cetus

Koans are questions with no logical answer that are used to break the mind of it always wanting the answer to every question. Like breaking in a wild horse, it finally gets so exhausted it gives up. At some point the mind totally gives up and surrenders causing a gap. Than true progress can be made when the student realizes how futile it is to use the logical thinking mind. Allow pure awareness to be present as much as possible by becoming totally silent. It will consume what has never been true.

What is infinite and boundless is found deep within the stillness of the moment. If you can step back and let there be only pure awareness of one sunset , you realize the awareness of infinite sunsets. Your labels of the conceptual mind break down as in "counting sunsets". Every sunset that has ever been and will ever be is happening within the moment. Everything melts into oneness/emptiness and all the remains is what is boundless and infinite. It opens that door where there no longer exists "this" or "that" or you or any constraints of the mind...

The true self is that which exists beyond our 9-5 self. Sometimes also referred to it as pure being,, atman, soul ect. It seems to an essence of self as just a silent observer to pure awareness that exists beyond personal identification. When the mind and all it's noise is transcended, all that remains is pure awareness/emptiness for all things to arise within. Nothingness is a field that surrounds everything within the moment. This field can be experienced really strong after a deep meditation. Nothingness, pure awareness and existence within this moment are realized as one unified field. Each moment is a still or snapshot that is static. The illusion of time flowing from past to future is stills strung together, one after another like a movie reel that allow for change from one static moment to the next. *I understand that everything explained here is a conceptual framework, but sometimes it has to be digested by the conceptually thinking mind before it can be experienced directly. I do that often. BTW- "Zen Mind, Beginners Mind" is one of the first books I read about Zen. Good choice! "In the beginners mind there exists all possibilities".

@Rahul yadav When I first started meditation, I noticed a humming or ringing in my ears which is normal and most people have but ignore it for the most part. You may be talking about something quite different though. I read once that when the pineal gland is becoming activated, it can give the impression of a humming sound in the head. If that's true or not, I have no idea.

@Leo Gura Wouldn't a deep experience of something much larger than self cause a jump to a higher level? @JustinSThe hippie movement was a mass awaking by a new generation - mother earth, oneness. universal awareness. human rights. love, peace truth. no more wars, expansion of consciousness and so on. It was a sudden awakening to a universal view for a Lot of people who were raised by a self centered and paranoid culture that had no place for an all inclusive holistic view for the benefit of the planet as a whole. Those in the lower tier would not accept the different view that was suddenly emerging by people who realized the "status quo" was very flawed and "unhealthy for children and other living things".

@Atom Well that's nice. You did cry in the moment for a reason.

Just out of curiosity, which one feels right to you as being the most beneficial. @ChimpBrain

@Natasha Thoughts floating around like bubbles in a collective consciousness. I was never aware of the "pushed into" before. Could that partially explain why I meet new people in my sleep? I know their presence exists.

@Atom Hi Atom. Could you be repressing thoughts when you are alert/awake and when you let your guard down by falling asleep they surface? A lot of this work is about acceptance of the contents of the sub-conscious mind. It must become a totally open book. When it's contents are acknowledged and let go of, all that remains is the moment. When you cry in the moment, there will be crying. When you are sad in the moment, there will be sadness.

Thoughts are like weeds. They just pop up out of nowhere. The trick is not to nurture them and they quickly die off.

@Mal I heard the weather isn't so great there this time of year due to time vortex storms. A nasty one can really ruin an otherwise great vacation.

@Ayla Pure white light is composed of all the colors. We can see them individually, reds blues, yellows, or as a whole.

@Ayla I'm back to dull and opaque self again. It's not too bad, just O.K. For a moment there it was nothing but pure light energy, than it slowed down and became vibrations and resonations and they settled down and became material matter/existence that we are as a body/mind.

@Ayla We are radiant

Resonate is a more recent use of the word of "vibe". Meaning connecting on a much deeper level than the gross. An underling vibration of sorts. "I can dig that vibe" has become " I resonate with that". What is "It" that we resonate and are one with? Maybe light energy in a completely different spectrum than what is perceived by the eye. Light energy resonating itself into matter and the field of awareness? Could everything be a field of light?

