Is this what 'being' is?

[Knock]

I think I finally understand what ‘being’ is. I used to always think of the word ‘being’ in English as a descriptor, such as “acting like” or “existing as”. For example, when playing with a game of Animals with kids, I was being a dog. I was “acting like” a dog. In this imagination game, I was “existing as” a dog.

But that is not what being is.

Let me side track a little bit.

In a recent podcast I listened to, I was introduced to the term ‘instrumentalization’. What I understood of the term, is that it represents something was used as an instrument towards something else. E.g. I caught the bus, to get to work. Here, the bus is the instrument.

The bus was the means towards an end. The end here was getting to work. I didn’t catch the bus because I wanted to, but because I had to. The bus was a requirement for me to get to work, hence using it was a conditional transaction. If the bus didn’t get me to work, I wouldn’t use it.

Sounds simple enough, right?

But what happens, if you get rid of the means of something, and instead it is an end in itself.

Story time:

I like to play the piano. I am okay at it, but not great, nowhere near good enough to make any sort of fame or financial gain from it. If you ask me what do I gain from playing the piano, I couldn’t tell you. Why? Because I don’t play the piano to gain anything. For me, playing piano simply validates itself. There is nothing to get from it. It is an ends, not a means towards something. Me playing piano is not conditional on some further reward.

The only way I could explain it, is I play piano for the love of it. But that explanation does not give it justice! Because you will misinterpret what love is, and it turns playing piano into a means of something else, namely, to experience love. So you might say, “Ohh, if you do it for love, you should do ‘x’ instead, I heard it gives way more love than playing piano’, which completely misses the point.

Any reason I used to describe why I play the piano, turns playing the piano into a means. Playing piano has now become instrumentalised. Any act to try and describe why I play piano, is not it.

In the same way, ‘being’ is a word to describe the absence of instrumentalization. If you were to attach any descriptors onto ‘being’, then it is like adding a layer of means onto something which has no means. Being - is an ends in itself.

To illustrate this, I am using ‘being’ as analogous to ‘pure awareness’.

Trying to add a descriptor to pure awareness, only takes you further away from pure awareness. Just like adding a reason for playing piano, instrumentalises it. To describe pure awareness you could say that it is like:

Being calm. -> doesn’t describe it. You are acting in a way to feel calm.

Being still. -> doesn’t describe it. You are acting in a way to feel still.

Being accepting. -> Still doesn’t describe it. You are acting in a way to feel acceptance.

Being… -> …now that is the only way to describe it.

To add any word unto the end of being would be instrumentalise it into something else. I now understand when the yoga instructor wants to illustrate a letting go of all attachments, she says to “fall into being”.

 

What are your thoughts? Is this a correct analysis? Am I missing something here?

 

 

Edited August 25, 2019 by Knock

[Leo Gura]

Look at your hand. That hand is an example of being.

You must ground this work directly in what's right in your experience. Not abstractions.

Being is the "stuff" that everything is. That "stuff" is consciousness.

[Knock]

@Leo Gura I'm a bit confused. It seems like I was talking about something, yet what you are talking about something completely different.

Could you elaborate? Or can anyone else help connect the dots between the what I said and what Leo is saying about it in simpler language? 

[SoonHei]

@Knock you're getting the general gist of it...

 

Leo is just pointing you directly to it

 

Being or isness simply refers to the present moment minus your thoughts about it

If Reality could be paused / stilled, that single frame of the present moment / NOW is what being or isness points to...

 

Only that Reality Cannot be stilled or paused

So it's always the current ever changing moment... Like a parabola with a single vertex point... It is 1 singluar point in which all of the manifest Reality exists... Objects/Experience moves into and appears on the Now

And whatever is in the Now = being = isness

 

Like watching TV

Whatever is ON right now is what is being/ising 

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, Knock said:

It seems like I was talking about something, yet what you are talking about something completely different.

Hehe, yeah. You see the problem? Look how you're beating around the bush rather than going straight for the simplicity of being.

Drop what you were thinking about and look at your fucking hand. That's being.

[loub]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Drop what you were thinking about and look at your fucking hand. That's being.

From my POV thinking is a valid form of inquiry and has gotten me quite some insights. Many people on here might have transcended the need for thinking and now want to point directly at being for others but seem to forget they they,too, once needed thinking.

Thinking can get you some places. Not absolute truth, but it might be helpful to that end still. Just be careful not to overindulge, do frequent reality checks while thinking and have it be one means to further metaphysical inquiry, knowing that ultimately only direct experience counts for shit.

