Category: Insight

Posted on

Duality in mind capacities

Left brain ———————— Right brain
Planning, Execution ————— Vision
Specific/Literal/Concrete ——— Abstract
Human —————————– God
Shamatha ————————– Vipassana
Concentration ——————— Awareness
Linear —————————- Non-linear
Serial —————————- Parallel
Spotlight ————————- Floodlight
Content ————————— Context
Ego ——————————- Soul
Narrow —————————- Broad
Specialist ———————— Generalist/Holistic
Trees —————————– Forest
Pixels —————————- Picture
Logic —————————– Intuition/Symbolic
Part —————————— Whole/Gestalt
Doing —————————– Being
Separation ———————— Integration
Multiplicity ———————- Unity
Depth —————————– Breath
Micro picture ——————— Macro picture
Defined/Delineated —————- Mystical/vague/undefined
Prickley ————————– Gooey
Practical ————————- Ultimate
Scientific ———————— Religious
Ground —————————- Sky
Physical/Material —————– Non-material/Metaphysical
Mind —————————— Psyche
Yang —————————— Yin
Emitting ————————– Absorbing/Listening
Judging ————————— Understanding
Achieving ————————- Allowing
Creating ————————– Dissolving
Collecting ———————— Processing/Surrendering
Masculine ————————- Feminine
Solar —————————– Lunar
Bounded ————————— Unbounded
Digital ————————— Analog
Attention ————————- Awareness
Intention ————————- Relaxation
Invention ————————- Discovery/Realization
Gross —————————– Subtle
Progress ————————– Emptiness
Technology ———————— Humanity
Doing the thing right ————- Doing the right thing
Industrious ———————– Artist
Posted on

Ascent vs. Descent

The source breathes out existence (ex-is, meaning external isness, i.e. externalization).
And then breathes it (sucks it) back in.
This it the breath of the source, as it descends and ascends through the chakras.

ASCENT:
Every lower chakra serves the higher in ASCENT.
1c = Survival/security/stability is to serve 2c = Community
2c = Community serves 3c = Empowerment/human goals/service activity
3c = Power/goals serves 4c = Procurement of love
4c = Love serves 5c = Wisdom/Truth
5c = Wisdom serves 6c = Vision/Experience/Consciousness
6c = Consciousness serves 7c = Non-local beyond.

DESCENT:
Every higher chakra serves the lower in DESCENT.
7c = Non-local Beyond serves 6c = Vision/Experience/Consciousness
6c = Consciousness serves 5c = Wisdom
5c = Wisdom serves 4c = Love
4c = Love serves 3c = Power/human goals/service
3c = Power serves 2c = Community/Entertainment
2c = Community serves 1c = Survival/Security/Stability

Generally when we say, settle down in life what we refer to is a successful descent:
Using Consciousness and Wisdom (6c and 5c) – Finding what you love (4c) – Creating individuality, identity based on that (3c) – Finding a position in social circles and society with that identity, Finding a partner for a family (2c) – Using the resources and money gained for buying property, enjoying material prosperity/security/stability (1c).

The path of ascent however is the opposite movement.
One wants to go back to the source.
So from a position of relative stability/security(1c) – One seeks to find the source through community by becoming a disciple of masters (2c) – One then uses the inspiration of the masters to take responsibility for their own transcendence and becomes a ‘seeker’ (3c) – One seeks to find out what is in one’s heart and explores both its yin/yang sides (4c) – The heart then realizes its love for wisdom and pursues wisdom for its own sake (5c) – The wisdom develops and distills itself into pure polarities (6c) – Then finally the polarities are dissolved in the non-dual non-local source beyond (7c).
Posted on

Creation and Destruction are not proportionate in this realm

Indulgence is not a good strategy because the rate of expending and regeneration is not the same.
The rates of regeneration and exhaustion are entirely different.
It is possible to break everything in one second but it takes a long process to create anything.
Creating harmony takes time, while creating disharmony is so easy.
It is so easy to make something ugly and chaotic, but so difficult to make something structured and beautiful.
It is so easy to waste energy and expend all of it very quickly but regeneration of that is not easy.
It is so easy to start a huge forest fire but it is so difficult for the forest to regenerate.
[Destruction] is so easy and takes no time at all while [Creation] is such a difficult/long/vulnerable process.
That seems to be the nature of this place.
The physical realm is esp. slow in its processes.
The next is the mental realm where destruction and generation can be much faster relatively.

