tsuki

A moment that thought references another thought is the moment that we miss that a thought is being thought. We identify with that thought, until of course we notice that identification. Then, we say that we shouldn't have identified with it. Missing the fact that another thought is being thought.

When questions such as those are being posed, about the nature of substance in a given perspective, one becomes open to observing reality from different angles. One such idea is about listening carefully to one's thoughts, as in meditation. All the thinking about the world and about oneself is being thought by whom, exactly? In other words: what is the substance of the mind? There is no answer to such a question. Each thought is an expression of an inaccessible fact and becomes a fact the moment it is not being thought. It is being created from thin air and returns back into thin air. There is no pile of thoughts from which thoughts are being drawn. They arrive, one thought at a time, like this text - a word by word. There is no bird's eye view about thoughts from tomorrow. No - all thoughts are here now, even the thoughts about other thoughts. The stream goes like this: Man, I really shouldn't have snapped at that guy yesterday. I thought that he was being too cocky, but now I can see that he was simply scared of me. Is that really a memory of yesterday? Or is it a story that just came up about something that supposedly happened? What reference point do you have to be sure that it actually happened? But tsuki, I can ask other people what happened! Well, isn't that a proof that memory is an idea that only makes sense in relation to other people? That you cannot confirm by yourself whether your past is really true? What is the basis for constructing subjective reality then? What basis do you have to say that, lets say - you shouldn't have been angry yesterday? Is it really always possible to externally tell whether another person is angry or not? Maybe you weren't really angry, but scared? Have you never lied about what you feel so that you trust other people's judgement about what happened in the past? You are simply being bamboozled by your thoughts. They are like a beautiful woman that passes in front of you and you simply cannot look away. She becomes your world, until of course, you get to know her and she becomes ordinary. To be free of the mind is to make the thoughts ordinary enough so that you are actually allowed to look away. There is nobody there that thinks these thoughts. They simply arise, like clouds in the sky.

I read the version by Ursula Le Guinn. It is not a scientific translation, but a compilation of them with the intent of capturing the poetic beauty of the original. Ursula Le Guinn is a renown author of many bestsellers. You can find this version in PDF on the web.

@Freakrik You're curious of afterlife, but have you explored the beforelife? What was it like in the beforelife?

From the point of view of the mind, facts are singularity. What are facts made of? Facts are made of words and structure between them. What are words made of? Letters? No, words have meaning which is a relation to other words. A car is in a relation to a seat, and a driver, and a steering wheel. It has similarity to a road, traffic and global warming. But what is a relation and structure? Relation is a connection. Structure is a net of connections. What is a connection, hmm? In order to understand words, you need to understand words. Why a car brings us to global warming? What is the reason for that? Are thoughts waves within the invisible space of facts? What's that? Just more thoughts and more facts. Fragmentation that breeds fragmentation. Facts are being stirred, and the stirring is what is observed.

From the point of view of the world, matter is a singularity. Is reality composed of atoms? What are atoms composed of? Are atoms composed of hadrons? What are hadrons composed of? Are they composed of quarks? What are quarks made of? hmm? Is it that we don't know or we can't measure? At which point material substance cannot be subdivided? At the Planck's length? Now, now - Planck's length is derived from quantum mechanics that says that matter is a wave within an unobservable field. At which point a particle stops being a particle and starts being a wave? Always? Never? Is it both? This escape from the standard model into quantum mechanics is an invisible tunnel through singularity. From the point of view of the standard model, a quark is a singularity. From the point of view of quantum mechanics, a wave is a singularity. Singularity = Singularity.

Various perspectives have seemingly different singularities. Singularity has no properties and is indescribable, as it is an intrusion from outside of perspective. One can only describe singularity from within the inhabited perspective by changing it. Change never arrives at what is being changed.

@K VIL Me neither . It doesn't mean that I'm trolling you though.

@Joseph Maynor @Faceless Knowing has various meanings. Don't get too hung up on ambiguity. From the perspective of Existential Truth (in Joseph's philosophy), all words have no meaning and are hardpoints that attach models to experience. Models being structure between words that give possibility for experience to be tangible.

Substance of the fully inhabitated perspective is what constitutes a singularity. Singularity has no properties and defies reason. Singularity is open and yet, inaccessible. Singularity can be expressed by change, but never observed in itself, because it doesn't exist. Singularity is a paradox. An artifact of the perspective that is being inhabited.

Any perspective can be inhabited fully. This habitation will produce artifacts which may prompt one to disregard, or worship other perspectives. Full inhabitation of a single perspective is apparent, when the substance and change of this particular perspective is used to explain the other perspectives. The inhabited perspective is regarded as reality, which accounts for all phenomena. From the perspective of the world, feelings are muscle movements and thoughts are neurons firing. From the perspective of the mind, action is will and feelings are intentions. From the perspective of the body, action is movement and thoughts are perception. The substance of other perspectives than the one inhabited are deemed unreal and the home substance is deemed as tangible. It is very difficult for the perspective of the world to deal with facts and health and those are expressed as states of matter. For the perspective of the mind, it is difficult to deal with matter and health and those are expressed as facts. For the perspective of the body, it is difficult to deal with matter and facts and those are expressed as health (of self, others, organizations). The deemed substance of reality (matter for world, facts for mind, health for body), however is never questioned and results in puzzlement when inquired. Self-inquiry of fully inhabited perspective leads to further fragmentation of substance into various categories.

