Natasha Tori Maru

What is this interaction meditation practice? I have not come across it. Maybe I know if it under another name.... Contemplation/self enquiry is needed to integrate the experience of elevated consciousness/awakening/enlightenment if you want to be able to use the experience to raise your baseline consciousness while in the waking reality. Without it, it is just an experience had. Like taking a bunch of psychedelics, tripping your balls off and then coming back to reality. Most people would look at that as 'oh yeah weird experience' and take nothing away from it. You have to realise what you are doing that facilitated the experience - or more precisely - what you are suddenly not doing. In waking life, you are constantly getting in your way. Your thoughts do this. Contemplation and self-enquiry aims to reveal what you are doing and the effects it has on your consciousness. How your ego - your self, prevents you from being conscious. The contemplation assists with the fish finally realising it is in the water, after the experience of jumping above the waves.

Okay so you define planes in some strange way. That's the same existence just energy/frequency levels and consciousness. You are defining words in english in ways others don't. You define yourself by your thoughts, which means there is egoic attachment. I don't want to argue with ego, and this is going no where. Gonna tap out because there's no point when you have arbitrary word meaning. Also I don't know where you got angry etc from, this is just pissing in cyberspace. Concept battles in bits and bytes on the internet. Honestly if you think it makes me angry - you haven't lived in reality enough. I'm just taking a position and pointing out flaws in thinking - I don't even necessarily agree with what I'm saying, just attempting to raise awareness.

Past and future - can you touch them? Can you smell them? Can you see them? Can you feel them? Right now? No? They aren't real. Human concepts. You're going to have to do a lot better if you want to convince me. You are trying to tell me you are experiencing something it is impossible to experience as a human because it is a concept and idea. Bunch of thought. Suffering? Human made. Point to suffering in your body. Show me. Pain yes, I can punch you in the face. I'm sure your face will hurt. Suffering where? Point. It's the friction of your thoughts. You are doing suffering. Remove thought, issue dissolves. 'Another plain of existence' I can't verify that. How did you verify it? Its a concept. Again another thing not real. You are clinging to logical explanation rather than falling back on real tangible experience - truth. Don't try to get out of this by dangling carrots 'you will intuit something there' as if I am missing something, when nothing you have said is verified as being true. You are perceiving something in labour of survival and it's is like a cataract over your eyes, obscuring your vision of the truth. You are so full of concepts, ideas, thoughts, descriptions, beliefs - these are all stopping you from realizing truth.

You are being. Human BEING. Experience. Just because you can enter a state of non-thinking doesn't mean you are separate from reality. You can stop walking because you know you are walking. If you don't know you are walking - how can you stop? Can a fish recognize it is in water??? The cat has survival & consciousness. A lower level to that of a human. It does not limit itself as a human does to this 'self' with perceptions that create a future/past and stories that induce suffering - that doesn't exist in reality. The body feels pain. By 'no-self' I don't mean NO BODY. I mean the construct of the self is made up. You are just experience. And you don't need thought to experience.

This sounds like you haven't done the work to integrate and have misunderstood as a result. When all thought stops, there is no self. Being emerges as the experience where all is unified. Either you are using english words in ways that aren't universally agreed upon, or you haven't experienced this without a substance assisting you. And no integration to facilitate understanding as a result. No, thoughts aren't happening. Thoughts aren't the substance of experience. Thoughts are something you are DOING. You are DOING the thoughts. They aren't some magical thing that happens. If you haven't realized you are actually doing the thoughts, how can you stop something you don't even realize you are doing?!? Yet above you state you were not thinking. But you haven't identified you are doing it. You see how that's unconscious? The exact opposite direction you want to go?

@Breakingthewall Barrier of what? If you were in total mental silence, you would have an experience where your ''self'' was absent. In that moment past and present cannot exist. What does after the 5 minutes, when you start thinking again, have anything to do with the period of thought cessation? Is this the barrier? I just don't see what your example is trying to say in reply to @James123 All I have as my truth is - you cannot reach enlightenment while any thought is occurring. If thought is occurring, you are experiencing anything but the NOW. You are conceptualizing. Which immediately puts you in the future or the past. Which don't exist. Not in your experience, not in anyone's. Thinking robs you of direct experience

Just pointing out you state you were in absolute mental silence but alert & then thinking all these things. Thinking 11AM. Even thinking about the future 'in half an hour' - which doesn't exist and isn't in your direct experience. You were conceptualizing the whole time. That isn't mental silence.

