Awareness Driving "me" Mad

[2000]

I have become aware of the mental stream and just how crazy it is. I know it is all of the same thought "substance", including even my words here. It all feels so foreign to me. The fact that I am aware of my constant thinking makes me go mad, becauseit never stops. I want to get out of the cycle of thinking and be present, but an escape seems impossible. My body reacts in strange ways to this.

[Max_V]

Notice, even when your mind is having a thought diarrhea, awareness is there. How could you recognize that you are having these thoughts if it weren't for awareness?

Awareness is always available, even when your mind is jumping up and down and screaming. You just have to ask yourself "Who or what is aware of these thoughts?" 

If you want more information on this, check out a couple of Rupert Spira's videos. In my opinion he explains it very clear and easy

[Joseph Maynor]

@2000 Yeah.  What's tripping me out right now is seeing that the thoughts I perceive are not my own.  They are simply part of what is.   Like a boulder on the side of a mountain.  I guess this extends to emotions too.  They are not my own.  They are like passing ships in the night.  Of course my self-image is not me, and that's been the wackiest one to purge.  I did a bunch of work before unsettling self-image, but I'm taking that one up a notch too now which is very unsettling but freeing at the same time.  I still don't understand why my feeling that I act has to be illusory.  Or, let's express it non-dualistically the feeling that action is being made.  I don't have to identify as the actor in order to perceive an act taken.  This might be sounding bizarre.  It's getting late where I live.

Edited June 29, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Natasha]

16 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

I still don't understand why my feeling that I act has to be illusory.

Lisa Cairns and Tony Parsons communicate well this kind of thing. Check this out

  

[Joseph Maynor]

I'm watching this now!

[pluto]

The deeper you breathe the easier it becomes

[Prabhaker]

On 6/29/2017 at 11:08 AM, 2000 said:

I have become aware of the mental stream and just how crazy it is.

Many times I have seen, observed, persons coming to me for meditation. They say, ”I am very much disturbed, with pains inside, sufferings. Somehow, help me to still my mind.”

I suggest to them something to do, then in a week they come back and say, ”What have you done? I have become more disturbed!” Why did it happen? Because when they begin to meditate, when they begin to feel a certain silence, they begin to feel the disturbance more. Against that silence, the disturbance is felt more keenly. Before they were simply disturbed, without any silence inside. Now they have something to judge against, to compare against. Now they say, ”I am going mad.”

So whenever someone begins meditation, he will become aware of many things of which he was not previously aware, and because of that awareness he will suffer. This is how things are, and one has to pass through them.

So if you start meditation and you do not suffer, it means it is not meditation, but just a hypnosis. That means you are just drugging yourself. You are becoming more unconscious. With a real, authentic meditation you will suffer more, because you will become more aware. You will see the ugliness of your anger, you will feel the cruelty of your jealousy, you will now know the evidence of your behaviour.

Now, in every gesture, you will begin to feel where a hidden animal in you, and you will suffer. But this is how one grows. Growth is a painful birth. The child suffers when it comes out of the womb, but that is part and parcel of growth. So it is right that awareness and knowledge bring more richness and growth and depth in man’s life – not because man doesn’t suffer, but because man suffers.

If someone has led just a snug existence – as it happens in rich families – you will feel, you will observe, that if a person is born rich, if he has lived without knowing suffering, without knowing the pain of living, without knowing anything, then whenever there is a demand, even before the demand the supply is there. He has not suffered hunger, he has not suffered love, he has not suffered anything. Whatsoever is demanded is supplied – rather. it is supplied even before the demand is there. But then look in the eyes of that man: you will not find any depth. It is as if he has not lived. He has not struggled; he does not know what life is.

That is why it is always very difficult to find any depth in such men. They are superficial. If they laugh, their laughter is superficial. It just comes from the lips, never from the heart. If they weep, that weeping is superficial. It is not from the depths of the being: it is just a formal thing. The more the struggle, the more the depth. This depth, this richness, this knowledge, will create such a complexity that you would like to escape from it. When you suffer, you want to escape from it. If you are looking to escape from suffering, then alcohol can become appealing or LSD or marijuana or something else.

Religion means not escaping from suffering but living with it: living with it, not escaping! And if you live with it, you will become more and more aware. If you want to escape, then you will have to leave awareness. Then, somehow, you will have to become unconscious.

There are many methods. Alcohol is the easiest, but not the only method and not even the worst. You can go and listen to music and become absorbed in it; then you are using music as alcohol. Then for the time being, your mind is diverted toward music and you have forgotten everything else. Music is working as alcohol for everything else. Or, you can go to a temple or you can do japa. You can use these things as alcohol, as an intoxicant.

Anything which makes you less aware of your suffering is antireligious. Anything that makes you more aware of your suffering, and which helps you encounter it without escaping, is religious. That is what tapas – austerity – means. tapas means this: not escaping from any suffering, but remaining there and living with it with full awareness. If you do not escape, if you remain there with your suffering, one day suffering will disappear and you will have grown into more awareness.

Suffering disappears in two ways. You become unconscious; then suffering disappears for you. But, really, suffering remains there. It cannot disappear. It remains there! Really, your consciousness has disappeared, so you cannot feel it, you cannot be aware of it. If you become more conscious, in the meantime you will have to suffer more. But accept suffering as a part of growth, as a part of training, as just a discipline, and then one day, when your consciousness has gone beyond your suffering, suffering will disappear not just for you – it will disappear objectively. Use suffering as a stepping-stone; do not escape from it. If you escape from it, you are escaping from your destiny, from the possibility of going beyond knowledge by using suffering as a device.

Source: Osho Book “The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol 2″

[Prabhaker]

On 6/29/2017 at 11:08 AM, 2000 said:

I want to get out of the cycle of thinking and be present, but an escape seems impossible. My body reacts in strange ways to this.

OSHO Kundalini Meditation

Osho Kundalini Meditation is one of Osho’s most popular and potent meditation techniques. It involves shaking, dancing, sitting silently, and relaxing. 

Instructions:

The meditation is one hour long, with four stages.

First Stage: 15 minutes

Be loose and let your whole body shake, feeling the energies moving up from your feet. Let go everywhere and become the shaking. Your eyes may be open or closed.

Second Stage: 15 minutes

Dance ...  any way you feel, and let the whole body move as it wishes. Again, your eyes can be open or closed.

Third Stage: 15 minutes

Close your eyes and be still, sitting or standing, observing, witnessing, whatever is happening inside and out.

Fourth Stage: 15 minutes

Keeping your eyes closed, lie down and be still.