Universal point of awareness
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When you observe a mental object (a certain emotion, a certain thought, a sensation, etc.), after some time, the observed object dissolves into a dimensionless point.
It happens after you peel from the object the outer circumstances, you isolate it from its name and titles, from the context, the excuses, the "why it happened", the "who caused it" etc. At this stage, your observation focuses on the pure internal energy of this mental object and then instantly it shrinks into a point. Try it by yourself and see.
When you hold on to this reduced point, you will see that you cannot tell where the point is located, not even in which space or dimension, actually the word "point" is only an approximation to this dimensionless zero-content entity. It can better described as the minimal representation possible to be still perceived by your mental faculties.
If you are alert at this point, you will find out that actually the observer-observed duality ceases to exist, the gap separating the observer from the observed collapses - in this dimensionless point, you, the observer, and the observed object are united into one point, you are one.
Don't just read this, try it by yourself and see if it is true. It is so easy to do it. Just do it at ease, no expectations, no effort. Pick a certain emotion, sensation, or thought that are currently present in your space of awareness and observe it. Peel from this mental object the outer circumstances (what in the external world caused it, when, your reaction, the name attached to it etc.) and focus solely on the reduced mental object, on the reduced energy, on its very essence. From now on, you don't need to do anything, at some point you will be left with this dimensionless point and then get united, subject-object, in the point.
Soon after, this dimensionless point will also disappear. Let it go.
After doing it over and over again with different mental objects, you will find out that all these reduced points are actually the same identical universal point and that this one point encompasses your very basic being.
This method naturally helps in dissolving mental issues. But its more fundamental power is in its ability to transcend you into a very important state: being in this universal point is the state of "I AM", is being without identification, is the pure "you" prior to extending the "I" to "I am this or that".
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Tried it...
I have just tried it... amazing... so easy and natural...
I am right now at work but I will do it again tonight before going to sleep.
Thanks!
Excellent
I truely enjoyed your perspective. Thank you =)
~Eric
joining.
joining.
just read it again now after half a year or so - great guidance.
I would emphasis something you mention: when trying this practice, one should make sure there are no expectations. only when you drop the expectation for a certain result and just flow with the observation as explained above, you arrive at that point of convergence and sometimes you don't. just peel the outer circumstances, observe and let whatever happens to happen.
Reality check
In your attempt to create new techniques, you've expanded simple acceptance into a complex mental fantasy. Whatever you are resisting, simply allow it to be, and allow whatever additional thoughts and feelings that are associated with it to come. In this allowing, it will fade because it was only the resistance to it that held it in place to begin with. It's precisely the same thing as your other technique of trying to cause presence and such. They both work by allowing/inviting that which you resist. You have discovered acceptance, the most universally suggested requirement. Now strip it of the complex proceedures and just accept. You'll find that it is effortless and humbling and does not keep you busy or feed ego. Just try it and you'll see.
You are not 'peeling outer circumstances from the mental object', you're just allowing them to join, and in this allowing, they pass in the way that all thoughts and feelings do that are not being held in place with your resistance.
You use an analogy to describe this fading as a 'reduction to a dimensionless point', then you say you can't find where this analogous point is in location. Of course not, since it was only an analogy to begin with.
You then imagine that the observer/observed duality ceases to exist, when all that has happened is that the thoughts and feelings have moved on and there's nothing more to observe. The observer is still there observing that phenomena.
You then go on to fantasize about how this new mental object, this dimentionless point, is somehow your Universal Beingness in the state of I AM.
Simplify, simplify, simplify, and get mind/ego out of the technique business. Surrender, acceptance, allowing. That's all there is. Every technique you devise will come back to acceptance, and this ultimately happens in your absence.
it is the simple, it is experience
There is no technique here but just guidance. If you were following it you would have saved yourself the wasted effort of describing why this shouldn't work.
Of course it's a technique.
And of course you're not listening, which is the normal mode of the mind and not a personal attack. What I said is "They both work by allowing, inviting, that which you resist." I expended the wasted effort, not to dismiss the technique, but to encourage a deeper look at what is really happening so that some actual awareness might result from the practice instead of just more food for ego. The goal is not to collect techniques to make ego more powerful, it's clarity, which robs ego of it's power.
a map
First, techniques when done properly do not make the ego or the mind more powerful, on the contrary, they break the mind's habit patterns and allow you to see things beyond any intellectual clarity which is limited.
Anyway, I personally couldn't find any technique in the post. I see there a helpful map like the one you give to someone who is about to march to a destination on a path he has never marched on full of junctions and traps.