How long does it take to create a stone sculpture, and how long would it take to break it?
It takes so many years to build trust, but it is so easy to entirely break it.
It takes so much effort to create an elaborate cultural system, but so easy to totally reject it and cast it aside.
To build a relationship takes so much of artfulness and effort, and it takes no time to just break everything.
How long did it take for the earth to flourish with all its creation/life/forms. Lets say it took 1 billion years.
It would take 1/billionth of the time to destroy the whole world with nuclear bombs.

How long does it take to create a complex machine? like your laptop. Think about all the labor that has gone into making every piece you see. And how long does it take to shatter it?
How long will it take for you to make a beautiful painting. You would have to learn the art over years, and develop your skills and then create a really beautiful one from all of that coming together. How long will it take me to destroy the painting? And if I kill you, I would have instantly killed all the intricate psychic structure you have created in your body-mind? (who knows how much we lose in death, whether we retain any of our specific learning/knowledge/memory at all).

Why this enormous difference between the power of creation and power of destruction.
Why can’t I be in a world where creation and destruction have the same power? That is true freedom isn’t it?
The only realm where that is true is in your pure imagination.
That is why I so prefer to stay there and not step down much into the world of becoming where destruction is disproportionately more powerful.
How is this place freedom?
The threat of destruction always looms and it relies on the restraint of all free agents. Everything is so hyper vulnerable here as a result.
How much can I control? 99% is out of my control?
The chances of my heart getting broken are 99% in this place.
It is so easy to destroy, but so difficult to create.
And 90% of stuff or more is driven by natural processes where only time and nurture can regenerate.
I cannot afford to be attached to anything here, because everything is so vulnerable to getting destroyed and even if I work day and night to protect my works I cannot truly secure anything.
The forces of creation are so so slow.

How long does it take to grow a baby? but it can be simply aborted in a few seconds.
This is not just for inanimate objects, but life itself that is so vulnerable here.
Life can be ended in a millisecond, but it takes so many years and decades to develop.
I can cut a tree with a chainsaw in less than a minute but how long it would take to grow that tree? 15 years?
I can raze a whole forest to the ground in a few hours, but it might take a whole century to grow that again – our whole lifetime and more.
Why is destruction literally a [Million] or [Billion] times more powerful here? – is the question I want to contemplate.
Posted on

Fractal soul visions

Linear time is within a certain frame of reference staying constant.
Beyond linear time is circular time.
And beyond circular time are eternal higher dimensional realities etc.
It gets more and more abstract.

Sometimes when our visions get abstract enough we can see abstract gestalts/patterns repeating again and again like time running through a mobius strip.

For me, the common themes I wrestle with are between:
– Being and Non-being
– Becoming and Unbecoming
– Ground and Groundlessness
– Knowing and Unknowing
– Striving and Surrender
– Linear time and Non-linear time
– Attainment and Non-attainment
– Order and Chaos
– Enlightenment and Non-enlightenment
– Home and travel
– Knowledge and Innocence
– Reality and Illusion

I can explain some of these things with poetic visions.
Here are some of them below:

Vision 1:

abyssedge

I have 2 choices, stay with what I know (what is in my hand) or the other choice is to jump into an unknown abyss.
I am detached from what I have and so at times I get the courage and jump into the abyss.
Now imagine you fall and fall through the unknown but there is no ground and you land up again at a similar place where you were standing before and again there is the same choice – stick to what is in hand(known) or just into the abyss(unknown).
Again this repeats, I work on letting go of the known in hand and get the courage and jump, and this repeats again and again.
This is the play between knowing and unknowing
It is the play between ground and groundlessness

Vision 2:

dream

Imagine you are in a dream and you are trying to wake up, but every time you think you have woken up you later realize you have still been dreaming. And so you try to wake up again, and once again think you have woken up, only to realize soon after that you are still dreaming and have to work again to wake up.
This is the play between reality and illusion

Vision 3:

sandsculpture

I build myself up like a sand structure from the chaos of possibility of the sand on the ground.
I feel I have attained knowledge and being, but soon it falls back to the ground.
Then again I get inspired, and I build another structure, work on it and reach a milestone, only for it to go back to the ground again.
This is like a looping struggle to BE something and not fall back to non-being.
This can be seen as the play of order vs. chaos.
This can also be seen as the play of attainment vs. non-attainment.
It is also the play between becoming and unbecoming.

Vision 4:

Home

Imagine whenever you settled in a place, buy some things, make yourself a home there and create security for yourself, you feel its time to move. You have to move and leave everything behind, go through the grief, and do a similar settlement in your next spot, only for you to again get the impulse to move and do it again.
This is the play between home and travel.

