Dynamics of language

Perception and language are so finely intertwined. The person with finer perception would have longer descriptions for things and would try to improve on vocabulary. Our language also denotes our persistent perceptions. If I use the word “I” everyday 100 times, that means I perceive this “I” word experience that many times too. My choice of words determines my personality, interests, passions, what matters to me, meaning etc. We all have the same basic senses, but language adds whole new layers of concepts. It is connecting engine among humans. Each human has a language (verbal) module and we convey and receive information through this. It’s like a router.  Language and memory are also totally connected. We convert our experiences into language symbolism to encode them in memory. It is the descriptive layer of memory that allows us to be selective in our focus, differentiate, categorize etc.

Verbal communication is abstract in a sense because its empty and it only points to direct experiences. A group of words put together can help us empathize and relive old memories too. Words do not convey the exact direct experiences but they still come pretty close for a plethora of things. At a very high level, we give meaning to each of the words (sounds) we hear. Language and art are the only tools I have for sharing my experience of life.
The tricky part is that every person interprets words according to his/her experience. So you can never be sure of being perfectly understood. If two people have a very advanced vocabulary and fine perception and interest, they could reach great heights. That is what I am attempting to seek – A level of communication and connection far beyond the bourgeoisie, mundane. Language also determines the level of intimacy between 2 people. Deeper, finer, richer the language, better the expression power, better is the richness of the communication, leading to profound connection.

Putting full effort

Because we never put full effort we can never know what we are ultimately capable of. At some level we are afraid that we might discover we are no good at something, so we never try OR we try with partial effort so that we continue to dream. It’s almost like we are divided in such a way that a part of us purposely prevents us from putting full effort since it’s very afraid of failure or hiding from us some deep unpleasant truth. That’s why full effort totally allows you to see what you is true and what is not with far greater clarity. In fact full effort = quite analogous to perfect clarity on whatever it is applied to.

Undifferentiated awareness

When you drop everything, you reach an undifferentiated state without verbal thought. Basically when you pull yourself back to see the entirety, there is just experience. I use thoughts and break this pure infinite experience down into space, time, objects, other people etc. If I just totally pull myself to observing the entirety or the whole, I see that there is just ever changing experience. All value lies in the experiences themselves. All our categorizations of good/bad, right/wrong, self/other, inside/outside are just coming from our mental models of reality which we collect over our lifetime. But the model will only be an accurate as the depth of our investigation of reality. Generally people get lost in an infinite horizontal space and fail to see that this space they are standing on is itself resting on some unquestioned beliefs. In diving to the depths of consciousness, we see that there are only 2 states – awareness and non-awareness (sleep, part of dreaming, perception in waking life). You could take it even further and ask the question, who knows about the unawareness part – well awareness knows. So there is ONLY awareness and nothing else. The experiencer, experienced and the experiencing are happening in awareness. Awareness/Consciousness/Light is all that there is. Everything just is. Every moment is full of it, including illusions, mental conceptions, preoccupations, physical reality etc. – all of them are mental concepts occurring within awareness. You are everything there is. The magic of questioning helps to get through the layers of illusion.

Someone might raise the question ‘If a rat nibbled on your toe in the night, didn’t that happen? How can it be said that there is nothing apart from you? For this question the answer would be that there is simply experience which is complete at every moment and the value is intrinsic, in this very wholeness. A rat nibbles at you at night. There is a concept of day/night, rat, nibbling, harm, pain, you, separation (being separate from the rat) etc. But how would a new born look at it? There is just experience, no concepts of rat, mammals, good/bad, day, night, harm etc. The baby is not even aware of sleep because it simply happens. The experience is one flow and memory is the only thing that maintains time (due to comparison).

2nd Attempt Jhana meditation

This was my 2nd attempt at Jhana meditation without a timer. Sat in a room which was mostly silent with very mild road noise and a clock tick. In this session, I was able to concentrate on my breath for up to 60-70% of the time. On closing my eyes the mental plane started mildly swirling and dancing but I tried to look at the entirety of the movement from an empty space again and again. I noticed that I needed to relax further down, this helped get rid of the ‘holding on to an image’ problem. The perceptions were still dancing about initially, but this time, I stayed more firm with my observation frame and caught the breath. The breath in the very relaxed state felt non-physical. It was a pure feeling and I could not locate it in space. I could not even feel its direction beyond how I chose to visualize it: as a sphere expanding and contracting, as a piston moving back and forward etc. I could drop the physical aspect, space and direction of it. It felt like a ‘subtle feeling’. I tried to reach this place again and again during my 15 min meditation and then concluded.

