Thoughts

In response to depressing thoughts

Posted by de

Dietrich: The question I would ask is: Is the focus on the ‘about’ what is seen or on the seeing itself? The ‘about’ is never going to satisfy. To give ‘meaning’ – good or bad – is just another form of a comment (‘about’). A solution would be to let internal comments fade out by giving them less attention, simply by realising that looking for improved commentaries is not going to satisfy. In realising this, freedom and unconditional love are seen to be your nature. Frustrating self-talk doesn’t come near this. Comments can’t see this. Meaning can’t see this. It’s okay and joyful to see the impotence of meaning.

RESPONSE: the empty nothing doesn’t nourish nor satisfy. I don’t feel any qualities, no freedom nor love.

Dietrich: Thoughts assume an authority that thinks that it has to be served and filled with satisfaction. The issue is not that there is no freedom or love. The issue is that the imagined authority, demanding satisfaction, continues to demand like a 4 year old child (‘me’) that hassles mum (life) for ice cream after ice cream (satisfaction). That activity of demanding is the distraction from the freedom. However, it is not very efficient for the believed-in child to try to slap itself in an attempt to reduce demanding. It is more efficient to see that the mind recreates the demander – (the 4 year old) – from moment to moment. The demander is a believed-in thought product. By seeing this, the demander is seen through, together with the demanding, and what’s left is freedom from this tyranny. This tyranny is a blessing in disguise because the cherishing of such an imagined child is no longer seen to make sense. Once this is seen, eating ice cream will be a much more enjoyable activity as it is not polluted by the activity of demanding.

Attention

Posted by de

Directionless attention is devoid of thought, directed attention is ‘looking through’ defining concepts (thoughts). The attention is the same in both cases, as light is the same, no matter what medium it shines through, and no matter what it shines upon.
The issue is if the light has temporarily identified with concepts while passing through them or if it remains unidentified while passing through concepts. If it stays unidentified then there is ‘freedom from identification.’ The other scenario is a seeming imprisonment in the maze of conceptual enclosures.

I Am Not the Body

Posted by de

Many nondual messengers say that you are not the body. As far as nonduality is concerned, that seems wrong as there is no division whatsoever. With other words: Being is everything that appears.

This is a quick conclusion that may satisfy the mind’s demand for logic and consistency. However, let’s look at this issue a little closer:

I repeat the statement: ‘Being is everything that appears.’ This statement is, in itself, not clear. Being is. Being is prior to the appearance of time, it does not come or go. Therefore, it is. The same can’t be said about appearances. They come and go. Due to their ephemeral nature, we can’t claim that they are. At the most, they appear to be. The appearance lends its substance from Being. Appearance has no substance of its own.

When we say ‘we are not the body’ we are referring to the fact that we are not an appearance, as appearances can’t be at all. They can only appear to be. The mistake the mind makes is to believe that it is the body, whereas in truth, neither the mind nor the body exist as such. The belief that appearances exist is responsible for their apparent reality. There is no evidence for such a belief to be true.

First of all, beliefs are based on memory. Memory is the imagination of a past event, an attempt to replicate a past event in one’s imagination. With other words, we imagine a memory to be true. It is easy to understand that an imagination is just that – a temporary flicker in the mind about a short-lived event that appeared some apparent time ago. Can we really rely on such a flicker of imagination to prove that it is real, that it is?

When we believe that we are a body-mind, we do the same to maintain such a belief: we remember events in which our body-mind was involved. This includes events that happened a second ago, such as having typed these words with fingers. I call them ‘my fingers’ if I identify with the body-mind. Interestingly, thoughts can only claim events to exist AFTER they already happened. Thoughts can never catch an event at the very instant it happens. Thoughts can only report on events that are already gone. They are no more. In truth, events never had the characteristics of ‘isness.’ They were extremely short-lived. Appearance and disappearance of any so-called ‘moment in time’ are simultaneous. A new vibration replaces the previous vibration. If the new vibrations resembles the previous vibrations, we could call this ‘patterns of vibrations,’ and the appearing phenomena seem to last for a while. Still, they don’t have any independent nature. All vibrations and the pattern themselves appear out of the only existence there is – Being.

When we see that ‘we are not the body,’ we see that all bodies only appear to exist by virtue of vibrating patterns that emerge from the depths of unfeathomable Being. Being does not identify with any seeming boundaries. However appearing mental activities can generate a belief that constantly claims that ‘I am a separate entity.’ It seems that most humans’ mental activities claim to originate from this belief which is also just a repeated mental activity.

The ‘Now’ (Presence) and Meaning

Posted by de

‘Now’ cannot have meaning as Now as it is more fundamental than any thought construct. Any meaning is involves thought. However, the Now (Presence) as source of all is able to produce and attach meaning to what it projects as seemingly other than itself. Ultimately, all apparent meaning is dreamt by Now. One could say that from the perspective of the dreamt object there appears to be a meaning in realising this.

Meaning is the same as ‘what matters’.

I like the quote of Jordan Peterson “The world is not made of Matter, the world is made of ‘What-Matters’­. It contains a lot of truth. When strictly nothing matters at all, the worlds cease. Having said this, I see that there is the possibility that ‘what matters’ can have an optional, playful flair. To build a sand castle at the beach – does it matter to the children? It doesn’t matter to the extent where the children get worried about the next big wave. However, they may still give the castle some meaning within the scope of playfulness while it lasts, and they may even enjoy the drama of the wave eventually flattening everything.

Purnamidah Purnamidam

Posted by de

(in response to a statement about the possibility of being complacently ‘full with yourself’):

in Sanaskit they have a saying ‘Purnamadah Purnamidam,’ meaning ‘That (the absolute) is fullness and This (its expression – still the absolute but appearing as if relative) is fullness.” The assumption that here is lack – caused by a seemingly independent and frustrated mind – needs to be questioned. In my opinion, fullness (greatness) has nothing to do with particular actions. The recognition that the ocean appears as waves restores the sense of this ‘double’-fullness which is none other than Love, the love of being and living from being. The absolute is full of itself. You can’t be full with other than yourself as other doesn’t exist. Only if thought claims this fullness it becomes what you call ‘full of itself’ in a complacent way, thereby preventing further investigation into the actuality of purnamidah-purnamidam.

The Formless and Thoughts

Posted by de

‘Nothing is form, and form is nothingness’ is a concession to the belief that there are things (Rupert Spira).

Then, there is the realisation that this belief, produced by consciousness, can be replaced by the realisation that colours, sounds etc are appearing out of consciousness.

Consciousness would not be be able to come up with colours, sounds, etc without employing thoughts, necessary to design the mechanics of perceiving colours, sounds etc.

Driving a car is most enjoyable without identifying with it or believing in it as a separate entity. However, the designers of the car had to invest a lot of thinking into the functioning of that car.

Realising the formless does not invalidate thinking as a tool to maintain the mechanics (vibrations) of perceiving colours and sounds for the sake of entertaining consciousness. Luckily, there is no need for consciousness to forget itself to perceive colours and sounds, but it has to forget itself as soon as it assumes beliefs in separation.