Chasing the High

[snowheight]

Practising exposes the same fallacy... practising for what? ... Those things just happen.

And in this the irony sprouts into the paradox.

I was reading the first chapter of TPON to Sue on that very spot where that picture of the shoulder kitten was taken just now and came across this:

"When a thought subsides, you experience a discountinuity in the mental stream -- a gap of "no-mind." At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being."

TPON Chapter 1 para 31

So we have two truths, yours and Eckharts. I've got no goal on that depth, but Hagen does speak a bit about "training the mind". One of the thoughts most likely to precede a persistent gap on the bench, with eyes closed and the mousehole conjured, is about practice itself; and it is astonishing to the mind how much more difficult and demanding Hagen's simple, stark practice, which would seem not so much different from the visualization ... just how much more of a challenge that would appear to be.

In the practice, and to say again -- every moment is an opportunity for practice -- as in the living ... the paradox dissolves as we express it by constantly falling effortlessly into existence.

Namaste

[ashley72]

... the paradox dissolves as we express it by constantly falling effortlessly into existence.

Now, Now, Now, Now...

Actually I've been reading Taoists Alan Watts & Raymond Smullyan the past couple of days. One gem I came across from Raymond was this...."there is something blurred and indistinct Antedating Heaven & Earth, How indistinct! How blurred! Yet within it are forms.

I wrote something similar to this in Andy's recent post Another Reminder from ET

I wrote this..."The world now appears inside of "me". However, for this appperception to occur, a pherpherial "inviolated level" is directly sensed around this outer world which is now within. I call it an inviolated pherpherial (discontinuity)... It's a mysterious or invisible boundary. This invisible boundary is unmoving and always HERE.... but extremely subtle and unnoticed."

Descriptions that could have used to describe this Inviolated rim would be blurred and indistinct.... and forms are within it.

[Rick]

So we have two truths, yours and Eckharts. I've got no goal on that depth, but Hagen does speak a bit about "training the mind". One of the thoughts most likely to precede a persistent gap on the bench, with eyes closed and the mousehole conjured, is about practice itself; and it is astonishing to the mind how much more difficult and demanding Hagen's simple, stark practice, which would seem not so much different from the visualization ... just how much more of a challenge that would appear to be.

In the practice, and to say again -- every moment is an opportunity for practice -- as in the living ... the paradox dissolves as we express it by constantly falling effortlessly into existence.

Bill, you may find this interesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuwUIRhw ... plpp_video

[ashley72]

"If you don't have an interest in the "thought" it has no power. You don't have to transcend it. It simply doesn't exist." - Mooji

Yes, where attention goes energy flows. So if space and time are also concepts... Then following that logic they don't have any power either, i.e dreamed into a kind of temporal-existence by conditioned thought. If I don't give those temporal-concepts (conditioned thoughts) attention, they simply don't exist. Wow, now let's see if I can directly experience the opposite of that temporal-concept.

I find by turning the arrow of attention 180 degrees around and looking where the head resides, somehow negates the concept of time & space. Simply by drawing attention in the opposite direct to the concept of a THERE & HERE.... and discover only HERE. In other words, attention going outwards creates time & space (HERE & THERE). Attention going inwards negates time & space. It's almost like we can have a concept of THERE dangling in the mind by drawing our attention in that direct. By countering that direction the dual-concepts HERE/THERE merge and cancel out. I wonder is there a zero point or still point for attention? Is Attention a vector, having both magnitude (content) and direction?

But they say the Tao can't be named. Because by giving it a name, would be an event. So the simple act of naming would dream it into temporal-existence. So I'm assuming Attention doesn't need magnitude (content). So a better metaphor for attention might be a pure mirror, which merely reflects the content by the sheer act of looking. So what is the content? The universe looking at itself? If I assume that to be the case we're left with just direction, looking inwards or outwards.... and maybe a zero point or still point. Is the still point or zero point the interface of that pure mirror? Because there can be no magnitude (movement) inwards or outwards, only direction?

