Consilience

Member
 View profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    2,146

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Consilience

  1. Posted

    @Violinpracticerdude

    The experiences are what they are. But if you want to find the roof of spirituality start questioning the hell out of WHO or WHAT is witnessing those experiencing? Divert all of your rationality and focus on what is witnessing every bit of your direct experience. Not beliefs about who you think is witnessing it (ie a self) but actually directly experiencing the witness to not just spiritual experiences, but every day experiences as well. 

  5. Posted

    What’s really ironic about the idea that spirituality is escapism is that for me, I literally hit the limit of rationality and modern science which pushed me to explore alternative explanations of reality and consciousness. It had zero to do with escape and everything to do with discovering truth. You should watch Leo’s blog on metaphysics and epistemology.

     

    Look into the hard problem of consciousness, contemplate the true profundity of the idea that the map is not and can’t ever be the territory by definition, really wrap your mind around the fact that symbolic representation is always SYMBOLIC, eg not the thing it represents. Science, language, rationality are contingent upon ralationships and concepts, they are LITERALLY nothing more the constructs within the domain of mind. Reality is being itself though, not mental activity.

     

    Best advice I could give is go down the rabbit hole of rationality. You’ll eventually become so rational you’ll have no choice but to see the limits, and flaws of logic and reason and why using the traditional systems of thought you’ve been programmed with since birth wont cut it if you want to really understand the absolute nature of reality.

     

    And in the end, become so rational you become a mystic because that’s where it will ultimately lead. 

  7. Posted

    Here’s a list:

    • counting: you count 1 as you breath in, 2 as you breath out, 3 as you breath in, 4 breath out, ect., until you reach 10. Then start back at 1. Reallt good for building focus and quieting the mind.
    • Mantra: pick a word and repeate it to yourself as you breath. Similar to counting but it requires a bit more focus to maintain total focus on a single word. Great for building focus.
    • breath awareness: literally pin-pointing your focus on the breath for x amount of time. One of the more powerful focus techniques but it also is harder to remain in the focused state comapared to the other two listed. Great for again, building focus. 
    • Open-awareness: try to simply let the inner awareness that you fundamentally are radiate and permeated the entirety of your direct experience. With each breath focus on spreading awareness to every macro and micro aspect of your direct experience. Very powerful stuff if you can maintian this state (which happens via building focus). 
    • Do-nothing: similar to open awareness but your not trying to dictate what the mind does. You surrender all control and allow whatever happens to happen. This is particularly focused on building equanimity and is great for getting feedback on how active or inactive your mind is. Again, DONT control anything or attempt to. The point is to sit with yourself literally doing nothing. Ive found this only really works well if you’ve achieved a sufficiently quiet mind, otherwise you might just sit for an hour lost in thoughts.
    • Metta: Really powerful for giving compassion the space it needs to flourish. Focus on loving everything. If you cant love everything, visualize loving everything, imagine what it would be like to radiate with unconditional love and compassion. This is an extremely important practice because even if we’re building awareness with other practices, if you arent radiating with love, your ego is still alive and well. Egos have a problem with unconditional love, TRUTH is unconditional love and acceptance. Contemplate this and practice letting that space grow. 
    • Kriya Yoga: Kriya has various meditation techniques which are possibly more powerful for building focus and awareness than the previous types Ive mentioned, and it also taps into becoming mindful of our bodies and the various energectic channels which influence our direct experience. You’ll focus on opening up your chakras which then in turn makes normal meditation more effective. Im not an expert on Kriya though so maybe Im mistaken, but this has been MY experience.
    • Self Inquiry: you keep returning your mind to the question: “Who is this witness? Who is aware? What is witnessing all thoughts? What is witnessing these thoughts?” Question the hell out of what is IT that is actually aware. WHO is aware of the sense of self? It’s a very contemplative meditation technique but it trains your focus and mind on the truth of your existential nature and is extremely powerful. However it’s only powerful given that you have the focus to maintain your direct questioning.

     

    I hope this list helps!

  8. Posted

    Look into the concept of flexible dieting. It’s a method of eating a lot of natural (non-steroid using) bodybuilders use as they diet down for contest’s or even in their off season.

     

    The overall principle is eating “un-healthy” foods do not make or break your health. If you want to eat pizza occasionally, do it! But realize the majority of your diet needs be made of “healthy” foods. 

     

    I want to kinda echo the point though that the healthier you eat, and the longer you eat a healthy diet, the more enjoyable those healthier foods become. But don’t become so neurotic about these healthy foods though that you can’t sit down and enjoy a pizza haha. 

     

     

  12. Posted

    3 minutes ago, Jack River said:

    Does a technique, path, subduing create conflict? 