@Oneness Here is another way to explain it. You can learn all there is about skydiving. You can practice it all your life on the ground. You can talk to many people who have skydived before. But at some point, it's totally up to you to take the final leap of faith. You have to be willing to jump out of "self" in the same way you would jump from the plane.

@Oneness Meditation is the practice of slowly letting go of ego/self. The erosion of self to final liberation where there is a tipping point and a breakthrough from self. It requires nothing less than total surrender If you can let go of the illusion of self this very moment and not hold on to one fragment, meditation would not be needed to experience an enlightened state of being. No matter what process is used, they all lead that all important total surrender of self. That is all that matters.

Agreed, I should have added the punchline "your already doing it, you are an illusion".

@Alexandre I question this all the time myself. Not exactly "identify", but more as to except the fact that mind is a part of reality. What is constant? The mind constantly witnessing a changing existence. Through the mind and a sense of I'ness, it experiences existence expressing itself in an infinite number of forms and also the realization of the oneness behind the many. Isn't that part of the miracle of existence expressing itself through the minds awareness of it? There is no "I" - O.K., but what is this unshakable witness that experiences this beautiful diversity of existence expressing itself in so many different forms? What sees these posts and responds to them? Something remains. Everything is in balance when the one is realized as being the source of the many within this realm of physical reality. That is not to say that mind will than cease to exist or we should deny it's existence if the one is realized as the true source of the many. I'm not talking to a point of fault as ego/self that excludes the whole, but to the point that diversity can be appreciated in each individual expression by the mind. I can only go by my experience of the one expressing itself in a multitude of beautiful expressions within existence through the minds eye. by Steve Taylor. If there is one concept which has been under constant attack by psychologists and philosophers over the last few decades, it is the idea of ‘you’ – that you are a real entity or ‘self’. Many modern philosophers and scientists suggest that this sense of being ‘someone’ is illusory, or just a simple product of brain activity. Somehow the billions of neurons in your brain work together to produce it, and all of the thoughts and feelings which it incorporates. This view was expressed very graphically by the scientist Francis Crick, who wrote that: ‘You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.’ From a less biological perspective, the philosopher Daniel Dennett speaks of the illusion of the ‘Cartesian Theatre’, the sense that there is ‘someone’ in our heads looking out at a world ‘out there’, and also watching our own thoughts pass by. In reality, says Dennett, there are only mental processes. There are streams of thoughts, sensations and perceptions passing through our brains, but there is no central place where all of these phenomena are organised. Similarly, the psychologist Susan Blackmore has suggested that the self is just a collection of what she calls ‘memes’ – units of cultural information such as ideas, beliefs and habits. We are born without a self, but slowly, as we are exposed to environmental influences, the self is ‘constructed’ out of the memes we absorb. Modern neuroscience seems to reinforce such views. Neuroscientists claim to be able to ‘locate’ the parts of the brain responsible for mental phenomena such as aesthetic appreciation, religious experience, love, depression and so on, but they haven’t found a part of the brain associated with our underlying sense of self. Therefore, they feel justified in concluding that this doesn’t exist. ‘Ghosts don’t Exist’, says the Ghost There are many problems with the attempt to ‘reduce’ our sense of self to brain activity. This is related to ‘hard problem’ of explaining the origins of conscious experience – so-called to distinguish it from the ‘easy problems’ of mental abilities and functions such as memory, concentration and attention. Whilst we might be able to understand these phenomena, the problem of how the brain might produce consciousness is on a completely different level. The brain is just a soggy clump of grey matter – how could that soggy mass possibly give rise to the richness and depth of consciousness? To think that it could is a ‘category error’ – the brain and consciousness are entirely distinct phenomena, which can’t be explained in terms of each other. And on a more practical basis, after decades of intensive theorising and research, no-one has yet put forward any feasible explanation of how the brain might produce consciousness. The ‘hard problem’ seems completely insurmountable. There is a basic absurdity in these attempts to show that the ‘self’ is illusory. They always feature a self trying to prove that it doesn’t exist. They are caught in a loop. If the self is an illusion to begin with, how can we trust its judgements? It’s a bit like a ghost trying to prove that ghosts don’t exist. Perhaps it may be right, but its illusory nature doesn’t inspire confidence. Dennett and Blackmore are presuming that there is a kind of reliable, objective observer inside them which is able to pass judgement on consciousness – and that presumption contradicts their own arguments. That is the very thing whose existence they are trying to disprove. Related to this, there is a problem of subject/object confusion. All of these theories attempt to examine consciousness from the outside. They treat it like a botanist examining a flower, as an object to scrutinize and categorize. But of course, with consciousness there is no subject and no object. The subject is the object. You are consciousness. So it is fallacious to examine it as if it is something ‘other.’ Again, you are caught in a loop. You can’t get outside consciousness. And so any ‘objective’ pronouncements you make about are fallacious from the start. An interesting question to ponder is: why do human beings invest so much energy into trying to prove that they don’t exist? Why do scientists and philosophers seem so intent on proving that they themselves are illusions? Perhaps there is a kind of repressed suicidal impulse at work here. Perhaps the individuals in question experience a deep-rooted self-hatred and an impulse for self-destruction which, at conscious level, has been translated into an impulse to negate their own identity and existence. More likely, though, these views are symptom of the general nihilism of our culture, the collapse of values which has followed from materialistic science. The fact that these theories have become prevalent, despite being fallacious, shows how well they fit to the present ‘zeitgeist’. Subjective Investigation So does the self exist? Is there really anybody there inside your own mental space? I think the best way to answer the question is to take a different approach. Rather than attempting to analyse consciousness from the outside as if it is an object, the best approach is to embrace subjectivity, and delve into your own consciousness. Try meditation, for example. In deep meditation, you might find yourself in a state of complete mental quietness and emptiness, with no thoughts, no perceptions, no information processing, no concentration. In fact, this state can be seen as the ‘goal’ of meditation (at least according to some traditions). The philosopher Robert Forman has called it the ‘pure consciousness event’ – a state in which consciousness exists without content, and rests easefully within itself. I have experienced this state myself, and am familiar with its qualities. Paradoxically, although consciousness is empty, it has a quality of fullness too. It appears to be full of energy – a powerful energy which has a quality of well-being, or even bliss. (This is what Indian Vedanta philosophy describes as satchitananda – being-consciousness-bliss.) There is also a quality of spaciousness – somehow my own consciousness seems to become wider and larger, to spread beyond my own brain or body. This can lead to a sense of connection or even oneness – a feeling that my consciousness is merging with a force or energy which somehow seems fundamental to the world, or the cosmos. But most importantly in terms of my argument in this article, in these moments, one of the qualities of consciousness is a sense of ‘I’. There is still a sense of identity, even if this sense may be different to the identity of a normal state of consciousness. This identity does not feel separate or boundaried. It feels part of a greater unity, but still has a sense of I-ness. You could compare it to a wave having a sense of its own existence of a wave but at the same time being aware of itself as a part of the sea. There is still an ‘I’ which has awareness of itself and of its situation. From this point of view, it appears that consciousness or identity is not an illusion. In this state, there are no ‘memes’ and no streams of mental processes, but consciousness still appears to exist. I would therefore say that the sense of self is fundamental to us, from the deepest levels of our being. Of course, this fundamental sense of ‘I’ is acted on by all kinds environmental, social and psychological influences, and becomes ‘constructed’ to a large degree. You could compare it to how a Roman fort is built upon and expanded over centuries until eventually develops into a modern city. But there is a fundamental kernel of ‘I-ness’ which is always there, underlying all of the activity and all the construction

@Water I was reading this topic you started. Great direction to head in from the posters.@Natasha @Mal

Yes, this happens all the time. This work is called awakening for a reason. You are starting to see who is living in a dream and who is for real. That includes you most of all. Have compassion for yourself and that will naturally spill over to others too. What is changing is the way you see things. The external world has not changed at all so you can't get angry at it. Realign your awakening awareness with it. Some old ways will fall away to make way for the new. Growth is always the hardest thing for the self when we have to admit that what we were portraying before may have not existed in an awakened state.

Nothing

@Ayla Each grain of sand = one thought of the mind.