Thoughts Do Not "arise From Nothingness"

[Salaam]

Thoughts actually don't just "arise" out of nothingness. They are activated and flavored by shifts in the contrast between our inter-connections that occur as things move/change inside us and outside us. We have a narrative system that is hooked into or superimposed onto our level of flow that automates the pace of internal chitter-chatter and maintains a given degree of immersion plus a given degree of populated conscious activity.

When people meditate and try to hold "nothingness" or an empty mind or whatever, they are in essence trying to slow/calm that flow and create a short-lived vacuum or pocket of thoughtlessness (among other things, there are many different kinds of meditation, which is really just practice of some flavor of applied focus). And of course when that vacuum releases, the thoughts come back, whether the vacuum was released willfully, or a shift in our body caused the automatic release. The release of the vacuum is a shift event in and of itself which is an emotionally competent stimulus that will trigger thought narratives and influence how they "appear" to manifest. We can't get caught up in that single shift and tunnel-vision to the point, where that is the only reference from which we draw conclusions. There is way more there to explore and way more we have to develop to even have proper access to those avenues of exploration.

So people make the mistake of jumping to the conclusion that thoughts arise from this vacuum because they haven't sensitized themselves to the bodily shifts, nor have they developed the tensile resiliency or traction to deal with how those shifts effect our cognitive recollection of the actual experience. They don't account for or properly attribute how the vacuum state influenced the mixture, which flavored the trigger of thought as it preceded, much like people fail to attribute or account for the weight or influence of observation having an effect on the collapse of a wave function when conducting science expirements.

In that fraction of a second where things shift, there is a shit load of things going on that are fast as hell, and more subtle then a whisper on the wind. Not to be melodramatic or anything, but internal transitions are hard as hell to gain a clear picture on, because every move you make in response to a transition influences the transition, which influences you on every level from cognition to immersion to emotion and everything else. We're trying to bring some kind of clarity to an ever-changing mixture that we are a part of and are influenced by at all times, which takes a lot of time and a lot of development to be able to create requisite levels of a kind of meta superposition to be even able to accomplish. And instead of doing all that, or even knowing to do all that, people just stick with the idea, that thoughts arise out of nothingness, because that's all their feel for things can tell them at the time and so they miss out on the potential for more. We have to be more humble than that and buy less into this false certainty "that this is all there is". This is where the uncertainty principle comes in handy as a protection against false certainty. In essence, beware a conclusion that leaves you no access to further potentialities, because a conclusion that absolute is a false and flawed one. Our view of life and ourselves does not have to be that primitive, nor so extreme and divorced from the nuances of reality.

Generally speaking, I wish people would remind themselves that they don't have to approach the question of free will in a binary way. We are a dynamic mixture of automation and free will superimposed on top of each other and the dance of that mixture plays out, in more than a single step. We automatically activate, then consciously calibrate, then automatically activate in response to that conscious calibration, which we then consciously calibrate again as we make choices. It is a dance with overlapping or slightly superimposed steps of automated activation and conscious balancing/calibration via choice with mutual avenues for inter-influence that compounds over time in a hopefully constructive way. The degree of depth, and the determination of which is the dominant or secondary force, driving the dance changes depending on the person and their unique context in a given moment. Distinct, but seamless and the degree of difference in what people might create from such a dance staggering.

Edited March 21, 2017 by Salaam

[Toby]

Once you see where thoughts arise in and also go to, there is no need for speculation. You could argue that thoughts are triggered by emotions or sensations, but then again is the question where do sensations, emotions or the body arise in and subside to?

[outlandish]

Nice post Salaam.

[Salaam]

37 minutes ago, Toby said:

Once you see where thoughts arise in and also go to, there is no need for speculation. You could argue that thoughts are triggered by emotions or sensations, but then again is the question where do sensations, emotions or the body arise in and subside to?

You're don't appear to have understood what I'm attempting to convey. 

Do you understand that when you actively try to create a thoughtless space in order to be the observer that watches the rising of thoughts that you are creating an altered environment from the normal base-line? You have to account for the added influence of this temporary stasis or vacuum and how it affects potentiality and consequently position. In this case how it limits or collapses potentiality, just like observing a wave function or electron cloud causes the same collapse.

