How do you get your dose of reality? What do you do to shut off your chatter and see the world? Sports? Meditation? Fighting? 1st Person Shooter Games? What is your extreme quiet?
Reality, silence, peace... these things are not something other than me that I can get or experience. The moment I stop getting and experiencing I can see that they are me, as it has always been.
when one forms concepts-thinks, they are fragmenting the whole. some need no technique to stop this process, while others benefit greatly. I find that extreme physical activity along with extreme relaxation work for me, though it would be foolish to rely on these things. just thought it would be interesting to see what others do to get into the "zone".
also, it seems that experience is inescapable in this life, though the process of analyzing the experience and preparing for the next may be something worth avoiding.
Experience is inescapable, but they are not the seat of peace and joy. Those are found in the permanent being, not the ephemeral percieving and doing.
If you're not experiencing, how can you see? It doesn't make sense. Surely seeing is a form of experiencing?
iris, the trouble with discussions of this sort is that we are dealing with something that is essentially beyond words, through the medium of words. So no matter how careful we are, we can never fully verbally express it. It is obviously not seeing or experiencing, since it is not something other than me. For something to be experienced, there must be the experiencer, experienced, and the experience itself. You cannot experience yourself, you can only be yourself. In the same way, you cannot experience permanent peace or joy, or whatever you call it - it's all the same - you can only be it. You can be peace, you can eb joy, you can be reality itself. If you seek to experience these things, they will never be permanent. Only in being will it last.
it seems that there is no fragmentation of experience into the experienced and experiencer until the mind replays and analyzes the experience. while it is going on, there is no seperation. it is always going on, so i see what you are saying. the problem is that we are so capable of seperating ourselves from reality by delving into records of past experience, that for some, something is needed to help them snap out of the mechanical mind and look without analysis. language is limited, so we do sort of have to talk "around" the situation, but i hope we have found some sort of common ground in all of this.
Absolutely sam! To be in the present is to be in peace! All agitations arise out of regurgitating past memories or frittering away our energies in hopes and fears of the future. To one who truly lives in the present at all times, there is no separation, such a one is a true master. To one who lives 100% in the present, also there is no experience as such, because the entire world is encompassed in her love, she becomes one with it all. It is a being rather than an experiencing.
If I can be it, then I'd have to know I was it. Otherwise, there would be no experience of being it. The only way out of that would be to be unconscious. A stone 'is' but it doesn't know that it is. I don't understand what you mean by 'you cannot experience yourself' - maybe the concept of 'self' needs to be defined here, because as far as it goes, I feel I do know myself. The principle of consciousness perhaps can't know itself - but the self is not usually thought of as the principle of consciousness. Over the doors of the mystery temple of Eleusis was written 'Man know thyself'. Many spiritual paths talk about self realization or self knowledge as being the goal.
That is more awareness than knowledge, it comes from being you, not from studying about yourself. In Hinduism, consciousness is what is called the self. What we experience as myself now, the egocentric I, is bound to body and mind. But body and mind cannot be self. If the body was self, would an amputee be only a partial person? If the mind is self, what happens when the mind is shut down such as in dreamless sleep? Does the person cease to be? The mind is also not self. What is truly self IS the consciousness that illumines the mind and the body and enlivens them. In our current state of misifdentification, we believe self to be body and mind. But the true self is consciousness, which is what Eleusis was exhorting us to know or rediscover. This knowledge is different from other knowings, because it is a becoming one with, rather than learning about. It is not being knowledgable, it is being knowledge itself, the knowing principle itself.
All I need to stop thinking is to remember that my thoughts are essentially meaningless. They're just abstractions of emotion. They're just a symptom of a struggle that isn't really occuring.
so what sort of actions do you take part in once these thoughts stop? we must be here for something, right? it seems that stopping the chatter can only serve as a base for right action-as far as this plane goes. so what do you people "do" without thought?
Excellent question. Being without thought is the initial step in understanding that my self is other than the body and mind, and that I am in fact one with everything. Once that knowledge is firm, as immediate as breathing, then thoughts being present or absent, we remain in freedom and peace. And only someone who is truly peaceful can bring peace to the world. Only someone who is truly free and joyous can give of the fullness of bliss to others. The action and the works of such a one are the actions of the life itself, for there is no distortion of or obstruction to the cosmic will acting out through them, like clear glass does not distort or obstruct the light passing through it. These are the people that truly act every moment for the good of all, because they see themselves in the all, just as we in our every moment act for our own benefit.
