Prison of beliefs

See everything 'as it is'. Feel all emotions completely without any controlling. Every belief is limiting, imprisoning you in a self-created prison. Every belief is giving away your power. Drop all beliefs and you have infinite power. There is nothing called power, love etc. or any emotion or experience outside of you. There is no outside. It’s your belief in separation that's giving you that feeling. Thinking something is good/moral/right/correct/noble is also a prison just like thinking something is bad/evil/despicable/shameful is equally imprisoning. All beliefs can be traced back to some person/people who gave you that. There is no reality to any of that besides your belief. You are the space in which everything arises and you are eternally this infinite space. All goals are based on your existing level of wisdom. If you elevate your level of consciousness, your goals could transform. You can be the most insignificant thing in the world OR the god of the world depending upon your beliefs. You can believe that you are the son of god and have the greatest purpose to enlighten people OR you could believe you are a ‘nobody’ and absolutely worthless. They both are still beliefs creating different experiences. Belief is needed for experiencing. Without belief there is no experience.  Also, from direct intense observation, it can be seen that if there is an ‘experiencer’, then the experience is temporary. The ultimate knowledge is simply seeing the totality of everything which automatically creates perfect intelligence, perfect intuition, and effortlessness. The question is “who are you?”; find the essence of this entity with the fire of awareness and it will reveal itself.

You are the entire universe

People would often settle for ‘you are a part of the universe’. But on further examination, the whole universe is you. When you are deep asleep there is nothingness. When you are awake all perceptions come back. You evoke the whole universe from your point of view while dreaming or awake. In the awake, dreaming state there is just perception. The ‘you’, mine, other is a division within the same space. ‘Time’ and ‘space’ are also part of this perception. Everything is eternally present and is ‘just is’. If all experiences are completed they leave the empty space you truly are without a trace. Like when a new born child moves from one room to another – everything is totally different.

People have also reported that set and setting is a huge thing while using psychedelics and just moving from one room to another makes a profound difference.  Maybe this is because the psychedelics greatly sensitize you and loosen your existing models of the world, allowing for fresh perspectives. You are life looking through this perspective/corner of its own creation. Everything is looking at itself from a specific viewpoint within everything. It’s like space moving through space. It’s like light moving through light. It’s like a hologram/fractal where everything is contained in everything infinitely.  Everything is a play of consciousness. There is wholeness in every moment. It’s only the form that’s changing.  All energies are there right now, the total energy of the universe is always the same and infinite and we are the total energy at every moment. Can you feel or know anything apart from you? We are the infinite energy and in an infinite sea of change. Even the enduring entities in our perception ultimately fall away upon death. So death is the final point for holding on to anything. The timeless component is not the changing forms; it is the formless awareness behind all form.

THERE IS NOTHING APART FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW AND YOUR EXPERIENCE. If you think there is, you have just divided your experience up into categories and concepts. You have created the entire game of the universe and now you’re in it and pretending to have forgotten that you know everything in order to freshly experience everything for the first time through infinite living creatures having infinite lives and infinite new perspectives for each. But the awareness which is everything, which is the knowing, which is simultaneously empty is always your essence.

All experience is felt moment to moment and is unique at every moment on sensitive examination. We never step in the same river twice. All the entities we think of as having essence are ghost like, when we shine bright light of awareness on them, they simply disappear and the truth is revealed in sparkling clarity. These essential entities can be dissolved only on intense powerful observation.

Our ultimate desire seems to be of union with everything. We relate to humans and not animals because we think they are similar to us. It seems like we always try to further our definition of ourselves. If we identify with a certain culture, conditioning, beliefs etc. then we try to expand only in that direction by finding similar people. The wider the definition of yourself, the more people you are embrace and understand. With the highest understanding, by this reasoning, you should be able to embrace every single concept, thing, person; real or imagined.

Is it similar to how we divide the land area of the world into countries? Are we dividing and sizing up people into similar boxes, boundaries, sets?

About First Times...

First times are usually a cocktail like mixture of expectations/anticipations (origins from a plethora of sources), excitements, fears (rejection, acceptance), anxieties, pressure (performance), urgency, grasping,  pleasure, the process of trying to interpret - fitting the new sensations into some mental model, sometimes shame.

The first times are Intense because of this cocktail but not usually pure pleasure. The pleasure is just one of the elements mixed into it.

Self Inquiry

If I look at my life history impartially, there have been people who really enjoyed and liked my personality and there have been people who have been indifferent or abusive. But somehow I have a tendency to view myself as a person who is not liked much or accepted by people in general. Why do I identify with this image more? Does it truly reflect the actual reality? Why do I tend to choose to be alone rather than with people? Why do I choose hobbies that greatly lower the need for interaction with others? Afraid of rejection, abusive people, exploiters, predators, indifference, judgments – anything that dis-empowers my perception of myself? Am I attached to an image of grandiosity about myself? And only like people who continually validate that? Which is why self-absorbed people don’t interest me since they are all about themselves and nothing is coming out?

