What is a disease? and Mind/Body spectrum

The brain on the right shows dopamine levels in normal circumstances when addicted and the left shows the normal version.

I read an article that talks about addiction not being a brain disease but more of an 'Extreme form of learning'. Normally the dopamine rewards is released for good food, sex, social interaction etc. But here in the addiction case, all of the dopamine is redirected to the substance causing an extreme desire to have it. It is essentially a re-direction. We call it a disease and destructive more because this redirection may threaten the stability and structures of society as it is as of today. But even a mystic would be termed as disease by psychologists because of his relative detachment to things that people pursue. Psychologists are like the mental gatekeepers of our societal structure just like the police are physical gatekeepers. Their concern is first conformity and second your actual health and needs.

Source: http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/2012/11/12/why-addiction-is-not-a-brain-disease/

In fact, there is an interesting question about how do we define any disease - physical (pain), mental (ability, processing, fixation), spiritual (true values, desires). It is some kind of disharmony, conflict. Perfect harmony is perfect health.

Addiction is a far broader concept than what it is generally thought to be. Addiction is not just to drugs like alcohol, cigarettes, cocaine, heroin, chocolate, weed, sex, love, sugar etc. It could be for just about anything. It could also be for certain kinds of social interactions, movies, life, state of mind, control, ideas, conceptions, models etc.

It is an entire spectrum of how much a 'perception object' draws you towards it.  The degree of compulsiveness the 'perception object' creates.

For visualization purposes imagine addiction/attachment is something like the visible light spectrum.

I sometimes wonder what is the difference between attachment and addiction?
They both seem to be essentially the same spectrum.

It seems like disease is a concept defined in society based on a certain kind of functionality expectation. When a person is unable to function in his daily office job/socially etc. then we declare him as unwell or having a disease (mental or physical). But the question is, in the absolute reality, is disease really something 'REAL'? OR is it more of an emergent property when the individual is not in harmony with the expectations and beliefs of his environment? Any dis-ease (as we term it) is ultimately just an experience. Anything out of the defined normal is called a disease and there are all kinds of interventions (antidepressants etc.) to forceabily get the person back into harmony/conformance with the dominant socio-cultural values.

Addiction to coffee and workaholism is encouraged and not considered a disease because it is in line with the dominant culture and its values. But addiction to psychedelics and ego-dissolution techniques is considered alien and a disease. Introversion and non-participation is considered a disease because the dominant culture requires you to be an extrovert. There are tons of examples like this. 

So there is no such object called disease in absolute reality. Disease is more of an interpretation which happens when 'What should be' and 'What is' are compared. 'What should be' is again the definition of functional normality as defined by the dominant culture and the average collective level of consciousness. For a future human, our condition maybe a terrible disease and likewise we may view our ancestors as being terribly diseased.

So disease is not really something solid phenomena. It does not exist in the absolute sense. It is an input interpretation based on 'X' model and during our life we flip through many mental models 'X', 'Y', 'Z' etc. A disease in model 'X' maybe a blessing/insight in model 'Y'.

It also opens up a larger question. That 'All of reality is essentially input interpretation' and interpretation happens through beliefs. So it would be quite accurate to say 'beliefs determine reality experience'. When your belief structures are warped by psychedelics/contemplation on connections/kindness/impermanence etc., the same ordinary objects create profound religious feelings. Its as if the physical reality experience is a shadow of higher vibrational realms like the mind and belief centers.

Its as if beliefs are like the ozone layer and clouds which allow sunshine to hit the earth or not. 

The sun (God, universal force, universal energy) is always shining. Each human could be thought of as planets dancing around the sun. Lets consider earth to be one such person. The stratosphere would be the deep subconscious. The troposphere, the pre-conscious. The clouds - our daily thoughts etc. So based on these layers only a limited amount of sunshine hits the earth. If all this is cleared or made transparent through the light of awareness (the sun's light), then there is only light since it has penetrated everything and revealed their true nature.

In a sense, all of these layers can be called diseases. The more cut of you are from the light, the more desperate you become to find it. But is it really a disease? This is after all an experience and each experience is beautiful. It is one form among the infinite appearances that are possible in awareness. How can it be inherently bad from this perspective?

Also the distinction between mental and physical diseases isn't really there. Mental patterns congeal onto the physical dimension of energy when repeated over a long period of time OR if highly intense. A physical pattern can cause a mental fixation and thereby cause mental suffering.

This is again a spectrum with no boundary. Everything is ultimately vibration. Something like how sound and light are actually the same thing (its being debated). Sound would be the lower frequency part and light would be the higher frequency part of the same spectrum.

The body would be the slower vibration part of the spectrum while thoughts would be the higher vibration part of our 'Spectrum of being'. Even higher in vibration would be the 'I am ness', 'desire space' and 'belief space'. Manifestation in the lower physical spectrum can have its origin in the higher vibrational spaces like thought. Like the saying 'Everything begins with a thought, an idea, a dream'. Also the reverse can happen. Physical pain (lower vibration) from a disease may make you change your beliefs (higher vibration). So the whole thing is one like the poles of a magnet - physical and mental realms. The interconnection is so complete that they both are really 'ONE'. Thought influences the physical and the physical influences thought. Both physical and mental represent the one absolute being. Its just like how we call the whole band of electromagnetic spectrum 'Light'.

Effects of our actions occur through probability spaces

The effects of all our actions occur through a probability space. Some things have much higher probability of inducing certain reactions, some of the others have a more unpredictable nature, some have low probabilities depending on what the chosen goal is. You can only perform actions in probability spaces, however the ultimate effects of your actions are driven by forces outside your control.

For example: A particular song may induce certain types of feelings in me. The overall pattern is highly probable However the exact feeling can never be recreated. There is a whole gradient of probabilities in awareness. Like if you are sick, in a very bad mood, tired, even the best songs would not be enjoyable. Whether or not some action of your will satisfy you is also a probability.

Maybe, in the previous weekend, when you had a night out and drank 4 beers, it was memorable. So you may do that again to repeat the 'memorable' aspect, but that again is a probability. It may or may not be memorable. Also the exact flavor can never be recreated.

These probability spaces at every moment are vibrating, pulsing, dancing etc. which is the ecstasy of life.  The more deeply you look, the more vibration is found. For example, your table looks stable. Look at it with microscopes, going progressively deeper, you'll reach a point where electrons are moving in warp speed and your entire table is made up of those warping vibrations. The same applies to your DIRECT experience of anything. The amount of vibrations you perceive depends on the extent to which you have developed your awareness.

So every moment is completely unique. When this fully sinks in, it creates a mixed feeling of euphoria and discomfort. The discomfort is because of the groundlessness. The euphoria is because your true identity is this infinite space of manifestation.

Experience of self as a mirror

My experience of self (self within awareness field) is like a mirror reflecting the environment. But this mirror also has memory, beliefs and filters. My beliefs are like translucent/opaque overlapping layered pieces of cloth covering this formless mirror.

The overlapping pieces of cloth with varying opacity are  like layers of an onion. When all the layers are peeled it is discovered there is nothing hiding inside.

Some parts of the cloth are more translucent, some less, some parts are opaque. I do not experience the pure formless mirror reflectivity because of my accumulation - belief filters, memories, interpretations, conditioning etc.

Right now, my experience of the world is through the translucent parts and holes of the veils that are obscuring my true unbridled nature.

How do I remove all the accumulation, conditioning and layers to find this brilliant formless(objectless) mirror which contains within itself the entire universe reflected with no separation?

Meditation - Insights on weed

The forehead is just flashing a light, the solar plexus is reacts to these flashes with a stably shining bulb like light. All the lights can be opened and the veils/blockage energies can be pierced through.

When thinking, you whole spine lights have to think, not just the top part: middle part = memory and base parts - grounding and context, and top parts - thinking, exploring, planning, uppermost part - higher vision.
The energy has to be released. Every impression, image that causes a strong reaction in the chakra lights means there is a lot of energy in that area that has to be expressed and released. So the objects that cause this occurrence should be welcomed and then you can work to release the stored energy. Once this energy is released partly/fully with the light fire of your awareness intensity, then even if the forehead light flashes an impression, it does not affect the body chakra lights below or affects very little because the accumulation of that energy was released from the lower level.

Weed increases the mind body connection with increased focus. This increased focus or stronger light of awareness breaks up the body sensation into a more splintered form. So technically any substance that increases focus energy should splinter the body experience and reveal more change.

