Now, I spend much of my attention on what is going on inside me. I often find myself stopping what I’m doing or thinking to figure out what I feel about something. Given where I’ve come from, it’s an incredibly freeing experience. It’s so much fun. — T Clark
Probably what any human is aware of at the most basic level is the "there is". ....The il y a is what is left over when we negate everything else; it's the density of the void. — darthbarracuda
Isn't the lack of awareness of anything just unconsciousness? — darthbarracuda
When I was a teenager, I was almost completely unaware of what I felt emotionally. Worse, it didn’t seem like I felt anything. I felt inauthentic in a fundamental way. Numb. Frozen. It made it incredibly difficult to have healthy relationships with others – family, friends, lovers.
I don't know the person who I was, as a teenager or before. I know what some of the feelings were, and notions of what was important. But I have no idea how I arrived at those notions of what's important. Conditioning, I'd guess, at the emotional level, starting early in pre-verbal age. — Michael Ossipoff
I'm not sure I'm talking about the same thing you are - I have always felt cut off from the person I was before maybe 15 or 16 years old. I remember disconnected things that happened, but not how my life fit together and not much about my internal life. — T Clark
As I have become more self-aware, I find that my connection to that boy is becoming stronger - he feels more like me.
Eckhart defines consciousness as "thoughtless awareness". In other words, it's perception prior to the first thought about what you are perceiving. If you think of consciousness as a blank canvas, all your thoughts and feelings are colors and shapes drawn on that canvas. Pure consciousness is stillness, it is tranquility, it is peace. — Aurora
People who meditate are chasing this gap in thinking, with the goal being stillness and peace. But, I think that it's the practice of meditation itself that gets in the way of that goal, because the pursuit of something creates thoughts about it, which doesn't help when what you are trying to do is stop thinking. Eckhart says, "You cannot cause it to happen, but you can allow it to happen" (referring to thoughtless awareness) — Aurora
Part of the value of getting older is an opportunity to maybe understand something about oneself as a kid, and what happened then, and how & why. I can't understand myself at those earlier ages, how I arrived at my priorities then, because I was a different person then. But I can deduce some things about the kid and what happened, but more in an objective way, something like when a scientist tries to explain an animal's behavior.. — Michael Ossipoff
But, I think that it's the practice of meditation itself that gets in the way of that goal, because the pursuit of something creates thoughts about it, which doesn't help when what you are trying to do is stop thinking. — Aurora
Tolle's description of that problem was excellent, and a wake-up call. ...how people's internal conceptual narrative about description, evaluation, & classification--and the related or resulting perpetual postponement of satisfaction (the present is just something to get through, for something better later)--displaces actual genuine experience. — Michael Ossipoff
And yes, it is counter-intuitive, as is a lot of spirituality, but the real meditation is supposed to be any moment of any day. When you put aside a specific 10 minutes for it, you are already lost because you are no longer in the present ... you are chasing something in the future, and using the present as a means to an end, as you mentioned. — Aurora
Seems to me that is a flaw in my ability to surrender to what meditation has to offer rather than a flaw in the method — T Clark
Well that's one good reason why I'm glad to have lived as long as I have. For whatever reason(s), a kid just doesn't doesn't have that capability of critically-understanding his life. Later we benefit from learning-experience, and getting farther from the early conditioning.
And it's definitely important and helpful to have some understanding now, about what happened and how. ...even though of course it's too late for it to help the kid of that earlier time. Too soon old, too late smart. — Michael Ossipoff
I doubt that's how the Buddha saw it. — T Clark
For the purpose of this discussion, by consciousness I mean the capacity for putting experiences into words. Awareness, on the other hand, is pre-verbal. — T Clark
I can see the universe – everything, stars and electrons, love, god, macaroni and cheese, my brothers - as a cloud. When I am putting ideas together to describe what I know or make an argument, I am very aware that I am putting together a story and I see a curve, a narrative arc, that shows the sequence of facts, ideas, and conclusions I am using to make my case. — T Clark
When I was a teenager, I was almost completely unaware of what I felt emotionally. Worse, it didn’t seem like I felt anything. I felt inauthentic in a fundamental way. Numb. Frozen. — T Clark
Trying not to try seems to be one of the ironies of the Eastern approach to philosophy. I believe it can work, but I have never had the discipline to make it work for me. Seems to me that is a flaw in my ability to surrender to what meditation has to offer rather than a flaw in the method. — T Clark
I think the best approach to Buddhist meditation is that taught by Sōtō Zen, one of the two main schools of Japanese Buddhism (the other being Rinzai). I won’t try and summarise the principles but I found the well-known book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Suzuki, a very effective book for teaching Zen meditation (zazen). The main point is to simply adopt the correct posture and do the practice, i.e. learn to sit on a zafu for some period of time and then direct the attention to the breathing. That’s it. The subtle point of Sōtō teaching, derived from the founder of the school, is that ‘to practice is already to be Buddha’. So there is nothing to seek or to gain. This seems counter-intuitive but it is the essence of the teaching. — Wayfarer
Essentially any inexplicable and maladaptive feelings, usually bad of course, otherwise they wouldn’t be a problem. — praxis
Anyway, according to Eastern tradition, practically no one achieves Enlightenment--life-completion--in this lifetime. Once in life, we aren't done till we're done.
In any case, that same tradition says that life-completion will eventually be there for everyone, but almost certainly not by the end of this lifetime. I don't even know what it means or would be like. For now, and for the forseeable future, nearly all of us are thoroughly involved with life, due to wants, needs, subconscious predispositions & inclinations, etc. — Michael Ossipoff
So first up, introspection is not some hardwired biological brain capacity - intrinsic to "being conscious". It is very much a learnt skill that we pick up as part of our cultural upbringing and made possible because self-directed speech does allow us to focus our attention and create a narrative story of "what is going on inside". — apokrisis
We have to learn what to expect when we introspect to actually even begin to "see it". This could easily be something we haven't learnt to do even as teenagers. And then our ideas about what we should find inside are so culturally dependent that we are only going to see what our cultures kind of teach us to see. — apokrisis
I was puzzled by this. When you say you see a cloud, do you mean visually see a jostle of images or do you mean something more kinesthetic and visuospatial, like having a sense of all these things "more or less within reach"? So they swim as possibilities on the periphery and can be brought sharply into view as required. — apokrisis
You might indeed be much more concretely visual than me. People do vary. — apokrisis
Again, this sounds odd the way you describe it. It is hard to imagine not feeling things, even if the feelings are confused, inchoate, hard to pin down. — apokrisis
So society really does shape what we believe about what we should find "inside". It is the prime source of any conceptual structure. And it approaches introspection in its own often quite self-interested way. — apokrisis
You expressed it much better and with much more knowledge and insight than I did, but what you are saying is similar to what I was trying to get across. — T Clark
So society really does shape what we believe about what we should find "inside". It is the prime source of any conceptual structure. And it approaches introspection in its own often quite self-interested way. — apokrisis
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