Vision 5:

watchingmovie

Imagine you are sitting in a theater seat and watching a movie, and you go through the story with the hero suffering gains and losses. Suddenly you feel it is getting too much and you want to snap out of it and you come back to your theater seat. You realize that you were always in that seat, nothing has really changed, and the whole movie was an illusion. But then shortly after coming back to the theater seat and disillusioning yourself, you see something else interesting in the screen that once again enchants you, and you start to gain knowledge from investment. And this happens again and again.
This is the play between alternating enlightenment and non-enlightenment
This is the play between alternating knowledge and innocence.

 

Posted on

The whole is your home

Home is the [largest perspective], the [whole’est perspective].
To leave home is to depart from this [largest perspective] into a [narrowed perspective].
All journeys away from home are journeys into [narrowed perspectives].
In fact the narrower your perspective gets, the more far away from home you go.
The most crazy journeys involve stepping into the most far out narrowed perspectives.

Home (metaphysically speaking) has little to do with your physical location or with certain people we call family etc.
Those are factors that ENABLE us to RELAX enough to ACQUIRE that kind of WHOLE PERSPECTIVE.
The more one relaxes and feel safe(the less the fear), the more that one can open up to the largest perspective.
And generally a physical location and known people (since you know them for many years they are much more predictable and cause the least anxiety/fear) is a good formula for our mammalian brain to PERMIT this ENLARGEMENT of PERSPECTIVE.

Since [Fear] is one of the biggest contractors of perspective, finding home is about finding freedom from fear.
Fear is what takes you away from home, and the absence of fear is what brings you back home.

Also, another important point is, [Right Action] comes from [Right View] (Buddha).
So the BEST POSSIBLE ACTION will always come from the WHOLE’EST PERSPECTIVE.
Narrower your perspective, the less you can see, and your action would be at a certain level of discord with the whole as a result.
A great demonstration of this principle is in the Samurai warrior training of Wu-shin(which means no mind).
They literally defocus their eyes on a neutral point far away, when enemies are running towards them with swords.
Imagine! Can you defocus and relax yourself like that when someone is coming to kill you with a sword?
For an ordinary person, his attention would almost get rapture’d and hyper focused on the sword alone and all he would see would be the sword and little else.
Think about it. If the samurai only focused on the sword, how would he take the best action?
The calmer you are, the less fearful you are = the broader your perspective = the better your action would be.
So ‘Home’ is also the place for the emanation of the best actions.
Whatever place keeps you in your highest spirits with least fear, will result in the BEST ACTIONS and BEST OUTCOMES.
Posted on

True communication is from connection

I used to ponder, what does it take to be a good public speaker?
I often face this issue of blanking out on stage and at times even blank out even when speaking 1-1 with someone.
On contemplating on the root of this, I realized the ultimate element is CONNECTION with the audience.

Connection is another name for ATTUNEMENT/RELATIONSHIP.
To speak to an other, we have to tune ourselves to their frequency.
Only then can we FEEL them.
And only in that ALIVE FEELING can a true alive communication happen.
Without that connection/attunement, the communication will seem rote/contrived/robotic/artificial/divorced/disharmonious with the actuality of the other person at that time.

This applies even when we listen to music.
Haven’t you noticed? – sometimes we tune into the feeling of the song (we are able to do that or naturally in that mood), and that is when we really feel it.
If we do not feel it, we hear the words/sounds but not the music.

Our mother forms the first connection in life.
That connection also illuminates your self (illuminated through the relationship).
If your mother is totally misattuned to you, then it would create enormous shame, unworthiness, undeservingness, and feelings of being bad/ugly/guilty.
It pushes the true self of the child in shadow, and the child develops a mother pleasing self to survive.
It also creates co-dependence (that misattunement is the basis for co-depedence, because the child then stays hyper-vigilant of the mother expectations out of fear)
It also creates a primal wounding/primal heart-break/primal separation and loneliness from the void created by the lack of attunement.
Then later in life, if we continue to relate to people based on what they want us to be and simply mirror that, it leaves us permanently in the shadow.
Real connection never happens, and as a result real communication also never happens.
Posted on

Who really cares? = The Mystic vs. Commoner

The commoner dresses up well.
The commoner tells you positive things about yourself.
The commoner speaks politely.

Contrast this with the mystic:
He dresses up in rags.
He tells you deep things about yourself you need to look into which make you feel unpleasant.
(You find him intrusive, inappropriate, and fault finding)
He speaks with emotional force and may even shout at you.
(You find him uncouth and unsophisticated)

But who really CARES?
The commoner or the mystic?
The mystic cares 100x more than the commoner.
That is why he shouts at you all the deep things he sees in you which need addressing.
He is dressed in rags because he is unconcerned about his appearance (he simply goes with the least resistance, whatever works) since he is dedicated to divine realities.