The mental/thought impression affect the body energy. Its as if the body energy is like stored balls of energy (each chakra). Some mental chakra flashes trigger highly accumulated balls of charge. So such impressions should be thanked and the body energy must be released fully with the power of light (awareness).

Each object/impression/thought that triggers some body reaction should be focused on and the heavy body energy release should be intensified and allowed fully. Is should be allowed so fully that whether you think of that paranoid thought or not, the release should be the same.

Sense impressions - pure feel, sight, sound are very rarified. Only the accumulation/congealing of energies is the body. There is no actual solidified body, there is only the space of feeling. The solidified is just accumulations and therefore a burden. Imagine how light it would feel without this congealed energy moved everywhere. It would feel like a child again.

Energy release techniques: Deep observation of outer triggered reactions and meditation practice for chakra brightening, freeing and expanding. Thank your surroundings for bringing out the very things you need to release.

If I remove those accumulations then I can enjoy much faster changing pixels everywhere. A dissolution/splintering of the body. Now vipassana bhanga makes more sense. Thats what you were essentially doing regarding freeing up the light of chakras. I can see it would lead to fearlessness because fear is basically this congealed energy.

Body arises like a pattern in a 3-d screen with empty pixels, like the way the blocks animation emerges in 3-D space say. Keep continuous awareness of this congealed/burdenous energy.

Sometimes only certain sense/mental impressions puncture these filled balls and make them radiate that accumulated stuff. All the energy stored in the feeling centers need to be released. Allow the existing accumulation/suppression to release with allowing and continue the allowing for new experiences so that no new accumulation/suppression takes place.
Weed allows you to see finer patterns by refining your mental focus in amplitude, resolution and stamina.

Project forward first, then backward then in the sides, then imagine the light shining from behind your body and through you. To release blockages. The heavier it is, the stronger and longer the release that is required.

Short contemplations (Oct/Nov) - some my own, some based on reading/videos

Loneliness is an experience i.e. energy making u move in a certain direction.
For e.g: it is like a hunger/thirst, which makes u look for food/water. When it comes to food/water we don't feel bad about getting it from outside. Why do we feel bad about getting stuff from other people then?

Music is experienced in infinite ways depending on which of the infinite moods you are in right now. The flicker or snow you see in your visual field is like infinitely rolling scrolls of your subconscious moving through parallel realities every second.

Anything conceived/cognized is a potential. Anything you are aware of is you and your potential. When u know your true nature of nothingness/everythingness/beyondness, you have total freedom in this space of potentials. The closer you are to nothingness, the more variety you can experience.

Do not identify with anything in the present moment if the thing had a beginning in time. Anything that appears or disappears cannot be your true nature.

Just like you masturbate through emotional intention and get yourself to orgasm. Can't the same be done about any emotion?

If you see something in others that makes u dissociate, angry, irritated, annoyed etc. that means you suppress that quality in yourself because there is basically only awareness and the quality (even they both are actually 'one'). Whether it comes from inside or outside is just semantics. You don't have control either way. There is only arising or disappearance in the field of consciousness.

If something is truly miserable you will drop it that very instant. What does not serve one part of me serves another part which gives it fuel to stay. If the whole of me does not give a pattern fuel to stay, its impossible that it would exist after that.

Constantly projecting a known past to an unknown present is the reason for perpetuation of patterns.

Hurting is not from love but from the conditions and projections we build around it.

You are aware of the whole infinite screen of consciousness timelessly in which the moment to moment dance takes place.

Its not the answer that is sought, it is to be free of the discomfort of not having it.

Great doubt and disorientation leads to great awakening.

If there is a real self then how can we be so fragmented? We keep locking on to different states of the mind body process. Infuse all processes with - precision and allowing, The best we can do is create an optimal environment for consciousness to grow in.

When you look into internal image space, you see that vast network. Your stored images of the world, flipping through them like roller decks at lightning speed. When u look at this blank image space there is a shimmering, subconscious flipping through of these roller decks. Your flipping through worlds, some of them are memory, some of them are fantasy/mythological/possible worlds. The part that is so far in, that it is sort of out. It sort of connects with that other network leading to oneness of the whole.

There is no 'thing' to love. That would be an illusion that you allow only that object's presence to put you in that state.

Meditation is a generic skill. It is a global variable applicable to all experience.

Life is always playing a game no matter what I do, even trying to withdraw is a game. 

There is no separate 'I' that stands apart from others, outside. Everything appears and moves in the same space/soup of consciousness. 

The more I observe change with sensory clarity and totality, I am able to switch between perceiving the screen and the movie. The persistent objects in the screen are the patterns of my believed self. More observation, more the release/understanding of this.

If all experience is coming to me and I am just still, then what am I attracting towards myself? Is everything entirely my world? Every single notion of what I think is going on outside me? Every interpretation? Is my basic substance all experience?

The fundamental nature or noumenon is permanent. The objects/appearances are impermanent. 

Beauty is an ideal form towards which we keep pushing. Everyone' wants their bodies and faces to look like the archetypes and we try to get closest to that by controlling stuff like - diet, exercise, makeup, grooming. There are also archetypal beautiful qualities which we keep moving towards such as - power, love, trust, openness, acceptance, clarity, equanimity, confidence, humor etc. What are these archetypes in the mental and physical? Do we really need to base our self esteem on how close or far away we are from those archetypes? Isn't it all relative, and only evoked when I think about it? What is the reality of everything when I do not think?
From the point of view of the witness, there is no doer. From the point of view of the separate self, there is a doer.

What we call relationships colloquially are habits, which are especially visible when talking with family.

I understand that thoughts are empty. But are desires empty? Are aversions empty? Are all desires mirages?

Theorem about the nature of objects

If an object can transform itself or change 100%, then the nature of the object is infinite potential and mystical.

E.g.: Say there is a screen in front of you, whenever you looked at it, it was blue. Now suddenly the screen completely turns red, without even a single trace of blue. What would you conclude about the nature of the screen?

Shallow Answer: The nature of the screen is both red and blue
Deep Answer: The nature of the screen is red, blue, both, neither and infinite. (This is the nature of object across all of time, i.e. encompassing the time dimension)

Explanation: This is because if an object can transform, change (delta) itself by 100%, that means it is essentially 100% unpredictable. It could well perform another 100% change and completely transform itself into something unknown. Nothing can be said about the nature of the object.  It is undefined, mysterious and by definition infinite potential (infinite trans-formative power).

Similarly, if 100% of the contents of your consciousness change (including the notion of consciousness itself, whatever that word represents), then the conclusion would be that YOU are mystical, undefined, and infinite potential itself.

So if you want to prove to yourself that you are infinite unborn potential, keep observing your experience until you can see 100% of the contents of your consciousness changing.

Another way to put it would be, if you are A and change completely to B later, then this proves that your essential nature is neither A nor B but it can be A or B (it contains the ability/potential to be A or B).

Altered states enlighten you by 'subtraction'

The more the number of altered states you experience, the more likely are you to understand your true essence. Each time you have an altered state that's deep enough, it gives you a fantastic break from your daily life, worries, fears etc. Another way to put it would be, it alters your otherwise fairly persistent causal, subtle and gross bodies. So altered states are literally a true vacation.

Now to prove something isn't absolutely true, it needs to change completely. For example if a screen showed only blue color all the time, you would think the screen is blue in essence. But now if the screen changes to red without even a trace of blue, what would you conclude about the nature of the screen? You would conclude that the screen is neither blue nor red and its nature is something other than blue or red. Now imagine this screen starts flashing 1000's of colors each totally distinct from the other. What would you now conclude about the nature of the screen? That it is beyond all the colors that were seen, right?

Something similar applies to altered states. For example if you experience the world as filled with dead inanimate objects, and in your entire life everyone you met validated this model, and if you have never seen the world as anything other than this model, then you would believe that its the truth or fact. But if you have experience a range of altered states, by subtraction, you know that none of them are absolutely true.

The same holds true for your identity too. Seeing all the sides of yourself is like seeing completely different colors on the same screen. What does this speak about the nature of the screen or your identity? Wouldn't it indicate that your essence is beyond all that was perceived?