@Inliytened1 Followed back! An addendum - I think going to body method is pretty hard for most people. Maybe even impossible. You need to be so clean with everything. Organic, no chemicals (or reduced), sleep discipline, no sugar (at all), minimal meat. No overeating or over-exercising. And above all, no hatred or negativity toward the body. No punishing the body. No negativity to looks or appearance. All this really helped me, but I realize most people think I'm a freak because I won't eat the pastries at the office. Or won't touch fast food etc. It's a level of discipline most don't want. They want pleasure.

Grounding in my body forces a state change. Takes me out of the mind chatter. So movement + breath. Thoughts begin to slow, then cease. From here expanding consciousness comes so easily (for me). The contemplation/self-enquiry is essential. Otherwise, I haven't found a way to integrate the experience. And without the contemplation & integration the elevated consciousness cannot be taken into typical human life. Small breakthroughs get carried into the relative domain when I nail this, but it is slow work to do while also working full time. Because I have to work in the relative domain to access the absolute - and the body is confined to this domain - working in movement accesses higher states of consciousness. Because in this reality, the body has to act as the element to induce friction against all the things that are 'defined' ie chairs vs bodyweight, textures vs skin, smells vs nose, sunlight vs eyes to produce experience - or being. I think my strange approach is working at consciousness from both angles - the mind removing all thinking/ideas/concepts while pulling all awareness into pure experience of sensation. Mind & body the same. Leveraging the relative to access the absolute.

I experienced it as truth - love. No time. No-self. All the silly aphorisms we use around here - not that it is common at all!

A practice - a tool you used. I don't think it matters how you chip away at the relative, through practice, to slowly reveal the absolute. The tool isn't relevant. I used self-enquiry (deconstruction) & body scanning/energy sensation. There are many different techniques. For my unique physiology, working with the body, to access sharpening of the mind, was the most effective. Bodywork is the missing link for most people. Maybe the Buddha kept it simple (we don't actually know this). I do thank you, for sharing your process

I 'am' being - and experience is how that being knows itself. I should have ended the statement above with '?' because it cannot be concluded. Experience is happening > something exists > being Maybe more implicit - it feels as if the experience and being collapse into the same thing during meditation. No me having an experience, just what is true right now... I am deviating from the topic - apologies

@Anton Rogachevski That little 'wound' of unclosed, un-concluded thought about what experience is - UnbornTao is ripping the scab off for more surgical brain probing... @UnbornTao I'll have another go... Experience is... when seeing, there is the coming together of visible form, the eye, and visual consciousness. When hearing, there is the coming together of sound, the ear, and auditory consciousness. When touching, there is the coming together of tactual sensation, the body, and tactile consciousness. When thinking, there is the thought, the mind, and mental consciousness. Combination of sense faculty and object... and a corresponding sensory consciousness arises... Immediate direct experience... Being.

Do you not see the irony? You are calling out others for introducing techniques/systems to use as a way to engage meditative states as 'overcomplicating', 'unnecessary'. And then simultaneously implanting this belief in 'enlightenment' 'awakening' - when belief removal is where its at. It is a belief until it is lived Truth. Doing what you are doing is going to confuse people more. The only way is for others to engage in the process with no aim for an outcome. Only to discover for THEMSELVES what is true. Not what is true for YOU. Which is why you guide to the truth. You don't shove some foreign belief or aim into someone's head. You are taking away all the magic from the process - and no I am not lying to you. I don't know how this isn't totally clear to you, if you have experienced this as you say.

@Inliytened1 I don't think having a goal of awakening is a good thing with this sort of work. You place your base within a space of lack 'I am not enlightened'. Setting yourself up for disappointment if you don't reach it - some people may never reach awakening or enlightenment. But through the process, they expand consciousness. Isn't it about the process? Also this 'awakening' is just another belief to embed into people.

