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.

Gravity, Law of attraction - expansion and contraction

If entropy is continuously increasing - if this is a basic law - then functions such as holding on to memory, habits, beliefs would use up much more energy - like dough is a much more ordered form but so much of heat energy is required to make it.

Maybe law of gravity is law of attraction. Gravity is the reason solids exist bringing together particles. Gravity may be creating weight. Gravity may be creating personality.

Consciousness is space where everything exists in it. Realizing this and giving up ones ego for unlimited vast space is like collapsing gravity of personality. Now this is a confusing part. If the personality is collapsed, why would have any attractive force powers? Wouldn't that make you a pure nobody? But surprisingly a lot of people of this sort have reported to be very attractive to everyone around. Maybe this collapse has a duality in it. They are either nobody or they become an incredible attractive force.

Maybe even emotions like love and inclusion feel like expansion while fear, repression is a contracting emotion. Is our natural nature to simply be in tune with the most basic law of the universe to expand forever. So holding on to anything is consuming lot of energy. At the most basic level we hold on to our personality with all its beliefs. Maybe holding on to this sense of I is a contraction. Are we overcoming this by acquiring more and more material possessions and emotional ties with other people? Maybe this explains our social desire. Our need for increasing learning. We want to continually keep expanding in everything. Romantic interest allows us to do this at a much more intimate level.

Does this also explain why our evolution is pushing us to connect with everyone else? For example the internet for sharing experiences and knowledge in the best way we know until now - media channels.

What is music in that case? Isn't it a manifestation of order? Isn't beauty a combination of unity - harmony and variety - diversity, Also how does it satisfy layers of order and disorder in reality?

Love as a trophy vs love like air

Imagine you’re really attracted to someone and have all kinds of experiences with them, the implicit agreement is that you would store the memories with me in a special place in your mind and cherish them like trophies. If you are always in the present moment, there is no trophy, you are not in this game anymore, your love is everywhere like air and there are no special places or preferences, there is no selection. This goes against typical romantic love and pursuits where there is a very distinct selection.

A non-selective choice less awareness is like air, everywhere uniformly present while our conventional love definition is more like a solid object we treasure like a trophy. So a person in this state does not have a personality as an object, it’s like air or water, infinitely modifiable, not even like clay which has some limitations. So in the personality dimension when all the solids are trying to find a way to fit into each other, the air just fits in anywhere and resides in a large space.

Non-duality, attachment, euphorigens

No experience is me. No experience is needed for me to be complete. I would be complete and in absolute bliss in a non-experience state. It is the deepest rest and the profoundest peace possible. Craving for a certain experience is like getting a taste of a sweet when you’re extremely hungry and the craving is to completely indulge yourself in it. Certain thoughts are super potent. They create a brief taste of the euphorigens and then the craving starts for the same. This also gives me more empathy towards drug addicts. When your stomach is fully satisfied, you wouldn't feel like eating the sweet. But in this case, the craving for experience (variety, intensity, harmony, beauty, purity etc.) is a hunger that one has to understand more deeply.

The euphoric state feels excellent but it is continuously present for too long then it becomes a baseline and loses significance, also since there is nothing to compare it against.

There are many ways to control this. I think there is a very deep inherent unfulfillment that persists no matter what experience is triggered. This can be observed by mindfulness. Mindfullness is totally needed for satisfaction of any sort because, what is the use of being happy if you do not know you are!

Eating a perfectly sattvic diet will reduce the number of euphorigens and therefore all cravings. With this the pure mindfulness quality can be stronger. Yogic asanas and pranayama can also similarly reduce cravings quite a lot.

I am simply attached and drawn to certain mental states of mind. It happens in the mental plane. I am different from others because of the mental states I am attached to. Compared to an ordinary person, my mental life is richer by a factor of atleast 100. Even physical objects are ultimate a spiraling of thought on matter. So in a way, everything is mental and your life is absolutely rich, if your conditioning is almost nil the whole mental space is your oyster for play. Beyond this freedom is the ultimate freedom of realizing your self which is the ultimate observer, a plane even above the mental space. That would be freedom from all action and change.

I am attached to certain perspectives, thoughts and ways of seeing things since on examination they give the best combination of freedom and reward. Is there really a higher and lower perspective? Each perspective is an optimizing equation. But what is the equation optimizing? What is the sample space of this optimization? I guess that would be the entire mental continuum. So we are basically selecting some experiences over others. What if we just rise off the entire mental continuum like stepping out of the dimension, allow our brightness to shine completely and then look at all experience as equal and simply as members of the mental dimension?

The transition would be like, if you visited another planet and stayed there alone long enough with aliens then all humans would look alike to you. This would be in stark contrast to the distinctions we make on earth such as good, bad, ugly, beautiful, man, woman etc. So does moving to the non-dual state essentially mean stepping out of the entire experience continuum? Is this what they call emptiness or nothingness!

