Differences between dualism and non-dualism

[Apech]

50 minutes ago, Bindi said:

Is it? Fear is at bottom life saving, designed I believe to protect the organism, but major early fears do tend to reverberate in dysfunctional ways into adulthood. I see the dysfunctional manifestations as a restriction on our freedom to live happily/peacefully and achieve personal goals, but the subconscious source of dysfunctional fears can be confronted.This is actually empowering, and certainly emotionally healthy. 

 

I suppose my own answer to my question is that fear is in essence energy itself - but specifically the instinctive (?) high alert state produced by threat.  It is necessary because without it we would soon be dead since we would be oblivious to threat.  I think the heightened state induced by fear is if not directly assimilated is stored in the alaya and will be triggered by forms which seem to relate to the situation which originally caused it.  A general background fear would be called an anxiety state.

 

Confronting stored fears in the alaya and unlocking the the highly charged stored 'memories' is , I think essential for the being who chooses freedom as the way.

 

 

[Bindi]

30 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

I like your answer, next time maybe you could just answer your own question right away  

 

Quote

I suppose my own answer to my question is that fear is in essence energy itself - but specifically the instinctive (?) high alert state produced by threat.  It is necessary because without it we would soon be dead since we would be oblivious to threat. 
 

 

Agreed, fear is required for survival.

 

Quote

I think the heightened state induced by fear is if not directly assimilated is stored in the alaya and will be triggered by forms which seem to relate to the situation which originally caused it. 
 

 

We can even be afraid of the idea of something happening when actual situations aren’t there to stimulate the stored fears. I don’t mean as a general anxiety state, more specific, for example fearing being abducted by aliens, in the past fearing vampires, creating threatening characters in the imagination to trigger the stored fears. 

 

Quote

A general background fear would be called an anxiety state.

 

Confronting stored fears in the alaya and unlocking the the highly charged stored 'memories' is , I think essential for the being who chooses freedom as the way.

 

 

I see it as once created, the fear has to be fully felt and processed before it can dissipate and stop repeating itself, sounds like ghosts of our pasts that have to be put to rest. The question is, is nonduality in and of itself enough to actually resolve these fear echoes? 
 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Bindi

[Miffymog]

I have been on a number of week long silent retreats, and although I have approached pre-samadhic states, I have never had a nondual experience.

 

The closest I've got to is when I'm doing an activity and 'been in the zone'. This is quite different from a meditative experience, because wwhile I'm doing the activity my mind is completely immersed. Where as, I'm guessing, in a meditative state because you can more fully reside in it, it can be more fully integrated and evaluated. 

 

There have been times when I have been utterly lost in an experience, and after the event I would some times eflect on what I could take away from it. The response I had from one retreat leader was that it meant I knew how to return to that state if I so chose.

 

For me what I would most like from a nondual experience, which is a strange thing to say, is something that I could apply in my life almost on an intellectual level. The word 'intellectual' here means the part of my mind which I use as a filter in order to engage with the rest of world.

 

When this filter is working well, I feel I am at my best.

 

This has been a fantastic thread, and I have been gaining a great deal from reflecting on the posts, so thanks to all 🙂

 

 

[old3bob]

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”  
― Frank Herbert, Dune

 

the "I" that always was, always is and will always remain,  the fearless and the eater of death 

 

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by old3bob

[Michael Sternbach]

9 minutes ago, old3bob said:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”  
― Frank Herbert, Dune

 

the "I" that always was, always is and will always remain,  the fearless and the eater of death 

 

 

 

1. This is a course in miracles. ²It is a required course. ³Only the time you take it is voluntary. ⁴Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. ⁵It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. ⁶The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. ⁷It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. ⁸The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

 

2. This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

²Nothing real can be threatened.
³Nothing unreal exists.

⁴Herein lies the peace of God.

