Making ego-reality thinner vs being deep in illusion.

[Endangered-EGO]

@Nahm "The identification is a self nourishing thought-loop" is what an insight I got from reading faceless posts.

I think I am going to raise thought awareness without interfering. As I mentioned, the identification will probably switch from the second thoughts to the next, or to the changing awareness thoughts.

Yesterday I just laid in bed with a very calm mind doing nothing, not even meditating and it was calm. There is definitely something to it.

"Now what should I do, how can I do contemplative work and neti neti and self inquiry if I just obsverve the seeker" is a thought and a mystery to me.

It is a strange loop of deciding to do stuff, but who decides? hahaha. I'm just going with the flow now I guess.

 

4 hours ago, No Self said:

There was this crazy guy, Fred Alan Wolf, from a New Age documentary who said the following: "The trick with life is not to be in the know, but be in the mystery."

"Oh, I want to be in the mystery, how do I get there? What can I do?" hahahahahaha.

"I wonder if the spiritual part of me will work without identification"... man that's also just a thought. I risk to identify as the referee of thoughts to decide what to do or what not to do hahahaha. Oh damn that is tricky. Just more thoughts always want to become identified with, in a very sneaky way, it's like the alan watts story of the police chasing thieves up a building. Everytime the police goes up one floor, the thieves go up one, and so they never catch up (until they arrive at the roof). That is happening with my thoughts right now.

 

Maybe I'll inquiry every "level of thought", I don't know what the roof will look like or if it's an infinite loop. Really weird.

[Endangered-EGO]

This is absurd, there is always one more layer looking for identification. And sometimes it switches language, depending on what story the thoughts are telling. Or what language the people I intend to talk about it talk. I have thoughts in 4 languages, and it switches the more I go up into the layers of thoughts, trying to trick itself. This makes me laugh, "I wonder where this is leading me", which is also a thought that seeks identification. 

I'm really curious about that stuff.

[Moksha]

@Endangered-EGO Have you realized being Consciousness yet? I believe you have, since you describe small awakenings. That realization of infinite spaciousness, free from perspective, is the anchor. Attention amplifies. The more attention that is focused in Consciousness, the less pull there is from the thoughts, feelings, and other energy forms of personality. Conversely, the more attention that is focused on the energy forms of personality, the stronger these forces become.

I have been practicing this, and yesterday something weird and a little scary happened. I experienced this reverse time loop, where my attention was reeled in, like watching my life in reverse. I was brought back to this experience of being a very young child, and looking through the eyes of the child. Then I sort of popped out of myself, back to being Consciousness, but observing this bundle of energies that I had identified with. I thought, "the boy in me is dissolving." It was a little disorienting. I couldn't detach entirely, and I didn't want to. But there was a lot more space than is usually the case.

One other thing to share that might be helpful. I have been realizing continuity vs. discontinuity. Consciousness is infinitely continuous. All of the energies of personality, and more broadly of relative reality, resolve to discontinuity. There is no true solidity or continuity in the perceived world. For example, we perceive our thoughts as a continuous stream, but once attention is focused, we realize the gaps that exist between our thoughts. It's like a movie that appears to be continuous, but is comprised of separate frames with small gaps between each frame.

I am enjoying observing these gaps. When you notice the gaps in your thoughts, and the gaps between your feelings, and even the gaps in your desires and your appetites, you realize the spaciousness underlying and infusing all of these energies. You realize that "you" are nothing more than these energy fields, and that Consciousness is experiencing "you" within its infinite spaciousness. As a practice, I think it might help you to try noticing these gaps.

[Nahm]

@Endangered-EGO

It doesn't matter what I say, so long as I sing with inflection that makes you feel I'll convey some inner truth or vast reflection. But I've said nothing so far, and I can keep it up for as long as it takes, and it don't matter who you are, If I'm doing my job then it's your resolve that breaks. Because the hook brings you back, I ain't tellin' you no lie. The hook brings you back, on that you can rely. 

There is something amiss, I am being insincere. In fact I don't mean any of this, still my confession draws you near. To confuse the issue I refer, to familiar heroes from long ago. No matter how much Peter loved her, what made the Pan refuse to grow was that the hook brings you back, I ain't tellin' you no lie. The hook brings you back, on that you can rely.