Anger about societal interpretations of sex and love

Sex is a pleasure object that is so outside your egoic control. When you really want it, you don’t get it. When you’re in an average mood, you get it. Then the whole power game kicks in with questions like: Why should I do it when you want, when you don’t give it to me when I want it? This lack of control about the whole experience and you being at the mercy of luck and your partner is so ego-destroying. It makes me a slave at the whim of my master. My master is actually the attachment to the pleasure I get from it. My partner would be the agent for evoking the pleasure, so in a way, she is the master. It makes me feel vulnerable, pathetic, pitiable, helpless, a slave, and at the mercy and whim of my master. It gives so much of my power away to the other person. It makes me feel like a puppet which the other person can abuse. It’s so demeaning, humiliating, hurtful and insulting. The entire internet keep ramming into my head that it’s the most pleasurable thing in the world even more than all drugs. Then why don’t I have access to it? Am I supposed to just wait my entire life at the mercy of someone who would provide me that? Too dis-empowering! Why is it such a pain to get sex when you exactly want it? Why is the sexual part of all my relationships always kind of pressured, non-optimal, guilt inducing and so ego based? There has to be some pleasure FAR better than sex so that I can get rid of this bondage forever.

Love is another word I started hating. It’s an endless waiting and it feels so competitive. Every person I see happy in love makes me die a little bit inside. In the world around me, it seems like I have to really slog my ass off to make someone love me. At least if it was that way, I would have a definite path. Then it gets even more complicated when you realize, you cannot force it, it will just happen. Well it’s not happening and I am acutely aware of that. Even when I hear the word love or say it, I feel a lot of discomfort in my chest.

An evening walk – different ways of perceiving

While walking on the road, initially I noticed that my perception was locked in a certain pattern. I tried to open that up a bit by conceptualizing in new ways.

·         Looking at the number plates of cars and analyzing
·         Looking at street signs and parking boards
·         Looking at the shape and architecture of buildings
·         Counting the number of ground slabs, Counting the number of street lights and seeing spacing, noticing the sewer covers
·         Looking at all the people and judging their moods
·         Noticing clothing of all people
·         Noticing each shop and creating mental groups when possible
·         Paying attention to the colors around
·         Perceiving sky patterns
·         Noticing the ratio of trees (plants) to man-made objects
·         Noticing stationary vs. moving objects
·         Noticing the texture of things
·         Noticing the quality of the air, scents and my breathing
·         Noticing the reflections on glossy surfaces and watching the shapes that form

Why is everyday reality so stable and predictable?

I can intellectually understand that reality at any moment is infinitely complex and I can also feel my own experience is continually different and changing. I imagine it to be a fractal which is continuously morphing. But yet, my day to day experience of reality seems so enduring, persistent, repeatable, stable, very slow changing. That is where I feel stuck and the element of boredom or dissatisfaction kicks in.

It’s like how we have rock like structures in nature. The rock is microscopically changing at every moment, but to my eyes it looks, well, like a rock. It would appear as the same rock to me throughout my 100 year lifetime. Another example would be looking at ourselves in the mirror everyday, the changes would be imperceptible right?
My experience of reality is mostly changing so gradually, that if I sample a day or two, there are moment to moment differences but overall it feels almost the same (low novelty). Extreme, shocking, exciting, rapturous, novel, moving experiences are quite rare. Their frequency is decreasing as I am getting older. The only direct way for me to get a powerful experience is by trying out new drugs and increasing the dose once I understand its effects. In such a case, I may enjoy life much more, but firstly society would gun me down, Coolidge effect would kick in and lastly I might get addicted to those pleasures and fall into a trap.
What elements control the experience of rate of change or rate of fluidity in my perception? My conceptual knowledge accumulated from my past is making everything more and more predictable with fixed patterns (mundane). What area of perception do I need to improve OR what do I need to examine to increase my enjoyment and fulfillment in everyday life? Do I need to simply work of increasing the fire of my observation and awareness from moment to moment?
I have read that some enlightened beings lead a super ordinary life as perceived by most people, but they are utterly fulfilled and happy by that. How is that possible? Is it that their sensitivity is 10 times of mine? What do they do differently?
All value is from comparison: like if you only date one girl, you only know one fractal, but if you have dated 10, then you’ll have 10 times the perspective etc. The perspective, interpretation, rating and ranking gets better, the more number of experiences you have.
Knowledge is riches because it opens up so many more life experiences accessible through memory and choose between perspectives at the present moment. Also, the joy of comparison and deep understanding through connections.

