Thoughts and Concepts are literally taking colour out of your Life - meditate more

[Arthogaan]

It's crazy to be honest. I am quite shocked. I had a big shift 1.5 weeks ago which seems to be permanent and I seem to really stripped myself of separate-self. I am forgoing a fast process of cleansing all residuals. Also I wanted to publicly thank @Water by the River for great guidance and advice post this shift. 

Anyway, today I had my first day that I managed to have almost no thoughts or conceptual thinking for the whole day. No thoughts separating me from reality nor thoughts categorizing what is happening and so on.

And it's honestly just crazy how much more vibrant everything was. Smells, colours, the pleasantness of breath and touch and even sore knees. I don't really understand it how does it work and how is it possible that thoughts and concepts make life so much dulled down. Doesn't seem obvious to me (any ideas @Water by the River @Bazooka Jesus @Breakingthewall).

The only logical answer to me is that brain/consciousness has all this processing-power available when it is not busy by constant categorizing and labeling of reality. Or like it's just programmed this way that you kinda get "reward from God" for all the spiritual work haha. It almost feels too good sometimes, like I am so content, that I don't care.

So meditating a lot, and maintaining that state for the whole day really pays off at some point. Changing your baseline IS POSSIBLE.


Also this is my 1000th post, and I feel so grateful today so I wanted to thank everyone for being part of this special place on the internet. It has been 2 years since the infamous taken down solipsism video which made me finally set up an account here. Beautiful 2 years of dying ever more with you guys 

[Osaid]

Woah, nice, whatever it is. I think you are tapping into something really big. Time will tell.

Thoughts and imagination are always partial. If you imagine reality, it limits it, and that can feel claustrophobic. I talk about that more here:

Pay attention to your perception of time and your emotions, interested to know if you notice anything there.

Edited March 7 by Osaid

[Arthogaan]

27 minutes ago, Osaid said:

Woah, nice, whatever it is. I think you are tapping into something really big. Time will tell.

Thoughts and imagination are always partial. If you imagine reality, it limits it, and that can feel claustrophobic. I talk about that more here:

Pay attention to your perception of time and your emotions, interested to know if you notice anything there.

These are good points. It's like thoughts and labels and categorization kind of come with the feeling of "meeh, I saw this kind of object a 1000 times already". So this is an artificial filter, and when you are fully without thoughts even the subtlest deepest ones, then reality really feel like looking through the eyes of a kid. Or on lsd. Or through the eyes of a kid that is on LSD.

When it comes to you using your imagination, do you experience it like universe itself generates it? Because after the illusion of personal self is gone that's how it feel to me, that it's not even me imagining things, but this imaginative images just come here.

[Water by the River]

You are very welcome.

1 hour ago, Arthogaan said:

And it's honestly just crazy how much more vibrant everything was. Smells, colours, the pleasantness of breath and touch and even sore knees. I don't really understand it how does it work and how is it possible that thoughts and concepts make life so much dulled down.

The Tibetans know that path and these effects since centuries. It is the standard development along this path... :

Two pathways of Awakened Awareness [Nondual boundless Awareness].

1) At some point you realize that you're not operating out of an individual localized consciousness anymore but you're operating out of being the Unbounded Wholeness, a place that is no place has no location and has no reference point. [Pathway of Non-localization]

2) Or, at some point you recognizes something quite evidently distinct from Awakened Awareness to ordinary awareness

• it has brightness
• it has awakeness
• it has intensity
• it has softness
• it has sacredness
• it has sparkling immediacy

[Pathway of metacognitive awareness of these attributes of Awakened Awareness to monitor if one is in this awake state or in ordinary clouded awareness]

So there's something evident about Awakened Wwareness in its brightness and lucidity and its just awake. It is different from ordinary awareness

So once you recognize that as something it's usually quite familiar you're recognizing and you've found your way back to your True Nature. Once you recognize that it's usually a big shift, and that is why it is linguistically marked [in the heart sutra mantra of “GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA”

That that's why it's linguistically “PARASAMGATE” gone way way beyond the localization of individual consciousness in your information processing systems operation to Awakened Awareness. And it's accompanied by a huge metacognitive recognition that this is something quite different from what you usually experience “BODHI SVAHA”, ooh what a realization.

So when you have that you see that you're operating out of that vast limitless ocean of brilliant Awakened Awareness Love that is your True Nature.

How do you don't judge the authenticity of it it used the accompanied by moving your heart. If it's accompanied by spontaneous gratitude or devotion or compassion you're on the right track.

That's the first map. If you learn something in this path that self-importance isn't terribly important. Somebody once sent me a picture. It said “I finally looked at the bigger picture in life. I wasn't in it”. 

 

Life is different when lived from Awakened [nondual] Awareness. The world gets suffused with brightness, lucidity, love, joy and bliss. You see for the first time how all these filters and lenses of the separate self literally have solidified and darkened the brightness and lucidity (nondual mere appearance, vivid, sometimes hologram-like nature) of the nondual infinite field/vastness. Mere bright appearance flowing in Infinity.

That, and the bliss of True Being that starts flowing and sustains itself in these states, is what sustains Awakened Nondual States in daily life, and lets it ripen... It is a positive feedback-loop which stabilized and ripens the "baseline" of the mindstream towards nondual non-separate Boundless Infinite Awakened Awareness. The path starts shows itself to itself.