There is only 'Aliveness' forever

Everything is alive. If I remove all objects and division from my awareness, all I see is aliveness/vibration. There is only seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, and the mind. My seeing space is constantly in vibration even if I just stare at one point. I am continuously sensing sound vibrations through my ear. Every breath I take, there is a different smell. The smell perceived in each breath is unique and continuously changing. The same holds true for internal and external sensations on/in my body. My thought/emotional space too is continuously in motion. In all of these sense spaces, there is continuous change, movement, vibration. Even all of these senses can be collapsed into the gestalt called 'Experience'. This experience is vibrating with aliveness by itself and you are all of it. There is no stable, persistent object thing in this entire experience spectrum. You are just the infinite potential formless dimensionless entity in which all dimensions arise including time, space, all objects and perceptions.

What's the best you can ever feel?

Imagine sitting on your chair comfortably. Notice that the objects in your visual field make no difference. Even if I replace the visual field with scenery from Hawaii, it would not change your mood much. If this is difficult to imagine, imagine there is a room where the whole room is a screen including the floor and ceiling. Suppose you are in the middle of this screen room, sitting in a chair. No matter what image the screen shows - a simple room, Hawaii, grand canyon etc. your basic mood would hardly change. Similarly all sound, music that you hear does not change your basic mood much. Sound and vision affect you only when you project emotions to the visual, auditory objects apprehended. So withdraw your attention and projection away from sounds and vision. Imagine your visual field gets completely black and there is absolute silence. What remains? The feeling. The other factors like vision or sound are almost irrelevant compared to feeling. Feeling/Sensation. When you FEEL good, even your thoughts will be different, your motivations everything. I got the first brush with this concept in a vipassana meditation retreat. Feeling sets the baseline for how everything else will affect you - vision, thoughts, sound etc.

So in our 5 senses - seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touch - Everything can be collapsed into touch or feeling. What you see touches your experience. Similarly what you hear touches you. Smell and taste are even closer to touch/feeling. It seems like all our thoughts are directed to get us to feel in a certain way. Are all our goals, motivations ultimately targeted towards achieving a certain feeling?

This explains why drugs like cocaine, meth, heroin make people lose interest in everything else. Its because what they were seeking all along was the feeling and when that is directly given to them, they lose interest in all the convoluted ways we use in society to attain those feelings. It creates a disillusionment and removes the interest and belief to participate in usual activities. Because these drugs give such high amounts of pleasure, its impossible to get even 1/10th of that no matter how hard you try in common life. So what's the point? would be the first question that would pop up. But however the drugs are temporary in their effect and also exhibit diminishing returns. But the craving for that experience keeps going up proportionally the farther you get away from the high state. So after a while you are stuck with a massive desire for that high, but the drug no longer gives you that. This takes you to depression - "Depression - getting what you want seems impossible or extremely difficult, much beyond your current state of mind or motivation'. A similar state could be very easily reached even in daily life. If your desires are too out of line with what is possible from where you stand, you would burn yourself out and then get depressed.

If I cut through all the illusions, I see all our activity is directed towards balancing certain feelings. If we have been unhappy for long, we seek something that would take us to the opposite side, thereby cancelling out the unhappy feelings. Seeking is the movement towards balancing dualities. Enlightenment would probably be seeing these master rules or patterns itself from a dimension beyond duality.

Now comes the interesting question. Taking all of the above points into consideration, what's the best feeling you could possibly have? If its all about balancing dualities, what is desired is not a attainment of a certain feeling, but freedom/transcendence/higher understanding. If you get too deep into a pit, all you desire is to get out of it. However if you are already on the surface, then you long for an adventure.

Drug highs are unsustainable because of the body's tendency towards homeostasis. But what if we alter the homeostatic set-point itself? This is what is aimed for in wire-head-ism. The idea is that we can alter the brain's set-point to a higher level of bliss. Maybe when we plug into it for the first time, there would be a fantastic jump of well being. But once we get used to that, it would once again become ordinary/normal and we would want to move again. It seems like the ideal life consists of continuous rapid free movement which is coherent, controllable and in harmony, which is what we term ecstasy.

So complete freedom in the experience space and transcendence from it what is truly desired. The separate self dreams of its total fulfillment and disappearance thereby (the separate self cannot be completed since it is the very lack seeking to complete itself, when completed, it vanishes).

So the next question is, where do you want to be in this experience space? The answer would be the opposite of your initial conditions of lack. You want to be in a place that fully completes, fulfills you. When this happen, you would not exist. It can be said, you long to experience the objects that would cause you (separate self - lack) to disappear. When it disappears, we create a new self and once again seek to complete it.

Now, that makes me wonder, are all starting conditions equivalent? Are everyone's lives equivalent? Because ultimately its a play of yin-yang and there are infinite elements in experience to play this game. It seems like the elements could be different but the essential principle of this game (what we call life, duality) is the same. Could this also mean that the potential for each person to live in ultimate glory, effortlessness and completeness the same?

Does time really matter, when time itself is part of experience? Time, free-will etc. intermittently appear and disappear. They are not as enduring, solid and essential as we believe them to be. Everything is just happening just by itself and I am simply a formless, timeless, space-less, dimensionless witness.

Excerpt from a lecture on nature of perception

From a Rupert Spira Lecture: The Nature of perception
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjwBWE64fG0

"That which is never ceases to be. That which is not never comes into existence. Nothing stands out from infinite awareness. No finite object, no finite self ever comes into existence. Knowing and being only itself, never becomes another object, self or world. Matter, mind and consciousness are not 3 separate things, they are 3 ways of seeing one reality. Our experience appears in accordance with the belief we have. If we think we are the body, everything will appear that way. If we think we are the mind, we will become idealists. If we know ourselves to be unlimited everpresent awareness, then experience will appear in that understanding. Multiplicity, diversity, separation will no longer be seen as real. Apparent duality between inside self and outside will collapse.The experience of beauty (or love which is identical in feeling terms, beauty is for perception) is itself the collapse of the inside self and other, outside objects. There is no subject, object in our experience. Rupa - means both form and beauty. The experience of beauty is the essential nature of all perception just like love is the essential nature of all feelings. Truth is beauty, beauty is truth. All experience will shine with the light of pure knowing."

Thoughts - 6 Oct 2013

Any kind of thought - feeling, image, motion combo I can generate now in thought space is based on my current state. I cannot believe any of that is really solid, substantial, essential because everything can change with a change in state. Its as if I am painting various pictures (thoughts right now) but the very color palette used is moving through various combinations of colors (my mood, or general state of mind).

It seems like there is nobody really solid or substantial existing. Its just a whole dance of interconnected movements happening by a universal force of which I am a witness. The only thing real is this witness which being empty by itself witnesses infinite variety. Environment triggers desire, desire triggers new environment etc. and so forth. Its like a continuously forward moving fractal (forward word itself is meaningless because its part of the fractal itself) where I have moments of free will or choice manifesting. Even manifestations like the identity, free will etc. are objects themselves to the subject, the observer.

Culture/Religion/Science is all games and not absolute in any sense. They all are part of the thought stream or the fractal. This is the de-conditioning that needs a much wider knowledge spectrum, exploration of thoughts and a general movement towards the higher unchanging dimensions. I am essentially moving towards the center of the black hole (metaphor for its gravitational pull towards the center, the infinite point of density) of experience where everything converges into a point and is finally transcended. A thing completely observed, is the same as transcendence of the thing. What's interesting is that, whatever your focus point, that is the center of the universe at that point. Its exactly akin to your visual field where the center point, i.e. the fovea centralis is what you are looking at in that movement and that is the center of your visual field in that movement.

I can extend this analogy and say, its like sitting inside a train and sitting in a window position where you feel it moving backwards. You eye's focus can be put anywhere in the continuously changing picture appearing in the window and that becomes your center of everything in that moment. Now even in this analogy, you may think there is still one solid entity, the observer himself with memory. This also gets mind-boggling. There is no observer apart from the observed and everything observed is changing. So in a way you are nothing and everything simultaneously and neither of the two. There is no subject too, because any act to describe the subject cannot be the subject because only objects can be described. So the situations is like this, all objects are changing and there is no subject. So you in essence are beyond everything, observing from a higher dimension outside of all manifestation but containing all of manifestation.

Thoughts - 28 Sep 2013

The preference for women body types seems to be a belief oriented cultural mime and not absolutely true. Our projections of 'perfection pyramids' is subjective and belief based. If this applies to body types for males and females, wouldn't the same apply to even personality, behavior? Wouldn't the invisible aspects also be equally powerful as body types and as illusory too?

