OneLittleHumanMind

Question it again and again. Why is it that you identify with the body? What is there special to the body compared to other perceived objects like a chair? Or do you believe that you have sensations inside the body and perceive the outside world through a body? If you for instance feel that you hear voices with your ears, that certainly creates a belief that you are inside the body. But do you really experience ears hearing voices etc.? When focusing on what you are, keep noticing that every perception 'lands' on your focus naturally, and then try to find the border between that awareness and the thing perceived. You'll naturally be 'in yourself' right there where you can't find any border. Don't look for an object that could satisfy you but rather look for not finding anything.

Yesterday I explored what it is that constitutes one's experience and divides it from others'. The grounding for that came from The Direct Path teachings, which I have read from Greg Goode most recently. It felt like there is a separate perspective that makes an entity. This it has felt almost all the years to me, more or less consciously. But when I explored that 'perspective', it seemed to require an imagined world or dimension to be in, like black requires white for example. I could easily boil it all down to single thoughts or feelings. Perspective, personality and possessing an experience were all just thoughts - floating freely in the infinite space. That was a wonderful insight. There wasn't even a particular body for one to have, unless I had a thought implying so. So I wanted to share a nice little thing for you, it's called full circle I guess? I drew a picture on a paper, where there are two texts "I" and "You" inside their own clouds. Those clouds represent the believed limitations of the mind. But what the limitations actually are, are just two thoughts floating in the infinite space, consciousness. And the content of the thoughts are those "I"- and "You"-clouds. When pictured, it seems like there are just illusory clouds thinking of clouds, constituting of clouds (thought). I've not fully integrated this understanding, but it made me childishly excited.

See if someone is doing harm to you in your life, and forgive them for that. Forgive them so fully that you feel how their actions towards you are what is meant to be. But only embrace that, don't build a martyr mentality. Also start to love them, so that only thing you can feel is warmness and unity with those people. I used to hate some things my boyfriend did and I deduced that he did them TO ME. (Which is a lie.) I didn't fully love him for all he was, only when he did the right actions. Now when I've reasoned this love issue and started to feel more embracing lately, I've learned to love also the bad actions/person I encountered earlier. Love what you would want others to love in yourself and continuously expand that.

Don't try to get rid of your wants/desires. It's just another want you'll come to see. Healthier way at your stage is simply just observe the wants and needs of the separate self. And besides that to understand that getting what you want won't add up anything to you. Observe how you are here wanting, and then after the want is met, you are still here, unaffected. Only another separate self would want to get rid of the self, that is merely an illusion. And that how you was wondering sounded very much like you need to transcend the "doer" you think yourself to be. You're not the one who suddenly wakes up from the thought-stream and decides to observe it again. You're as much during the thought-stream as you are when you exit that and emerge the knowing of awareness again. It's just that the awareness comes to know itself as it is instead of the stream of thoughts it was grounding.

Have to apply that today!

@Mu_ My very first recognition was that I can't continue living as an illusory self. It was a straightforward intention. Now that my inquiry has evolved deeper, I desire the honesty even more. I want to know the most honest happiness they are talking about. And I'm not denoting than it wouldn't be subtly mine already, but I want to know for sure. Well, what compels me looking deeper... Because I intuit that there's always something deeper. This has been shown me many times. @Jack River So you are suggesting that everytime I go for an idea of getting beyond the thought, I'm actually just ending up to thought again? And is everything that thought thinks about reality? Hmm. I'd say that nothing is, but for sure the thinking itself is, because it's happening. I'm quite certain that a thought can't point to anything, like an physical object can't point to anything but itself. It can be that I'm claiming a mind to be more prominent part of my conscious reality than it is. It's like another thought, of a mind, acting out an inescapable medium to reality, though I'm the whole reality to begin with. And I have had these awakenings, where I understand how everything originates from me, and it's like I can't sense that as a located feeling anymore, unlike so many of the other experiences. Maybe it is that localization thing that maintains it all as a state or idea? Psychedelics I can't take, because I don't want participate in illegal activity here in yet very staid country

@Mu_ Thank you for replying. Well, at this point, it's quite hard to define a destination I am aiming to, because on one hand I don't really see a destination, and on the other.. I know there's still something more. But this more I am pointing to, is not something substantial, or a state or a place. Everything I do in my everyday life lacks a stopping point, so I can't presume any longer that there's any. It's saddening to the mind, but I'm peace with it, and I just try my best to see what's this all about. So, rather than looking for something, I'm looking deeper. I observe my trying, and I observe when I'm not trying. I watch what's there anyways, how a self can't do anything, so I somehow know that I always remain as nothing. But my suspicion is, whether I've really tapped into knowing, or I've just come to another idea. But your description about me as a seeker sounds quite accurate, I hope that you can provide with some more light to this.