Do you understand that shifts in the narration of thought coincide with deeper shifts below your consciousness that also carry with it an electric or energetic charge that expresses as a split-second pulse your brain normally filters out to maintain the representation of a seamless flow of consciousness? That split second pulse also has an effect on your cognitive recollection of what is actually occurring. If you have not worked with tension and developed traction and stability in the face of these micro energetic attractive-repulsive forces that happen within your brain, you will NEVER gain access to all the subtle shifts and inter-connections that occur within and from that pulse. It will literally snap close like a magnet snapping to metal in that fraction of a second, but you'll never even realize it.

Your whole post smacks of looking for some absolute beginning and ending, but that's not how reality works and is a limitation of human beings we are attempting to evolve and expand from.

The universe is an ever moving, beautifully inter-connected system of balance and counter-balance which includes the counter-balance between specificity/limitation and uncertainty/potential. Access to potentiality is never cut off in an absolute sense.
 

34 minutes ago, outlandish said:

Nice post Salaam.

Thanks

[AlwaysBeNice]

Fearful thoughts arise from negative conditioning/trauma which stems for the sense of separate self

[Toby]

I'm not interested in arguments, I can only share my point of view. For me, the question "where does this thought come from? Where does it go to?" made a lot of difference. If such a question does not resonate with you, it's ok.

[jse]

Thoughts - they arise from looong posts.

[Echoes]

Ultimately thoughts arise from nothingness. As this whole universe arose from nothingness. If you want to connect thoughts to a kind of causality between energetical and bodily shifts or events, you have to point to the beginning of the causal "event". But every beginning point of the causality chain is arbitrary and can be retraced back to the big bang which arose from nothingness. (If we belief that this big bang theory is true). Ultimately every moment arises and disappears in nothingness

[Nahm]

Everything is everything. We're all where we are.

I think the ego likes the 'nothingness' because it holds it as an achievement relative to others. 

At the same time it is a marker in a somewhat typical order of growth & inquiry revelations.

 

The everything is everything.

 

[Echoes]

@Nahm I think the Ego doesn't like nothingness at all. It's rather afraid of it

[Principium Nexus]

You guys are all nothing  

[Salaam]

2 hours ago, AlwaysBeNice said:

Fearful thoughts arise from negative conditioning/trauma which stems for the sense of separate self

Are you saying all fear arises from this conclusion you've stated?

I happen to appreciate fear and I don't demonize it or automatically attribute it a negative value like you seem to be doing with the above. From where I stand fear is a problem when it crosses a threshold level imbalance that creates an immobility or freeze response. Other than that fear can be very helpful and even precious. For instance, I love that I am afraid to lose the things that I care about, it means they matter to me and they're connected to me on deep levels that intermingle with the core of my humanity.

My fear works with me in harmony. It doesn't immobilize me or keep me from acting with spirit and character. Instead it sensitizes me, sharpening my senses and making me more aware. It helps me counterbalance against the numbing agents of comfort with it's slight fire, like holding a hot coal in a tin cup on a snowy winter night.

1 hour ago, Toby said:

I'm not interested in arguments, I can only share my point of view. For me, the question "where does this thought come from? Where does it go to?" made a lot of difference. If such a question does not resonate with you, it's ok.

Last time I checked this forum was for self-actualization and expanding and challenging beyond the comforts of preconceived notions. You say asking yourself those questions made a lot of difference for you. I've already asked those questions and developed many abilities over the years to ask even deeper ones, some of which I've shared with you.

... but, like you kind of said, if you don't want to examine them and stay where you are, that's okay.

1 hour ago, Echoes said:

Ultimately thoughts arise from nothingness. As this whole universe arose from nothingness. If you want to connect thoughts to a kind of causality between energetical and bodily shifts or events, you have to point to the beginning of the causal "event". But every beginning point of the causality chain is arbitrary and can be retraced back to the big bang which arose from nothingness. (If we belief that this big bang theory is true). Ultimately every moment arises and disappears in nothingness

You might want to update your knowledge pool with regard to quantum thermodynamics and some new theories regarding singularities and the big bang. We had a discussion about it in another thread that you might find interesting.

