Barriers to Enlightenment

Naw, I think they get it, they just have no confidence that it is true. We have ancient memories of struggle in our lizard brain.

 

Agreed.

We both know why it isn't the way people imagine it to be. But why, indeed, do people imagine as they do?

Might I suggest that it is, in part, because they have been trained to think as they do? Could you comment on this notion?

Ah, well, too bad I can't get any closer than third-hand. I used to test claims like that one; it was fun.

Please explain what you mean by "state of being" as it pertains to a typical human.

Ah, yes! I learned a lot about that when I saw the need to quit drinking and (later on) cigarettes. It's quite a kick to the ego to discover that we're not calling the shots as easily as we'd like to imagine we can.

What behavior were you attempting to change?

"Part" of the discerning mind? I want to be sure I am not misunderstanding you, so please elaborate.

 

I do not think of the lizard brain in terms of having memories per se. Would you consider it equally valid to say that the lizard brain is conditioned by those ancient struggles? Or are you proposing that we can evoke conscious memories from that region of the brain?

 

Is quantum probability field collapse a term with a common definition, I am not familiar with it.

 

You could suggest such a thing, and since you do, perhaps we could extend that in all ways and say the world is not full of unsound men, but men who have learned so well, unsound principles.
Perhaps one reason to imagine as we do is the idea that today, is not my day to die. Some one said something about living lives of quiet desperation. Everyone can see things can be gawd awful fucked up, but this moments comfort always seems easier to rob from the hard facts of time.

One of those hard facts is that no one knows the hour of their own demise so, all of our projections for the future are potentially and therefore ultimately, fanciful. Surely there is a better way than pursuing, "what rust and moth doth corrupt and destroy".

I can be pretty precise if you will allow me to some axiomatic language.
First off when I say human being I mean the mind that is synthesis between sensation and knowledge. That being has a vibrational nature, (evidence beating heart). That vibrational nature we may call tone. Tone from the greek tonos meaning to stretch. Your vibrational tone is dependent on how you are stretched. You may have been witness to a situation where a new arrival in a room will project an obvious tension, you can "feel it in the air"

Now comes the axiom, "where your treasure lies, there is your heart also."

Treasure is that which you consider good, true, or valuable. So we have an emotional being that is informed by those things we take stock in. You can bet if your truth is suspect that your emotional being or tone, will be unsettled.
Anxiety is caused by the misapprehension of what is so, (false, god good truth). A mind without anxiety, is wholly kind.

We can listen to a composition and perhaps sing along, (absorption), we can refuse to listen, (reflection), Or we can compose ourselves, (polarity).

So by human state of being I mean, that state of tension or attention that reflects or affects ones determination to be, intent.

I really don't remember, it has been so long since I practiced he did she did.
Maybe something about a conflict between the desire to play and the responsibility of meeting expectations.

How about the I am I call myself is the same I am you call yourself. Our bodies are common biological stock and we are of one mind with many cells so to speak. In simplest terms, we share our thoughts.

 

Y'know, I often find it difficult to understand you, TheDope. Your writing reminds me of someone who is thinking out loud. There's really no need to keep demonstrating how smart you are; you've already proven it to yourself countless times. Maybe you can stop now.

In any case, I think I understood this bit. We appear to share the same views on this matter.

It seems that very few people genuinely "get" the "one mind with many cells" perspective. But let's make sure that we are speaking of the same thing.

Please explain what you mean by this in simple, logical, high-school language. You can assume I'm an idiot and give some easy examples to illustrate your explanation.

Thanks.

 

All work and no play huh. My normal waking thoughts are not centered around
what the plan of the day might be or what I might like to do to entertain myself.
My head is a constant stream of statements of principle.
Some people think I am a quote a day machine or something like that. It is just the way I think and what I think about. Also my statements are usually a distilled and condensed form of a great volume of practice and experimentation. It would not be unusual for me to be asked to fill things out a little more.

If there is some specific point that you find difficult, perhaps you could point those points out when they occur. It doesn't bother me in the least to expound and expand if I can determine where you are needing assistance. That you often find it difficult to understand me, is kind of vague as to content. I don't think you should confuse your momentary lapse of understanding with an effort on my part to befuddle you.

