Pillars of Enlightenment

Equivalent terms (they all mean exactly the same thing in direct experience):

Complete Acceptance = Effortlessness = 0 Resistance = Full Equanimity = Weightlessness = Bliss = Total Peace.

3 Pillars of Enlightenment (Shinzen):
Concentration
(Directed Focused Attention)

Sensory Clarity
(Seeing the different flavors of everything clearly)

Equanimity

(100% Attention, 0% Resistance)

Extra most important pillar:
Awareness

(Seeing from the 'Screen of reality' point of view)

3 Pillars of Enlightenment (Buddhism):Impermanence
(Change is Eternal.
Change is what makes beauty and life possible.
Change is what makes even perception possible.
'Knowing' itself is possible only because of change.)

Unsatisfactoriness
(No 'Thing' can satisfy you. Only 'Nothing' can :))

Non-self
(There is nobody who knows, there is only knowing.
The person who appears to know is also part of the knowing.)
 
The Unfindable subject:

In the subject-object paradigm, the subject perceives the object.

But the dilemma here is, when you look for the subject, another object is found.

How can you find the subject, if whatever you find is an object?

The answer is, the subject is inherently unfindable and an infinite mystery.
The nature of the subject is an infinite mystery, unknown, infinite potential.

So the true perceiver is inherently unknowable, just like a fire cannot burn itself, or a knife cannot cut itself.
This is what is meant by return to your unborn self.
Because the 'born' self that you think you are, is the object and not the subject.
If you think you are any object, then you are dreaming.

You are the awareness that is aware of the screen itself, all of the screen contents are made up of your substance.
Everything that has ever appeared to you in your life is made up of your substance.

So the trick is to turn awareness on itself, instead of being aware of an object.
Being aware of the subject is like awareness being aware of awareness, therefore realizing itself by itself.
It is the ultimate unification.

What is beauty?

I always thought beauty was something to do with ideal forms created by some kind of laws - like symmetry, golden ratio (1:1.618), or from the principles of art: movement, unity, harmony, variety, balance, rhythm, emphasis, contrast, proportion, and pattern.

But the qualities above implied that beauty can be only felt in a gradient or hierarchical scale. In other words, the highest perception of beauty is dependent upon the objects/perceptions fulfilling those qualities which are rare in nature. But as I implored and probed the thought further, I felt beauty was a perception transcendent of even the qualities I mentioned above.

In a sense, even all those qualities I described above is a sort of deep cultural conditioning. Reading about different cultures and their perceptions of beauty really opened my mind up to the relativity of what we call beauty. For example ladies from a tribe in Thailand would wear rings on their neck to elongate it and the lady with the longest neck was considered most beautiful. There are umpteen such strange practices such as foot binding to make the feet small, tongue and body piercings, scars etc. which were done to in an effort to be more beautiful. We may dismiss such phenomenon as outliers but actually they are not. Even within the western culture there are so many different perceptions on what is considered beautiful. What is beauty then?

Are even the most abstract art principles we uphold a sort of deeper cultural belief based prison?

Then I probed into this further and then suddenly this epiphany hit me that "Seeing reality and things as they are, in their full openness and vulnerability is what is truly beautiful". Vulnerability generally has a negative connotation. So I could use the word 'Openness, tenderness, gentleness'. Now we are looking at the world through the goggles of our perceptual lens. So the first step is allowing your lens to be as it is in its full psychic openness and effortlessness with 0 resistance. Then allowing all of the perceived contents through this lens be seen with the same 100% allowing, effortless, tenderness, gentleness and full openness with 0 avoidance, 0 resistance and fearlessness. And finally just staying with this whole screen of experience and completely letting it be as it is in its true nature with no effort to distort or control what is perceived. Immediately there is a sense of free falling, effortlessness, vulnerability and a sense of beauty rushes through. It involves a profound act of letting go of the moment completely and simply staying with bare effortless observation.

Love as a relationship vs. an object

Love is an experience of a relationship, it is not an 'experience object' by itself. Like when you have a rare pleasurable experience, the projected relationship towards this 'Pleasurable experience object' is love. Love is a projection from you towards the manifest experience. It is the highest projection you are capable of towards the manifest. It is the highest vibration your reality could vibrate in. It is something projected by you towards the manifest object. So the source of love cannot be anything other than you since it is you who projects it onto 'experience objects'.