@Knock I found your elaborations interesting . Don't let these people encourage you to stop thinking prematurely.

Edited August 25, 2019 by loub

[Truth Addict]

Being is so obvious that it doesn't even require you finding it. Being is always the case. That's what makes it tricky.

Being does not require knowledge or understanding. In fact the knowledge and understanding are being.

[Aeris]

the pov you feel about being yourself is "being"

the entire experience of yourself is an illusion deep programmed in the mind.

the only reality is the "now"

when you think of futur, you think of futur while "being" in the "now".

this is a side of truth, another one is the fact that your brain is a tool that create fantasy every second, guessing what the world is based upon your prior relative experience of "being/self/pov".

but this experience is a lie, hence, most of what we believe is just as solid as a story.

if 10 peoples tell us a story, we tend to subconsciouly makes it a reality inside our brain.

it is maybe real for them ( in their fantasy brain/soul world ), but it doesn't mean it's real for the entire others experiences of others

Edited August 25, 2019 by Aeris

[Corpus]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Look at your hand. That hand is an example of being.

You must ground this work directly in what's right in your experience. Not abstractions.

Being is the "stuff" that everything is. That "stuff" is consciousness.

These words taken in isolation and at "face value" would have most people thinking "Lay off the 5 MeO, Leo!".

The gold within Leos post is the 3rd sentence. If we take that as the sole arbiter of how we proceed to get to sentences 5 and 6, then despite the difficulties of our minds to wrap around what is being claimed, self-enquiry can allow us to grok the sentiment.

The OP mentions equating "Being" with pure awareness (or as Leo says, consciousness) which is fair, but the next step is to establish for oneself that this pure awareness is inherently aware of itself. How?

If the OP asked themselves " Am "I"(aka Being )present?" his/her own direct experience will conclude "Yes, "I" am present" . If they went on to ask "How do "I" know "I" am present?", the only accurate answer will be "Because "I" am aware "I" am present". Taking it further the next question to clarify is "How do "I" know "I" am aware?" There are no means by which one can provide an acceptable answer to this which refers to anything external to this presence/awareness/Being and the only answer (which will bend the materialists mind) is along the lines of " This awareness/Being/presence is simply aware of itself as an inherent feature". This is the "Is-ness" aspect of the whole business. It "just is".

So, we have hopefully reached the point where it has been established that Being/pure awareness/presence is, and is self-aware.

Now, this Being/pure awareness can for our current purposes be regarded as a faculty which is possessed which "knows/experiences" the world through our perceptions (eg seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling), our minds through our thoughts and emotions, and our bodies through our sensing. We could pragmatically describe all of these "interactions" as "experiencing". Taking the example of the hand as per Leos post, looking at it informs Being through the perception of vision- and that is as much as we can say if direct experience alone guides us. We are not truly seeing our hand- we are simply experiencing the viewing of our hand. Focussing on how our hand feels, we are likewise experiencing the sensations the hand gives rather than feeling the hand. This is key- we establish ourselves as pure awareness hence the subtle dissociation between the sensation as is conventionally accepted and the more accurate (but wacky notion) that we are rather having the experience of the sensation without adding concepts which are not in our direct experience.

As we place our hand in front of our face, at what would be conventionally regarded to be at a distance of say 2 feet , we should enquire "As the experiencing of the hand is all that is truly known, how far is this hand from this experiencing?". Pondering this one will conclude "No distance as it is "happening" within experiencing".

If we next ask "How far is this experiencing from "I", the pure awareness/Being?" After a little consideration one will conclude "There can be no distance between these".

Therefore the hand is no distance from experiencing, and experiencing is no distance from pure awareness/Being hence in the direct experience, the hand and the self (pure awareness/Being) are not separated.

To take matters further, we can ask "What is the substance of this hand, other than experiencing?" In our direct experience all we know of this hand is the experiencing so we may conclude that no other "substance" is present in the hand.

Let us proceed to ask "What is the substance that experiencing is made of, other than pure awareness/Being?" In our direct experience, experiencing is not composed of any "substance" other than pure awareness/Being. 

Hence we have come full circle, and logically (!!) confirmed that IN OUR DIRECT EXPERIENCE that the hand takes place in and is made out of our self, the I, pure awareness/Being.

Thanks are due to Mr Spira for this self-enquiry protocol!   

 

Edited August 25, 2019 by Corpus