 

1 hour ago, Nahm said:

Everything is everything. We're all where we are.

I think the ego likes the 'nothingness' because it holds it as an achievement relative to others. 

At the same time it is a marker in a somewhat typical order of growth & inquiry revelations.

 

The everything is everything.

 

Being able to hold a vacuum can seem special and great, but after awhile it becomes normal and not a big deal. That's a typical pattern to so many things in life. People experience something new that shakes them to the core and for awhile they think they have superpowers and achieved this pinnacle of humanity. And then after a period of time it becomes normal again. When you get on a road where you're growing at this depth more frequently, this pattern becomes more apparent and you learn to predict and properly prepare for how the changing contrasts of these experiences effect you.

The problem arises when people want to hold onto that feeling of greatness, and choose to make they're identity reliant upon continued validation of greatness or superiority (like Trump for instance). It's much more stable and harmonious to choose energies/emotional flavors of validation that rely on other things then either greatness, superiority, and inferiority.

For instance, I don't internalize or indulge in thought narratives of how great I am about a particular thing. Instead I shift my focus to my degree of capability and my confidence and trust in that capability. And for the other side of the coin that holds inferiority and suckitude, I instead focus on being humble and thankful for how much more I still have to learn and involve myself with. When you do this you find concepts like power kind of masturbatory and a waste of time and instead focus on building with capability and creating meaning rather than self-aggrandizement.

It gives me a tighter and much, much richer spiral of growth and I don't waste my energy on the kinds of fears or over-exertions that come from trying to validate a position of greatness or invalidate areas that reflect the avenues where I have just begun new growth and am "not all that great" in.

In order to master mastery, you have to master being a beginner and that means mastering all the things a beginner deals with like struggle, ignorance, awkwardness, frustration, and discomfort.

If you want to work on your ego, embrace being a beginner. Don't demonize your identity as a whole (which some "kill the ego" extremists seem to misguidedly do).  

Edited March 21, 2017 by Salaam

[Echoes]

@Salaam I followed that thread, but as Leo already said, you confuse the scientific idea of nothingness with "actual" nothingness. You take a symbolic, indirect approach to something that is beyond all this. 

Whatever causes your thoughts may previously had, they are all born in nothing. Where else?

[Toby]

Do you want to share opinions or do you want affirmation in your view points?

[Salaam]

57 minutes ago, Echoes said:

@Salaam I followed that thread, but as Leo already said, you confuse the scientific idea of nothingness with "actual" nothingness. You take a symbolic, indirect approach to something that is beyond all this. 

Whatever causes your thoughts may previously had, they are all born in nothing. Where else?

With all due respect, Leo and anyone who is ascribing to his assertion in that post is the one taking the purely imaginative or delusional approach. If your "actual" nothingness has heat in it, it is not absolute nothingness, if it is still permeated by fields of potentiality like the universe is at all levels that is not absolute nothingness. If your absolute nothingness is being contained by matter in the form of bone, sinew, and brain matter it is not "absolute" nothingness.

How about you move your mind out of the binary paradigm of beginning and endings and rise into quantum cognition? With superposition you are both 1 and 0 at the same time and can "birth" one or the other and from that one or the other "birth" another superimposed status. Humans all too often make the mistake of projecting their own limitations on the universe, but the universe doesn't give a shit and keeps on being dynamic with access to potentiality preserved.

There aren't beginning or endings, there is instead recombination with different layers of complexity and synergy while still maintaining access to both poles of simplicity beyond our current evolution of cognition and levels of complexity that humans have not yet developed the cognition to contain.

Every time a person falls into the paradigm of beginning or endings, they are taking an isolative view of reality which does not consider it's preceding combination. And that holds doubly true for absolute beginnings or endings which are a violation of the uncertainty principle.

38 minutes ago, Toby said:

Do you want to share opinions or do you want affirmation in your view points?

I'd like an evolving dialogue where people put the time and effort into expanding themselves in ways that are in harmony and synergy with real life with practical application. Where people critically think and explore rather than blindly follow the establishment of a given place.

