I'm so extremely lost

[manitou]

I would not worry about it. Enlightenment is not something to achieve. Trying to archive things creates desire and cravings lots of trash. If you can accomplish a peaceful tranquil mind that is a good place to start. Just remove all thoughts of spiritual traditions and be your self. Remember you are complete at this very moment and do not let things steal your peace or take your power away.

 

 

This is beautiful.  Enlightenment is stuff to drop.

 

The fact that it's all jumbled right now is a good thing.  If it weren't jumbled, you'd be stuck with the conditioning you were given in your early life.  Everybody who wants to grow in spirit and understanding needs to have this jumbling up process.  I think you're right where you're supposed to be, and this site is right where you're supposed to be.  You will be attracted to the things that are right for you.

 

Don't let anybody intimidate you into their path, and don't fall subject to the 'shoulds'.  Let your inner guide let you be attracted to that which you need - this will surely happen, if you are true to yourself.

 

Your honesty is beautiful.  Your humility is perfect.  That's how I know you will be directed to your own answers.  Much of your ego has been shattered, just by your admission of being lost.

 

You are loved here.

[steve]

"Enlightenment is stuff to drop"

 

Interesting how this dovetails with a quote discussed in the Buddhist forum:

"Nirvana is merely the exhaustion of error."

Edited February 2, 2016 by steve

[manitou]

"Enlightenment is stuff to drop"

 

Interesting how this dovetails with a quote discussed in the Buddhist forum:

"Nirvana is merely the exhaustion of error."

 

Perhaps a little more artfully put....

[silent thunder]

For me, any longer, to release and let go, is vastly more potent and healing than to seek... anything.

To seek is to become seeking and effort and strain and things naturally fall into a struggle for and against with duality. 

 

To release seems to foster mental quiet, clarity and simple being that resonates in a sense of flowing unity.

[manitou]

I just had another thought.

 

Reconsider the shrooms.  

[Apech]

Feeling lost and divorced from one's spirituality is actually a very necessary part of 'the path' itself.  It's difficult to accept and it's even harder to avoid searching around for a solution.  Such solutions are often just a means of distraction.  So don't (in my view) try to fill up the gap with some new practice - it will just be a toy to divert you from what you are really feeling.  The thing is, this state has concealed within it it's own solution.  If you can see it.  

[Mark Foote]

In my experience, there is no way around ascertaining one's own necessity.  As in, what do I really need, to live.  

 

It's possible for me to discover my necessity, in one movement of breath:

 

“You must strive with all your might to bite through here and cut off conditioned habits of mind. Be like a person who has died the great death: after your breath is cut off, then you come back to life. Only then do you realize that it is as open as empty space. Only then do you reach the point where your feet are walking on the ground of reality.”

 

("Zen Letters: Teachings of Yuanwu", translated by J.C. and Thomas Cleary, pg 84)

 

"Died the great death" is letting go of any voluntary activity of body and mind.  At some point, I find that holding still (as it were) cuts off the breath, that is "ascertaining my own necessity".  Coming back to life is receiving all my senses (including equalibrioception, proprioception, and graviception).  When I receive all my senses, the location of my awareness can move even if the rest of me is still, that is "open as empty space"; the rest of me can move when the location of my awareness is still ("the millstone turns but the mind does not"), that is "feet walking on the ground of reality".  I can breathe.

 

In my experience, there is no way around ascertaining one's own necessity, most immediately in the movement of breath. 

[manitou]

In my experience, there is no way around ascertaining one's own necessity.  As in, what do I really need, to live.  

 

It's possible for me to discover my necessity, in one movement of breath:

 

“You must strive with all your might to bite through here and cut off conditioned habits of mind. Be like a person who has died the great death: after your breath is cut off, then you come back to life. Only then do you realize that it is as open as empty space. Only then do you reach the point where your feet are walking on the ground of reality.”

 

("Zen Letters: Teachings of Yuanwu", translated by J.C. and Thomas Cleary, pg 84)

 

"Died the great death" is letting go of any voluntary activity of body and mind.  At some point, I find that holding still (as it were) cuts off the breath, that is "ascertaining my own necessity".  Coming back to life is receiving all my senses (including equalibrioception, proprioception, and graviception).  When I receive all my senses, the location of my awareness can move even if the rest of me is still, that is "open as empty space"; the rest of me can move when the location of my awareness is still ("the millstone turns but the mind does not"), that is "feet walking on the ground of reality".  I can breathe.