You can sense this unwinding energy when someone dies. Without going into details, I've been with people in the natural death process. As their mind goes, thoughts begin to slow. Their self is dying before the body. I always felt this like energy unwinding. The self dissolves and the dying person comes into being right before the end. You are witnessing a person come into an essential state right before all things cease. You can feel this in hospice care. If you are sensitive enough. ofc I voted for unwinding

Nigh impossible. I really enjoy it though. It is the greatest counter to the stress of construction. The more frequently I touch the state, the greater the stress load I can handle.

Haha it is one way to eliminate thinking, ay?

It's giving cinderblocks of raw truth to the skull <3

This is just an ideal. When you know what it is and just do without thinking - this seems obvious. But you need to get there. The way we are raised - inoculated against spirituality, our truth - leaves people totally lost with this stuff. Deconstruction is what you do to achieve the state. And in my experience, to get at the being state, there is always some deconstruction needed. Even if all it takes is 2-3 minutes of deconstruction after a full day of hard, stressful work. Then into that state. Like taking a hot shower at the end of the day - you emerge cleansed. The shower is like a deconstruction.

Isn't this just deconstruction?

Yes. However, when one is confused, they typically aren't able to identify the source of the confusion. Highlighting the concept or frame they are using is like a torch illuminating an fox lurking in the dark. THERE IT IS! Now I can shoo it away Give them the frame/concept so as they grow, they learn to discern experientially. They will naturally outgrow. And so, discard. I just try to show the next step on their personal road to the truth. Just telling the truth never really works. They have to find it for themselves

Ah yes, I get you - we have to use concepts to illustrate after all I do not know - can you? Definitely as you describe - concepts without identity. Usually while during normal life the thought is 'That's the future - a fantasy'. 'In the past again, a story'. And these are always concepts or narratives/ideas/beliefs. It is consistently a story about the future, or an attempt to understand something. I have never been one to dwell on the past. Regret, envy, jealousy. I don't have much experience of them. I don't really know how I think all the time, as it is so fast I cannot grasp it. All I know is all elements of my ego are me actually doing it. Thoughts don't ever just come out of nowhere. Same with feelings. They don't come out of nowhere. Always self generated. Always a cage. I am consistently attempting to find a frame and systematic way to understand something. This is something I am trying to actively stop. As it gets right between me and meat of the experience. The challenge of society and this way of life is that you cannot get far without actively understanding things. Survival ay? FUCK IT So, when we try to engage in these practices.... well. We have everything working against us, eh? Because I was raised in a very odd and isolated way - many of the structures of society that work against 'being' weren't present. I was in that experience until age 20 or so. Then life got in the way. Now it is a return to what I previously had. You are way ahead of me on the path if you are 25 - and although I should not compare - it is more a way for me to feel so happy for you <3

I should hope so! I will say for myself, there is always something to deconstruct. I can experience, and have experienced, no-self states. Being. I don't like to share stuff about enlightenment - I don't want to taint anyone with belief. Sometimes I do enter states of being outside of meditation. But only ever following some intense and prolonged sessions. Additionally - my other way to experience being is to do art. The process for me is timeless. Sun goes up, sun goes down. I won't notice. Just the pencil as it is destroyed against the paper - and creating something else simultaneously. I highly recommend creativity like this! But outside those states I am constructing all over again.... what a crack addict I am The deconstruction is an ever-present necessity. I don't want to think about waiting for an awakening or aiming for it, as this is something else to deconstruct. All I know is I am DOING this - I can tell when I do it, and I am gradually working on halting this in its tracks. This whole process is what we have been taught our entire lives - and I have 39 years of this habit to break >.<

Yes - that trust that you will know precisely what to do, and when, exactly as you should. You won't forget whatever it is you are thinking of doing in the future. Because there is no future - that world doesn't exist. It is part of the conceptual landscape of reality the very act of deconstructing is attempting to surgically remove. The same with the past. All things we are actively doing that remove you from being. There is only now and your direct experience. You are NOT that thing. No fear - that's a big one for me. No fear at seeing your end, because it is truly the beginning. Deconstruct the fear, as you are afraid of the no-self. I still cannot understand the crew here who meditate constructively. I don't understand how it works - I take on beliefs and concepts like an addiction!