Conventional love:

Conventionally, our belief structures filter what can allow you to open this projection onto the manifest. Such a case, would be conditional love. So when the 'experienced object' is passed through your belief filter, and is deemed worthy of the experience of love, then you shine/project love on to the 'experience object'.

For example, a teenager who is extremely eager to try alcohol for the first time in his life comes with very high expectation. If the right amount of alcohol is given to him, he would shine projected love towards that inebriated experience. Whereas, a devout christian who is deeply against the concept of alcohol may process this experience in an extremely negative way. So we conditionally open and close our love projection based on the interpretation of our belief matrix and whether or not it interprets the present experience to be worthy of such a lofty projection.

In such a case, the love is dependent on the existence of the 'experience object' and is also dependent on the belief structures interpreting the stimulus as worthy of love. So if either of them changes, the 'experience object' or your 'reality input interpretation/belief structures', your projection would change into something else (not love anymore). Then your vibration may lower into other states and once again there would be a need to seek a manifest object that would pass through the filter and allow you to experience this love again.

About the belief filter and the fleetingness of conventional love:

This 'belief filter' that conditions your projection potentials is the prison. Also since both the 'unconscious belief matrix' and the 'manifest experience' are continuously changing, the experience of love is inevitably fleeting. The freedom lies in transcending this matrix and shining the light of awareness on all gross and subtle beliefs that form this matrix like prison.

About transcendent love:

Now, I've used words like prison, matrix, unconsciousness, fleeting, inebriated, dependence, lower vibration whose connotations point to negative phenomena. I've also used words like highest, transcendence, freedom, light, awareness where the connotations point to something very positive. The transcendent love however includes all of the above including the negative phenomena. In fact negative/positive distinctions are only based on the interpretative framework and duality. The transcendent love is for all interpretative frameworks, all of manifest experience, all its potentials etc. There is 'Nothing' literally that is not embraced by transcendent love.

About the self, world, ground reality and energetic fractals

- What is this world really I am finding so demanding? Lets look at it from the absolute ground of awareness level. Everything is ultimately consciousness. The feeling experience of everything is energy in a certain configuration. In consciousness, there is an appearance of an external world which is like a frozen dream with laws, rules, limits. There is also the experience of being in a particular point of view and controlling a body. There is an appearance of 1-1 mapping between my actions and feelings. There is an appearance of a particular web of relationships, laws, rules. Intermittently, there is the experience of personal will where in the entire of consciousness, I am a fragment and capable of controlling the other fragments in a certain relationship. There is also the appearance of various psychic forces creating experiences by relativity. The continuous movement of the psychic energies creates an experience called life which again appears in consciousness. Consciousness itself is impersonal and what I call personal is only a fragment.

- Different psychic energies seem to appear in consciousness (the one space). Their movement and relativity creates the appearance of life. In this life however, there are some persistent deep energies cluster which I call myself. The interesting thing about the self is familiarity. No matter how many changes happen in your life, you still find a persistent and familiar sense of you. How is this possible if everything is changing? Maybe there are different levels to the change. Certain deep levels do not move at all creating the persistent familiar feeling of self. A particular pattern fueled by beliefs. What are these beliefs and what is the space in consciousness in which a belief resides?

- This self is attempting to find the conditions that would fulfill and neutralize, and end itself. However, the conditions may never be found because the self may be an endless pattern recreation like a fractal creating many many worlds infinitely but all of them having the root pattern of a fractal.  When this fractal itself is seen through, it is referred to as transcending the self where the insubstantiality and dream like nature of all experience is revealed.