How are my values created? Out of all the experiences in my life what is the magnet of my personality that creates my perception and memory? Are the core qualities of the magnet formed in childhood or are they a function of previous lives too OR does it have no boundaries and simply an ever evolving manifestation of god? By definition, I am a person (Incomplete) and moving towards completeness and all-inclusivity. The interesting part is that even though my environment is completely different, I am still trying to work on my past projects with the hope that I would find some future situation where they would perfectly come in handy.

Why do I perceive the way I do? Why do I see the world the way I do? Why am I ‘ME’ and not someone else? Why am I even asking these questions at the moment? To think about them in future?

Why do I have such a deep need to be understood? Why am I not sure of my own truth and I am so badly seeking validation from other people for that? I think the reason for validation is to gain social power. But what power can stand in front of truth? Isn’t this illusory power? Am I looking for some ground to stand on and thinking the best way is to get people to fortify my beautiful thoughts so that beauty continues in my perception?

Among all my perceptions, why are only some registered as me? Isn’t ALL PERCEPTION = me? There is this imaginary giant filter through which I pass all perceptions and whatever passes through gets stored into memory too. My motivation is coming from this memory castle which attempts to advance in certain ideas, pointers, and directions in the infinite reality space. These motivations change with environment, but certain core aspects seem to be persistent giving the clear feeling of permanence or an essential self. What is this essence?

Perception of everything as an investment

Everyone is running after investments in all forms. All relationships are investments, all job work performed is an investment, traveling around/exploration is an investment for interesting social conversations. There is a mindset where I can see everything reducing into some form of investment in anticipation of future reward/security.

Ecstatic movement of energies

All your life energies and EVERYTHING that you can possibly imagine and beyond is in a certain configuration at this moment. These energies are constantly in a flux and are ecstatically moving. The “I” concept filter acts as a huge barrier to the free movement of these energies. I force myself to think in a particular way, suppress feelings which arise which don’t seem right and encourage only certain patterns in myself. I also control my attention in definite ways which have been taught to me by society.

The energies are moving ecstatically from infinite intelligence and the “I” or ego attempting to stop them does not really stop them. The energies try to move around the obstacles I create and if they are impassable the energy transmutes into other forms and get stored as stress in muscles and nerves. If I unevenly dam a river, it starts flowing in a very turbulent way creating lots of opposing forces. It greatly reduces the power of the river, lowers speed and wastes lots of vital energy.

The ego cannot do anything to stop life energy since the ego conception itself is part of the flow. The “I” entity restricts the flow only because of social definitions imbued into us from societal man-made influences. Most of the ideas/concepts/energy configurations which define me are based on the ‘average understanding level’ of everyone who influenced me in my life. It’s like your operating system utilizing infinite energy from the background. Your operating system can only draw as much power from the infinite space as your beliefs permit it to do so. When you upgrade your beliefs, you upgrade your O.S. and can thereby draw more energy from the infinite space.

If you dam any part of your psyche, it will flow out through maximum force through the smallest of holes. This is why sexual repression is so powerful. It creates immense interest that it just wants to burst out of you if given the freedom. Whichever part you suppress or deny yourself, it will create pressure and want to come out of you in greater intensity. This is part of the reason why temporary self-denial is so pleasurable. It creates intense pleasure once you let go after a while.

Now the mind boggling part is that, being aware of this river of life is like the gift of a lucid dream. It happens to certain people at certain times and even that cannot be willed by you. Your very desire to know the truth that drives you to read and explore all these perspectives is part of your flow. The experience of releasing energies is very profound and liberating and stokes immense gratitude in you but it is not necessary to transfer this experience to each of the so-called non-liberated people. They are all having fun in their own way. You do not even need to go by any rules such as ‘Help those want to be helped’ since you will automatically do so anyway if your life energies desire so.

So the ultimate goal seems to be to free all your life energies completely and just sit back and enjoy the ecstatic ride. The tension and release game of life energies is what makes it such an interesting game. Regress your awareness far enough that you can see the whole game being created and animating the infinite energy into whatever configuration it wants to move in (including the part that you call ‘you’, ‘other’, ‘material world’, ‘separation’ etc., all concepts)

The ‘tension’ and ‘release’ principle is actually what we use in dancing all the time. Maybe that’s why the usage of the term ‘Ecstatic dance’ for the universe energies.