Suck it in suck it in suck it in, If you're Rin Tin Tin or Anne Boleyn. Make a desperate move or else you'll win and then begin to see what you're doing to me, this MTV is not for free, It's so PC it's killing me, so desperately I sing to thee of love. Sure, but also of rage and hate and pain and fear of self, and I can't keep these feelings on the shelf. I've tried, well no in fact I lied, could be financial suicide but I've got too much pride inside to hide or slide, I'll do as I'll decide and let it ride until I've died and only then shall I abide this tide of catchy little tunes, of hip three minute ditties. I wanna bust all your balloons, I wanna burn all your cities to the ground. I've found I will not mess around unless I play then hey, I will go on all day. Hear what I say, I have a prayer to pray, that's really all this was, and when I'm feeling stuck and need a buck I don't rely on luck because the hook brings you back, I ain't tellin' you no lie. The hook brings you back, on that, you can rely. John Popper, waf harmonisist. 

[Endangered-EGO]

@Moksha  I get what you are saying with spaceousness, Adyashanti talk about that, and shinzen young teaches to notice the "gone" and the objects expanding and contracting within the space of awareness.

The problem, I believe, is identification with the "spiritual thoughts". Realising that those were just thoughts made meditation effortless yesterday. The gaps between thoughts were way longer than usual even though there was no effort in meditation yesterday.

About continuity, I noticed that when I focus on the discontunuity of thoughts I tend sometimes to realise that the awareness of the external word is waaayy less continuous I once found myself cooking asking myself "How the fuck did my hands take the pan out of the shelf put olive oil and meat into it without anyone controling it." That was probably the longest discontinuity I noticed, I also feared I had lost memory, but I was just very much in the now, and could remember when trying.

I do that practice noticing the gaps sometimes, but it is often fuelen by the desire to get somewhere I am not, by thoughts I identify with, so I am a bit lost with the though things, I just started contemplating and experimenting with thoughts. If I happen to notice the gaps during meditation that's okay.
I'll contemplate the thought-gaps though.

I might be at a turning point now, and I don't know where it will lead me. So I don't know, I don't know who decides what to do. haha.

@Nahm  Thank you for your help, I'll let you know what your help did to me, once I know it myself.

[Moksha]

@Endangered-EGO The more you are able to notice the gaps in anything, the more grounded in Consciousness "you" are. Maybe a better way of putting it is, paying attention to spaciousness helps to desolidify the energies of the personality, and reduces their pull on attention. Whatever you attend to, you empower. Attending to spaciousness will deepen your Conscious presence, whereas attending to your thoughts will further entrap you in them.

"Spiritual thoughts" is a funny realization  Your instinct is right; the problem is with identifying with them. They are just another thought form, pretending to be spiritual, but they are not actually spiritual. Spirit, or Consciousness, is continuous. It cannot be a thought, because thoughts are inevitably discontinuous. Our awareness of this can ebb and flow, but Consciousness is always. I have been feeling this for some time now, a nearly constant realization of spirit or Consciousness, but it still ebbs and flows, and like you, I still feel some pull from the energies of the personality.

"I don't know" is the best turning point  Continue not to know. Instead of trying to do anything, maybe it will be helpful not to try. Just notice those moments when you realize that you have drifted back into your mind, and the realization itself will create more space from your mind.

 

[Endangered-EGO]

@Moksha
I just tried to focus on the gaps, however they happen mostly when I attain effortless concentration in meditation. It's also kind of tricky, because I tend to want to have a goal in meditation but during meditation I always have to give that up to have a good meditation.

I'm curious, have you ever tried shinzen youngs meditation on expansion and contraction? It's like meditation on the entire "flow of perception" the gap-the appearing of the object-the expansion of the object-the contraction of the object- the disappearing of the object.
Its just makes you observe the relationship between the awareness and the object within.

Apparently after a lot of practice you can realise the expansion and contraction of an object simoultaneously. I'm not there yet, but I believe this is the most awareness-stimulating (for the lack of a better word) meditation I have tried.

Do you perceive objects like that too? or just the discontinuity?

 

[Moksha]

@Endangered-EGO Do you see the common thread in your own experience: you are most spacious during "effortless concentration" and while "giving up any goal". Awareness is more a letting go of effort, since it is our natural state. Consciousness always is, if we would just stop struggling against it, and realize it.

I haven't tried Shinzen Young's technique, but I like the idea of it for meditation. As humans, on the local scale, we survive through the expansion and contraction of our breath. On the life scale, we expand into adulthood, and contract into death. It is true for every form, on different scales.  Consciousness itself is continuously expanding through creation, and contracting through realization.

I see it as discontinuity within a continuous field. Individual personality is the closest discontinuity, but there is discontinuity in every other personality and form, even at the cosmic scale of time and space, all within the continuous field of Consciousness.