I wish for the attainment of a girl with the following perfections:
- perfect body/visual aesthetics/complexion/texture/color/facial features
- perfect health
- perfectly compatibility
- perfect match of interests
- perfect complement
- perfect growth and adventure
- perfect syncing of life goals
- perfect companion
- perfect healer

It is the attainment of the most desirable object. Can any object no matter how desirable ever satisfy you? Especially transitory and ever changing objects? Wouldn't there always be a concomitant fear of losing it? Wouldn't I have to put EFFORT to keep it with me? If it is so desirable, wouldn't everyone else want it to? Wouldn't it not be a continuous struggle to ensure that it stays with you? In fact isn't that how value is created, the very definition of collective value?

Everywhere in the society game, there are pyramids and everyone wants is fighting to get to the top. Whether it is to be the most attractive person, have the most vied for job, have the best apartment, car, sense pleasure access, access to the most desirable objects (both material and invisible in the form of experiences), get the most attention, respect, fame, adoration, admiration and love. Whats the point in fighting for something that is eventually going to fall away. If you have the wisdom of their impermanance and emptiness, would you still fight?

What is the definition of perfection? Is it just based on the belief model that I am holding? And I move through various belief models even within a single day and while talking to different people. The core archetypes of my belief system is what gives the feeling of continuity of 'Me'. The auras around this core are changing at different degrees. But what is the core but an unexamined very abstract archetype? When these archetypal core beliefs are examined then all burden would dissolve. Maybe there is no such real thing as perfection because of relativity of everything. There has to be a viewpoint that is transcendent and free of relativity. From that viewpoint everything is perfect including everything in the matrix of relativity and the relativity framework itself.

Is it even possible to attain anything? Is the very notion of attainment a fallacy? The very fact that I think I exist as a person implies I am incomplete and have a purpose to complete/fulfill myself. So existing as a person implies by its very definition a 'purpose'.

The more I look at the mental space of thoughts and their contents and spaces of occurrence, I can see their transiency, impermanance, emptiness nature. I will not use unreal, but their reality is terrifically impermanent and insubstantial. Even memories are that way, all of them.

Reflection on what reality is not - 21 Sept

Whatever I've read, all the accumulation of information, knowledge is suddenly lost when talking in-depth topics to family, or in heated debate with people. If something is real, how can it just disappear like that? It's probably because its all part of memory and when your whole working memory is filled with something else, you have a totally different experience and you HDD contents no longer matter. This is exactly what happens after watching movies too. The altered consciousness is because of the altered contents of working memory. So its the whole game of convincing anyone: Why is it so hard if I really have the truth with me? Why is that not sticking to me? Everything, EVERYTHING! seems to be fickle, shaky, changing and carries the possibility of falling away. I seem to be vulnerable of influence almost anytime even for great truths.

It's as if with great difficulty I extricate myself from the gravity of earth and move to Mars, but on contact with earth again it pulls me back in. Once again I put put EFFORT in disabusing myself of the narrow beliefs into the larger spaces. I seem to be attached to the larger spaces and heights of perception. I am quite confused about what to do. Should I dissociate myself from all contact with the narrow to avoid getting sucked back into that limited thought process? Would that just be avoidance again? This does not seem to be in line with either effortlessness not fearlessness. It almost seems like there is an extremely tall mountain of enlightenment and I have climbed halfway but I need to overcome attachment to it. This is in line with the scripture too about "Seeing oceans of bliss and miraculous states of being, wonder, beauty, joy, ecstasy" but even that has to be let go of." It seems like the only thing real is the common denominator for all experience. What is that? Just a sense of bare existence. Probably even that falls away in the void. So if I get grounded in the VOID and totally see that I have no identity, then what I would be is unimaginable, but that would be the operating point for infinite freedom. But that seems to have nothing to do with miraculous, wondrous states. Enlightenment doesn't seem to have anything to do with changing anything. It does not remove anything - suffering, pain, struggle, discomfort, resistance. When the knowledge is there, you feel the bliss/rapture. But what's the guarantee that the knowledge will stay with me. It's after all impinging on memory which is ever so fickle and dynamic. Another saying that strikes me here as very close to the ultimate experience is that "If a phenomena had a beginning in time, its not real" and everything I possibly know had a beginning in time in my cognition. So none of that can be real including all of my accumulation, knowledge and exploration. Am I looking in the wrong direction totally? How do I get closer to understanding what is truly real? Is this a stage in my evolutionary process OR is the process about understanding that there was never such a thing called liberation and enlightenment and there is nothing to get liberated from?

What is the notion of self-actualization? Is it for the dreamed self which is not even real? What about all my desires? The seeking energies in me? Are they all just dream goals? I cannot even hold on to the concept of everything being a dream because even that has a beginning in time and can pass away and return anytime. How can any verbal thought be real? It obviously has a beginning in time because you can see that you think yourself into that state. I can see now that this whole notion of there being this 'world', notion of 'I' that has desires to experience x,y,z is all just beliefs in self-reinforcing loops.

The satisfaction from all the videos I watch is derived from my intense curiosity (desire) to know what is actually knowledge, substantial, real etc. I keep calling myself a dream object in a dream created by dreamed beliefs. But what if there is nothing apart from this dream to wake up to? OR what if what I am is all the appearances (objects in my experience) and there is nothing apart from that? How can I trivialize a dream or an illusion if all of reality is made up of that? Who is writing all of this? It's another desire inside me to kind of lay out my thoughts and understand. But even this has a beginning in time and cannot be real?
Who is making my experiences move/change? I cannot say that 'I' have no control, because the 'I' itself is imagined including the notion of 'control', notion of 'having' and the notion that 'I do not have it'.

It is incorrect to say that 'There is nobody doing it' too. Because duality gets instantly stamped on anything I say/write/think in language.
The actual reality transcends language, space, time, thought and all phenomena (appearances).

Higher Rules:
- There is no self or other.
- There can be no contradictions. Contradictions indicate there is some belief.
- There is no doer. The doer itself is being done.
- Any phenomenon/perception that has a beginning in time is not real
- No verbal thought can be real.
- Reality transcends language, space, time, thought and all phenomena (appearances).
- Time and space are imagined into being.
- There is nowhere to go, nothing to do.
- Everything 'is'
- All 'effort' implies effort from the dreamed self which would not lead to getting closer to reality. It would just be cultivation.
- Everything can be safely experienced.

If everything happens by itself and if I can do away with all future planning and completely absorb myself in the present NOW, imagine how much energy would be available.

The whole enlightenment is a de-conditioning/deconstruction process. You return your identity to the unborn self. It's de-hypnotizing yourself. It has nothing to do with changing any phenomenal experience.

Life is a dream unfolding

 
In the common model of operation, there is the outside world, the inner psychic complex - a compartmentalization of the 2, and the outside stimulus is perceived by the inner psychic complex but very mildly. So whatever you see will look ordinary and fairly insignificant. But when the inner psychic complex opens up, we start to feel full with beauty, wonder etc.

Now everything described here along with the definitions, is one such model, we are forever moving into different models by change/time. Its exactly like the dream at night, we may believe and experience all kinds of things, but its all a dream and the reality is pure nothingness/unborn infinite potential. Once you realize you are that very thing (the invisible, formless, unborn, infinite, quality-less pure potential) then you can completely live this dream without identification and non-identification is freedom.

The catch here is, the desire arising and consciousness movement happens by itself. You cannot make the desire arise, because that would be another desire arising in the present moment. Also, the movement of expansion and understanding towards waking up also happens by itself. Waking up itself, happens by itself just like you don't wake yourself up in the morning, it just happens and your consciousness shifts into this configuration of reality. Even me thinking in this direction and writing about it is happening by itself. It's like, there are no individual wills, there is only God's will (universal force) moving everything.

Experiential Links to Digestion issues

Digestion problems seem to have clear experiential connections.
Pipeline: Perception entry (How much enters? How often?) - Information processing (How much is processed?, how long?) - Decision outcomes (final outcomes of the processing) - Archiving/Back burner storage (for processing later) - Excretion of the unused/unwanted (clearing storage)

Digestion problem summary: The gate valve allows too much in, the processing center is overwhelmed, everything is pushed to archival storage for later processing leading to lots of accumulation - hardly anything is excreted out since I want to extract so much and don't want to lose anything.