[snowheight]

"five-star service"

Bill, you may find this interesting

Rick, that was riveting, just dead-on point, thank you from the bottom of my heart man.

I hope you see the funny irony of this being "interesting"

Mooji put this as well as anyone can, just as I expected he might ... never thought to look for his take on this ... now I got a link to someone other than kiki to share with fellow practitioners, as this one's goin' in the keeper file.

We gotta give it up for the subtlety of ET here ... in his mousehole exercise he specifically suggests inviting the next thought (see this earlier post) ... as I alluded to before, sometimes a thought will arise as to the tricky cruelty that is being employed by answering the door to those old friends just to have them suffer the nearly certain fate of the airless void on the other side of the threshold. -- in this we see a constant thread in the advice of practice (Tolle, Mooji, kiki) : thoughts are inevitable, it's the texture of the welcome mat that has the appearance of being determinative from there.

Don't form the intent of stopping them. Don't refrain from forming the intent of stopping them.

Thanks again Rick, Namaste man, Namaste.

[snowheight]

the paradox dissolves as we express it by constantly falling effortlessly into existence.

Now, Now, Now, Now...

Yeah, there it is, right there. That nails it. Perfect.

Yes, where attention goes energy flows.

Ash, If I haven't thanked you for this simple pointer that you've repeated then let me say, thanks. It is very effective.

Mooji refines it at 4:39 -- to paraphrase, we loan power, power from within of belief, identification and attention that oxygenates the thoughts.

This next is from the mind but with a good-hearted vector:

i^2 is an effective description of what seems to the mind to be the experience of letting a thought dissolve.

i^2 is one of a myriad of directions/paths/ways/views of and to the gateless gate.

i^2 is the only way to describe it.

Ash,

Our egos can only hope that these feedback-loops that get set-up between our minds and blurted out here have at least had some entertainment value for the others reading the stuff.

[ashley72]

Our egos can only hope that these feedback-loops that get set-up between our minds and blurted out here have at least had some entertainment value for the others reading the stuff.

[ashley72]

i^2 is the only way to describe it.

Yes a 180 rotation of attention. Can it be that simple?

Because all the pointers seem to rotate to this absolute simplicity. excuse the pun.

Byron Katie's "turn it around" counter-belief method is a prime example. Harding's Headless Way another.

I think its worth reflecting on the words of the famous 17th century mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

“The imaginary number is a fine and wonderful recourse of the divine spirit, almost an amphibian between being and not being.”

In other words...

"The Divine Spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and not-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity."

Hey there's a good title for Jason's book..... "The Imaginary Root of Negative Unity"

[Rick]

My pleasure Bill. Glad to have been of service.

[snowheight]

Every instant is an opportunity.

Who we are rests irrevocably deep within and is splashed large and loud and colorfully all about us.

Every moment is a chance to forget that. Every instant is an offer to know it.

How could this ever end? What is this “losing it” they’re babbling on about?

… ah, but the sweet peace of knowing dulls the point of awareness and the laughing thief reclining with his feet on my coffee table went unnoticed as he slipped back in.

Every second is an invitation to maintain that awareness.
Every moment is the gift of grace which begs our acceptance.

Every instant is an opportunity.

The truth that there is no I is balanced in the paradox by the truth that there is a you and in those precious instants when the windows on the soul are open to me all speculation ends even as I witness what is within by gazing steadily without.

Every instant is an opportunity, even those instants when your eyes are closed to me.

Every tick of the clock is the sound of a temple bell.
Every noon whistle a caress of the ears, a reminder that the devil will have his due.
Every cry of the cuckoo is an opportunity to smile at the devil and to see him evaporate in the parlor trick of his smoky vanishing act.

Every minute is a chance to reclaim the stolen now from the thief.
In every hour of every day the promise of victory by surrender is not only a promise, it is all that there is, ever will be and ever was.

Every instant is an opportunity.

Take my love thief, its all that you can ever steal from me.

Every instant is an opportunity.