I'd like to see people work with tension and differentiating between how a change feels and how it shifts us. Gaining traction with those shifts, slowing and stabilizing them so their awareness can gain perspective and clarity around the nuance that occurs within it. I'd like to see people gain a greater ability with depth, to understand how things balance and counter-balance and how that motion affects the formation of a person's reality at the time.

I'd like to see a lot of things actually.

What do you want? Do you want to maximize your potential or do you want to remain in your comfort zone? Maybe try and feel the tension there, note down whether your initial reaction to that question was attractive or repulsive and then play the experience back in your mind slowly, including in your investigation the type of narratives playing in your mind. Investigating the other options you might have chosen had you not immediately snapped to either of those charges. Notice how much choice and potential we leave on the table and miss with our snap judgements and reflexive conclusions about a thing.

Edited March 21, 2017 by Salaam

[LetTheNewDayBegin]

Salaam.  This is great! Thanks for sharing!

How do you personally maximize your potential?

"Nothingness" is just a concept, a symbol. We can say things arise from nothingness but it's just a simplification of what really is.

What is really going on is beyond words. We can only approximate that with more investigation. Maybe we could do that in this thread?

So...

One one hand, thoughts arise from shifts in contrast between our interconnections and the shifting is the primary property of empty space (see: void fluctuation effects).

On the other hand, when we say thoughts arise from empytiness/nothingness we may actually mean the same thing - void fluctuation effects.

Any thoughts? (or fluctuations?)

Edited March 21, 2017 by LetTheNewDayBegin

[Echoes]

@Salaam Why imaginative? It is the direct opposite. You are the one imagining various theoretical constructs and conditions. Where do thoughts arise in your actual experience? Out of what? 

Quote

If your "actual" nothingness has heat in it, it is not absolute nothingness, if it is still permeated by fields of potentiality like the universe is at all levels that is not absolute nothingness. If your absolute nothingness is being contained by matter in the form of bone, sinew, and brain matter it is not "absolute" nothingness

But what is the "place" in which heat, bone, sinew, brain and every other thing can exist/arise? Can it be another thing? And in which does this thing then exist? Nothingness is the absolute ground for every-thing.

[Nahm]

@Echoes I agree. It's like killing a bear maybe. It doesn't seem as formidable after, and a lot of dudes feel the need to hang it's head on the wall and make a rug so they can retell the story. 

The everything though. I don't think there are words or even thoughts for it.

@Salaam all pretty easy to gree with.  It's more fun though, if you would make some outrageous claims or something. Thank you.

 

There's no nothingness. Simply be definition alone. 

[Salaam]

14 hours ago, LetTheNewDayBegin said:

Salaam.  This is great! Thanks for sharing!

How do you personally maximize your potential?

"Nothingness" is just a concept, a symbol. We can say things arise from nothingness but it's just a simplification of what really is.

What is really going on is beyond words. We can only approximate that with more investigation. Maybe we could do that in this thread?

So...

One one hand, thoughts arise from shifts in contrast between our interconnections and the shifting is the primary property of empty space (see: void fluctuation effects).

On the other hand, when we say thoughts arise from empytiness/nothingness we may actually mean the same thing - void fluctuation effects.

Any thoughts? (or fluctuations?)

Thanks!

I'm going to focus on your first question for now because I believe it's answers tie into your second one as well

I'll touch on some things in general and then give examples of how those things increased my potential as a human being. If you have any questions please let me know.

So there is maximizing your potential and realizing/manifesting your potential. What are the building blocks that affords us the capability to do those things? What are the building blocks of capability and learning? That is where I initially put my focus and effort.

You have awareness, but what does awareness need to expand? Well, you need to increase your sensitivity, which will increase the population or diversity of sensations/inputs your awareness is encompassing and connecting with, but then you need to be able to understand the differences contained within this population so it's not this mushed up incoherent thing.

So just in the above you can see elements of capability and learning, include the abilities of awareness, sensitivity, population/diversity, and differentiation.  But, there are many more abilities like connection/rapport which is a huge arena of how things inter-relate. Do they connect? How do they connect? Is it complimentary or adversarial? Attractive or repulsive? Do they merge, do they stack, do they interlock, or do they adhere?