    After an inflection point in being-ness, yes. If one cannot “be” not necessarily. And herein lies my disagreement. I see your perspective, but I see the relativity in what you’re saying as well. 

    If a mantra brings one closer to being, they should follow that technique. Equally, this technique may one day create the conflict it once had subdued 

  13. Posted

    Just now, Jack River said:

    Can there be a ‘quietness’ if there is conflict? 

    The achieved part.. is there a reward to be had? 

    If there is conflict, there cannot be quietness. If there is not quietness, the illusion may persist. In this perspective, a technique may be a path towards subduing the conflict, carving the eventual persistence in being.

     

    There is no reward, there is only impermanence and an eventual transformation

  14. Posted · Edited by Consilience

    53 minutes ago, Jack River said:

     Technique to get somewhere...resist what is? 

    Is there freedom in that? 

    If you think techniques inherently go “somewhere” then we have different perceptions of the place and purpose of various meditation techniques. Which goes back to my point, I disagree and to each his own.

    What “is” is a world with many beings living in illusion. Depending on the depth if the illusion, practicing a technique may serve as a way to quiet said illusion. Once a threshold of being is achieved however, all techniques must be dropped.

     

    To not see the value in practicing techniques would be a foolish however. The path out of the matrix may not actually exist in the absolute sense, but the role of a seeker a the first step towards wht is, for some. 

  16. Posted

    On 9/26/2018 at 0:27 PM, How to be wise said:

    @outlandish shinzen Young said that it took him 20 years to the point where he could be happy in a traffic jam. Gosh, if he sat with Byron Katie, he could’ve done it in 20 mins. That’s why I say that inquiry is superior to meditation.

    Claiming one technique is universally superior than another is very myopic. What works for one may not work for another and vice versa. 

     

    @outlandish Thanks for the video! 

     

  19. Posted

    The best way to involve out of stage green and into yellow is to start developing and implementing personal development systems. So for example:

    Do you have systems for:

    • Sleep
    • Nutrition
    • Exercise
    • Meditation
    • Contemplation
    • Service
    • Reading
    • Financial infrastructure 
    • Discipline

    I wouldn't get too crazy with the cheese wiz with creating systems or trying to be "perfect," however, take careful note of that last bullet. It seems like one of the ways you're holding yourself back is that you lack discipline. Discipline is ironically a very stage orange quality (it can be stage orange, but honestly every stage in the spiral dynamics spiral can utilize discipline). Nonetheless, discipline is going to be an absolute necessity as you continue down the path of personal development and spirituality. So developing a system for the development and implementation of discipline can become extremely beneficial. 

    The best advice I could give is to start slow. Start building a productive and healthy habit (literally in any domain, whether sleep, nutrition, exercise, etc.) and STICK WITH IT. Create a habit so easy that it's impossible to fail unless you're just not committing. And then keep building this habit more and more and more, day after day after day, week after week after week... This is what I would consider a discipline system. Discipline isn't built over night, but once the various disciplines you've implemented turn into habits, they are much more easily sustainable. 

    And that's really what this boils down to. You're going to need sustainable and disciplined behaviors as you continue down this path. And in my experience, the best way to develop a disciplined behavior is to start small and then slowly increase it over time. As you generate your capacity for discipline itself, your capacity to implement new systems is going to increase as well, which will allow you to really blossom into stage yellow. 

    Hopefully this helps.    

  20. Posted

    I don't think this would be a trap. The letting go of suffering, or the letting go of the concept that cold = suffering in your case, is very much a form of meditation. Have I had similar experiences? In a way yes, in so far as experiencing pain for itself rather than experiencing pain as suffering. Any sensation which causes suffering is not inherently a sensation of suffering. It is only until our ego's conceptually label sensations (such as cold) as suffering do they actual cause suffering haha. 

    But yeah meditation is powerful stuff! It's not surprising that you're able to achieve this even with little practice. I would continue to contemplate on your experience and try and sink deeper and deeper into states of being, experiencing consciousness AS ITSELF without labeling your present experience as "good" or "bad." 

    Awesome insight dude! 

  21. Posted · Edited by Consilience

    I would still practice meditation just due to the myriad of health benefits (physical, mental and emotional). On the other hand, self inquiry seems to be centered around realizing a state of being-ness, which is ultimately the "action" being taken during any type of meditation. You are "being" in the moment, utterly present and everlastingly aware. Though self inquiry helps point towards the right direction, building the laser pointed focus required for self-inquiry to be effective is achieved (in my experience) through various meditation techniques such as counting, mantras, kriya yoga, metta-focused meditation, etc.  