Contemplation on why society exists

It seems like all minds are the same and each mind contains the whole of all experience. Just that each is in a different configuration optimizing certain variables. Each mind is a subjective bubble and isolated at least as of my perception. Different minds manifest different amounts in this physical plane. What is a doctor, engineer etc. without any social context? It is a specialization in a particular thought form. Society mostly favors specialization and works on 'mutual trust' that others are doing their specializations respectively. The trust factor is so important here.

Why is the current system not agreeable? economic inequality, concentration of power with the elite, exploitation of the working class, corporations manipulation, work slavery, rigidity, suppression, social manners, conventions, excessive consumerism at the cost of the planet, myopic compulsive thinking to just reach target after target, encouragement of addictive forms such as work holism,  etc. Society is the synthetic collective mind entity and the fact that it is running shows that people are actually happy with it. Awareness and beliefs are the main factors here. What will you do if you totally believed that the government was god's order? What if each human being was made completely aware of everything? How would the world be? Is this deliberately part of the design so that these cycles can go on? Human emotion expressing themselves as opposing forces? Why does delusion even exist? Maybe that is also part of the duality game, the fun of waking up? the joy of finding these delusions out? the joy of correcting incorrect knowledge and organizing?. All these cycles? And we don’t know how long these cycles might last. Maybe it is kind of like the yugas in Hindu mythology lasting 1000's of years. Maybe even delusion is an integral part of this whole cyclic game or universe of interconnected patterns.

Changing energies, origins of I, diffusal of focal points

I have a perception of me, my priorities, mental maps etc. and EVERYTHING ELSE in my perception is JUST a filler. Here the duality of lack and fulfillment operate. But if I totally relax or rest my self-definitions, priorities and feelings of separateness then I zoom out into another level where many new states of consciousness open and everything that was in the periphery before, actually becomes me. In truth every single thing that I can perceive, experience, be aware of, cognize etc. is me. There is no solidity to anything. Everything is just of miasma of movement and continuous change. Identity is for social convenience just like time. It has no intrinsic reality or essence. We give meaning to the stories, projections, images and videos and finally the physical experiences they cause. But nothing has any essence. Everything is the same basic substance - consciousness scape/water in an ocean. Just like we have a dreamscape for dreams, you can objectify and go through tons of emotions in the dream but when you wake up it’s all gone. How substantial is that? Isn't that the reason people dismiss it as unreal? Extending the same logic, isn't our reality also quite similar with experience being everything? The objects, identity, concepts, priorities, projections are all products of a man made social mind. How can that be taken as something real? Yet we stick to that and live thinking we are a separate individual with a separate identity for the rest of our lives. Why is that not ridiculous then? If I slap you, will you say the pain is you? Isn't the experience of how we call ourselves also ever-changing especially in pure body sensations and thoughts?

By continuous reinforcement from childhood we have created a somewhat solid entity of ourselves. Because of the reinforcement and habits formed (thinking, physical actions etc.) we create this persistent imagination or phantom of who we are and believe that for the rest of our lives. Society pressures you right from birth to define an identity which is why the first thing done is give you a unique name. After that the separateness of things is gradually instilled by associating each object with a sound in language. You tell a child this blue color thing in your hand is called "pen" by repeating the word pen again and again whenever the child holds it. We do this for all objects including the child's identity itself. Initially the child associates the blue object as "pen". But the next day you show another red pen and then repeat the word "pen" again. Now the child is a bit confused but it combines the common characteristics of the two and improvises on its concept of the pen. In this manner, but repeating words again and again for different situations the child is in, we reinforce, improvise and broaden definitions of all concepts for the child. 

Once its older, its definition of pen becomes refined like this:

Any object with the following properties:

·         function - to write on paper or on a digital instrument by hand

·         properties - shape, color, texture, material, mechanical parts, affordances

·         typical pen - writes in blue color, is long cylindrical and has a handle and a press button on top

Now this is a micro example of the pen object just to show how a child learns concepts. Along with teaching the child all these concepts, you also teach it a mothership concept of "identity - me". Whenever a child is having pain, you tell the child "you are always having pain" OR if people do not like the child much you say "you are not desirable to people". Now the child attaches this painful experience or the undesirability to its definition of self. Just like the pen example, the child builds up and improvises this definition of itself. Once the definition matures a bit, it starts using the word 'I' and memory starts to function. That is why we do not have any memories of the time before 3 or 4 years of age. Think about it, if you don’t know what to look at among 1 billion stimuli, how can your memory work?, what will you store?. So identity gives you definitions, priorities and maps for what is important and what is not and once this is well formed, your memory can start to function. So bringing up a child is actually a supreme act of creation.

So it’s a funny paradox. This filter that prioritizes what we should do, what is important, what is not, where our energies must flow, what experiences should we seek, what should we move towards etc. is created first and then we have our identity formed. Only after the identity is formed do we have memory. The funny part is we look back on memory to find out why we are like this. Why we are like this cannot be found in memory because the identity was prior to that. It’s a job done by your parents/circumstances/social interactions/experiences at an early age over which you have no control. That is why identity is a socially created phenomenon. It is not intrinsic and that is why part of enlightenment is seeing through this completely. It is just like any other concept but we take it extremely seriously because we think it is something solid or real.