- The self is almost like a particular kind of magnet, attracting certain experiences towards itself. The end result is a kind of fractal pattern in consciousness. That is why wherever you go, no matter how many situations change, the fractal gets recreated giving you the sense that YOU are still there. So since a fractal is infinite, there can be infinite diversity in a single person's fractal pattern. So transcending it, is like transcending to a higher infinity. So what this means is that infinity can contain smaller infinities within it and so on. Its similar to the universe, you can zoom into the universe to the nano-particles and still go infinitely deeper. You can also zoom outward and reach the level of super galaxy clusters. But all of that is only an appearance in a transcendent space and this unspeakable, ineffable space where everything appears is the ground of everything, the screen which creates all appearances into existence. This screen is what you truly are. Whether you are looking at a nano-particle or looking through a telescope at the farthest object in the universe, it is all appearing in your consciousness. So this instantly removes the solid materiality illusion.

- So the self is meta-patterns of relationships. It is the blue-print on how to form relationships. This blue print is like acorn from which the acorn tree unfolds. A set of very deep axioms of beliefs. Just like a basic set of 10 axioms can create the entire vastness of a subject like geometry, the self has axioms which can create this entire fractal in energy.

Thoughts - Apr 24, 2014

Desire is what makes me disconnect from what's there. It is not wanting/not liking what is there/present. Desire has a yang and a yin side.  Yin side is not wanting what is there. Yang side is wanting more of something that is there. If there is no desire, then automatically, you would just be and immerse yourself into what's present.  Seeing the in-substantial nature of desires and their conditional arising and passing makes me weary about trusting them. This makes me lose faith in time and is bringing me to the present.

Life goes on forever/eternally. There is no beginning in time and there is no end of time. Time/change is forever. Time itself is an appearance projected by the timeless dimension above it. I am all of time (as a concept) itself and beyond it. I can choose to be in time or timeless.

This bodily manifestation can be seen as a particular frozen paradigm in my imagination space.
Its as if I'm put into a video game of sorts/ a preset set of laws and rules creating this specific flavor (of world, universe, body, others etc.).

Why MUST I play this game? The game is somewhat fragile too and it is easy to die. When I further question this, the concept of death too seems meaningless. Death in fact literally means freedom from this dream and ability to solidify another dream or experiential paradigm. How can it be anything negative?

What would prevent me from once again imagining another bodily experience? Why should I be weary of it in the first place? If I want it, I'll imagine it, If not, I won't. If I'm split minded, then the stronger part would decide. It all seems perfect.

An interesting question to ponder would be: what aspects of this bodily experience am I attached to? What aspects of this worldly experience am I attached to?

I feel even what we call instinct for survival is us basically fearing about losing this flavor. But what keeps us wanting to experience this manifestation flavor? What do we waiting for, what do we want to see, experience, witness?

How do I move into limitless possibilities of creation? How do I escape this particular flavor of manifestation? Why did I decide to lock this paradigm and make it unconscious? Why did I divide myself up into all this multiplicity and choose to experience from this point of view?

If I am experiencing only a small fragment of the real me, then what sense does it make to oppose all the creation flavor witnessed? It is literally like me fighting with myself. It is like cancer, a cell not behaving in harmony with the other cells causing disharmony. What is the point of having so many thoughts and concerns about the future when it is unknowable anyway? Why do I choose to choose to fight with all of this? How do I reclaim all of my unconscious and understand the true reasons for everything?

It seems like the only plausible answer for: What's the point? is "The question you are asking, that is the point, to experience that, the point is THIS (whatever's happening, unfolding).

Also, another confusing thing about the world manifestation flavor is that, it exists when I tune into its frequency and I can tune out and move into my imagination frequency too if I want. So the question is, who created this world flavor of experience?  If I am only a witness, who is creating the contents?

All the bodily problems and everything might be because of my aversion to this manifestation. So the stomach refuses to digest, the intestines refuse to assimilate, the liver refuses to detoxify, the bowels do not eliminate well, breathing happens in a shallow way and so on. Whereas if I love everything, then wouldn't all of this happen far better? What is depression after all, it is wanting something that is not there.

Change is 'Meaning/Life'

Direct experience with hot and cold water 
Experience with cold and hot water - 2 dual direct experiences - the body stabilizes with whats there if it is kept going for a while. First the intensity of the experience rises, and then when it is too intense, the body disconnects and goes into some kind of void space, then again comes back to experience it but it does not feel as intense, its more moderated.

