Itsokimok

Member
 View profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    63

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Itsokimok

  4. Posted

    This is mind-bending for me as I'm a newbie. Contrary to what I normally think/believe (that I was born), I felt during this exercise that I exist but it doesn't necessarily mean I was born. That's honestly what was implied by my parents and other people. They were talking about how we're all born, so I assumed that's what happened. What really happened if I'm being truthful, something suddenly arose out of nothing. All of a sudden there was a variety of feelings, thoughts, sensations, sounds, time, space, other people and a body that I called "my body" because those people said that's what it was. They taught me many more ideas on top of that as life went on (or as somethingness continued to exist). I started conceptualizing and talking like them in no time, building my own ideas about who we are and what's happening. But these are ideas and are somethings that I'm aware of just like sensations and sounds. Other people are also somethings that I'm conscious of. Before I was "born", there was nothing. Then I became conscious of a 5 year old "human" child's body and mind and other human children and adults around along with non-human animals and plants etc. a bunch of objects or somethings. What was there before there was something? It really felt like nothing. But Leo says I was there when there was nothing and will be there forever...but I don't being there. I only remember being there when something appeared as my body and mind and the world... I'm confused lol

  5. Posted

    I had a dream the other night that made me wonder if the people I saw in that dream, which were really just representations of my thoughts and feelings, ever wake up to their true nature just like I could wake up to my true nature in this life and realize I'm not a separate entity or even a human being? The people I saw in that particular dream represented a particular group of people I often come across in waking life that I have certain thoughts and feelings about. The characters in my dream weren't separate entities in their own right, just mental projections representing certain feelings and thoughts I have about a certain group of people. But they seemed to be acting like they were separate from me, my mind. They didn't seem to know that they were just in my mind, briefly manifesting while my body slept in bed. Could they ever wake up to their true nature?

  6. Posted

    On 9/7/2020 at 10:51 AM, The0Self said:

    If it feels like you can only "do it right" when you're sitting down in a quiet place with your legs crossed, work towards getting to the point where you can constantly see that you are aware of everything you experience, thus not the experiences/thoughts, but the awareness itself. Not awareness as you know it, as what you are is not known to anyone. If it feels like you've gotten an answer as to what the I is or where it is coming from, that's just the mind playing tricks, be aware of it and intend to increase consciousness and increasingly look forwards to the "goal" until no detours or excuses exist. Basically every thought is just that: an excuse.

    Good point man! 

  8. Posted

    I've new to self-inquiry and feel frustrated. I ask What am I? Immediately get a sense of the body and I say, not that and what am I? The body is too close to me and dominates my experience. I keep getting the body and the head. I know that I'm aware and trying to focus my awareness on awareness and it's so slippery. When I try to focus, I'm also using words and saying "I'm aware of being aware. I'm not the body. I'm not the pain in the arm. I'm not the feeling of anxiety in the chest. I'm not a mental image of the face. Awareness is aware. I'm aware of awareness. I'm aware of the knower of these words spoken etc. etc." But these are words. I'm saying these words to myself as I do this. Aren't words coming from the mind? So am I doing this right or wrong? 

    Also am I supposed to keep my eyes open during this? 

     

  9. Posted

    I'm off work for  a month and a half and wanted to make use of the rare opportunity by doing a retreat at home. I want to do meditation, Neti Neti and self-inquiry for 2 weeks. I can sit for a long time but have never done something this intense. Should I do half days or shoot for full days for the whole 2 weeks? Also should I stick with one method for one day and another one the next day or do all of them each day? 

    Thanks! 

  10. Posted

    46 minutes ago, Nahm said:

    What kind of trip someone must’ve had, to ‘come back’ and name that mushroom penis envy?! Seriously. 

    Trip on an empty stomach, never eat mushrooms, make tea instead. Even better, write ‘psilocybin vapor’ on your dreamboard, and forget the whole topic. Also, 3-4 is the danger zone. Like taking a train that stops at insanity. Take the train to good times, laughter and insights, or to herotown. 

    It looks like a penis! I looked up pictures of it lol

  11. Posted

    21 minutes ago, VeganAwake said:

    That's a pretty good way of putting it ?

    It points to the one that's aware or conscious isn't real.