Artificial boundaries

Everything is seamless besides the boxes we put around things. Can you really say that each birthday is a milestone personality changer for you? When you cross countries, can you really feel that you are going into a distinctly new land besides the artificial fence? All boundaries seem to be artificial man made concepts created for convenience. In truth everything is seamless. I can take this a step further and say the physical world itself only exists as a mental concept in your perception which is the actual reality for you. The passage of age, the passage of time is just seamless. The molecules that make up air and the molecules that make up a solid just differ in their energies and frequency. That too is seamless. The appearance is just a product of our perception.

What is a person? 

·         Is it the body - that is just a body - a visual and tactile entity

·         is it a certain attitude - that is just a certain attitude based on the situation

·         is it a certain set of high probability behaviors - That can change with circumstances

·         is it a set of unchangeable beliefs - they are just beliefs, beliefs can change too

·         Is it the voice of the person? - that’s just sound

What about appearances of objects in general? What about people voices and recorded sound? They seem pretty repeatable. True! But the pure sensory input is meaningless until it’s interpreted by the brain. Even in the interpreted part, there is a just seeing and just hearing. However, the just seeing and just hearing parts are immaterial and absolutely do not matter. It is how much emotion the sense perceptions bring out in us or the overall experience that really matters. And this is what is in constant flux.

Maybe that’s why the masters keep saying, reality is constantly changing. What they mean is not that everything is moving around as fluidly as a dream, but that what we call 'Experience' is constantly changing. Everything seems empty of essence. Whatever essential thing I find dissolves when I actually intensely observe with awareness.

Sex, duality and desires

I always had this feeling that the act of sex itself was very ordinary. It’s the projection, imaginations, bio-chemicals that make the day and night difference. Maybe that’s why it’s called chemistry.  Attraction is a mystery. What attracts me and how and when is it sustained? I am looking for some external magical object that will satisfy me supremely. It’s hard to even imagine what such an object will be because my imagination of this ideal object keeps changing all the time. However, in my past, I have had people with whom I was very comfortable and satisfied to a fairly high degree. They have appeared in certain situations and given me satisfying experiences which is why I am able to project right now.

All of these perceptions could change in the next moment or after some time/energetic movement/chemical changes etc. There is obviously some ideal concoction in reality that would evoke the most profound pleasure, insight, euphoria, joy, love, comfort that I can ever experience. This is the belief that makes me search for it/seek. This concoction would adjust itself and be perfectly tuned to my dynamic and give me exactly what I desire at every single moment.

The paradoxically disturbing and euphoric part is that EVERYTHING is changing. The same sex might feel excellent at some other time. I cannot predict besides let myself dissolve in this every changing soup. All my thinking happens in a backdrop. Observe this backdrop feeling, it is very vast and your whole thinking pattern is based on that background feeling. This backdrop keeps changing subtly throughout the day. How can I trust and rely on my thinking which is a function of this changing backdrop itself? The only constants I have are the consensus mental and physical reality which seems more stable in whichever civilized part of the world I go to.

Everything is a duality equation. Lack/Incompleteness in anything drives you to Fulfillment/Completeness. What you truly want at any time is specific to that moment and context. The context/backdrop keeps on changing. So your wants too will be different at each moment. Whatever formula I come up with for this moment is only for now, the current state. What a magnificently complex puzzle reality is!

If you feel there are things that will timelessly fulfill you, then there are powerful beliefs of lack running as an under-current in your perception. This could have been put into you by your parents, relatives, friends etc. Who told you to believe in XYZ? It’s an interesting question. Sometimes the beliefs are set in an entire paradigm with a few proving experiences. Then we keep validating that paradigm over a long period of time by continuously finding patterns of reality that validate that paradigm. So mega structures of paradigm beliefs get created. With reality being infinite, it provides powerful validations for all kinds of beliefs and paradigms. An experience is possible only through beliefs, projections etc. Without them there is no life. It’s a free infinite space which can validate any pattern you are seeking.

Do we have any control in this ride? Why did I have these thoughts now? It’s just flowing out of me. Conventionally I would say ‘I’ wrote all of this. But actually things are just warping and flowing in the present moment. If I have rock like disturbing structures in my beliefs, it increases the motivation of my energies to overcome them. If all my beliefs are light, then I just flow like air. Everything is ‘AS IT IS’ in its own way and a judgment is only if you lock yourself to a certain perspective paradigm. So maybe experience is only possible when you are an individual or a limited entity. Imagine a dream where you are everything at once, it might be equivalent to deep sleep, so we cannot really call it a dream. That’s why our REM experiences when we experience ourselves as a separate entity within our own dream.

All our life energies are locked in certain beliefs and in a specific configuration. Like they say, a fingernail can block the sun if it’s held close enough to your eye. As all of this is dropped, we will free those energies and get closer and closer to un-limitedness until we reach a paradoxical deep sleep like state where we are utterly free and yet fully awake.