I think I had already used the simplest terms by saying we share our thoughts. It seems as though we have private thoughts but these thoughts are stimulated by the very same mammalian characteristics we all share. We all have the same types of thoughts at one time or another. Not only do we share our thoughts but when we do, they are strengthened. The thought remains yours and becomes someone elses' thought as well. A concentration of mental energy. Minds join, bodies touch.

 

During the day I have different thoughts. They judge, they are about the enlightenment, some focus on meditation and attention, they reveal repressed emotions and repressed hatred. They all have one thing in common, selfishness/egocentrism, manifested in several ways. Whether for or against. So when a peak of sadness/anxiety is reached, a deep reflection makes me want to observe the conflicts.

The good part about it, is that the sadness and the anxiety are momentaneous, not like before when they were present all the day.

One day I was meditating and I had an insight about life, as we were made ​​known, a thought came, saying that the day would be night and night should be the day.

That same day a few hours later the same thought appeared after I had returned to (a restless) mind and I didn't understand. An emptiness "said" the meaning was not the same.

We can observe it in this thread or any time in life when we try to comunicate. We say something but when the other people hear it, she is the one that has the power to understand it in the way she wants to.

To me life is like a movie. At the beginning we are the spectator, but little by little our attention is focused on the film, we begin to feel increasingly identified with the characters, until we begin to feel the same as him. Sometimes when something upsets us too much and makes us question reality, we turn to feel ourselves. These are the moments existence tells us to meditate, to live it, to get back to ourselves.

Today's message: Love.

:love:

hehe

 

Neosimian;

"sometimes we might have a "theory of mind" for the other person so that we can hold in mind a simulation of what they are currently believing about what we're saying."


This is an interesting observation. It is actually about ego as social currency. The ego or the sense of personal identity associated with the uniqueness of one's own body, designs a front or image that it will seek to project on to the world. Emphasizing those things that it thinks will contribute best to ones own "reputation" and suppressing those things that one feels will present them in a less than worthy light. This aspect of the human psyche is what is referred to in esoteric circles as the money changers in the temple

Not only do we fashion an ego for ourselves but we make one for everyone else as well. That ego being associated with that body. The people around you either enforce your sense of self, challenge your sense of self, or leave you to yourself, and you do the same for them.

Such an ego is a false front being devised and supported by deception. Not only is it not honest to or within itself, but it fails to ascertain the true nature
of the inhabitants of those bodies that they see. They appear to be, "not me", but such barriers do not exist for the abstract mind. We can be entirely synchronous in thought to where there is no separation in fact. Where our thoughts can be identical, our bodies are not, identical.

 

Just as in any exercise, we gain strength through practice. If we can do it for one minute, then we can do it for two, and if we can do it for two, we can do it for five and on until there is no more going in and out.

Another important point. In this life some will embrace us and some will not, no matter what we do. The apparent sense of responsibility for the way some one else feels is a false one. We can help if help is accepted, but the individual mind is a kingdom that the individual alone can rule. Nobody can take your place and you can fill in for no one else.

The most helpful thing initially is to not be part of the problem, remove the log from your own eye so to speak.

There is another element to that observation and that is you are in fact the movie maker in every respect, seeing yourself an actor in the movie. As we become absorbed in our very convincing parts, we forget that we are the maker of the movie and we can change or exchange the parts that we play at any moment. We feel trapped by circumstance when the circumstance itself is bounded by our own script.

Depreciating the power of your own mind is a barrier to enlightenment.

Ahhh,... what's that?

 

I do not think you are attempting to befuddle me. Rather, I think you are more interested in impressing yourself than communicating.

The thoughts are, of course, affected by our animal characteristics. However, I'd like to hear your opinion about the content of those thoughts. To what extent is that content truly private — that is, originating exclusively from the thinker? And to what extent are we simply reprocessing that which has been given to us by the environment (especially including the people around us)?

 

I hope you don't mind me replacing "The thoughts" with "brain noise" in my quote above. That appears to be what you're talking about.

I'm intrigued that you singled out the "for or against". In my experience, brain noise is often like the opposite of equanimity, constantly attempting to fix, improve, condemn, compare, evaluate, dissect etc.

That kind of brain noise seems to arise from an initial (but wordless) judgment which means: "This is good" or "This is bad" or "I am for this" or "I am against this" or even "I am not this".