The truth seems like a pure de-conditioning of all perception of who we are. That is why they say the "Who are you?" question will eradicate all your doubts. People take the doubts so seriously but never question the beliefs/paradigm/assumptions on which the doubt resides. We just have to intensely look into it and absorb it so intensely that we instantly see how all of it is empty of essence just like the feeling of a slap is not attached to you. One we advance sufficiently to see through our entire identity and its assumptions/beliefs, many dualities start to disappear like the perceiver and perceived become one; The knower and the known become one; and there is absolute freedom just like becoming lucid in a dream and being able to do absolutely anything. All that is needed is total relaxation and allowance of everything as it is at every moment. Every time you relax into anything, you diffuse its importance and it allows you to see how other options maybe equally probable or valid.

Relaxing is basically a zooming out. Suppose you were on the ground and standing just beside a tall building, the building looks very large and massive. But what if I took you 13000ft up in the air for a skydive, this large building just looks like a small dot. What if I took you to outer space - could you even see the building? In a sense ideally as we grow up this is what should happen - i.e. a broadening of our identity and diffusal of individual parts based upon all the new experiences we have.

All reference points and even existence is an idea that slips in and out. You simply relax into all those ideas and perspectives. Even alan watts theories has so many reference points or angles. What disappears in 5 seconds is not real. The desire to find the ultimate reference point is from insecurity. It acts as a middle man between the world and the interpreter (ego). You exist is a prerequisite for anything even the experience absolute consciousness.

Relax all focus points and center in the bliss - it’s just surrendering everything - causeless realm is where bliss is - it doesn’t know anything - it’s the nature of innocence - get out of all stories, analysis, philosophizing, giving importance to anything etc. - experience your experience without focusing on it - no objectifying - its absolute relaxation in timelessness - awareness is the space in which duality occurs - personal development in for improving personality, focus is still on causation, in management mode, it’s not freedom, it’s helpful in the relative plane - freedom is causeless and timelessness, there is no independent nature or essence to things, all are expressions of one life, perceptions in one awareness, everything is water. We attach experiences like happiness to certain objects - it’s like there is a map of images and accordingly our experiences are felt - this is the illusion 

Symbolism - projections - words are just empty - mind pictures/movies are empty - it’s all deconstruction to reach enlightenment - If I seek an experience, can I maintain it for the rest of my life? - like watching the laptop screen and imagining the movie - OR dreaming in the night and projecting onto a dreamscape that just fizzes away - So what is the image of wellness, analyze each component, is it a valid image, how long will it last, can it last forever? - this is the man made/social mind - imagine the most stressful state and look at it critically and it’s still possible to allow it and see - it’s so beneficial to see the emptiness because it helps you rest more and more and get real freedom - happiness is not an image (the images are empty) it’s more of a relief and allowing everything to be right here - enlightenment as a word is empty and when you fully imagine what it would look like the emptiness can be seen - it’s simply the inescapable seeing and the emptiness of everything - in a relative world, all words point to things - Ask the question: What am I doing? What if I stop everything and just be ‘non-doing’. I have to investigate how many things disappear.

Origins of separation and strategies

Whatever you focus your attention on becomes your experience. Description points experiences a lot in daily life. Separation is enhanced by description/contextual thinking and reduced by relaxation. Without words there is no sense of separation. Even sense of separation is a part of separation. If it doesn’t look like that it looks like this - based on belief in a sense of separation itself. the minute you describe, it’s a new story. Longer more detailed stories appear more inherent. Separation is just a particular state of consciousness. Only the thinking is creating the sense of separation. Relaxing dissolves this.

How much separation is originally coming from sensory experience? Is there a single word in the universe outside your mind? Everything is a confirmation of awareness. We love the thought of love, peace, joy. 'You exist' is transcendental and exists simultaneous with everything else like the lowest common denominator. When you see the dualities they self-destruct each other into peace and freedom. Only a thought can be against of another thought. Let every experience be a confirmation of your existence/aliveness/awareness.

What’s the use of knowing what we already know? You don’t want to make sense of it, put together some thoughts together so that things can be left - You want to understand to let go, trust and be. We may really want to just be. We keep questioning and when an answer satisfies we are in bliss and relieved till the next question.

Extending identity to all perceptions

Its too easy to fall in love with pleasant perceptions. In fact it is almost automatic and effortless. The challenging part is to love everything that arises even the most grotesque of forms and feelings. After all everything we perceive is who we are. We are inseparable from all kinds of perception or more like the space in which perception is happening. If we hold on to a small set of perceptions, call it 'Me' and treat everything else as external and push it away, its ignorance of this fact. There is a interconnected system referred to as the physical body that moves with you but you are FAR larger than that. You are the perceiver behind the machine and the machine itself is highly interconnected to its environment.