 

In my experience, there is no way around ascertaining one's own necessity, most immediately in the movement of breath. 

 

I feel that there is something really pertinent here, and yet I can't put my finger on it.

 

You're saying to drop all preconceptions and conditioning?  (Die the great death).  How does this pertain to the OP when you speak of regaining all senses?  Are you saying to address what is directly in front of us?  Does the relocation of awareness, whether moving or still, have something to do with Shroom's disorientation?

 

Probably 10 years ago I would have totally understood your post.  I'm getting old, I'm afraid -

Edited February 3, 2016 by manitou

[Mark Foote]

I feel that there is something really pertinent here, and yet I can't put my finger on it.

 

You're saying to drop all preconceptions and conditioning?  (Die the great death).  How does this pertain to the OP when you speak of regaining all senses?  Are you saying to address what is directly in front of us?  Does the relocation of awareness, whether moving or still, have something to do with Shroom's disorientation?

 

Probably 10 years ago I would have totally understood your post.  I'm getting old, I'm afraid -

 

When I was in college, I became vegetarian, then vegan; I tried to do without a lot of things. 

 

Within four years, I began eating eggs and cheese, and then meat again; I felt that some things were necessary to me, for whatever reason, but I had confidence in that (and I still do). 

 

The rendition that Yuanwu provided is a lot simpler, just having to do with ceasing habitual activity of mind and body (yeah, that's simple, right), letting go of activity.   Is this the kind of contact with necessity that could relieve the sensation of running in circles?  It is for me, so I offer it. 

 

Contact of the senses:

 

 

"Bodily self-consciousness (BSC) is commonly thought to involve self-identification (the experience of owning 'my' body), self-location (the experience of where 'I' am in space), and first-person perspective (the experience from where 'I' perceive the world).

... BSC stems from the integration of visual, tactile, proprioceptive, and vestibular signals."

 

("Visual consciousness and bodily self-consciousness", Nathan Faivre, Roy Salomon, and Olaf Blanke: http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/203878/files/reprint.pdf)

 

 

Yuanwu was just talking about returning to life, coming back to one's senses.  I find distinguishing the experience of gravity and the senses above from the eyes, at least some of the time, to be important in my happiness.  Calms me down.  Lets me feel the location of my awareness, instead of the location of the object in awareness relative to my eyes.  The rest follows from that.

 

I like what you and Apech had to say very much.  I couldn't leave it at that, what a fool!

Edited February 4, 2016 by Mark Foote

[Karl]

That to me sounds like a conversion from the idea of the primacy of consciousness moving to the primacy of the existence.

 

I know that feeling of being disoriented and anxious when being unable to figure out the context. Also related to what someone wrote on here "first mountains as mountains and water as water; then mountains not as mountains and water not as water; then mountains still as mountains and water still as water".

 

So, that, at first we go through life purely unself consciously- a kind of learning phase in which we aren't super consciously aware of the exact relationship between self/external/internal perceptions. Like being very absorbed in a learning activity when young.

 

Then, at some point (age related?) this changes. The absorption gives way to a super conscious awareness of perceptual positioning. How am I related to self/external/internal. This is where mountain is no longer mountain and lake no longer lake. The feeling is disorientation, not knowing what is real and how it relates perceptually.

 

Then we swap it all around. We aren't in the younger learning phase and we have feet back on the ground without the disorientation.

This is mountains still mountains and lake still lake.

 

I can relate to that because I definitely went through it. There was a time I could not tell outside from inside with any certainty. It was as if the learning unselfconsciously had changed into a more focused awareness on how this was happening. Like looking out of a window into the distance for an extended period of time , then the eyes suddenly focus on the window itself and, for the first time realise the window exists there.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Karl

[manitou]

Yuanwu was just talking about returning to life, coming back to one's senses.  I find distinguishing the experience of gravity and the senses above from the eyes, at least some of the time, to be important in my happiness.  Calms me down.  Lets me feel the location of my awareness, instead of the location of the object in awareness relative to my eyes.  The rest follows from that.

 

 

LOL, a fool you are not, Mark Foote.  You never fail to amaze me with your posts.