The commoner on the other hand is dressed up well because he wants to make an impression on you.
He tells you good things about yourself, again not because he cares about you truly, but rather, to endear himself to you.
He speaks politely because he has no real emotional investment in the conversation and you besides getting you to like him and that might be a good future investment in case he needs any favors from you etc.

I’ve presented this in a caricaturish way, but the point I was trying to make was that:
The mystic is seen as rude, mad, uncouth, inappropriate, and intrusive and rejected usually, but he is the one who REALLY CARES.
Posted on

Information vs. Processing

When [Information] is less than [Processing] = We go outside, we socialize, we seek experiences (sympathetic activation – seek and explore)

When [Information] is greater than [Processing] = We retreat, we isolate, we hermit ourselves [parasympathetic activation – rest and digest]

This dynamic can also be clearly seen in:
1 – how we search/acquire physical food
2 – and then consume/digest/assimilate it
Just like physical food is for our physical body, [impressions food] is for our psychic body.
We first explore/seek and go on adventures to acquire experiences, then once we have acquired enough, we go low key and possibly isolate ourselves to digest everything.
In our world systems, we are expected to work perpetually with little breaks.
So we often feel guilty for profoundly retreating for too long.
But it could be that is what you need.
Follow what your deepest being is telling you.
Posted on

Loneliness is the thirst for connection/relationship

Loneliness is a kind of thirst.
A thirst for what? A thirst for relationship/connection.
Thirst for ‘BEING’.
It is the thirst to BE.
BE what? Just to be anything, something…
OR a thirst to be more than what you are.
To ‘relate/connect’ is the same as the ‘Will to BE’.
Greater the ‘Will to BE’ = Greater is this thirst to relate/connect.
It is possible to BE anything only through relationship.
You are a some-body only in relation to other-bodies.
You are a personality only in relation to other personalities.
The self and other are emergent phenomena that are mutually interdependent on relationship.
The other does not have to be a person, it could even be ANY EXPERIENCE including abstract ideas, philosophies, inanimate objects etc.
Remove the relationship, and both the self and other vanish together.
The game gets disbanded, and identity is dissolved with it.
For example: In the movie ‘Cast Away’, Tom Hanks draws a face on a football and keeps talking to it to maintain his identity. If he did not do that, in the absence of all human contact, his humanness ITSELF would fade away (from the disappearance of ‘relationship’)

A ‘Relationship’ is the ‘AXIS’ that creates the respective players on both the sides.
Be it:
To love ——— To be loved [Axis]
To desire ——- To be desired [Axis]
To need ——— To be needed [Axis]
A relationship axis creates polarity, the 2 poles.
The poles are not fixed but can switch too.
A relationship is alive too, it is a dynamic, an alive dance.

We derive profound meaning from each other.
A profound dance transpires in every interaction.
The deeper we understand this, the more it brings out the depth.
Ultimately it is life interacting with itself.
That which is alive in me interacts with that which is alive in you.
I create myself through relationship with you, you create yourself through relationship with me.
Even what we call we call as negative relationship which includes seeing oneself as rejectible, contemptible, unlikeable, unlovable, unworthy, unfit, uninteresting, unimportant, unwanted, undeserving etc. is also a [REAL TANGIBLE INTERNALIZED NEGATIVE RELATIONSHIP IMAGE].
It is not non-relationship, because non-relationship would simply remove everything.

The loneliness is the helplessness of being unable to let go of this [internalized negative relationship image], and being unable to let go of identification with that.
That gets frozen inside us, and keeps getting reinforced in every interaction.
We ignore the interactions where that is not affirmed, and emphasize the interactions where it gets affirmed, and it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
All identity works on this internalized bias, isn’t it? (whether positive or negative)
What would you be without that identity?
Isn’t that thought more terrifying than simply holding on to the known identity?
So it is like being caught between the devil and sea.
We hold on to the known devil, than let go into the unknown sea.
Unfortunately, this is trans-rational, there is no rational explanation that can truly convince you to let go into the sea.
The negative relationship identification eventually fades and wears itself out, plays itself out, and a new era is gently ushered.
We can help this process by accepting and fully experiencing everything.
We transcend this by FULLY EXPERIENCING the negative relationship imprint itself.
Feel your deepest loneliness fully with as much as you can muster, with the attitude of dropping into it, and giving in/allowing.
When fully experienced, when you feel it with your whole being and apply your whole mind and soul to it, even the loneliness will look sublime, and you will see it for what it truly is – a phenomenon.