Life is the acceleration/deceleration and speed is meaningless
In other words it seems like we only feel acceleration and speed by itself is a meaningless concept. Even meaning, is basically the same thing, the change. Like if you were born in a rich family and always traveled in an aeroplane, that lifestyle would carry 1/100th the meaning compared to a poor kid dreaming about it. Change is life. More the change, more the life. Experience/Awareness is as change happens, it arises simultaneously with change and disappears when change stops.

Every night all the acceleration/euphoria/dancing/ecstasy of life particles almost stop causing deep sleep. Then once again they dance and their accelerations are experienced as life. The interesting part here is that there is no beginning and end. It happens forever in infinite patterns revealing infinite beauty experiences.

You are all of life's particles and you create life but setting them in motion. The unconscious part is when you have set some particles in motion (like the night in the picture) and then you forget that you set those particles in motion even. The completeness of the picture is seen once you witness all the particles and their motions.

Everyone is playing a game. But everything happens with the same infinite set of particles and motions.

Again the shiva and prakriti analogy strikes me. Shiva is all of life's particles and prakriti is the force that sets all of them into motion to form infinite patterns of beauty. This is the eternal dance.

My desires

Trust, love, belonging, safety, relaxation, merging with all of existence, connection, openness, embracing, fearlessness, freedom (no attachments, no bondages, nothing to protect), true meaningful service (what I was meant to do, following my highest passion and excitement), full alignment with the universal energy, finding true purpose of my existence, finding my true essence, transcending all desires, transcending and freedom from the self, effortlessness, healing of self from all its trauma from neglect, removing all neurosis (procrastination, the forcefields prevent me from doing things expected), removal of all divisions within the mind, full integration, realization of my infinite nature, infinite peace, complete clarity of reality and all perception phenomena (complete clarity on cause, effect, purpose, decisions, other people, behavior, psychology etc.), removal of all prisons of the mind, finding the origins, purpose and reasons for all the aspects in myself, exploration of extraordinary states of mind, exploration of psychedelics, reaching peak experiences and seeing experience with microscopic intensity and clarity, staying with knowing, reaching childlike wonder and fascination, complete understanding of duality and how to play, complete fulfillment at all moments, complete and maximal functioning of my brain, Experiencing ecstasy, delight, rapture, Extreme concentration powers and flexibility, super high processing speed of incoming information, removal of all shame, disgust, embarrassment, guilt, seeing through all belief structure realms, ability to reach any altered state at will (full access, full freedom), express my true infinite self to the world in its full light, perfect working of memory, accessing all potentials of my consciousness space, a state of receptivity and aliveness, seeing the truth at all times.

Thoughts - Apr 9, 2014

Meditation on weed:
I could see myself switching between the 2 modes: social mode of thinking and my personal mode. I was the arbiter choosing between those 2. It seemed like the 'external world' was far out, and my 'self and emotions' were much much nearer to me.  There was a clear sensation of the 'me perception' (self and emotions) I was carrying around. The self was a baggage I was carrying around. A psychic object made of energy.

Also I could see my 'Will' center was very very deep. In fact I could almost not find it at all. The command just comes from the infinite space behind, and it materialized itself and accordingly shifted my focus. I could see that I am the creator of all perception, I create it by virtue of my choice. The self was the filter which restricted this choice making and seemed to make it follow patterns and meta-patterns.

The more I withdraw and let go, the deeper I go. By this logic, it seems certain that maximal equanimity with super depth would give me the experience of infinity or deep sleep. As I go backwards and see everything as one substance 'knowing', I can see that there is nothing but the movement of knowing (including the self psychic structure(filter/focuser)) which is happening by itself. There is no experience of a separate doer OR the 'doer' and the 'done' are the same. All awareness content is aware of itself, there is no agent. All manifestation in perception is because you will it into existence.

Thoughts about Shiva and Prakriti analogy:
Its like shiva (awareness) and prakriti (dance). There are infinite such combinations(prakriti) available for the self(shiva) to participate in, but the self is free to choose and completely withdraw to nothingness if it desires so. The real 'you' is like the kid in the park(shiva) free to choose any game(infinite games created by prakriti) to play. Another way to describe would be shiva is 'space', prakriti is 'content'. The space is free to choose among its own infinite contents or withdraw from everything and stay as no-thingness. The self is free to choose any level in this spectrum. The self is also free to decide what level of involvement it wants, with what games.