(ACIM, T-in.1:1–2:4)

Edited June 6, 2022 by Michael Sternbach

[awaken]

『不二』不是一種經驗

而是一種進入三摩地的心態

 

"Non-duality" is not an experience

but a state of mind that enters samadhi

 

如果你做到了『不二』的心態

你的三摩地會產生質的改變

 

If you have achieved the "non-duality" mentality

Your samadhi will make a qualitative difference

 

如果你沒光，你會產生光

如果你有光，初級的烏肝光，你會繼續產生兔髓光

如果你有烏肝和兔髓光，你會繼續產生陽生光

到某個程度，你會產生滿月一樣的圓形光，這時候你就可以確定你走對路了

 

If you have no light,  light will be produced

If you have light, primary black liver light,  rabbit marrow light will be produced

If you have black liver and rabbit pith light, the YanShen light will be produced

At a certain point, you'll have a full moon-like circular light, and that's when you can be sure you're on the right track

 

如果你只有一種『感覺』，覺得你達到『不二』的感覺，那很肯定的，你搞錯方向了

If you only have one 'feeling', that you have achieved the feeling of 'non-duality', then for sure, you are going in the opposite direction

 

[Apech]

2 hours ago, Bindi said:

I like your answer, next time maybe you could just answer your own question right away  

 

 

Agreed, fear is required for survival.

 

 

We can even be afraid of the idea of something happening when actual situations aren’t there to stimulate the stored fears. I don’t mean as a general anxiety state, more specific, for example fearing being abducted by aliens, in the past fearing vampires, creating threatening characters in the imagination to trigger the stored fears. 

 

Sure, in fact there's a whole genre of horror films which posit such situations.  And it is interesting just how commercially successful such things are - that people instinctively see value in triggering fear (because of the energy in it).  But I would also say that aliens - i.e. non-human entities and vampires i.e. entities that live by drawing on human victims - are fascinating because they are in some sense real.  Topically a virus is an alien entity which enters and feeds off our cells - though I wouldn't reduce the whole subject to this kind of analogy.

 

Quote

 I see it as once created, the fear has to be fully felt and processed before it can dissipate and stop repeating itself, sounds like ghosts of our pasts that have to be put to rest. The question is, is nonduality in and of itself enough to actually resolve these fear echoes? 

 

'nonduality' as a thing does not exist and cannot resolve or do anything.

 

I think the question here is - 'is the energy which needs to be fully felt and processed and the energy which is what you are, fundamentally different in any way other than mode of operation?'

 

If you take the hero's journey to tackle the dragon (a kind of sum of all fears) you might following victory say, the violent and chaotic powers which I have vanquished in essence are no different to life itself - that in effect I have been battling myself.  And you might call your relationship to the dragon non-dual.  But if you started to think and act like this half way through the battle you would find yourself off your horse, on the ground, with giant fangs poised to bite your neck.  Then I suppose, staring up at those toothy jaws, you could say 'meh, just illusion' ... then rest in peace.

 

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Apech

[Mark Foote]

4 hours ago, Bindi said:

A turning point it may be, but it doesn’t appear to be a complete and final disassociation from all physical and emotional and mental and karmic identifications, and this complete disidentification seems to be the greater achievement (to me).

 

 

Do we disidentify with all the physical and emotional and mental and karmic, or specifically with the notion of being the actor with respect to these things, of being able to act (out of will) with respect to these things in a manner that doesn't leave a residue to be dealt with in the future?

And what has that got to do with the central channel, if I may?

[Mark Foote]

3 hours ago, awaken said:

 

If you have no light,  light will be produced

If you have light, primary black liver light,  rabbit marrow light will be produced

If you have black liver and rabbit pith light, the YanShen light will be produced

At a certain point, you'll have a full moon-like circular light, and that's when you can be sure you're on the right track

 

I know you have pointed to your posts elsewhere on Dao Bums, awaken, but can you bring just a little of the meaning of "black liver light", "rabbit marrow light", and "YanShen light" here?  

Or maybe, more specifically, of "black liver", "rabbit marrow", and "YanShen".

Edited June 6, 2022 by Mark Foote

[Apech]

 

[dwai]

Fear is a direct result of the ignorance about our True Nature. 

 

To protect the body etc doesn't require fear - it requires alertness/being present. In fact, in situations where one's life (say) is truly under threat, the perception of time and space changes dramatically. Everything happens in slow-motion, and there IS no fear as it is occurring. Anyone who's been in a car crash or similar life-threatening experience (I have) can corroborate this -- similarly to other situations which pose existential threats. The fight-or-flight response kicks in after the event has occurred when the mind has had time to process what happened. Being fearful doesn't protect you, or improve your chances of survival.

