Journey to the Abstract

All awareness/knowledge/perception is by contrasts. Change is what makes perception/consciousness even possible. We cannot be aware of something that is unchanging (like we cannot be aware of ether, or something that is continuously there, the persistent object is dismissed from consciousness). The unchanging is the infinite potential ground of being, from which we can even observe change. Anything that you observe cannot be you (like a fire cannot burn itself). When something is observed, it is immediately transcended. ‘You’ are the infinite potential ecstatic unborn space from which all experience arises/passes in cycles/vibration. Beauty is variety, harmony and movement and beauty is exactly what life (infinite diversity, harmony, impermanence(change)) itself is. Impermanence is what makes beauty even possible. Life is change, more the change, more the life, Less the change – closer it is to death. Death is a mental concept. You were never born and will never die (Do you experientially remember having being born?, It just happens in a seamless flow). There are no ‘Events’, events are created because of our mental conception or limited view of reality. Nothing is abrupt. Everything is flowing and dancing in perfect harmony in the realm of the absolute. Direct experience is the only thing there is. It would be more appropriate to just say ‘Observe what is’, and nothing more. You are ‘That’.

You are immortal because ‘it is impossible to be conscious of being unconscious’. So you are eternally conscious.
Attention is the primordial energy force. ‘Where ever attention flows, that aspect/quality grows’. This applies to ‘Every’ single thing.
Duality makes everything fair and all realities equivalent when seen from the larger picture/expanded consciousness.

– Desire itself could thought of as simply energy. A desire moves you to do certain things until that energy is used. A simple case would be, you reach your threshold for thirst, and this creates an intense desire to go drink water. So you go and get water. Now the question is, did ‘You’ really get up, or did the desire move you?. Each desire is like a mini ‘I’. We have many little ‘I”s or desires but there may be a small group of highly powerful ‘I’s which we may refer to as our core personality. So from this perspective, it could be said we are swimming in an ocean of desire being desire ourselves. Like a drop of water swimming in the ocean. So the duality here is that, there is only arising and passing away of multiple layers of desires at different rates in time. So identifying yourself with any desire is to get locked and limited into some viewpoint.

– Another interesting area is ‘prana’ (life force energy). The waxing and waning of life force energy. Activities that give us energy like sleep, meditation, relaxation vs. Activities that drain our energy like stress, worry etc. This cycle happens everyday. Like batteries we get charged in the mornings and it runs out by night. I would intuit deep sleep has maximum potentiality and it might be the 0 (infinite potential) point for all manifestation. Duality is the reason why everything in the universe is cyclical. I feel duality and the cyclic nature of everything imply each other.

– Another super fascinating insight I recently came across is that, awareness itself is by contrast. Without contrast awareness itself is not possible. All knowledge is by contrasts too. Like how do you know, you are feeling normal now? How do you know there is light around you now? The very perception of normality or light implies knowledge of abnormality or darkness. The definition of every concept, implies some kind of polarization, just like even if you shatter a magnet, even the smallest pieces will have the 2 poles. This can be applied to every single thing we know, both conventional knowledge and spiritual knowledge. It seems to be the very nature of knowledge.

– If awareness is because of effort from your part, then in the relaxation that follows (duality principle) you will lose this awareness. True and timeless awareness has to transcend duality and that can happen only if its effortless (At the center of the wheel of experience not at the periphery).

Here are some other great duality statements I picked up from an Alan Watts lecture:
– Happening and doing are duals again. You can’t tell the difference without the two-together. You need happening to know what is doing. Also, voluntary and involuntary are duals again.
– Sensation by itself is awareness of contrast.
– Non-existence is the very condition for existence.
– Where is the notion of improving, isn’t it absurd? White must win? Which side would you take: Black or white? Does the side really make a difference?
– Nothing is the source of something. It is the seed.
– Both white and black can play the negative role. We conventionally associate white with the positive and this is another illusion. For Example: Paper with black ink writing, the writing is the positive and the white is blank, and therefore nothing, negative. In this case the black is positive.
– Drugs take you more fiercely into duality.

– If I take a euphorigen (any of the super gratifying ones), because of duality, on coming down, instantly my ordinary state would seem miserable. The perception of happiness and misery itself is relative.That is way perception itself works and perception is the only reality we know, so its reality itself. Excessive pleasure for humans with ordinary psychology is very likely to create extreme compulsivity. This is not only true for drugs but just about anything, like even sex (That’s why the taoists advice Karezza instead of regular sex). So when you come down from the drug, you go lower than your baseline causing an intense desire to elevate the level up again. Now the setpoint of pleasure has been set to that first high experience, the memory of that make you binge on the pleasure stimulus until you reach it again. Now you go down even further the 2nd time and so on. So the sine wave of ups and downs has been intensified compared to a normal person’s happy/sad moods.

– All existence is painful validated by its dual i.e. the universal seeking of pleasure.
If I am seeking to improve my situation, seeking to get better, seeking to be at another mental state B, even the smallest seeking implies dissatisfaction with the way things are. This is what is referred to as suffering. If we say, all humans are universally seeking pleasure, it would be equally right to say, all humans are dissatisfied with the way things are.

– If you are absolutely satisfied, you will dissolve, you wont exist as a person anymore…..Think about it in terms of the consciousness of being a person….how do you know ‘you are you’?…..that sensation of a core drive is fueled by a desire…and desires are fueled by beliefs….and beliefs keep changing in patterns….its like music……a song may have many different melodies with different instruments but yet maintaining its signature pattern by which you can recognize it……personality is also like that…..a music of overlapping constantly moving desires, yet maintaining an abstract pattern that you can recognize every time

– There is duality between predictability and unpredictability.
How can I know what predictable without being simultaneously about whats unpredictable, and vice versa?