Detachment and true choice:
Attachments (even the subtlest ones) are the prison preventing this freedom. The longing to escape the self is the longing to escape attachment. Attachment and fear are the same thing. Attachment IS a fear in essence. True choice itself can only happen with true detachment (True detachment == fearlessness). Otherwise, if attached, what freedom do you have to choose anything?

Refinement of the analogy:
In fact, even this analogy can be improvised. It is not even an external game(prakriti) that the self(shiva) participates in, with the self being separate from the game. Its more like, the self itself has infinite potentials of modulating patterns within its own substance.

Its like imagine your computer monitor or TV came alive and it show display any picture it wanted (infinite potential for pictures). The same applies to 'experience'. We are the infinite potential space for experience. The potential for modulation is 'prakriti' and space or nature is 'shiva'.
Shiva = nature, Potential = prakriti.

I can take this even further. Space itself is an experience, time itself is an experience. So the only thing I can rightly call it would be 'no-thingness' (the '-' is intentional, indicating it is no thing and beyond everything). Because any 'thing' is only one of its potentials out of an infinite number. It is this vast undefined no-thing in which something appears. So all the contents of experience, is only an appearance (among infinite such appearances).

All expression possibilities are available at every moment

All expression possibilities are available in all moments. At every moment, there is an appearance that satisfies the emotion you want to feel. Go into the appearance in the moment that allows you to feel what you want to feel, and feel it. The situation is immaterial, because it is as infinite and whole as any other appearance.

Its the belief that the situation does not deserve certain expressions from you (joy, love, involvement, interest, fascination, wonder) that holds you back. If this belief stays persistent, it causes depression. When this belief is removed, the lost freedom is regained.

In fact reality itself is this infinite possibility space. Finding your true nature is finding out that 'You are THAT'. You feel what you want to feel. If you think a mental/world model prevents you from doing this, then that is the belief illusion. This is because the mental model exists in a totally changeable thought space. Enlightenment is basically finding out that 'You' are the true essence of everything. No external object has any intrinsic essence. There is only ONE SPACE where everything appears and 'You ARE that space'.

Desires are what you deny yourself

- Your desires are exactly what you are denying in yourself.
- I'm constantly on the lookout for appearances that would give me what I am denying myself.
- I'm constantly looking out for appearances that would quell all 'presence of absence' so that there is only presence.
- It occurs to me, if you are fully aware of the presence of absence of 'Something' then all that is needed to be done is to transcend it and give yourself that 'Something' you missed.
- To be aware of the presence of absence of 'Something', that implies you know exactly what that 'Something' is.

- So in a true sense, you can never really say 'I do not know what I want'.
- Whats preventing you from fully experiencing that 'Something' you denied yourself in that case?
- There is some belief/belief network you are unaware of because the minute you become aware/observe this belief network, it is transcended and seen for what it is.

Removing beliefs:
- Removing beliefs is a bit like a the 'short term memory picture test'.
http://www.brightfocus.org/alzheimers/resources/matching-pictures-memory-game-1.html
- When you find all the same picture blocks they disappear. Similarly we test spiritual insights with the contents of our memory and experience causing the insight to get more and more internalized.
- Like take the statement 'Everything is made up of consciousness, the one substance'. Now verify this with all all the contents of your immediate experience (all the contents of your memory).
- So if you have internalized an insight logically and to a beginner level experientially, then you can take a substance that enhances memory access/recall/unblocks/frees it or a good psychedelic to sift through your memory folders and investigate if it meets the insight.

Finding sexual partners

We look for partners who will give us what we are denying ourselves. The ideal partner is one who counteracts all your beliefs or feelings that make sexual arousal difficult. This partner also counteracts all the emotional blocks too. Blocks are tied to guilt, neglect, fear. The rule for sexual arousal: "Have others do onto you what you feel guilty about doing to others." Guilt inhibits sexual arousal, its diminution increases sexual excitement. It is the person who absolves you of all your sins.

You fantasies give you a strong clue as to what aspects are you denying yourself.