Thus, to give one example: "I need to be enlightened because I am against not being enlightened".

Does this sound familiar to you?

Ah, yes, this is familiar. Once, a few decades ago, the phrase "What is, is" came into my mind. Suddenly, everything became clear; there was no longer any need to struggle or fight. It seemed that if everybody in the world knew what this meant (as I saw it then) there would be no more war.

A few hours later I had no idea what I was getting so excited about. Such a simple statement, but I could no longer understand it the same way.

Oh, I have pieced together the insight logically, and it still makes sense. But it lacks the connectedness to everything that the original insight had.

So I had to admit that the words were merely a point from which I was able to perceive the actual insight.

Imagine the disaster if I'd started preaching the insight without realizing that I'd lost most of it. Is this how some religions start?

Anyway, a similar thing happened about 5 years ago. In that case, the phrase was "Remember this day" — I'd heard the phrase in a song. It blew my mind when I saw what it meant to me at that moment. Yet I have my doubts that the song-writer meant it that way, and eventually I lost the meaning I'd ascribed to it.

I can think of at least one other example of this happening. It has probably happened a few more times than that.

Does this situation sound familiar to you?

Is this not an example of how ego arises within us, as we identify with a particular set of circumstances, and then mistake ourselves for those circumstances? Is this what you were trying to convey?

 

Aha, I get it! That's an amusing and poetic way to express the issue.

I am skeptical that thoughts can be identical. However, there can be a high degree of resonance — a lack of arbitrary difference. Is that what you meant?

 

It is one thing to be cool, it is another to act cool. This is a teenage lesson.
Could it be you would be better served addressing the content of what is said, rather than object to the form it is said in? If it challenges you to understand what I am saying, then meeting that challenge is a transcendent
step, going beyond what you have previously learned to what is yet to be learned. If a person tells me I am profound, I recognize that is their own profound seeing that they are commenting on. We share our thoughts.

There is a gate to which only you have the key to, that stands between the common mind and the individual mind. That gate is called kunda buffer in one tradition. It relates to the vedic models of energy systems. Perhaps you had heard of something called "kundalini". Sometimes you are not attending the gate and some thought may come up totally out of the blue and you wonder where the heck did that come from. It came from a sea of shared thought.

To what extent is our mind shared, totally. To what extent can you be aware or unaware of that, is the extent to which you put up no defenses to sharing your thoughts. All matter can be said to have three properties, they are absorptive, reflective, and polarized, or in polarity.

You can listen and even sing along to a composition and that is an absorptive state. You can, not listen to "external" compositions and this would be a reflective or non-absorptive state. When we are internally focused, we sometimes call that self reflective. And you can compose and perform your own composition and this would be in polarity with the minds purpose, which is to create.

Look at the money that may be in your pocket,
The function and power of that device is driven by shared thought

 

It is I think, more consistent with the idea of equanimity than the idea that the money changers in the temple were robbers and thieves of the sanctity of an edifice. The temple of god is the devotional heart of man and the practical appearance of god is in that which is invoked.

From the context of your statements, by "resonance", we take it you mean agreement. However, consider there is no moment when you do not resonate.

You must be willing to hold up even your own conclusions to continual scrutiny as life is emergent. It is no advantage to a man that he finds those most agreeable whom he agrees with.

 

Enlightenment = the Courage to Create. And Creative evaluated resolution form Work (Resolve is something else; too ethical to Me) = the Subject encountering the Object ecstatically.

 

Sometimes I get a hard on

 

I attempted to do this, TheDope, in the hope that I could find some flexibility in you. I sought to meet you half-way.

During my time with the Skeptics I learned that many autodidacts, when there is a lack of communication, consider it the responsibility of the other person to bridge the gap. I have now reluctantly concluded that this is how you operate.

You might one day discover, as I did a few years ago, that when people do not understand you it may be because you are erecting a wall of words. As I did, you can impress people with how clever or deep you are, but perhaps one day you will also see that erudition and obscurantism are powerful defenses for the ego.

I could be mistaken, of course. I will return once more to read your response and discover all the ways that I am wrong and you are right. I am unlikely to respond, though, because it seems that there's little or nothing here for me.

Vansrouge and Walsh: You're welcome to drop me a line, if you wish. Thanks for taking the time and making the effort to communicate.