Each substance from perspective of its own domain is inexpressible in its own terms. There is no possibility to observe facts within the mind, matter within the world and health within the body. Change within a domain is an expression of the substance: Thoughts express facts. Actions express matter. Feelings express health. The self-chatter of the mind is a constant processing of the facts. It expresses the facts and relates them to other facts. We know our facts because we think them. Observation and measurement are actions upon matter. We observe the world by bouncing matter off other matter. The result of this bouncing (interaction) is a movement of matter: let's say - a tip of a gauge, an electron within a neuron. Assessment of health is done through feeling. We feel various degrees of suffering and pleasure, both mentally and physically. When we feel cold, we know to find shelter. When we're hungry, we're attracted to food. When we cut ourselves in a finger, we grab it to prevent bleeding. When we feel infatuation, we'll do anything to be close to the other person.

Each perspective has its own, distinct substance that is being changed: Substance of the world is matter Substance of the mind is facts Substance of the body is health Names of the respective substances are arbitrary, but are pointers to something that is static. Substance of each respective perspective is something that is accumulated and changed. In each perspective, a change is constantly occurring with respect to its own substance. The substance of each of these perspective is changed back into itself. Category theory calls this kind of transformation identity, but this name is reserved within this framework to avoid confusion. The names of transformations within their respective domains are following: Transformation within the mind that changes facts into other facts is called thought Transformation within the world that changes matter into different matter is called action Transformation within the body that changes health back to itself is called feeling.

Reality has three perspectives that occur simultaneously: The mind The body The world Each of these perspectives can be conceptualized as a dimension. Sort of like a dimension on a three-dimensional Cartesian space. These perspectives contain various phenomena, and are disjoint: None of the phenomena occurring in the world, occur in the mind. None of the phenomena occurring in the mind, occur in the body. None of the phenomena occurring in the body, occur in the world.

@How to be wise It's okay. Do you mind explaining why do you assert that?

@Hotaka As I go again and again through your posts here, I notice that it is very difficult to read them. I missed a lot of depth in your posts in my responses from yesterday. Sorry about that. I would appreciate if you broke your responses up into paragraphs in the future. Other than that, your words resonate with me a lot. Would you mind sharing your own experience?

So, there's been this feeling of spaciousness behind my eyes, 'inside', while I meditate. At first, it was difficult to attain and after some practice, it came easily. Now it manifests itself on its own. At first, I was describing it as 'pressure', or 'tension', but I really like to call it spaciousness. It's a feeling that bears similarity to inhaling deeply. With 'lungs'/'chest' however it has limited capacity and there is a point after no more 'air' comes in. Spaciousness in forehead during meditation is more like constant, never-ending inhalation/expansion. There are actually two 'places' in which it manifests - both inside of my head, 'behind' my eyes. It first appeared somewhere directly over my eyes, centered. Now it 'sits' on top of my head, or on the back of my head. There was a point when I could move it from one place to the other and it felt as if it was going through a small pipe, or a straw. It is not focused, like touch for example, but more blurred. Radiating over the whole inside of my head. Like spaciousness of breath is blurred over lungs. As I'm writing this post I came to realization that I can extend the area over which I can feel it, but to some degree. I was wondering if it's possible to extend it over the whole 'inside' of my body and I was able to do it to some degree, but felt resistance. I know that all of this sounds weird, but do you had any experience with this kind of phenomenon? Does this description fit into any framework of growth that you know and I can work with?

Emptying your mind can lead to reconnection with the world through physical body, like @Quanty suggests. Going through transition of perspective can be pretty traumatic though, so I'm not sure how that would interact with the depressed mind.

Bliss/joy/peace are one experience for me. From one point of view, it is calmness/stillness. The emotional pond is still, without anger/fear/guilt/shame, etc. From another point of view, the peace is blissful. It is a feeling of being completely dead inside, like nothing would ever move me. It is a pleasant feeling! I do feel emotions, but because the pond is mostly still, I can easily identify and direct them. They are not negative, but neutral. This redirection from, lets say, anger to negative thoughts is conditioned into movement that reinterprets the experience into something more positive. There is a tension during aggravating moments, but this tension is internally resolved through equalization in thoughts. Feelings are being let go, automatically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy

