Thoughlessness, Timelessness and Love

Some days there is this feeling of nothingness which feels really unpleasant. There is a strong aversion to this feeling and the mind tries to fill it up somehow, usually with negative thoughts and an undercurrent unpleasant feeling. I analyzed this feeling of emptiness and it seems that though there is no gross thought, there is a subtle undercurrent thought manifesting as a feeling. It does not have any content, but it is just a mild unpleasant restless feeling - the mind seems to strongly resist it. It is from this feeling all the other thoughts are generated.

If I observe the undercurrent itself, I may be able to reach a state of thoughtlessness. I believe thoughtlessness is timelessness since time is change and we measure time by the movement of our thoughts. So no thought, no time. I was wondering if the undercurrent is actually a frequency attracting other thoughts. If I can change that frequency to love, then all thoughts would be tuned to that.

Float tank experience 3

The good part about this float was that, I slept for an hour or so before going. We lost the route on the way so it took a lot more time than expected to reach. We postponed the 9:00 appointment to 9:30 but we actually reached at 10:30. So the session was for 1hr instead of 1.5hrs for 40$. I quickly finished the bath and got in. I was quite alert and not sleepy in the float throughout. After relaxing sufficiently, Ｉ tried to examine what part of the body was having stress. I found it was mostly in my face somewhere along the forehead and nose. Also whenever I felt strong emotions or aversions it seemed to be coming from the middle of the chest. I could not really locate where the thoughts were coming from. They would just creep in any time without me able to trace their origin. I would catch it usually 1-2 secs in retrospect, after the thought has occurred. I also examined difference between day dreaming visuals vs staying alert in the present. I tried to examine the difference between different kinds of thoughts - visual, feeling, auditory and look for an area  in the head where I felt it.  Overall it was great and I was able to dig deeper than before. It felt like a really long time, even the 1hr duration.

Each moment is extraordinary

At Each Moment:
someone dies, someone is born, someone is delighted, someone is in ecstasy, someone is in severe pain, someone is living your exact dream feeling, dream emotion, there is someone having a relationship with your dream soulmate, dream lover, someone is enjoying the best lust of his life, someone gets a fracture.

Garden analogy of significance

Imagine a garden with many flowers, shrubs, trees and grass. Lets use this as an analogy for our mental life. In your dream lover's mental garden, what would you like to be?

• The roots = Absolutely not noticed but at the same time absolutely indispensable
• The grass = something that is everywhere but not really noticed, but is like the underdog, it will be really missed if gone but when its there its treated with neutrality
• All the trees = strong pillar of support, columns for a building, foundation, indispensable, again not specially noticed much when there
• All the flowers in the garden = A representation of everything that is beautiful in her life
•  A significantly beautiful and large flower = A special place of joy and feelings, completely unique, distinctly admired

Evolution and our level of being

Has evolution really changed who we fundamentally are? Have the core motivating forces changed? Do all our drives still originate from the biological need to procreate and other basic instincts? Do all our fears still stem from the fear of death? Are there differences in our different states of mind or what we keep pushing toward? What are we really progressing towards? Is there a higher metaphorical layer that explains all these patterns?

Peak experience from music

If you want goose bumps euphoria throughout your body, sit in a comfortable position somewhere. Make sure the place is extremely quiet, close all windows/doors. Put on some high quality headphones. Play one of your favorite songs at an EXTREMELY low volume, your breathing should be 10 times louder, it should be THAT LOW. Say in a laptop
(volume setting of 1, VLC player volume setting of 3 - 5). Since decibel level is a logarithmic scale, I would guess the sound level would be 1000's of times softer than your usual volume.

Put a playlist of around 5-6 songs. Initially you would struggle to hear anything but keep concentrating on whatever little you can hear. Eventually it;ll get clearer and clearer and your sensitivity will increase. After a while once you get comfortable, increase the volume rapidly to your normal level or slightly more.

If its a favorite trance track esp, you;ll have a brief moment of euphoria where the music overwhelms you.

Knowledge is that which is behind the words

I have kept reading extensively on psychology, philosophy and self improvement for ages. In the recent years, it has accelerated greatly. I still use the same words, but their meaning has drastically changed and is much deeper and interconnected now. And while talking to people about these topics, I realized they interpret the same words very differently compared to me. This is another indicator that words in a language just point to experiences. Only people similar to you can understand you since they would emote to the same things. Even if you get the right feedback, still you can only assume that his/her experience is the same as yours. However, even if not true in an absolute sense, it perfectly satisfies our need for validation and belonging.

Letting go and trust

I realized that the reason I was not effectively letting go was because I did not completely trust my surroundings/external environment. I was still in some kind of fight or flight feeling. Once I focused on this trust feeling, I was finding it much easier to let go. The main areas to focus on are the eye sockets and the space between eyebrows. I guess the will center is located here and when you completely let go of the will center, you automatically reach a relaxation space where reverie, fantasy and other great feelings start to kick in. Reaching this deep relaxation space while maintaining alertness is the key to observing hypnogogia and deeper dream states.