[snowheight]

Hello everyone. Some of you might remember me from years ago or from having intermittently popped in and out of the forum. To all of my past internet friends, hope you are doing well.

A topic recently came up elsewhere, and it occurred to me that this forum is likely one of the few places where most of you might be able to relate to it.

Have you ever pursued Tolle's "watch the thinker" with an interest toward being fully present at the precise moment of thought formation? My practice has been intermittent over the years since I last posted on this thread. But one element that I've incorporated when I do meditate is a simplification of kiki's advice from here. In sitting with the intent to meditate, sometimes there can be silence from start to finish, but other times, the mind will drift, and I'll catch myself lost in a discursive train of thought. The prescription is simply to notice the noticing, as it happens, and honor the present.

I find the contents of the mind in attentive silence to be somewhat similar to a pre-dreamlike state. The more attentive I get, the deeper the attention goes, but there is always some subtle movement. There can sometimes be an opening to awareness that results in a sort of self-sustaining relaxation -- but that's a different story. In this post I'm referring more to the "attention on attention" that happens in an initial sit-down, rather than an "awareness of awareness" that transports one into a blissful state.

One of the best descriptions I've found of this is also a tough and boring read in it's technicality: Sekida's treatment of nen's and mood in "Zen Training". The movements I can sense in quiet attention are vague, muted, just the initial building blocks of a thought or emotion. In Sekida's parlance, they are "first nen", some in response to ambient sounds or a breeze, but the more interesting nen are the ones that bubble up from within. Eventually I got to a point during some months when I was practicing regularly where I came back to kiki's "See if you can see the first impulse of their arising". So I sat with the specific intent to catch the inception of one of the trains of thought as it was forming. I'd describe what I found as sort of giving a metaphorical physical feel for the process of how interest meets attention, and actually employed that in terms of a sort of self-hypnosis to make changes to my habituated attention in everyday life.

So how about you? Have you ever tried to catch the thief in the act? What did you find?

[Onceler]

Sometimes I do something similar to what you describe, but mostly I don’t. I find the flow of life, thought and emotion, all mind, to be much more interesting.

Dazzling, even.

[snowheight]

Oh, I understand that. Sure.

[Sighclone]

what I found as sort of giving a metaphorical physical feel for the process of how interest meets attention, and actually employed that in terms of a sort of self-hypnosis to make changes to my habituated attention in everyday life.

I spoke with kiki about "proto-thoughts" a few years ago. The Sanskrit is ritam baragh pragyam or something. The experience for me starts with finally (after a few minutes) resting in "no thought" - aware of simply the quiet bliss of being. But nope, that doesn't last forever because a proto-thought inevitably arises! There seem to be two sources - the waking mind and the dream center, and they are different. The dream center launches goofball images founded in memory and usually linked to chronic fixations or tensions associated with my personality. (Yup personality continues...see other threads.) If my awareness turns to them, they are somehow replaced by a bigger awareness which is to say that the dreaming becomes visible as its own energy, and somehow 'separate' from me. I'm not a seasoned professional at lucid dreaming, but sometimes it happens. At any rate, if I stay with the dream, I generally fall asleep!

On the other hand, "normal" thoughts seem to emerge in a very primitive form seeking energy from attention. If that is not given, then they vaporize.

My 2 cents...

Andy

[snowheight]

Thanks Andy ... do you mean you literally fall asleep when that happens? Google gave me no love on that Sanskrit term but just knowing there's some writing on the topic from that culture is enough to pique my interest. What led me to seek out other's input on the subject is what seems to me to be the interaction and interdependency between the "waking and dreaming centers", as you put it. I know this is treading along the edges of Psych 101, but this forum represents for me a sort of subculture of subjective exploration of the mind that offers the possibility of a perspective transcendent of the objective.

If I were to put it into one simple sentence, what I'd say is that the moment of witnessing the transition from proto-thought to thought is an opportunity to become conscious of mind content and dynamics that we were previously unconscious of.