@Hotaka I don't know. Let's see if you can relate: I always come out of thought into the crown, or third eye. From there I can shift between the two down to the throat and no further. It is stuck at the throat and if I leave it there, it silences the mind. It feels like a blockage, because I cannot move it down below to other areas. It can also be interpreted as an excitement of the throat because of a constant flow downwards. It doesn't seem to be directed towards anything below. As if the capacity of spaciousness of the chest was too great to be filled with this flow. When I let the crown go through the throat, I can simultaneously focus on the breath. With the throat active, as I exhale, I can 'pump' the spaciousness through my spine downward, towards the root (anus?). As i do this, I feel pleasant vibrations throughout the spine. It feels as if the space reached the root and reversed, shooting upwards. I wonder if I can reach the heart this way, or there needs to be a third movement, irrespective of the throat and breath. At the early stages of my meditation practice, I felt two movements of this space that I can relate to now. Both felt as if I was a superconductor for the space. One was like the space shifted through me downwards. It felt as if I was infinitely heavy. Pinned down to the ground. It did not even occur to me to move in this state. It was like I was eternal, like the space itself. My whole body, every inch of it, became aware of the movement down. The other experience was when the space moved upwards. It felt then, as if I was weightless. As if my body didn't exist. This body feels like a gland of the space, yes. It is a way to pump it. It feels as if I was an organ within the cosmic body that influences this space. The cosmic body being me. It is not something other/alien, but me. I can shift from the mind-perspective into the body-perspective that I just described. I have come here by developing the mind-perspective to the point in which it became similar to the spaciousness. This is how it was possible to me to cross the body-mind barrier. This barrier is what I call the identity. Psychology operates on this boundary, where the mind and the body meet. Yes. Everything about me is arbitrary now. The self-story is a matter of choice. It all became an intertwined mess of events with no apparent causality. I don't see auras per se, but I can recognize forms of energy in non-scientific terms. People seem to have problems with funneling some forms of energy into other. Like connection with people into money, or money into understanding. We're too heavily grounded in objective perspective and cannot deal with money properly. It stagnates and builds up. I haven't thought about the space-time correspondence in-depth yet. From the body perspective, everything is here and now. There is no time in this domain. I think that you will find this graph useful:

@MarkusSweden From my point of view, material reality is perspective-independent. You can apply many perspectives on top of it and you will get different results depending on the definition of the current perspective. When your mind becomes open enough so that you do not fear ambiguity, you can inspect your models of reality closely to see that they are, in fact, hollow. Words have many different meanings and if you do not inspect them, you may run into a trap of thinking that your models are reality. The moment that you think that something is obvious is the moment that you missed your judgement. The same reasoning applies to prediction of people's motivation. People do hings for all kinds of reasons and assuming upfront that they are stupid is the expression of your model of society. You should learn your own stupidity, so that the word 'stupid' becomes emotionally neutral. It has to stops meaning 'the other person'. Learning all of the wicked sides of your personality is a very potent equalizer of judgement. There is no such thing as collective unconscious in reality. Perhaps I have not yet awakened to the degree you have been describing. This is why material world has to be perspective-neutral. The state of consciousness cannot be something externally observable. This is why spiral dynamics is cyclic. There is no way to tell from your perspective whether somebody else is lower or higher than you. You can only tell whether they are on even, or on odd stage (with respect to you), but never if they are lower or higher. The world is relative to perspective you have and perspectives are disjoint. I think that judgement of others is self-miscommunication. A lack of mastery of the mind. Unfortunate, but common. Not perfect, but essentially unknowable. Saying something about somebody else is an expression of your understanding of the world. Negative judgement is an expression of misaligned perspectives. I do. This is a clue however. The one-eyedness is the reason of ambiguity. Instead of saying that it is a flaw, embrace it to become free. True freedom lies in perfect balance. Not a balance on top of a mountain so that a small wind tips you over to fall. It is a balance in a valley. A beach ball does not care for storm, as it is all the same to it which direction is up and which is down. It is not stable, nor unstable. It is a neutral balance. (See the article)

It is fascinating how various cultures came to this realization through the breath into various areas of the body. I seem to have broke through the mind, increasing the frequency of thoughts so that they become more similar to other bodily sensations. I can see how stilling the mind with meditation can be a different approach. Making it silent so that it focuses on the body.

I am not gathering knowledge, but exploring structure. I am aware that words are empty and it is a matter of choice, or habit to connect them to certain phenomena. What I am interested in is exploring the structure, or relationships within a theory and map it onto my experience to see what it predicts. I am not gathering facts. This is what science misses and remains silent with respect to the inner work. Funny, how just a new hours ago I thought that my spaciousness is being blocked at the throat. Then, I started to think that it is not a blockage, but a constant flow downwards. A release of the pressure from the crown. Then, it seemed like the empty space of my chest was so vast that no amount of channeling from the crown would fill it. Now, I can see that the fact that I linked the spaciousness of the head with the chest was not accidental. Chest is a pump of its own, drawing space from the 'outside'. I did an interesting experiment. As I channeled the space through my throat, I stopped breathing. It seems that the body was more relaxed with respect to oxygen deprivation. I will do more tests when I will get back home. Got some work to do.

I described something like this in my other thread. Can you relate to this experience? Try to be open-minded about it. What we call spaciousness may not be the same thing, after all. What's important here is the structure, not the content. How you can interact between the parts of your body. The inner touch is an interesting way to put it. It is an interesting idea to link this with scientific knowledge about our body. Do you think that inner touch of different areas of the body is a way to influence its operation?