call god-realization. I barely had any of these experiences besides maybe small tastes, so I'd like to experience it directly a couple of times so I know what the work ultimately is about. I soon will do DMT and explore that route for consciouness expanding tools/methods. Obviously also with meditation as it just helps me personally. 
 

Edited July 13, 2022 by ValiantSalvatore

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, Jordan said:

Ok so most people will not understand consciousness thought meditation because the range the average person can experience is too narrow to determine much from it. You seem to believe accessing higher dimensions though psychedelics then spending more time directly embodying what you picked up is a better to go about understanding which does make sense to me. Correct me if I am misunderstanding this.

I have been taking 5Meo dmt every once in a while. Maybe average once a month. It does seem to help me understand more deeply but I have had a feeling that I should not do it too often so I have time to digest what happened which meditation seems to help with. It did take a few times to get get an idea of what to expect and slowly increase my dose to a safe but potent amount. I may be ready for increasing my frequency a bit.

Meditation is useful and has its place. All I said was you won't fully underatand consciousness with it alone.

3 hours ago, ValiantSalvatore said:

By which method is it possible to access higher dimensions besides psychdelics are psychdelics themselves a tool for what you'd deem higher dimensions of consciouness? 

Psychedelics are the highest tool, according to me.

This does not mean you shouldn't meditate. I meditate.

[ValiantSalvatore]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Psychedelics are the highest tool, according to me.

This does not mean you shouldn't meditate. I meditate.

I see.

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Meditation is useful and has its place. All I said was you won't fully underatand consciousness with it alone.

Thanks for pointing that out that is fantastic! Sometimes I get the impression to not even do it at all because it's not a tool for the highest levels. I get what is meant overall. Thanks for providing indirect feedback in that sense!

[Leo Gura]

Even though it is not the highest tool, you still gotta train your mind. Psychedelic will not do that for you.

[Kksd74628]

@Leo Gura

17 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Even though it is not the highest tool, you still gotta train your mind. Psychedelic will not do that for you.

That's actually very good that you pointed this out here, because most people here on the forum have picture that you somehow deny the power of meditation and so on. As I commented to you on another thread, even if something doesn't directly make you experience god-realization it can still have its use for other things and even to god-realization indirectly. That's also one video idea for these folks; Importance of mastering basic stuff. That could cover the trap of only trying to do highest spiritual things and expecting it to be enough.

-joNi-

[Razard86]

28 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Even though it is not the highest tool, you still gotta train your mind. Psychedelic will not do that for you.

I feel like it does, kind of like how a guy who does not train and enters a fight and gets destroyed, if you enter a psychedelic with no ability to maintain calm and surrender.....well you will learn to respect the substance the HARD WAY.

[Someone here]

Yes "the mind " is a thought.  It's not a physical object . Have you ever seen "a mind " before  ?

[Razard86]

12 hours ago, Kksd74628 said:

@Leo Gura

That's actually very good that you pointed this out here, because most people here on the forum have picture that you somehow deny the power of meditation and so on. As I commented to you on another thread, even if something doesn't directly make you experience god-realization it can still have its use for other things and even to god-realization indirectly. That's also one video idea for these folks; Importance of mastering basic stuff. That could cover the trap of only trying to do highest spiritual things and expecting it to be enough.

-joNi-

That's because they are completely biased and see/hear what they want to see. Leo literally did a video where he said you need to make a commitment to meditate everyday and that he meditates everyday. Here is the irony.... I bet some of the people who feel this way about Leo...probably do not meditate as much as him. Leo actually went to meditation retreats...which is extremely difficult to do if you grew up in the West. 

Western people have grown up around technology so much that meditation is extremely difficult to do because you have to get used to not being stimulated. Its doable but its similar to shedding your skin like you were a snake. You will have to peel off layers of conditional stimulation to become used to silence and stillness. 

[Carl-Richard]

@Razard86 @Kksd74628

The disagreements around meditation vs. psychedelics is whether it leads to enlightenment or not, not whether it's beneficial.