Then there are other abilities like dimensionality and compression, pace/flow, traction, stability, resiliency, coherency, limitation, and authenticity/fidelity. 

Each of these are abilities and actions we physically carry out in response to things that actually occur. Patterns of universal movement we can learn to read, decipher, and harness. And when we synergize all of them together we have a set of skills that at all times and all situations we can practice and develop that changes us as human beings. Allowing us access to greater degrees of potential as well as the ability to bring that potential out into real life.

Essentially, by hooking into and involving myself with around 12 compound movement patterns of capability over the past 7 years I have gained access to the ability to learn anything I want and change anything I want within the bounds of what my health will allow. It's how I became a polymath and gained a high capability in all of the 9 different kinds of intelligence among many, many other things.

See the cool thing about those 12 elements of capability is that you change as a human being when they reach certain thresholds, both individually and when the overall level of synergy crosses one.

For instance, because of my development of sensitivity and differentiation I can feel at all times in a superimposed state emotion and sensation, but also the energetic/electromagnetic shifting movement that cascades concurrently with that feeling. Van der waals forces or the pull and push of energetic activation which gives me twice the amount of information my body is processing compared to how I used to be, but also twice the amount of options and actions. I can change how intensely I am attracted or repulsed by things, which allows me to shape how my emotions arise in response. I can use this skill to localize physical imbalance in the body and shift them inside myself. I can do it to a more limited degree in others through touch. A person's muscles will shift and move, in response to my touch via my modulation of their attractive/repulsive qualities. Sharing pleasure with another increases and the way it shifts them becomes more influential.

Further, working with tension has increased my capacity or ability to hold or store greater and greater amounts of it in my body. The action for this is called mutual capacitance and it's the same concept behind electrical coils. Which is also responsible for increases in my charisma or the degree to which the expression of my emotions influences and shifts other people, as well as the degree to which that emotion and energetic content internalizes within another. This makes me more attractive, trustworthy, gives me greater impact in communication, and the ability and potential to have deeper and richer relationships. Actually, it makes me seen as more of a man and seen as more sexually viable, because of the simple fact that I can handle greater and greater levels of sexual tension, when in contrast most guys can't and freeze or break the tension with a less attractive response. Plus the greater the sexual tension, the greater the degree of sexual automation and trance, which in subtle ways makes me just that much more captivating as a person.

Other changes include the ability to access different kinds of flow states, greater access to instinct and synergizing it with my rational mind, the ability to handle the emotional curve of learning, including resistances like the feeling of "this is too hard" or "I don't know what to do" which often halts people in their tracks. Greater connectivity and response to bodily connections affording me greater speed, flexibility, strength, and reaction times.

I can slow down my perception of time with practice which is essential actually when it comes to observing what happens inside our heads as we think and reflect and observe. It allows me to take a split second of time and slow it down so I can see more and more going on within that flicker than I ever could before. Then I can review that, without falling into the habit of tunnel vision or judging the experience in a vacuum. I can of course create a vacuum if need be to isolate and decipher, but then reconnect it to it's preceding processes and potentialities before jumping to a conclusion and moving on. I don't get carried away by my experiences, because I have greater traction against their emotional impact, which allows me to stay in the spaces of intensity where the greatest amounts of coherency and fidelity reside, which allows me to internalize deeper and more inter-connected experiences of life with less distortion and delusion. 

All of which compounds over time creating more and more growth and more and more potential and capability.

The experience of this over the past couple years has been truly incredible. It's been brutal and dangerous as well, but I can't even describe what it feels like to have the tools of evolution, life itself, truly in your hands. Not just in an intellectual sense, but in a tangible, real way that reaches in every single aspect of your being and bears fruit nearly every day.

I hope that gives you some sense of the potential inherent to this path. There is so much I could write about, so many experiences to recount, and understandings to share, but hopefully they give you some idea of the potential awaiting all of us if we only lean into that edge of life where evolution and expansion reside.

[outlandish]

Anyone in here read David Bohm's book "Wholeness and the Implicate Order"? It feels very relevant to this discussion. Therefore I'd like to relevate it to this discussion