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.