This state in fact redefined what I thought relaxation was. Previously, I used to associate relaxation strongly with stupor or a mental numbness. Now I can see that it is possible to be fully awake and completely relaxed and its quite a wonderful state to be in.

Concept of the "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind"

This movie is one of the deepest psychological romantic stories ever. It goes to the very root of what we call romantic love which is actually completely internal/part of our dreams. We build a whole association network with the person loved.

After going through a variety of emotionally charged experiences with that person, the experience itself starts getting linked to the internal impressions of that person.

• You associate all intense pleasure/pain sensations to the lover and he/she starts becoming indispensable to your life experience itself. 
• The lover acts as a catalyst in bringing out cherished or emotionally charged states in you and they get intricately woven into the fabric of life experience itself. 
• Beyond external experiences, we also start attaching this person to our fantasies and this makes this network grow into even your most primal drives in life.

That's why a common feeling after a breakup is that, I cannot/will never feel alive again. It requires a process of disconnecting/detaching the person from your life experiences or replacing them with someone else. For it to be replaced, the new experience should be more intense. More the intensity, more is the strength of the memory and association.

In the last part of the movie, near the seashore, he suddenly comes into the present moment and realizes all that he missed out. Becoming a pure observer, savoring each feeling's intensity and letting go, detaches you from the situation/context/person and gives full freedom to the experience. The experience is no longer locked into the pattern that only a certain person/context/situation can invoke it.

Becoming this observer frees up your mind into the truth and makes it spotless and you become what you always were and will be. Hence "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind".

Float On - Float Tank experience 2 - Jul 03

Unlike my previous float tank session, here I had the option of choosing between the ocean tank and the traditional tank. I spoke to the owner 'Christopher' about the issue not having good air circulation in the tank and therefore he recommended that I float in the Traditional one. I spoke to him about lucid dreaming too and he told me that he did it a lot of times and that it might require some practice. It was inside a room that had a shower cell and a towel, robe, earplugs etc. There was a similar earth like smelling soap inside. I quickly showered and got into the tank. I put on earplugs and they were excellent, created a almost custom mold like seal without infringing into the ear canal.

After getting into the tank, I was quickly able to settle down. The air circulation was quite good and the breathing did not trouble much at all unlike last time. The only discomfort I felt was that I was afraid the water was creeping up my forehead and that it might start coming closer to my eyes. I concentrated on my body with the usual Vipassana technique and after a while it started feeling comfortable. The experience was much smoother than last time. There were a lot of sexual content in them. I also imagined VIBGYOR in the reverse order and this time it was far better. I felt each color really well and I could also sense that there was potential for much more. I kept dipping in and out of hypnogogia.  I would suddenly start hearing noises and seeing things, but if I tried to make sense of it it would snap me out of it. This happened many times. The 1st 1 hr went by really fast(felt like 20mins). Maybe it was because of the extra shower time - about 15mins. After that it was a 2hr float which I thought would only be for 1 hr. From the 2nd hr onwards, I let go and it seemed that I could hear and see strange stuff, I had no memory of the events but there was still some awareness retained.

After the almost 3 hour session, I spoke with the owner for another 1 hr and he gave me some very useful insights. That I needed to totally let go of the "need to make sense" and just become a master/ultimate observer of everything. He remarked that it would automatically wake up both the left/right centers and you can remember the events. He told me about his color hive like experience inside the tank and the fact that he could recall it. We had a lot of interesting conversations and his general comment was similar to adyashanti which is "about nothingness, the illusion of control, to let go of concepts and live in the flow/outside you identity trying to establish itself". Another volunteer was listening to us and he gave an interesting analogy "If molecules were to have eyes and see other molecules the empty spaces between them would appear like how we see starts". The owner also gave us a good discount, so it totally cost 80$ for 2. He seemed to be really genuine and having a high degree of experiential knowledge. He also spoke about the dark room retreat in Thailand which he was planning to attend.

Approach to romantic relationships

My approach to romantic relationships is purely like how an artist would look at the world. He sees the pattern of beauty in the spectrum and expresses it in powerful creative ways like poetry, painting, writing, exotic verbal expression and other such forms. These relationships are one of the most interesting/intense experiences life can offer and I'm well aware of their transient nature too. In fact it is this transiency that even creates the significance.

Why cant people live that way? When there is mutual attraction, they can just live in the moment and try to experience positive feelings as deeply as possible and when it starts waning, let go with warm feelings gracefully. This memory imprints of this in both would be powerful and what can be a greater reward than being part of another one's dream. After all we all live in the mental consciousness where memory plays an extremely pivotal role.

Its like, you see qualities in that person you deeply admire and focus on these dream qualities. The other person does the same, tries to find their dream in you. And when you get a match, try to go to the deepest experiences till its comfortable for both. This also means both should have advanced communication skills, high emotional intelligence with diplomacy, similar level of self development and overall intelligence as prerequisites.

Enjoy and savor these experiences, etch them in your memory and radically increase your sense of well-being. Its a pure win-win relationship or rather a 1+1=3 kind of equation.