Simplified summary: So the issue is I'm trying to do TOO much beyond my available resources. This is resulting in fatigue and burnout. Therefore there is not enough energy for happily fulfilling daily expectations and surplus is limited.

Questions to investigate:
Why am I trying to do that? What am I seeking? What is the emptiness I want to fill? What is unsatisfactory right now?

Analogy:

Archival, Storage - working memory, short term, long term memory
Processing center (Intelligence center) - Intellectual, Analytical functions - Categorizing, Hierarchy, seeing relationships, patterns, interrelationships, connections, dependencies
Decision centers - Buddhi, Discriminator, Emotional clarity for decisions, clarity on goals and desires, world model, deciding what is useful - what is not, what to keep, what to reject
Excretion centers (Colon) - Completely removing the unwanted, discarded and processed stuff to make way for new stuff to enter.
Input - Perception centers, gatekeepers (RAS in brain), openness qualities

Virgins and first sex

 
We dislike porn stars, sluts, hookers, prostitutes etc. because the specialness quality of sex is removed. Most things revolve around this 'feeling of specialness'. There is a whole spectrum we use to evaluate. For sex with an ordinary girl, we would like her number of previous partners to be between 0-10. Once it gets much more than that, the specialness factor is drastically reduced. Say she has slept with 100 men and you are the 101th person. Your relative value is 1/101 vs. a virgin who would make your relative value an absolute 1. That's why virgins are rated so highly because they give you the highest 'special' value. You are their first experience and its incomparable for them. First experiences are special because their relative value is the highest.

Thoughts - Aug 23

I think my basic revolt, rebellion, dissatisfaction, frustration, disappointment, anger, irritation, rage, fight, struggle is because of the perception of being reduced to a robot in the work system of the world. The minute I can conceive of something completely, it becomes something automatable or robotic. Everything I do at work can be automated easily. I want operate at the edge or forefront of whats possible. I seem to have an instinctive rebellion against all forms of routine, habit, coercion, effort, restriction, imprisonment, self-control, discipline, force against one's will, any action against values. Its an exhaustion of will power that has happened with me.

The solution I feel can be found by exploring the dark side and seeing the mechanics on how its creating the bright side. Then once the mechanics is understood, I can move towards the bright side until its splendid bright, a kind of ascension. This is because any desire is ultimately seeking balance. Its like if your on -50 of the number line of experience you want a +50 experience to fulfill you. As you approach +50 you would feel the fulfillment increasing. This would lead to a complete balancing and me existing as a person (i.e. a lack) will disappear. Thereafter, there would not be any persistent lack driving me as a stable personality. I would be in a state of beyond everything until I am pulled back into ignorance. It seems like ignorance and knowledge also move in cycles like the Yugas in Hinduism  - alternating between Kalyug and Golden ages. Everything becomes much clearer when you see beyond narrow bounds of time going far beyond your 100 year lifetime and seeing causes and effects.

I cannot see how intense bottomless passion can exist without you simultaneously polarizing yourself as severely lacking. Maybe passion is the fun you have when you create a -100 for fun which makes you race towards +100. The more you think you lack something, the farther away you would be from the center of the wheel of experience. You need to have been intensely sad to know what extreme happiness is, because its relative. That is the nature of knowledge/perception/awareness/consciousness itself. They exist inseparably as one, like poles of a magnet.

There are 2 ways you can make a person extremely happy in the relative sense. Make him intensely suffer with a deep memory imprint of it and then bring him back to normal state. Now, when perception happens, it would compare the present experience with memory and make the person feel extreme gratitude and happiness. This is another way. Giving the person Methamphetamine is not the only way. In fact, giving a person an extremely powerful temporary euphorigen would amplify the person's dissatisfaction with his current state because perception would then use the euphoric memory and interpret the present as dull, uninspiring, depressing, frustrating and induce deep cravings. It seems like taking euphoriants creates a lot more karma/passions. It seems like passions and karma are equivalent, anything that creates passions is creating karma.

Intense suffering will definitely potentiate you for happiness. Thinking much beyond the time frame of your life (80 years) helps in thinking at this height. All this makes me rethink suffering, ignorance, limitations, dullness etc. because they exist inseparably with their opposites.

Perception and memory are so tightly interlinked. It seems having an experience is impossible without memory. Because perception itself happens by contrasts. Without memory there is nothing to contrast against. It would essentially be a non-experience. Which is why it is said the samadhi state is a non-experience literally, but it greatly potentiates your waking life experiences almost converting you to a child again because of the deep contrast between nothingness and aliveness. You need to plunge into the depths of nothingness to feel supreme aliveness. Just like music can only be heard clearly only in the background of silence. In childhood that's why things seem so much more intense and more towards simplicity or black and white. In adulthood experiences start becoming more sublime, rich because now there is much greater variety in memory.

The interesting thing is we assume we don't know a zillion things in the world that we are yet to  learn, discover etc. The belief in the notion of growth is a fallacy in the absolute sense. We assume a child is born as a clean slate with extremely limited knowledge. As he or she grows up, we believe he is 'Becoming' and 'Accumulating knowledge'. The notion of 'becoming' and 'accumulation' is a another fallacy. When you look at the real picture, its more like only the movie that has changed, the brilliant projector light is eternally operating. It can show infinite diversity of experience like a projector can show infinite pictures but is using the same light. Experience is always whole. There is only the transcendental reality operating beyond time and space eternally. Time, space, memory, intellect, physical laws, scientific stuff, notion of a separate body, notion of other people, notion of success, notion of growth, achievement, accumulation, becoming etc. are all characteristics or properties of the movie. But its all ultimately white light which is you.

Every moment is whole

All experience is in one space. There is only one giant space in which everything appears and disappears. The sense of doership, I, desires, ordinary physical reality laws, dream laws, rationalizing, memory, intellect, feelings, all of them appear and disappear in this space. Every night as I sleep I go back to the 0 point of experience and get back energy to move on the experience wheel. The 0 point has to be the true source of energy. That's how we get energy from our sleep every night. The relaxation potentiates arousal/action, arousal potentiates relaxation/rest. Whatever is there in this moment, is everything there is, in this moment. In the next moment, its a different experiential space appears. Even moment can be observed this way and you will notice that the observer is always transcendent of the thing being observed. Even time and space can be observed in this manner and the observer of these phenomenon has to be beyond them. There is a certain height of awareness where you are eternally conscious and whole all the time. Infinite diversity in varying intensity can arise and pass, but consciousness is the white light of the movie projector, always projecting white light in essence and you are that very light. The projected light can create infinite pictures, but you are the light itself and not the pictures it creates.

The ultimate 0 point

We move in the direction of our own momentums. When people around me desire to have the same momentum, there is a union experienced. If I encounter a profoundly similar matrix of momentum, then I have a soul mate. If the momentum's are totally different, there is the experience of individuality (being and feeling distinct, separate). Individuality and Merger also move in cycles, and potentiate desire for each other. If you move too far into sameness, you want to be individual (distinct). If you move too far into being individual (distinctness, separateness) a longing arises for belonging, acceptance. It appears we all are moving towards the ultimate 0, balance point of experience (non-experience in a way since experience is by contrasts). This 0 point would be the 0 point from which all dualities stem forth. A multidimensional 0 point, just like in a graph we have 0 point for x, y and z axis. The 0 point is like a universal attraction singular point from which everything is bobbing, dancing back and forth like pendulums. Whenever any point moves far enough from the 0, it is pulled back with a force proportional to its distance from center. Greater the distance, greater the force. An absolute relaxation should bring everything to 0 like a waking sleep where only the pure substance is seen like white light.

About momentum/karma/habits and self

Each person has - different momentums, accumulations, habits, tendencies, drives, desires - but all stemming from the ground of being.

Its like seeing the entire universe as it is, from a safe distance i.e. seeing all potentials as points, seeing all the stars as equivalent points of light from that distance. The subtler ones would get invisible as you go higher, as you go lower, you would see the smaller planets but the nearby star like the sun would be so bright, it would prevent you from seeing other stars.

Everything is momentum. Outside expectations are certain milestone points on the spectrum of potential directions. Which 'direction set' to choose? If this changes often, it results in in-decision because there is no stable point of view or perception.

Every behavior at every moment you choose is adding momentum to that direction. You are creating momentum every second of your life. When enough momentum is accumulated in some directions the other potentials become very very subtle almost invisible. Like how the sun obscures the other stars in the night sky, we develop a pattern of high level movement representing our personality.

