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.