    Awakening occurs when the sense of 'self' collapses or dies and simultaneously revealing it never existed making awakening or enlightenment a fictitious event.

    Thanks! Are different teachers really pointing to the same thing ultimately even though there are variations and disagreements among their teachings?

  12. Posted

    33 minutes ago, VeganAwake said:

    Yes he's talking about how the experience of being a separate individual creates an illusory self-centered agenda placed over the top of reality.

    There actually aren't any separate individuals that are conscious and aware which is usually the misunderstanding and mostly why I believe Jim doesn't prefer using those words.

     

     

     

    Ok so there is What Is/Reality, which includes everything including this experience of being a separate, conscious individual. So there is What Is, which is infinite and so therefore it includes the experience of awareness and separate individuals ?  

    According to Rupert, you can get become conscious of infinity by directing your awareness to its source away from the contents of awareness and see that it's infinite awareness. But for Jim, there is no awareness. There is just What Is. Do you know how Jim got enlightened? I'm confused as to how he arrived at this conclusion of What Is.

  14. Posted

    @VeganAwake Jim Newman's approach sounds really different from, say, that of Rupert Spira. In another video, I heard him say that What Is doesn't need awareness or consciousness to be whereas Rupert says awareness is the only reality there is. Also do you know what Jim means about the "individual" being an "experience" that hides What Is? Why is there this experience?

  21. Posted

    So far I understand (at least conceptually) that all I know of life is experience and all I know of experience is the knowing and that being/awareness is prior to any objective experience. The knowing that knows sadness is the same knowing that knows joy or an itch on the hand or a thought about spirituality or the need to pee really bad. I realize my whole life has been experience, awareness, perception, knowing, being. What else do I know other than this? Even my sense of "I", the self is an experience, knowing, perception...This gives me a slight feeling of fear and freakiness. But nothing radical and destabilizing. Oh and also am-ness and is-ness feel the same. Sometimes I feel like saying, "Is!" "Am!" "Being!" "Now!" "Aware!" when I focus on the fact that I'm aware and experiencing the world. But I don't see how that leads to enlightenment yet... I also get that I can't insist that my 'I' is in my heart or head. I can see how I would assume it's in those places just because the most engrossing perceptual modes are located in the upper part of the body (seeing with the eyes, thinking in the head, talking with the mouth, expressing emotions with the face, feeling in the chest etc.) But that doesn't mean 'I' am actually there. So where am 'I'?? I don't know... So this is as far as I've gotten. 

    Any books and teachers to recommend for a newbie like me? I would love to get some more traction with this!

    Thank you

  23. Posted

    6 hours ago, PopoyeSailor said:

    Right now you are in a state whose nature is that which you are describing. Because the shit is now hitting the fan and you are in some part of that room. But, there are others who are right smack in the middle of such rooms. The rooms will fade out in due course of time and transform into palaces for all of them one day or another, or in one reality or another. You can be so sure of that, because if there is one thing that doesn't change, that is "change" itself. No state is permanent either in this world or the next. Change is the fundamental nature of reality. Even intense suffering after reaching a certain period will feel like normality, and if it reaches a certain threshold has the potential to bring enlightenment(Best e.g is Eckhart Tolle). 

     

     

    That's really interesting man! 

  24. Posted

    @PopoyeSailor That dream-like state of seeing things based on your waking state life freaks me out too. Sounds like Bardo in Buddhism where you have either pleasant or unpleasant hallucinations for some time after your body dies. I'm sure I'll see a lot of my fears materialize in those hallucinations I bet. I have quite a few fears and even phobias. Something I haven't quite articulated yet is that I feel existence is scary and all consuming because imposes itself on sentient beings. It's fascinating and terrifying how you have to go through all this. All this shit in your waking life, then you go through some possibly terrifying hallucinations and get reborn to go through a similar cycle unless you're enlightened. 

  25. Posted

    @Nahm Thank you, Nahm for this. I tend to feel high highs and low lows. I would go through periods where life feels like a burden and I even want it get it over and done with but fear that I'll be born again into something worse. Then I would go through an equally long period where I notice big growths and insights and feelings of love, joy and reverence for all of life. I become super inspired. I don't have bipolar, just a fair bit of trauma. Rumi, damn, I always end up crying when I read his stuff. It's so moving