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My motto in life: try everything as long as it is not physically addictive.
"First, techniques when done
"First, techniques when done properly do not make the ego or the mind more powerful, on the contrary, they break the mind's habit patterns and allow you to see things beyond any intellectual clarity which is limited."
Seeing only happens if there is looking and not just mechanical 'trying'. The looking is what's being suggested. If a technique brings about some temporary peace or relief, then mind generally claims it has found a means of control, which is the strengthening of ego. It's true that if it is done properly, as you say, there is no strengthening, which is what I'm talking about. We're looking for awareness rather than control.
"Anyway, I personally couldn't find any technique in the post."
How odd.
it is very hard to change a program you did not originally write
First, investigating who am i recursively (who is it that thinks etc etc) is also a technique so I don't understand your point.
Anyway, you must realize humbly that you are a robot, a completely programmed robot. No matter how many insights and bright conclusions you arrive at, they are within the limits of your program, they are within the box. We are a programmed robots. As every programmer knows: it is very hard to change a program you did not originally write. Techniques do this. They are systematic so they are less prone for your robotic programming to abuse them for its purposes and they come from the outside and therefore are out of your programming patterns box.
The robot therefore resists techniques or at least techniques which go against the programming it is based on. Therefore an important linking point between the robot and the technique that should be maintained carefully is to select techniques not according to your taste (which is part of your programming) but to try to check briefly each and every one you encounter, just check and see if the results are getting out of the recognized limits of the box. You feel it when they do - it's a sense of fear of something getting out of control which means you need to continue with that certain technique.
~
My point is to not act like a robot and perform techniques without awareness. Self inquiry, performed robotically, is equally useless.
clarity
Clarity based on assumptions rather than on direct experience is not clarity. This is the problem of neo advaita, this is the reason why there are so many neo-advaitan teachers and none realized.
This is the importance of techniques, they are vital experiential leverages from your current perspective to higher ones.
~
Once again, you are seeking an experience for the ego to own rather than clarity. Clarity is not based on experience. Your experience is that you are a separate human. This is not clarity but rather delusion, and so how do you know the delusions from the 'true' experiences. No experience is true. The best experience can show you is what is not true; what does not work.
Here's a quote that just showed up in my mailbox this morning. You won't listen to me so will you listen to Nisargadatta, or is he a neo-advaitan false guru too?
"Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing.
By its very nature it comes and goes. Self-realization
is not an acquisition. It is more of the nature of under-
standing. Once arrived at, it cannot be lost."
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
"I Am That"
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Separate humans
> Your experience is that you are a separate human.
Might as well take this experience to its limit, instead of going against it.
Separate oneself completely. Be totally isolated, alone, an island unto oneself, completely absent of any others.
Total separation is Unity. When the isolation is complete, oneness is complete.
Enjoy the paradox, guys/gals.
http://www.omkaradatta.info
accurate
Following it you will manage to taste a state of beingness with no objects.
do not stop until you are on the verge of the intangible
(shira - I must say you have this rare talent to communicate complicated spiritual truths in a clear and experiential way with no convenient shortcuts of relying on dogmas, with a lot of respect and responsibility for your readers, with a lot of compassionate encouragement and with no trace of ego motivation - I'm following your essays for quite a time and managed through them to realize a couple of central concepts that until then I may had have understood only intellectually)
An important emphasis regarding the above: when peeling the observed object one should not stop at the body sensation embodying the mental object (as in Vipassana) but should go on until there is some mental nucleus of the object left, it is something that feels as intangible but is still tangible in some evasive way - hard to explain, better to experience... and then the point of convergence happens.
Knowing without perceiving
It's the point where you know that the thing is still there but you cannot perceive it anymore, you are left with the knowing only until knowing also vanishes.
Many things right now just
Many things right now just happened without even knowing why it happened.That's why we have the universal point of awareness to explain this.When we say awareness,it means that we should be able to know the things underlying that concept.It so happened in the cold war between Massa and Emanuel that create a big impact in the society. If you're going to make accusations, you probably should have a clean rap sheet – which is why Eric Massa should probably keep his trap shut.Accusing Rahm Emanuel of being the "son of devil spawn" when you're essentially letting your contract running out because sexual harassment charges are going to prevent your re-election amounts to little more than a parting shot.Even if every constituent of his were to donate a payday loans worth, the future in politics doesn't look rosy for Massa- especially after such a public display of sour grapes.