 

I am a bit blown away by your mention of gravity.  A couple years ago I started the practice of closing my eyes and realizing that were it not for gravity, I would not even know I was here.  I would not feel my feet on the ground, or my butt in this chair - it is only the tactile senses that are granted to this entity that dwells within me (the same entity that dwells within you) that gives me the illusion of separation and presence in this world.  Separate we are not.  If you are a fool, I am as well.

 

Love to you -

 

Manitou

[Karl]

LOL, a fool you are not, Mark Foote.  You never fail to amaze me with your posts.

 

I am a bit blown away by your mention of gravity.  A couple years ago I started the practice of closing my eyes and realizing that were it not for gravity, I would not even know I was here.  I would not feel my feet on the ground, or my butt in this chair - it is only the tactile senses that are granted to this entity that dwells within me (the same entity that dwells within you) that gives me the illusion of separation and presence in this world.  Separate we are not.  If you are a fool, I am as well.

 

Love to you -

 

Manitou

 

You wouldn't know you were here ? You think gravity determines your cognition of self, come on Manitou you cannot possibly believe that ? Surely you have a seperate identity within the universe or you would be unable to make that observation. It's an observation from your perspective. To have a seperate perspective you must have a seperate identity. To have a seperate identity is to accept existence exists.

[manitou]

LOL.  Gimme a break, Karl.  I was speaking in a purely physical sense.

[Brian]

I just had another thought.

 

Reconsider the shrooms.

Yeah, that was my first thought.

 

[Karl]

LOL.  Gimme a break, Karl.  I was speaking in a purely physical sense.

 

How were you saying that ?

 

If you said that you could not tell up from down then that's plausible, but if there was no gravity at all, then there would be no you to observe such a thing.

 

Seriously, this is all for the best ;-)

 

(You know I like playing with the concepts. I find it interesting what people say and like to explore the ramifications, not necessarily to make corrections to that thinking. )

[manitou]

How were you saying that ? If you said that you could not tell up from down then that's plausible, but if there was no gravity at all, then there would be no you to observe such a thing. Seriously, this is all for the best ;-) (You know I like playing with the concepts. I find it interesting what people say and like to explore the ramifications, not necessarily to make corrections to that thinking. )

 

Okay.  The senses give us the false sense of separation, one from another.  The practice of 'feeling gravity' (along with being aware of what I'm hearing or smelling, as I said, my eyes are closed when I do it) reminds me that I possess a physical body with senses that keep me feeling separate from you.  It separates physicality from 'my' reality of Oneness with all.  It helps me remember that my separateness is only an illusion that I get caught up in - that the reality is really the One Life.  Maybe I'm not saying it very well. I think we're talking apples and oranges.

[manitou]

Yeah, that was my first thought.

 

 

In my experience, your first thoughts are usually darn good ones.  Or, more often than not, funny ones.

[Brian]

 

In my experience, your first thoughts are usually darn good ones. Or, more often than not, funny ones.

[Karl]

Okay. The senses give us the false sense of separation, one from another. The practice of 'feeling gravity' (along with being aware of what I'm hearing or smelling, as I said, my eyes are closed when I do it) reminds me that I possess a physical body with senses that keep me feeling separate from you. It separates physicality from 'my' reality of Oneness with all. It helps me remember that my separateness is only an illusion that I get caught up in - that the reality is really the One Life. Maybe I'm not saying it very well. I think we're talking apples and oranges.

Fruit based conversation seems to be spreading across the forums today :-)

 

Well you are seperate. That's an excellent thing because I can talk to you and exchange different perspectives and ideas. If we were all one then our intellect would be homogenous. It would be like a single note piece of music, or a monotone picture in a monotone universe. It is the different identities that make our conscious experience of life bountiful and fascinating. There's time enough for monotony when we are dead and gone. Don't wish it here and now.

 

Apples and Oranges is a good example.

 

In order to feel 'oneness' then one must be self identified. Such that 'I' feel something. Without the I of identity there can be no feeling of anything. As it is you 'feel' which is an entirely emotional thing. By all means feel at one with everything from a self identified and seperate perspective. There isn't a conflict and that's a nice place to be.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Karl

[manitou]

Fruit based conversation seems to be spreading across the forums today :-)

 

Well you are seperate. That's an excellent thing because I can talk to you and exchange different perspectives and ideas. If we were all one then our intellect would be homogenous. It would be like a single note piece of music, or a monotone picture in a monotone universe. It is the different identities that make our conscious experience of life bountiful and fascinating. There's time enough for monotony when we are dead and gone. Don't wish it here and now.