There is only 'Me' and 'My accumulations/karma'. If I dissolve my accumulations, then only I remain in my freedom. Psychedelics temporarily take you out into unfamiliar places. Your accumulations are your prison.

The doer is not constant, it arises and passes. Doer's are basically desires. Each desire is an 'I' that is driven to fulfill itself. There are multiple competing I's but continuously changing. The desire matrix is what is 'You' or what you call 'You'. A certain attachment to certain directions, a certain momentum, accumulation. It can be said that the desire matrix gives us our experience of the doer. In this matrix again, it is continuously changing, however at different rates.

For Example:
Broad changes - childhood, adolescent, early adulthood etc.
Medium changes - when you move to a new place, change jobs etc.
Immediate - your current mood and how talking to a new person suddenly changes it

Truth and ordinary consciousness is literally like night and day

Giving everything equal attention makes all things lose their hold. Instead of big blobs in your experience (like the sun blocking the stars), You see a uniform space with multiple dots and no solidity, like looking at a starry night sky with 1000's of white dots. If your current state is like a bright sun (personality) shining obscuring the stars, de-conditioning yourself is like gradually reducing the the sun's light intensity until it becomes just a dot like any other star and with this, the whole night sky becomes visible to you with 1000s/1000000s of stars, the subtler you go. At the subtlest you will see almost an infinite amount of stars. Its literally a day and night difference. Habit (gravity), Coolidge effect (law of diminishing returns) is overcome by seeing the infinity and understanding the higher laws.

Life is like free falling into a fractal

Life is like free falling into a sea of infinite potential points, whichever points you choose, they grow. If you want to completely change, give all of your attention to those points which are subtle and they will grow in expense of the shrinking of the ones that are big right one. Its exactly like free falling into a fractal, so at each moment you have the choice of choosing a point in attention and that element will grow depending upon how much attention energy you give. Removing the gravitational effects of the points for which you have accumulated momentum is detachment. Detachment is freedom from the gravity of attachment.

Thoughts - 12 Aug

I want to be meet the highest ideals of my imagination at every moment. Like if I perceive someone to be better, I want to be that immediately. If I could do that, it would be impossible to perceive lack. But if there is no lack, then what is there to do?. So maybe I need a combo of high challenge and high ability to put me in 'Flow'. But again 'flow' is just an experience. Its like saying, I want to figure out a way of having a 24x7 orgasm. Duality laws would make it lose its meaning. The duals potentiate each other. Your imagination of what others are and your ranking of them is like looking in a particular direction of the ocean - the direction could be towards greater fulfillment, connection, joy, love, harmony, beauty, ecstasy etc. Is it possible that there are people purely trying to move in the opposite direction where more suffering, torture, cruelty, limitedness, chaos, randomness, disorganization, scattering, destruction, reduction in consciousness is better, like the opposite of entropy? Is everything really ultimately moving in the same direction? OR is it just randomness? How would duality work the other way. Supposing I am moving towards greater suffering and avoiding pleasure won't it become more difficult to suffer because you would develop so much of tolerance towards that, just like we have developed de-sensitivity towards pleasure in the civilized world. A numb insufferable bliss? I cannot see that as fulfilling too. Again, this could also be interpreted as: the person trying to suffer more and more is trying to overcome something. What will it take to overcome all of experience in its infinite variety? The only way out seems to be going absolutely beyond EVERYTHING, a total salvation and release from everything. The puzzles seem insoluble for the mind. The key must lie in something beyond. Every single experience I investigate seems unsatisfactory in the broad sense. Is this because of memory? What if there was a way of making you recreate the first time experiences? But then, the lack-fulfillment poles would not even arise because before the first time you try something, you don't even want or can imagine what the experience is like. Any projection is possible because of memory only. Then what do we truly seek? Is it to totally, timelessly experience from a point of view which is beyond all (rooted in the source)? Timeless immediate all knowing?  Staying in the still point or center of the wheel of experience? Would this mean a regression to the unborn self?

I wonder, what is the meaning of all the multitude of experiences I had in childhood and in the recent past? The harder I think, the more the answer comes as "They are just what they are". Whatever meaning I create is created in this moment again and that is as unsubstantial and fluid as anything else. There is no past since my meaning creating system itself is a dynamic infinite changing fluid entity.

You are the center, the origin point, whereever you go in space

The ground (down) and sky (up) would be valid all the time where-ever you go. They just update themselves creating the same infinity for the up and down direction in space. This is true for all directions. Wherever you go in space, you are the center. The point of consciousness is the source of everything and its radiating/projecting outwards. Its like you are in the middle of the ocean all the time, wherever you look you would find yourself with the same expansive infinity on all sides. You can compare yourself with other boats around you, but that depends on what direction you choose for the measurement.

Insights - Aug 6

All awareness/knowledge/perception is by contrasts. Change is what makes perception/consciousness even possible. We cannot be aware of something that is unchanging (like we cannot be aware of ether, or something that is continuously there, the persistent object is dismissed from consciousness). The unchanging is the infinite potential ground of being, from which we can even observe change. Anything that you observe cannot be you (like a fire cannot burn itself). When something is observed, it is immediately transcended. ‘You’ are the infinite potential ecstatic unborn space from which all experience arises/passes in cycles/vibration. Beauty is variety, harmony and movement and beauty is exactly what life (infinite diversity, harmony, impermanence(change)) itself is. Impermanence is what makes beauty even possible. Life is change, more the change, more the life, Less the change – closer it is to death. Death is a mental concept. You were never born and will never die (Do you experientially remember having being born?, It just happens in a seamless flow). There are no ‘Events’, events are created because of our mental conception or limited view of reality. Nothing is abrupt. Everything is flowing and dancing in perfect harmony in the realm of the absolute. Direct experience is the only thing there is. It would be more appropriate to just say ‘Observe what is’, and nothing more. You are ‘That’.

You are immortal because ‘it is impossible to be conscious of being unconscious’. So you are eternally conscious.
Attention is the primordial energy force. ‘Where ever attention flows, that aspect/quality grows’. This applies to ‘Every’ single thing.
Duality makes everything fair and all realities equivalent when seen from the larger picture/expanded consciousness.

About Duality

- Desire itself could thought of as simply energy. A desire moves you to do certain things until that energy is used. A simple case would be, you reach your threshold for thirst, and this creates an intense desire to go drink water. So you go and get water. Now the question is, did ‘You’ really get up, or did the desire move you?. Each desire is like a mini ‘I’. We have many little ‘I”s or desires but there may be a small group of highly powerful ‘I’s which we may refer to as our core personality. So from this perspective, it could be said we are swimming in an ocean of desire being desire ourselves. Like a drop of water swimming in the ocean. So the duality here is that, there is only arising and passing away of multiple layers of desires at different rates in time. So identifying yourself with any desire is to get locked and limited into some viewpoint.

- Another interesting area is ‘prana’ (life force energy). The waxing and waning of life force energy. Activities that give us energy like sleep, meditation, relaxation vs. Activities that drain our energy like stress, worry etc. This cycle happens everyday. Like batteries we get charged in the mornings and it runs out by night. I would intuit deep sleep has maximum potentiality and it might be the 0 (infinite potential) point for all manifestation. Duality is the reason why everything in the universe is cyclical. I feel duality and the cyclic nature of everything imply each other.

- Another super fascinating insight I recently came across is that, awareness itself is by contrast. Without contrast awareness itself is not possible. All knowledge is by contrasts too. Like how do you know, you are feeling normal now? How do you know there is light around you now? The very perception of normality or light implies knowledge of abnormality or darkness. The definition of every concept, implies some kind of polarization, just like even if you shatter a magnet, even the smallest pieces will have the 2 poles. This can be applied to every single thing we know, both conventional knowledge and spiritual knowledge. It seems to be the very nature of knowledge.

- If awareness is because of effort from your part, then in the relaxation that follows (duality principle) you will lose this awareness. True and timeless awareness has to transcend duality and that can happen only if its effortless (At the center of the wheel of experience not at the periphery).

Here are some other great duality statements I picked up from an Alan Watts lecture:
- Happening and doing are duals again. You can’t tell the difference without the two-together. You need happening to know what is doing. Also, voluntary and involuntary are duals again.
- Sensation by itself is awareness of contrast.
- Non-existence is the very condition for existence.
- Where is the notion of improving, isn’t it absurd? White must win? Which side would you take: Black or white? Does the side really make a difference?
- Nothing is the source of something. It is the seed.
- Both white and black can play the negative role. We conventionally associate white with the positive and this is another illusion. For Example: Paper with black ink writing, the writing is the positive and the white is blank, and therefore nothing, negative. In this case the black is positive.
- Drugs take you more fiercely into duality.