 

Other kinds of fear reactions are a result of the ego being threatened, and are mental responses, after the fact. Mostly the kind of situations where one would go through "what-if" and "if-this, then-that" type of analysis in the mind. Usually, people aren't aware of it - they feel "Afraid". But the fear is a response to perceived/hypothetical threats, not a real existential challenge. This fear response is a direct result of the mistaken identification with the personality layer that is perceived as being "threatened". Even ideas can cause this reaction. Only, the choice one makes consequently is that of "anger" or "outrage" etc (we can even see that on display on this very forum).

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by dwai

[silent thunder]

8 hours ago, Apech said:

 

'Wisdom' or prajna is prior to conscious awareness (vijnana) and does choose, choice is not illusory as that is just bunkum made up by neuroscientists like Sam Harris based on bogus experiments on measuring brain activity on people pressing buttons.

 

whatever gets your through your night...

[dawn90]

20 minutes ago, dwai said:

Being fearful doesn't protect you, or improve your chances of survival. 

 

 

Luke here was saved by his fear of the dark side by your logic he should've given in since "fear" doesn't protect you against anything.

 

From a purely survivalistic point of you you're right but it does protect him in this instance from ending the Jedi race.

He saved not only himself because he fought back; but he fought back corruption in his heart and because of this the Jedi heritage lives on.

 

Dwai.

You would've made that movie shorter.

Perhaps not a loss when you look at the movies that followed, but definitely we would've said goodbye to the Skywalker legacy much sooner (and Rian Johnson).

[old3bob]

with a relative reality/being in its relative realm there is no "illusion", but with a more subtle reality/being a less subtle reality then becomes more or less illusion like... thus we have had tales of advanced beings in the earth realm who with the need  have walked through walls, or a god being who can traverse all the realms if they have the need to.  (and then we have chapter 43 of the TTC where it says,   "...Only Nothing can enter into no space..." 

Anyway Imo it would be great if some people would quit harping on about illusion.

[ralis]

59 minutes ago, dwai said:

Fear is a direct result of the ignorance about our True Nature. 

 

To protect the body etc doesn't require fear - it requires alertness/being present. In fact, in situations where one's life (say) is truly under threat, the perception of time and space changes dramatically. Everything happens in slow-motion, and there IS no fear as it is occurring. Anyone who's been in a car crash or similar life-threatening experience (I have) can corroborate this -- similarly to other situations which pose existential threats. The fight-or-flight response kicks in after the event has occurred when the mind has had time to process what happened. Being fearful doesn't protect you, or improve your chances of survival.

 

Other kinds of fear reactions are a result of the ego being threatened, and are mental responses, after the fact. Mostly the kind of situations where one would go through "what-if" and "if-this, then-that" type of analysis in the mind. Usually, people aren't aware of it - they feel "Afraid". But the fear is a response to perceived/hypothetical threats, not a real existential challenge. This fear response is a direct result of the mistaken identification with the personality layer that is perceived as being "threatened". Even ideas can cause this reaction. Only, the choice one makes consequently is that of "anger" or "outrage" etc (we can even see that on display on this very forum).

 

Fear is a physiological evolutionary response built into the lower brain stem, a survival mechanism. Not a recent adaptation, but over hundreds of millions of years. Ignorance has nothing to do with it. 
 

[Cobie]

9 hours ago, Apech said:

What is fear ... is the question.

Fear is that thing that makes you piss in your pants. You feel it, you know what it is. That’s all.
 

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Cobie

[dawn90]

1 hour ago, dwai said:

Fear is a direct result of the ignorance about our True Nature. 

 

The Sith would be proud.

 

 

[dwai]

14 minutes ago, dawn90 said:

 

The Sith would be proud.

 

 

Pratibhasika satya 

[dwai]

25 minutes ago, ralis said:

Fear is a physiological evolutionary response built into the lower brain stem, a survival mechanism. Not a recent adaptation, but over hundreds of millions of years. Ignorance has nothing to do with it. 
 