Selling Water by the River

 

Edited March 7 by Water by the River

[Osaid]

44 minutes ago, Arthogaan said:

 It's like thoughts and labels and categorization kind of come with the feeling of "meeh, I saw this kind of object a 1000 times already". So this is an artificial filter, and when you are fully without thoughts even the subtlest deepest ones, then reality really feel like looking through the eyes of a kid. Or on lsd. Or through the eyes of a kid that is on LSD.

Yes. This is related to the separate self; the assumption that there was a "you" in the past which saw it many times.

Knowledge ties into the past self too. There is knowledge generated from that past self, that you can "know" what you are experiencing because you saw it before or heard someone talk about it before. This knowledge partitions what you are looking at into various parts and dualities, thus limiting your perception of it.

44 minutes ago, Arthogaan said:

When it comes to you using your imagination, do you experience it like universe itself generates it? Because after the illusion of personal self is gone that's how it feel to me, that it's not even me imagining things, but this imaginative images just come here.

That's a way to put it.

Existentially, I see it as if "nothing" is generating it. It is appearing out of nothing. Which is to say, there is no thing in your experience which generates it, and thus there is no limit or context to it either. This is essentially how I see the rest of my experience too. Even calling it "imagination" or "thought" takes away from what it truly is, in the exact same way that labelling anything else would. It is just an undefined experience, it can't be put into any kind of explanation. It is not real or unreal, and it is not imagination or non-imagination, it is simply just "nothing", which means it is completely undefined. Any way you try to define it or explain it is itself imagination, catch-22. 

Aside from that, I practically see thought/imagination as a reaction to your surroundings. If you smell food, you will imagine food. If there is a robber in your house, you will imagine ways to fight the robber. There is not really someone who chooses to have those thoughts, but it is just an intelligent reaction to your environment. You never ask yourself "do I want to imagine something?" before imagining something, because that kind of choosing never occurs as it would create an impossible paradox.

Edited March 7 by Osaid

[Water by the River]

1 hour ago, Arthogaan said:

So meditating a lot, and maintaining that state for the whole day really pays off at some point. Changing your baseline IS POSSIBLE.

... and with the right tools & techniques it doesn't need a "brutal face against the wall for 10 years concentration meditation" approach to do that/change baseline. Althought in the beginning, concentration meditation is useful.

There are more sophisticated/efficient meditation systems/methods, and less sophisticated systems/methods...

The less efficients ones are more robust (against erros along the path), but less efficient/slower. Shovel vs. excavator.

 

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, Arthogaan said:

And it's honestly just crazy how much more vibrant everything was. Smells, colours, the pleasantness of breath and touch and even sore knees. I don't really understand it how does it work and how is it possible that thoughts and concepts make life so much dulled down.

It is extremely hard to live in a dull, blocked and anxious state, and it is the normal state of most people. I would say that the main reason is fear. After childhood we come to the conclusion that control is absolutely necessary. We sift the flow of existence and translate it into concept in order to control it and thus achieve what we perceive as essential: fitting into society.

The concept is not absolute, it is relative to society and this creates a state of constant insecurity, anxiety. neuroticism, mental illness. Our entire mental landscape is bounded, divided, limited, defined, according to arbitrary definitions. We consume tons of mental content: movies, novels, essays. All of this is shaping our control software and making it more sophisticated. We begin to consume spirituality and our software takes on spiritual nuances, but the control is always there, iron, impossible to let go.

Our mind is a steel corset, and living in it is truly and totally miserable shit. Congratulations comrade, because it is perceived that you have really been able to get out of the prison, from the scam that almost always entails being a human. Now your mind is free, and your mind is reality itself. happiness, flow, beauty, joy. like when you were a child but even more so, because you have infinity at your fingertips.

[Guest Bazooka Jesus]

@Arthogaan

That's amazing. Congrats on the system upgrade, comrade!

22 hours ago, Arthogaan said:

And it's honestly just crazy how much more vibrant everything was. Smells, colours, the pleasantness of breath and touch and even sore knees. I don't really understand it how does it work and how is it possible that thoughts and concepts make life so much dulled down.

Well, it's pretty simple: If you put all of your focus and attention on one thing, then you automatically pull it away from everything else. The problem isn't that thoughts exist; it is your compulsive obsession with them that effs you over. It's like with romantic obsession... if you are completely infatuated with one girl, then all others will just seem "meh" to you. In the same way, if you're obsessing over your thoughts, then the rest of reality will seem "meh". See?

Here's a perhaps even better analogy: Imagine you are standing in front of your bedroom window and look outside; but instead of focussing on what's going on out there, you instead focus on the glass of the window. What will be the result? All the stuff outside will become blurred and dull within your vision. And when your focus lies neither on the window glass nor the world outside but instead on the thought "I am standing here in my bedroom looking at the window in front of me", then both widow and outside world become blurred and dull.

So, the way I see it it's not so much about eliminating all thoughts as it is about "seeing through them" and recognizing them for what they are: Passing appearances within reality, like everything else in existence. As such, they have neither more nor less significance than anything else that arises within THIS. When you give your thoughts no more importance than the glass of your bedroom window, then reality becomes alive and vibrant because your awareness is no longer imbalanced; now everything is equally important, equally alive, equally DIVINE.

At least that's what I think.

 

Edited March 8 by Bazooka Jesus

[Guest Bazooka Jesus]