I've done a lot of observing of the mind latterly and I see the mind react to that in various ways. Oftentimes I see that rather than there being an individual mind, like a container, there is a bunch of mechanisms of a human mind, which keep working whether I have considerable thoughts or not. So, at the same time I don't have quite a much thoughts running in my head and there is a dominant peace, but I have those mind mechanisms that make it hard to see further. When I look into my mind, and I try to catch up that which is not the mind, it seems to make a total loop back to where I started. So, I see only some faint thoughts or a state which demonstrates the "other than the mind", but quite seemingly isn't it. Then I discard that state in expectation of seeing something that is not a state. But again, because I seem to have even a notion of the non-state, that comes up, and I still can't verify it to be other than the mind. "I am" is the only 'thing' I see to be prior to a thought. And at least, I know very well what could be mind's activity and not reality. But can I ever truly know if I have transcended it, in the limitations of an inquiry? Can I really pull ahead of that endless loop? These are my questions for this topic.

Like Sven earlier said, we produce saliva and swallow it all day long. Sometimes we notice it, other times we don't. Due to my body-focused OCD, I sometimes get stuck in my swallowing too much and in the past I added negative emotions to it. But those emotions are superfluous to have about a very natural occurrence in a body. So don't blame your swallowing, loosen your thoughts about it. It is also quite good to have saliva in a mouth, because if I don't have it, my throat begins to feel dry and my mouth tastes bad afterwards.

I have those very same feelings too. My emotions towards people have reduced, along with sexuality, sensitivity and seeing life as meaningful. I've also observed it as much as possible, and that has taken me nowhere. But I think it is so because we still have a very faint layer of ego (at least have I, don't know about you). And that we call an observer - still located somewhere, inside a human form. And because of that quite inexplicable sense of separateness, there's no love. We have seen that our definition of love was wrong and maybe we was expecting others to be something to deserve our love. Now we're somewhere in between, but we don't grasp that transcendent kind of love. It is normal. We can't fake it. So what I would say to you is, that inquire into your separateness. Try to pinpoint every feeling and thought it is hidden in. Contentment will follow, if you stick and feel accepting towards your emptiness. Remember that there has to be joy, fulfillment and love in life. Otherwise it's quite futile to live.

Sometimes my level of self-observation seems even overwhelming. I don't know if I'm doing it in the right way then. It seems smoother to be concentrating on some external stuff (school task for example) than my bodily feelings. That's an issue I would want to hear an answer to.

@Joseph Maynor Yes, I do all of that except formal day-to-day meditation. I don't always have a gap in time or conditions good enough to sit down and meditate - say, I have bad back pain or that blurriness I mentioned previously. Then I try to focus on mindfulness and not craving for meditative states. But that is only one or two times per week. For the rest, I preferably walk into nature and get meditative there.

@Aaron p I don't know if I'm getting it right. But so many times it feels like I have to understand better, be smarter or something. And that knowledge (which everybody except me seems to have) will carry the nondual realization. It also seems like I forget things that are close to understanding something. But yes, there is a huge duality within this. And for the rest: I don't cling on the idea of a path. I can see that there have happened a few shifts in my 'journey to realization', but eventually, the essence of everything has been prepared in the very beginning of my life as this form. And nothing gets more satisfying. I'm totally fulfilled most of the time, when my mind doesn't create the abyss. But have to admit, that desire for knowledge and seeing myself as unable to understand are the potential blockers. Does anyone have any view on that OCD issue and how to include it to my inquiry?

I'm a 19 years old girl and interested in nonduality/oneness (or whatever it is called, I don't care much about names). For over a year and a half I have been establishing meditation, kinds of self-inquiry and journaling into my life. I'm not a fan of high self-discipline when it comes to these practises, and I don't believe it's a matter of hard work to realize my nondual nature. I tend to contemplate things quite informally, along with everyday happenings. But more than that, I often sit down and meditate on interesting issues following some pre-written questions. When doing that, I always lose my ability to keep all the strings together. I mean, I may ask one question and then I'll question the previous question. But at some point I can't focus on my experience: what is the question telling about, what I really perceive etc. Very often I see an invisible wall to come out in front of me. I can't get insight of anything, not even a word in my mind. My mind is stuck and can't handle anything like that. Right now, questioning the physicality issue really bothers me. It's so simple intellectually but still some very primal sense is saying that I cannot be the objects I am perceiving, and they just don't feel "me". I can simply see that everything is in consciousness (like every dense-like object is in a dream as well), and we cannot step out of that ground. But even then it feels like the physicality and independence of objects are existing in consciousness. I cant progress further than that, and every time I'm exploring it, a strange feeling of invisible wall comes. A wall between me and some understanding. How to approach this? Also, there's one issue that seems to be quite a big hindrance to embracing understanding. I have very persistent body-focused neuroses. I've got a diagnosis of OCD two years ago. Now, when everything is coming into my awareness as clearer, also the body-focused compulsions get worse. Sometimes my body feels like a total obstacle, because instead of exploring my mental beliefs, I'm stuck in my bodily sensations. On some days I may be aware of my stomach for 12 hours and I'm not sure if I'm hungry or not. Sometimes my throat feels dry all the time or I concentrate on my swallowing, without any intent. My question would be that can I include these problems to my overall inquiry and can nondual understanding help with these? Or do I just need to bypass them like other feelings? What to do when I don't have energy for fresh inquiry, because I'm so tired of attending to my sensations? Thanks for reading.

How can you view the world because your very view of the world is world itself Really, you can't separate the world and the way you seem to "view" it. That's why everything is absolutely correct. There's no need for a right or wrong view i.e a world.