- If I take a euphorigen (any of the super gratifying ones), because of duality, on coming down, instantly my ordinary state would seem miserable. The perception of happiness and misery itself is relative.That is way perception itself works and perception is the only reality we know, so its reality itself. Excessive pleasure for humans with ordinary psychology is very likely to create extreme compulsivity. This is not only true for drugs but just about anything, like even sex (That’s why the taoists advice Karezza instead of regular sex). So when you come down from the drug, you go lower than your baseline causing an intense desire to elevate the level up again. Now the setpoint of pleasure has been set to that first high experience, the memory of that make you binge on the pleasure stimulus until you reach it again. Now you go down even further the 2nd time and so on. So the sine wave of ups and downs has been intensified compared to a normal person’s happy/sad moods.

- All existence is painful validated by its dual i.e. the universal seeking of pleasure.
If I am seeking to improve my situation, seeking to get better, seeking to be at another mental state B, even the smallest seeking implies dissatisfaction with the way things are. This is what is referred to as suffering. If we say, all humans are universally seeking pleasure, it would be equally right to say, all humans are dissatisfied with the way things are.

- If you are absolutely satisfied, you will dissolve, you wont exist as a person anymore.....Think about it in terms of the consciousness of being a person....how do you know 'you are you'?.....that sensation of a core drive is fueled by a desire...and desires are fueled by beliefs....and beliefs keep changing in patterns....its like music......a song may have many different melodies with different instruments but yet maintaining its signature pattern by which you can recognize it......personality is also like that.....a music of overlapping constantly moving desires, yet maintaining an abstract pattern that you can recognize every time

- There is duality between predictability and unpredictability.
How can I know what predictable without being simultaneously about whats unpredictable, and vice versa?

- Duality of wanting – want also implies awareness of what is not wanted
When you want something, in that very moment of wanting something, not wanting of its opposite is implied. If I want a want a white object, then it instantly also implies I do not want a black object. Here black and white is simplistic. It can be an abstract quality too. An opposite can be found for every single mental object no matter how abstract.

- Hearing music in any form would not be possible without awareness of silence. So the duality is that if you are enjoying music, you are simultaneously aware of the background silence too. They happen concomitantly. Imagine a continuous note with no gaps, there would be no pattern, therefore no music.

One line thoughts

There is no 'doer'. I am the instrument of the unseen force (god) and the same unseen force moves everything. This force by itself is beyond everything. The body is simply moved in service of this force.

I only create my receptivity/earnestness/desire. Everything else just happens accordingly.

Actions directly influence others. Patterns simply pass on directly.

Sensations -black box- mental states arise -black box - spiritual desires. Life is about relationships to everything.

Survival related work and keeping up with the societal expectations can take up so much time and is a permanent source of insecurity.

The more still the observer, the deeper the observation possible.

Change, purpose, meaning, engagement, interest, curiosity creates mental satisfaction.
Understanding, higher knowledge, harmony, unity in diversity(richness) is spiritual satisfaction

Every single action of ours can reveal so much about us through their implied relationships.

When you observe a belief, it is already transcended.

Extraordinary attention put on the ordinary makes it extraordinary.
Extraordinary attention put on the extra ordinary makes it ordinary.

If an experience has a beginning in time, its not real.

The real is the unborn prime mover force which is you. You are the very ecstasy animating all of experience.

Everything can be safely experienced. Its all ropes, no snakes.

Infinite unborn potential seed is you

You are everything in this moment and what you call 'yourself' right now is a small part of this moment. Its like calling yourself as only the right thumb instead of the entire body.
Any desire indicates a lack, hole, dissatisfaction or some belief. All compulsivity and tendencies should be observed in its minutest forms. The ideal/absolute state is where you are 0 and everything that comes in is seen as it is.

Whatever tendencies/momentum/states of mind you see in people is like seeing their future too (most probability). Personalities exist in the same probability space as everything else. The probability a rock will remain a rock is extremely high, animals have more variability, normal humans even higher variability, the 'highest being' would be some kind of shimmering ecstasy happening at warp speed. Its like, the more variable, changing and fluid something is, the higher evolved it is. We are in that state in childhood and gradually move towards predictability and solidity in adulthood experience. The most beautiful things are also the most fleeting. The same is true for pain too. The most painful things are fleeting too. The faster changing something is, the more life energy it has. The people you see are all momentums of certain mental patterns, tendencies with the driver of beliefs.
Its the same infinite space with infinite interpretations. Change in interpretation, is like changing the picture of the projector's white light and creating altered states.

Each person is a reflection of your potential and the seed of that infinite potential (potential of everything that can ever exist in the experience realm) is the 'you' deep down. Each person represents different offshoots of this infinite potential seed.

Change/Impermance is beauty itself

Change/Impermanence is whats beautiful. It is life itself. Dazzling, glitter, shimmer, radiance, vibrance, dance - all of these commonly used words represent vibration, movement or change. Heaven is a place where your entire being is vibrating in high frequency (ecstasy). All awareness itself is by contrasts. Like a music where the flow itself creates meaning. All sensation, change in field of consciousness and changes in attention focus all flow like music. Life is this endless dance. More the contrasts, more the awareness.

“From the Absolute to the Relative-from the Infinite to the Finite-from the Undifferentiated to the Differentiated-from the Unconditioned to the Conditioned and again from the Relative to the Absolute. That is the whole truth of the inexistance to the existentialist, formless to the form, Creator to the Creature, one to the every being, absolute to the inabsolute and vis-á-vis, so forth every single thing is temporary, non-existed, so do I, the dream that I dreamed off is simply a 'lie and impermanent too' same as in the mortal world whatever I do experience.”
― Upanishad

Habits/Karma/Consciousness

You are harnessing every moment and building momentum of choices. Creates habits which becomes automatic and loses consciousness. What you see everywhere is various momentums. Everywhere there is creation in different amounts and the seeds of all kinds of creation exists in the present moment in pure potentiality. A single minded focused man can build most momentum in a specific direction and you see a giant in that area. But even that falls away on death. So there are all these things popping in and out of existence at higher and higher frequencies the finer you look and 'THERE IS ONLY THAT'. Infinite variety arising (living) and passing (dying), OR going in and out of existence. When we see a gestalt ordered pattern, we term it life. There is also the vertical dimension of the observer. At the smallest height the observer sees a proton as alive and at the largest sees the whole universe as one organism. In-between there are various levels and at a particular vertical height we have this view of living/non-living as defined in our conventional society.

Removing solidity from awareness is moving into subtler and subtler faster vibrating objects until you reach the objectless/formless from which 'Form' can be seen arising/passing at its absolute level of granularity.

We invest in patterns at every moment. All our habits operate unconsciously perpetuating our experiences in reality or we see our life moving in certain directions. We unconsciously invest in the same things at every moment and simply make the patterns/tendencies stronger. Freedom is freedom from all habit and tendencies and having absolute power over creation. Habits are the accumulation of our previous patterns. Karma is basically habit. The continuation and perpetuation of patterns. For example: Each time you give energy to getting anxious, worried, stress, frustrated, paranoid, scared etc. you are only fortifying, strengthening, reinforcing, empowering, further habituating those tendencies. You in essence are the entire energy of this universe. Every SINGLE aspect of your reality is a specific modification of this universal energy. This includes every single world view, belief, ideas about existence, who you are etc. EVERYTHING. At a low level of consciousness, all your tendencies, deeper patterns and beliefs about reality are invisible to you and operate right under your nose but you cannot see them. So you end up thinking you are a victim or a puppet being pushed around. It is not really 'other people' who push you around. It is karma itself or the force of habits that give you the same things again and again. The only way out is to elevate consciousness itself and empower yourself.

In zazen meditation, they stare at a blank wall and simply remove 'All the mental conditions' that cause stress and anxiety resulting in a complete elimination of the same. Even the jhana ecstasy is based on the cultivation of factors - concentration, equanimity. When these factors are cultivated to a high enough degree, it results in ecstasy. What are the conditions causing your reality? Especially, what are your mental habits, projections, tendencies, and drives creating your reality at this moment?