In certain people, the adhesive quality of beliefs is lighter and this is increased when one encourages questioning everything. So the illusion is clearer and it’s both liberating and the groundlessness is frightening.  It’s the mixture of pleasure of surprise/wonder and the fear of lack of control. Everything seems to come in a dual package with each dual affirming the other but they are both intrinsically one.

23minute jhana meditation

Today was my first REALLY sincere attempt at Jhana meditation.
I read the following article: http://www.metta.lk/english/accessing-jhana.htm

It absolutely intrigued and inspired me and I was ready like never before to attempt it. I had a very intimate encounter with my own mind in these 23 minutes. My mind is like the ultimate hypnotist. It would get me out of the object chosen blistering fast and suddenly I would be like 'where the hell did I land up?, where was I?', just like a super fluid dream of continuously changing perception. Another very interesting thing I observed is that, I hold awareness of the actual real sensation for just a blip and quickly a mental concept takes over and like a change blindness trick I hold on to that instead. I think this is what the Buddhist texts meant by mental factors. Now this mental concept being in the fluid mental plane starts morphing into something else and I start to perceive something entirely different. The mental plane is like sinking sand. I would like to call it a 'dancing fluid space of continuously changing perceptions' rather than 'monkey mind'. The actual physical sensation appeared to change much more slowly. However, I could not observe it continuously since the mental factor distractions allowed me to only come back to it intermittently.

Its becoming a super interesting inquiry. Its like what is left when you let go of everything. I found that there are layers and layers that hypnotically pull me in. The real effortless reality lurks behind all those obfuscating Maya like layers which draw my attention and interest very easily. I watch this mental movie like an enraptured kid and then suddenly I'm like 'I was supposed to be observing the REAL breath sensation'.

Holotropic Breathwork experience - 15 Sept 2012

I had previously taken an intro 45 minute session, so I had a bit of idea as to what to expect. Reaching the space where your body is almost in-detectable (similar to the float tank) and exploring the mind-space. When I started off with my 2.5hr-3hr session, first I found those uncomfortable lightheaded energetic sensations which kept getting more intense as I continued. Surprisingly, I did not get tetany at all. Lying down in shavasana or with a similar position and legs folded worked out very well. After around 30-40mins of breathing, I suddenly fell into the holotropic state and was drawn into dreamlets. The dreamlets were quite similar to hypnogogia and were no more easier to observe. Whenever I tried to verbalize or conceptualize with my mind, the process would stop. Its almost like only one of them can function i.e. either I get enjoy the flow of images or have a blank screen where I think in words.

I recall around 3-4 dreamlet like scenes. The scenes were emotional but of medium intensity just like usual dreams. One interesting part was when I saw orange symbols like art flash in front of  my eyes. It was like my eyes were wide open and looking but I was wearing a mask and they were closed. That was a really interesting moment. It would be wonderful if I could get that kind of clarity with hypnogogia. Another very interesting moment was when a particular song was playing, it created really great feelings in me in those moments, like a real WOWW kind of feeling. My body felt really cool at the end like the energy has been totally cleansed. Only my entire right shoulder to right arm was paining and that also went away once I got up.

The interesting pointers for exploration are: how do you navigate and allow the flowing imagery to operate fully without the verbal, analytical and conceptual mind interruption? and the second is: How would you retain a strong memory of it without any conceptualizing? would it be like eidetic kind of memory training?

During the sitter role, the people crying and screaming around me coupled with the super loud emotional music (tracks played at the end of heroic and romantic movies) really moved me. I was thinking about my own suppression and how much energy would be released if I just let it go.

I got thoughts about a cell with a small nucleus at the tip of it say. The nucleus is the controlling inhibitory rationalizing part of me. But there are these whole cell contents pushing me in various directions. The nucleus decides whether to follow it or no but the pressure is nevertheless there. I thought about how divided my mind is and what wholeness might feel like. Why are all my actions so divided? That's why there is so much of stress, tension and indecision.

I can meditate on each aspect of my suppression and release it. The only suppression which I cannot fully release is with respect to moving the physical body, unless my work is in a lucid dream.

What if you could travel back and meet your past self?

While looking through old photos today, I could recall vivid memories and impressions from my past. I could also get a quick glimpse of my experience at that time like what it felt like to see/experience through those child eyes. I had collected photos of myself in a chronological order.

I could feel a kind of unconditional love for my past selves and experiences. I was wondering, what if I could go back and comfort that scared child I was? Show it the right perspective and give it all the love it missed. I would be the ultimate mentor since it is the absolute height of empathy possible. I know and can relate EXACTLY to the feelings of that child/adolescent. I can directly address the deepest fears and insecurities. I can also share that the future is totally OK and nothing that is happening now matters beyond an interesting memory.