    It's almost like in order for self inquiry to be effective, one needs the focus built form other meditation techniques. Many techniques work quite synergistically so I wouldn't give up old fashion meditation. 

    I'd be interested in what Leo's opinion is though. 

  22. Posted

    This post is going to be a trip report/an outline of insights and experiences I encountered last night while going to a rock concert with my step dad; the band is named Russian Circles. The drug used was weed. I smoked around 6 heavy hits of a strain called Gorilla Glue #4, dosed at 29.6% THC and 0.86% CBD, using a glass pipe. 

    *Warning, this will be a long post, but I'll have it organized by the experience so if you want to only read about certain topics, you can. 

    What I thought was going to be an otherwise "normal" rock concert ended up becoming a facilitator for 3 separate mystical/non-dual esque (I really have no idea what to call them) experiences. We walked into the venue and immediately it felt as though Russian Circle's music kind of shocked my nervous system... Like the vibrations where synchronizing with my body. It was loud of course, but also the style of music that Russian Circles plays is extremely rhythmic, has zero vocals, and is also very complex, so it's hypnotic in a way. They use a lot of loops in their music, so there are multiple layers of sounds going on at once. So we're literally just standing in the crowd and the more time that passes, the more and more it felt like I was beginning to sink into the rhythms of their music, as if my ego just kept getting increasingly quiet to the point where there was just the awareness of the music. More awareness, more awareness, more awareness... And then things got weird.



    Infinite Intelligence - 



    Probably around 15-20 minutes into the concert after becoming increasingly aware of and into the music, and after still being high as fuck from the weed, BOOM. I'm just in awareness. It was literally just fucking awareness. I was aware of these powerful rhythms, I was aware of all of my body sensations, the visuals of the show and crowd occupied my consciousness and there literally was no more sense of "I." It was just pure, unadulterated conscious experience. And then there was this clear and distinct disconnect from the music, from the crowd, from the power of that auditorium, and "I" just fucking saw into everything that was going on. It was like the universe revealed to me the complexity of every last mother fucking drop of reality. 

    It was as though I was peering into the amount of skill, time, energy, and fundamentally Intelligence, that it took those band members to perfect their craft, how much time and energy that went in to culminate into this beast of a performance, a performance that was able to drawn in a massive crowd and hold their attention, as if they had transcended into some sort of gods. I felt and saw the complexity of the musical vibrations, almost as if the sounds were "dancing" in some sort of patterned INTELLIGENT rhythm through vibration. "I" became aware of how much information and intelligence had transpired to create this exact moment in time in space, how much fucking evolution, how much cellular organization, how much practice and skill, how perfectly aligned the actual cosmos of our universe had to be aligned to create THIS PRESENT FUCKING MOMENT. The sheer intelligence of my absolute reality hit me like a freight train. Like... Every last drop of orgnazation and complexity for every last individual human, every brick of that building, every cell on that room, every atom, the velocity of our galaxy, the gravity of our sun, the pull of our moon, the psychology of these minds.. all of it just poured over awareness like a waterfall. 

    What was also so profound about this experience is I could actually feel the limitations of my consciousness on this matter. I saw just how utterly mind bogglingly complex this ONE FUCKING MOMENT was... And yet how much intelligence I still wasn't able to become conscious of. I'm sure if I had taken a real psychedelic, perhaps it could have facilitated further insight into the nature of this intelligence, but regardless of the strength of this insight and experience, I still was aware enough to see how much further room for growth there was. 

    One of the key insights I came into direct (as direct as I've ever been before) contact with is how that at every scale of reality, there is infinite of intelligence. Whether at the sub-atomic, atomic, physical, biological, psychological, social, all the way up to cosmic scale, there is infinite intelligence at play. The experience was actually beautiful and profound... and ultimately very elucidating. 



    Self Contractility - 



    The way Russian Circles organizes their music is that after each song plays, they play these soft yet melodic interludes before continuing on. So after the song that sent me flying head first into intelligence ended, I was kind of just sitting there shell shocked at what I'd just experienced. And then the music started up again...

    So at this point, my ego has returned somewhat and I'm a little overstimulated. What ended up happening was my vision just fixated on a man in the crowd. I was staring at the back of his head, at his silhouette. The music kept increasing.... harder and harder; volume and intensity rising and rising and dude I just kept staring at this random strangers head. This silhouette became the singular focus of my awareness, and it began to feel as though "I" WAS the silhouette, as if this outline was the source of any sense of self I could ever have. I became so fixated on this man that it truly felt like my sense of self just merged into his body, there was no more "my body" it was only "Silhouette."