Prison of beliefs

See everything ‘as it is’. Feel all emotions completely without any controlling. Every belief is limiting, imprisoning you in a self-created prison. Every belief is giving away your power. Drop all beliefs and you have infinite power. There is nothing called power, love etc. or any emotion or experience outside of you. There is no outside. It’s your belief in separation that’s giving you that feeling. Thinking something is good/moral/right/correct/noble is also a prison just like thinking something is bad/evil/despicable/shameful is equally imprisoning. All beliefs can be traced back to some person/people who gave you that. There is no reality to any of that besides your belief. You are the space in which everything arises and you are eternally this infinite space. All goals are based on your existing level of wisdom. If you elevate your level of consciousness, your goals could transform. You can be the most insignificant thing in the world OR the god of the world depending upon your beliefs. You can believe that you are the son of god and have the greatest purpose to enlighten people OR you could believe you are a ‘nobody’ and absolutely worthless. They both are still beliefs creating different experiences. Belief is needed for experiencing. Without belief there is no experience.  Also, from direct intense observation, it can be seen that if there is an ‘experiencer’, then the experience is temporary. The ultimate knowledge is simply seeing the totality of everything which automatically creates perfect intelligence, perfect intuition, and effortlessness. The question is “who are you?”; find the essence of this entity with the fire of awareness and it will reveal itself.

You are the entire universe

People would often settle for ‘you are a part of the universe’. But on further examination, the whole universe is you. When you are deep asleep there is nothingness. When you are awake all perceptions come back. You evoke the whole universe from your point of view while dreaming or awake. In the awake, dreaming state there is just perception. The ‘you’, mine, other is a division within the same space. ‘Time’ and ‘space’ are also part of this perception. Everything is eternally present and is ‘just is’. If all experiences are completed they leave the empty space you truly are without a trace. Like when a new born child moves from one room to another – everything is totally different.

People have also reported that set and setting is a huge thing while using psychedelics and just moving from one room to another makes a profound difference.  Maybe this is because the psychedelics greatly sensitize you and loosen your existing models of the world, allowing for fresh perspectives. You are life looking through this perspective/corner of its own creation. Everything is looking at itself from a specific viewpoint within everything. It’s like space moving through space. It’s like light moving through light. It’s like a hologram/fractal where everything is contained in everything infinitely.  Everything is a play of consciousness. There is wholeness in every moment. It’s only the form that’s changing.  All energies are there right now, the total energy of the universe is always the same and infinite and we are the total energy at every moment. Can you feel or know anything apart from you? We are the infinite energy and in an infinite sea of change. Even the enduring entities in our perception ultimately fall away upon death. So death is the final point for holding on to anything. The timeless component is not the changing forms; it is the formless awareness behind all form.
THERE IS NOTHING APART FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW AND YOUR EXPERIENCE. If you think there is, you have just divided your experience up into categories and concepts. You have created the entire game of the universe and now you’re in it and pretending to have forgotten that you know everything in order to freshly experience everything for the first time through infinite living creatures having infinite lives and infinite new perspectives for each. But the awareness which is everything, which is the knowing, which is simultaneously empty is always your essence.
All experience is felt moment to moment and is unique at every moment on sensitive examination. We never step in the same river twice. All the entities we think of as having essence are ghost like, when we shine bright light of awareness on them, they simply disappear and the truth is revealed in sparkling clarity. These essential entities can be dissolved only on intense powerful observation.
Our ultimate desire seems to be of union with everything. We relate to humans and not animals because we think they are similar to us. It seems like we always try to further our definition of ourselves. If we identify with a certain culture, conditioning, beliefs etc. then we try to expand only in that direction by finding similar people. The wider the definition of yourself, the more people you are embrace and understand. With the highest understanding, by this reasoning, you should be able to embrace every single concept, thing, person; real or imagined.
Is it similar to how we divide the land area of the world into countries? Are we dividing and sizing up people into similar boxes, boundaries, sets?

About First Times…

First times are usually a cocktail like mixture of expectations/anticipations (origins from a plethora of sources), excitements, fears (rejection, acceptance), anxieties, pressure (performance), urgency, grasping,  pleasure, the process of trying to interpret – fitting the new sensations into some mental model, sometimes shame.

The first times are Intense because of this cocktail but not usually pure pleasure. The pleasure is just one of the elements mixed into it.