 

Apples and Oranges is a good example.

 

In order to feel 'oneness' then one must be self identified. Such that 'I' feel something. Without the I of identity there can be no feeling of anything. As it is you 'feel' which is an entirely emotional thing. By all means feel at one with everything from a self identified and seperate perspective. There isn't a conflict and that's a nice place to be.

 

I think our Minds are all one but conditioned differently, depending on where we were born, who our parents were, the falsehoods we were given from birth.  Reversion is the action of the Dao.  It all returns to One, then to the Void.  We're somewhere caught in the middle of the process.

 

IMO.

[manitou]

 

 

I'm glad someone picked up on that.  The comment was sticking out a bit, like a sore thumb.  I hope The Cat is giving it consideration - it could well explain the feeling of disconnect.  Substances have a way of being tricksters.  Some of my greatest insights have been under the influence of something or other - but in the long run it turns out to be antagonistic to my ultimate goal of finding Truth.  Which was right inside me all along.

[Mark Foote]

Okay.  The senses give us the false sense of separation, one from another.  The practice of 'feeling gravity' (along with being aware of what I'm hearing or smelling, as I said, my eyes are closed when I do it) reminds me that I possess a physical body with senses that keep me feeling separate from you.  It separates physicality from 'my' reality of Oneness with all.  It helps me remember that my separateness is only an illusion that I get caught up in - that the reality is really the One Life.  Maybe I'm not saying it very well. I think we're talking apples and oranges.

 

First, for Karl:  from Dogen's "Genjo Koan", three lines, not necessarily consecutive in the original:

 

"When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point."

"When you find your way in this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point."

"Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be readily apparent."

 

I'm hoping, Karl, that you saw the bit I quoted above, that attributes the identification of self to the integration of particular senses, namely, the vestibular, proprioceptive, and ocular senses (to which Olaf Blanke adds the otoliths); this correlation has been made, I believe, largely on the basis of Blanke's research into the particulars of out-of-body experience in the medical literature, and the clinical cases where the basis of such experiences was localized.

 

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. 

 

I'll lift part of my essay entitled Dogen's Genjo Koan here:

 

'"Layman Pang was with his whole family sitting around the fire. Layman Pang suddenly said, 'Difficult, difficult—ten bushels of oil hemp spread out on a tree.' Mrs. Pang said, 'Easy, easy—on the tips of the hundred grasses, the meaning of Zen.' Their daughter Lingzhao said, 'Not difficult, not easy—eating when hungry, sleeping when tired'."

 

Yuanwu commented on the story:

 

"Usually when I relate this story to people, most of them prefer Lingzhao's remark for saving energy, and dislike what Old Man Pang and Old Lady Pang said about difficult and easy. This is nothing but 'making interpretations by following the words'. People who think like this are far from getting to the root of the fundamental design."

 

I find the descriptions given by Old Man Pang and Old Lady Pang a lot like my experience with "when you find your place where you are" and "when you find your way at this moment".'

 

And, as I go on to point out in the essay, a lot like my experience with "although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be readily apparent." 

 

Manitou, your exercise with gravity I think is exactly "when you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point."  Actually, there, you are exercising both your sense of gravity and your sense of consciousness generated by the proprioceptors; that is, consciousness generated by the proprioceptors in the joints, the ligaments, and the muscles all over the body ("butt in the chair"), rather than by the organ known as the brain.

 

With regard to the senses giving us a feeling of separation, if you emphasize one more sense that I believe is there in your exercise anyway, that feeling of separation drops off (in my experience); that would be equalibrioception.  Here's a nice description from the T'ai Chi classics, quoted by Cheng Man-Ch'ing:

 

"In general, what the ancients called, 'straightening the chest and sitting precariously,' has to do with the work of self-cultivation. ...Holding the spine erect is like stringing pearls on top of each other, without letting them lean or incline. However, if one is tense and stiff, or unnaturally affected, then this too is an error."

 

Emphasis on the "precarious", for equalibrioception (source for that quote can be found in my latest piece of writing).  I myself look explicitly for the presence of pitch, yaw, and roll with the experience of location, sometimes (mostly when I'm unhappy 'cause my mind is overactive).

 

If your eyes are closed, you can experience the feeling of location shifting around; no longer necessarily fixed, no longer necessarily in the head.  This can be pronounced, right before I fall asleep. 