Pressure to stick to a group, company, or career

There is pressure from society to construct an identity. Depending on what identity you construct, you accordingly get experiences. I find this a very difficult choice. Changing identity is not easy. Investments accumulate over whatever identity you choose. Just like, if you were a nomad, you should let go of a lot of things before you decide to move – changing identity would involve losing all your accumulations/investments to the extent to which you change. People try to further their own identity by making more and more connections having the same social mimes, which leads to the formation of groups. If you want to change the group, then in the changed group suddenly all the stuff you had previously would become irrelevant. Kind of like, if one group was totally into bitching, gossiping and trivial social information and another one discussed philosophy and abstract ideas, they are quite incompatible. So the skills you acquired in your previous group cannot be used here much. Another analogy would be, if I worked as a carpenter for many years and then I suddenly want to switch to being an electrician then there would be little transferable parts. The same issue occurs in marriage, it’s a contract with accumulating investment over time. If you suddenly decide to break out of it, all the relationship investment collapses. Switching a career would also mean losing a lot of your investment like the carpenter-electrician example. There are transferable skills but a drastic switch could leave very little commonality. If you decide to leave your company, again all the internal knowledge, processes and the relationships you acquired in the company would be lost. Certain patterns could be metaphorically applied in other companies too, but this would be an abstract learning for the most of it. Basically, you would have to start all over again in the new company with the abstract learning from the previous company experience.

This is the dilemma of an explorer.  There is a force trying to make us move towards investments, security and consolidation and there is another counter force which aims at diversity of experience and seeks exploration. If I take my personal case, I have moved in and out of so many groups, so many social mimes, so many intellectual ideas, concepts, fantasies and experiments. But at a given time, my mental state is in a specific configuration and I can only access a very tiny fraction of all that’s there in my experiential memory. When I go into totally new groups, I am suddenly returned to square one. There is no investment, they don’t know me or trust me, and carry a very rudimentary image of me. The passing away of all that I experience makes it easier for me to understand of all this as an illusion and the emptiness of my essence. But the entire societal/cultural layer we have over reality works in exactly in the opposite direction by language and a conceptual layer where things exist inherently in and off themselves. What do you tend to choose: investment or free exploration?

Thoughts about gradients of awareness

From a first person perspective:

"Once I reach very fine levels I can see that I can switch awareness in and out at will with extremely minimal disturbance. It’s like everything would be as it is but I would be present in one moment and in the other I would not be there. It’s like breathing. I must work towards consciously breathing without altering anything from the unconscious which was going on moments before. Another thing I have noticed is that I can feel the effort of my eye focus muscles and some movement of my consciousness in the middle of my brows which brings me back to the physical reality. To move into non-physical realms I have to learn to leave these entirely relaxed with no disturbance but still pop in my awareness.

Another interesting thing is when I am not there it’s not that I am totally absent like sleep. What we call mechanical or automatic is a blurry faintly aware state nevertheless. By definition when you are NOT aware, there is NOTHING and you absolutely would not know/cognize it. An example of a fainter abstract awareness would know that you had a dream when you woke up but remembering nothing from it. That means there was some faint awareness of the fact that there was a dream vs. nothing. 

Maybe it is like if you have a 1mp photo, you can see all the buildings windows etc. of the scene. But if the picture has only 200 pixels, then it would look blocky and you would not be able to recognize anything but yet roughly figure out it may have buildings. So maybe the 1mp is like advanced awareness and recording of dreams and the 200 pixels is just ‘knowing’ you dreamt.

Also, an interesting part is what is recorded to memory or what is not? What is the threshold of awareness detail required for memory recording? The most perplexing thing is I can recognize someone very easily but not be able to draw their face/or recognize a place but not recall any details of it/recognition of a song that you heard it in xyz place etc. That means only recognition without reproduction is also another ‘dim awareness vs. advanced awareness’."

Freshening up of perception

Freshening of perception is the best thing in the world. Sleep does it. So does advanced meditation.

Complete withdrawal from something potentiates it. Like how sleep potentiates waking.

So complete withdrawal from everything should potentiate everything. Deep sleep does exactly that. Everything needs to smoothly flow in its cycles. A repressed part creates a desire. But, all desires are non-substantial by themselves like pressure difference creates a hurricane. The hurricane is non-substantial, it is simply at outcome of movement in other invisible forces. When everything is in perfect flow, there is nothing to do or achieve besides just being and free falling.

Mirrors, Reflections and the Real You

Mirrors!!! Each person is like an amusement park mirror. These mirrors represent me in all kinds of funny ways – some show me as fat, ugly, beautiful, with a big face, short etc. I cannot look at myself, just as an eye cannot see itself or a fire cannot burn itself. So I try to judge who I am from these reflections shown to me. I record these reflections in memory during early childhood. The recorded reflections then became ‘ME’. Later I begin to pursue only those mirrors that show me these recorded reflections. If my early life reflections were good and if people accepted me well, I would believe ‘I am a loved individual’ if not, I would form a negative image about myself.

Seems logical right, if you didn’t know how you’re back looked and if did not have a mirror, what would you do? Ask 100’s of people right and then try to form some concept of how you’re back looked? But here again, there is an unquestioned core belief. How do you know if others can see your real back or what they really see when they look at your back? How do you know if they are seeing the real thing or just telling you something they see as part of their own imagination? Why do you believe them? Because everyone else does? How does everyone else doing something make it true? How can you assume that they are seeing ‘Your Real Back’? Another belief here would be of assuming the back is a static unchanging entity. Why should the back be static? What if it completely transforms all the time? Yet another belief here would be ‘why is what you call your back ‘YOURS’’? What does it mean to own/possess something? Just because you can control it? Does it mean anything you control is you? In that case why is your car not you? Is it because, you disappear when the body dies, but you do not die when the car is destroyed? Do you call your body ‘YOURS’ because it makes YOUR perception possible, and without it there is no perception? The instrument that makes perception possible is not YOU. The belief in this case is thinking that the instrument of perception is YOU instead of YOU being separate from the instrument. There is another belief too, how do you know what happens after death. The only thing that you can know is that it is unknowable. Why are we so afraid of the unknown? Is death the problem or ‘fear of death/unknown’ the problem?

What if 'YOU' were nothing? What if 'YOU' were totally independent from what the mirrors were reflecting and that ‘YOU’ does not exist at all? ‘YOU’ only exist in your memory of recorded reflections from various people. But what is memory? Isn’t it just a fraction of a fraction of your recorded experience? It is a story like any other story book. There is no reality to the past beyond what you choose/believe to give it. 

‘You’ being nothing simultaneously implies you are ‘all experience happening at this moment’. You are everything that is happening/the entire universe. We are surprised why different people think different things about us. Some think we are very nice. Some praise us for being intelligent. Some consider us to be dumb, average. Some admire various qualities. Some find endless faults in us. Well which of these reflections is the REAL thing? None of it is true, because there is no ‘ME’ in true reality beyond my belief that my early childhood reflections from other people represent me.

The blueprint of what we carry around as identity is basically a memory of certain experiences tagged with ‘ME’ and preserved. The rest of the experiences are tagged with ‘OTHER’ and discarded. Just like how we look into the refrigerator and tag items as ‘GOOD’ or ‘SPOILT’ and throw the spoilt into the trash. What we call our identity is actually a burden in a way. It is our accumulation of certain memories based on the belief that ‘THIS IS ME’ usually given by parents and early childhood influence.

In life, as we age, we try to further this accumulation. In truth there is no need to remember/collect anything. There is no life story, there is no past. It’s interesting to note that our memory starts working only after we have formed our ‘I’ concept from other people’s reflections (parents, siblings) at the average age of 3-4. The amount of information entering is infinite, so formation of this identity based on reflections simplifies things. Once simplified the brain can start storing small parts of experiences based on this ‘PRIMITIVE I’ formed. Have you noticed we store things in memory only when it’s related to the ‘I’ in some way. Otherwise what is the need? If a stranger tells you a long story, why would you store it in memory unless it’s related to something you desire? The formation of identity is for simplification and convenience sake. But a convenience is not reality. An analogy would be drawing a moon on paper and calling it ‘the moon’ for convenience. But it is not the real moon.

What every person thinks about you in this earth at all times is ‘YOU’ and you are much more than that too. YOU are everything that has ever existed and that can ever be conceived. There is nothing outside of you.