    Intellectually, I've known for a while how arbitrary the "self" actually is. The ego/mind creates these artificial, arbitrary conceptual identities out of the human body that occupies our awareness 24/7. Just because this body happens to always occupy our present awareness, it does not follow that WE ARE THAT BODY. In fact, it's appropriate to say, we are AWARE of that body. Unfortunately, the illusion as a separate self, built off of layers and layers and layers of subconscious conceptual processes prevents the True Self from actually realizing its true nature. What this means is that the sense of a separate self is actually contractile in nature, and simply "morphs" around the body we always have a direct experience of, despite the fact that this is an arbitrary distinction. What happened with this man's silhouette was that this sense of self arbitrarily detached from "my" body and formed around his. This was achieved through a single laser pointed focus on his outline, so much so that the self "leaped" onto him. This is possible precisely because "my sense of self" is literally just as arbitrary as "my sense of self latching onto a man's outline." Each are bullshit, each are illusion, but each are achieved through a laser pointed focus on either my "sense of self" or another facet of present experience. 

    To put all of this more concisely, the self can expand and contract in any direction it wants, with equal validity in all directions BECAUSE there is no actual self, or EVERYTHING is you so any distinction is arbitrary and equally valid/invalid, depending on how you look at it. Knowing this intellectually is quite different that going through the literal experience of self contractility. 

     

    Energy Transformation - 


    Towards the end of the performance my ability to focus started really diminishing. It felt like I was in some sort of limbo, unable to really ground myself or make sense of the chaos that was going on. I wasn't freaking out or having an anxiety attack or anything, but it certainly felt like I had started to spiral into a very overstimulated state where all of the senses where clashing and fighting with one another. The music had turned into the propulsive and powerful force that was hammering me over and over with each wave of sound. 

    At the peak of my discomfort, I spontaneously dropped into a state of meditation and started to perform sushumna breathing. For those who don't know, this is a Kriya yoga technique where you essentially imagine/feel energy flowing up and down your spine through the 7 chakras. Through each breath, it felt like the energy of this performance started flooding into my crown and root chakras. What was so interesting though was it felt like I had started directing this overwhelming energy through my spine, and this somehow began to "recycle" the harsh energy of the show into alternative forms of creation. The sounds began to return to their beautiful state, and I began to slowly release the suffering from overstimulation by simple directing all of the energy into my spine. 

    A flash of insight into the nature of energy transformation entered my mind too. As the energy of these rhythms, visuals, and crowd were circulating through my spine, it felt like these were then transformed into and through my body. If anyone has heard of the term "Shakti" which is roughly defined as divine energy and the source of creation, it felt like I was coming into contact with this principle. How each and every facet of our reality transforms itself, through itself, with itself, and ultimately recycles itself into all of reality. As more and more of the shows energy poured into my spine, more and more I became conscious of the strange loopiness that is reality interacting with itself through transformation. 

    This last experience could have easily been more defined as a mystical experience rather than an insight into the nature of reality, however even from a materialistic paradigm, reality literally interacts with itself through transformation of energy and matter. It doesn't seem like too much of a leap to think that one may be able to become directly conscious of this facet. Meh.  

    Sidenote: If you don't do Kriya yoga, START. This shit is powerful as fuck and really starts to open up the mind, body and ultimately self. 

     

    Key Take Aways - 

     

    Fuck. 

    This was by far one of the most powerful experiences I've had on weed. It wasn't my most powerful, nor did this feel like an "enlightenment" experience, but nonetheless fuck. It was nice being able to directly experience mechanisms of reality, but I think the biggest take away I was left with was just how much further down the rabbit hole I have to go. Enlightenment goes really fucking deep... And despite how powerful of an experience last night was, I was shown just how much further my awareness has to grow. 

    So for now, I'll continue to chop wood and carry water. 

    P.S. For the forum members who still think weed can't be used as a tool for personal development and spiritual growth, fuck you (jk) ;) 

    P.S.S. If you actually read all of this, you're a G. 

  23. Posted

    3 hours ago, PsiloPutty said:

    @Consilience  Interesting. Did you come up with sunflower yourself? How long have you been doing it?

    No actually. I originally got the idea from a podcast called "Future Thinkers." Long story short, there was a guy on the podcast explaining how Sunflower was the mantra he used and I just kinda started using it ever since haha. 

    I've been using it for around 9 months now as a basic concentration technique, but only about 1 month ago has the mantra sort of transformed into more of a metta approach towards meditation. It was like... holy shit the mantra is more than just a sound. It's a bridge towards compassion, and consciousness which are ultimately tightly linked. I think the fact that Sunflower is a relative calm word has helped in this regard.