 

The senses have their boundaries.  To open to all the senses, and to realize action instigated by what is beyond the boundary of the senses ("actualized immediately"), I find the recollection of the mind of friendliness and its extension beyond the boundary to be magic.

 

"Sitting shikantaza is the place itself, and things. ...When you sit, the cushion sits with you. If you wear glasses, the glasses sit with you. Clothing sits with you. House sits with you. People who are moving around outside all sit with you. They don't take the sitting posture!"

 

(Kobun Chino Otogawa, from the jikoji.org website "Aspects of Seated Meditation (Shikantaza)")

 

Notice the cushion, sitting with the butt, above- ha ha!

Edited April 20, 2016 by Mark Foote

[Karl]

I think our Minds are all one but conditioned differently, depending on where we were born, who our parents were, the falsehoods we were given from birth.  Reversion is the action of the Dao.  It all returns to One, then to the Void.  We're somewhere caught in the middle of the process.

 

IMO.

 

The mind is a collection of experienced integrated sensory perceptions of existent reality.

If there are falsehoods then these will necessarily cause conflicts with reality on some level.

What could the 'one' mind be ? Are you envisaging some universal truth that it is hidden and if so, then on what would it be based ? Some other reality ? If so, then how is it possible to know that reality is any more/less real than your current experience of reality ?

 

 

[manitou]

The mind is a collection of experienced integrated sensory perceptions of existent reality. If there are falsehoods then these will necessarily cause conflicts with reality on some level. What could the 'one' mind be ? Are you envisaging some universal truth that it is hidden and if so, then on what would it be based ? Some other reality ? If so, then how is it possible to know that reality is any more/less real than your current experience of reality ?

 

I would say the mind is a collection of experienced integrated sensory perceptions of existent non-reality.  Who can describe what reality is?  Even if we are standing together looking at the same tree, the tree will look slightly different to you than to me, because we cannot superimpose our eyes over each other.  If we step into the same position to look at the tree a minute apart, the tree is still different because time has made it so, however imperceptible.

 

The 'one' mind, is our mutual view of shared reality in our current dimension.  Perhaps this is a buddha-land, as described in the sutras.  Perhaps there are countless other shared realities in different realms, different stratas, different dimensions.  Yes, I do think there is a universal truth that must be experienced, it cannot be spoken.  It is that which is contained within the Logos, the 'We Are'-ness of all of this.  The Dao.  The template.  The oak in the acorn.  The image of the lotus in the seed.  The law of attraction.  Personally, I think the Logos and Love are the same, the glue that holds it together.  Perhaps it is the dark matter.

 

I don't know, what is reality, Karl?  You tell me.  Is it the bellows of the Dao, are we merely the other side of a black hole breathing into a big bang, back and forth ad infinitum?  I surely can't put words to it.  But if one has experienced the Oneness of the collective, then one gnows.  Once one has been there (please don't ask me where 'there' is, I can't tell you - I can only tell you the circumstances under which I saw it) it is felt, it is gnown.  It is The Collective, and it is real.  It is golden.  It radiates. It is warm.  It leaves no questions in your heart.

 

It's just not a brain thing.

Edited February 4, 2016 by manitou

[manitou]

If your eyes are closed, you can experience the feeling of location shifting around; no longer necessarily fixed, no longer necessarily in the head.  This can be pronounced, right before I fall asleep. 

 

One thing I like to do along these lines is to close my eyes if I am the passenger in a car.  It's less effective if you're the driver of the car.  I imagine that going around a curve to the right, I'm in body.  A curve to the left, out of body.

 

I find very interesting your mention of the strings of pearls, the exquisite balance of the spine.  I do this as well - I like to sit on a cushion, perhaps a meditation position - but for the purpose of finding exactly the relaxed point of balance, where no muscles need engage to hold the head above the spine.  When I am in a place of danger, I place myself within a gyro-type place of perfect balance, envisioning round moving circles around me, gyrating - and knowing (or gnowing) that I will be fine.  I have done this instinctively throughout the years, even in my police career - way before I'd ever heard of the DDJ.  There must be something instinctual inside of us that knows this.

 

I look forward to reading your written article.  I have a feeling much of it will be over my head, however.   My exquisite 12th grade education can't begin to keep up with you.  My heart can Get Down with you, but my head can't Keep Up with you.  But I will try.