This point needs closer examination. Who we really are has nothing to do with evolution or time.  Ignorance is precisely that — we think of ourselves as limited (miserable) beings who are caught in a cycle of ______ (fill in the blanks with evolutionary process, karma, etc etc). But we are not. 

[stirling]

20 hours ago, Bindi said:

Fear is the conditioned action, arising prior to conscious awareness, not acting on that fear is the thought reaction, it relies on a conscious response to a specific manifestation of fear. 

 

While I don't get the feeling that there is a lot of room for flexibility in your world view, you might find it interesting if you are a decent meditator to learn to watch the "skandhas" arise in order to actually see how your thoughts and feelings are constructed. Keep in mind that this takes some work, but it is a very useful skill to learn to allow a body feeling to stop in development, before it even becomes "pleasant/unpleasant" in "2. Sensation". 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandha#Description

 

With practice you can see that all thoughts and feelings have their start as phenomena that HAVE no positive or negative value and are therefore empty of fear, love, etc. etc. 

 

Feel free to ask more questions about it if there is genuine interest.

[stirling]

9 hours ago, Apech said:

'Wisdom' or prajna is prior to conscious awareness (vijnana) and does choose, choice is not illusory as that is just bunkum made up by neuroscientists like Sam Harris based on bogus experiments on measuring brain activity on people pressing buttons.

 

My personal experience says otherwise, though there are plenty of non-Sam Harris based science experiments that DO demonstrate this point, not that they are ultimately relevant: 

 

https://www.wired.com/2008/04/mind-decision/

 

If you want to take this apart, meditation is the place to look, and learning to see the skandhas arise (which I just posted about) is ironically, the practice I would recommend.

[blue eyed snake]

8 hours ago, Bindi said:

I have no issue with this as a personal experience, though to believe that it describes reality is just a belief. 

 

this is one of the things that make it so funny.

You describe my perception of reality as just a belief and "the nondualists"  describe your perception as just a story.

and bicker on about it for 50 pages already 

 

(I've no idea what a 'nondualist' is though, it feels like you're putting  a bunch of very different people in a labeled box.)

 

8 hours ago, Bindi said:

A turning point it may be, but it doesn’t appear to be a complete and final disassociation from all physical and emotional and mental and karmic identifications, and this complete disidentification seems to be the greater achievement (to me).

 

I do not regard any of this as an achievement, and your description is a state that I would not want to fall into right away, the shock of change would do my body in.

 

I regard myself as a toddler, I've learned to stand up, maybe even to walk a few steps. Now I need to learn to walk with the easy grace of a healthy young person. that will take a few, probably many years.

 

 

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by blue eyed snake

[ralis]

19 minutes ago, dwai said:

This point needs closer examination. Who we really are has nothing to do with evolution or time.  Ignorance is precisely that — we think of ourselves as limited (miserable) beings who are caught in a cycle of ______ (fill in the blanks with evolutionary process, karma, etc etc). But we are not. 

Who are “we” that you speak of? That is a generalized statement where you are attempting to apply it to all persons, a false generalization. Speak for you self please and don’t condemn others to your world view. I call it religious posturing whereby one claims a higher superiority, or cause, by classifying others as ignorant. 

[Cobie]

12 minutes ago, ralis said:

Who are “we” that you speak of? That is a generalized statement where you are attempting to apply it to all persons, a false generalization. Speak for you self please and don’t condemn others to your world view. …

Well said. I totally agree.
 

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Cobie

[blue eyed snake]

2 hours ago, dwai said:

To protect the body etc doesn't require fear - it requires alertness/being present. In fact, in situations where one's life (say) is truly under threat, the perception of time and space changes dramatically. Everything happens in slow-motion, and there IS no fear as it is occurring. Anyone who's been in a car crash or similar life-threatening experience (I have) can corroborate this -- similarly to other situations which pose existential threats. The fight-or-flight response kicks in after the event has occurred when the mind has had time to process what happened. Being fearful doesn't protect you, or improve your chances of survival.

 

hmm... as far as my knowledge reaches it is fear that wakes up that respons of very adequate reactions. I've been in lifethreatening situations too and when someone tries to do you in,  fear is the main motivator, at least in this body.

 

maybe you are superman of course, then thing probably are different. will make allowance for that