– Duality of wanting – want also implies awareness of what is not wanted
When you want something, in that very moment of wanting something, not wanting of its opposite is implied. If I want a want a white object, then it instantly also implies I do not want a black object. Here black and white is simplistic. It can be an abstract quality too. An opposite can be found for every single mental object no matter how abstract.

– Hearing music in any form would not be possible without awareness of silence. So the duality is that if you are enjoying music, you are simultaneously aware of the background silence too. They happen concomitantly. Imagine a continuous note with no gaps, there would be no pattern, therefore no music.

There is no ‘doer’. I am the instrument of the unseen force (god) and the same unseen force moves everything. This force by itself is beyond everything. The body is simply moved in service of this force.

I only create my receptivity/earnestness/desire. Everything else just happens accordingly.

Actions directly influence others. Patterns simply pass on directly.

Sensations -black box- mental states arise -black box – spiritual desires. Life is about relationships to everything.

Survival related work and keeping up with the societal expectations can take up so much time and is a permanent source of insecurity.

The more still the observer, the deeper the observation possible.

Change, purpose, meaning, engagement, interest, curiosity creates mental satisfaction.
Understanding, higher knowledge, harmony, unity in diversity(richness) is spiritual satisfaction

Every single action of ours can reveal so much about us through their implied relationships.

When you observe a belief, it is already transcended.

Extraordinary attention put on the ordinary makes it extraordinary.
Extraordinary attention put on the extra ordinary makes it ordinary.

If an experience has a beginning in time, its not real.

The real is the unborn prime mover force which is you. You are the very ecstasy animating all of experience.

Everything can be safely experienced. Its all ropes, no snakes.

You are everything in this moment and what you call ‘yourself’ right now is a small part of this moment. Its like calling yourself as only the right thumb instead of the entire body.
Any desire indicates a lack, hole, dissatisfaction or some belief. All compulsivity and tendencies should be observed in its minutest forms. The ideal/absolute state is where you are 0 and everything that comes in is seen as it is.

Whatever tendencies/momentum/states of mind you see in people is like seeing their future too (most probability). Personalities exist in the same probability space as everything else. The probability a rock will remain a rock is extremely high, animals have more variability, normal humans even higher variability, the ‘highest being’ would be some kind of shimmering ecstasy happening at warp speed. Its like, the more variable, changing and fluid something is, the higher evolved it is. We are in that state in childhood and gradually move towards predictability and solidity in adulthood experience. The most beautiful things are also the most fleeting. The same is true for pain too. The most painful things are fleeting too. The faster changing something is, the more life energy it has. The people you see are all momentums of certain mental patterns, tendencies with the driver of beliefs.
Its the same infinite space with infinite interpretations. Change in interpretation, is like changing the picture of the projector’s white light and creating altered states.

Each person is a reflection of your potential and the seed of that infinite potential (potential of everything that can ever exist in the experience realm) is the ‘you’ deep down. Each person represents different offshoots of this infinite potential seed.

Change/Impermanence is whats beautiful. It is life itself. Dazzling, glitter, shimmer, radiance, vibrance, dance – all of these commonly used words represent vibration, movement or change. Heaven is a place where your entire being is vibrating in high frequency (ecstasy). All awareness itself is by contrasts. Like a music where the flow itself creates meaning. All sensation, change in field of consciousness and changes in attention focus all flow like music. Life is this endless dance. More the contrasts, more the awareness.

“From the Absolute to the Relative-from the Infinite to the Finite-from the Undifferentiated to the Differentiated-from the Unconditioned to the Conditioned and again from the Relative to the Absolute. That is the whole truth of the inexistance to the existentialist, formless to the form, Creator to the Creature, one to the every being, absolute to the inabsolute and vis-á-vis, so forth every single thing is temporary, non-existed, so do I, the dream that I dreamed off is simply a ‘lie and impermanent too’ same as in the mortal world whatever I do experience.”
― Upanishad

In zazen meditation, they stare at a blank wall and simply remove ‘All the mental conditions’ that cause stress and anxiety resulting in a complete elimination of the same. Even the jhana ecstasy is based on the cultivation of factors – concentration, equanimity. When these factors are cultivated to a high enough degree, it results in ecstasy. What are the conditions causing your reality? Especially, what are your mental habits, projections, tendencies, and drives creating your reality at this moment?

There is pressure from society to construct an identity. Depending on what identity you construct, you accordingly get experiences. I find this a very difficult choice. Changing identity is not easy. Investments accumulate over whatever identity you choose. Just like, if you were a nomad, you should let go of a lot of things before you decide to move – changing identity would involve losing all your accumulations/investments to the extent to which you change. People try to further their own identity by making more and more connections having the same social mimes, which leads to the formation of groups. If you want to change the group, then in the changed group suddenly all the stuff you had previously would become irrelevant. Kind of like, if one group was totally into bitching, gossiping and trivial social information and another one discussed philosophy and abstract ideas, they are quite incompatible. So the skills you acquired in your previous group cannot be used here much. Another analogy would be, if I worked as a carpenter for many years and then I suddenly want to switch to being an electrician then there would be little transferable parts. The same issue occurs in marriage, it’s a contract with accumulating investment over time. If you suddenly decide to break out of it, all the relationship investment collapses. Switching a career would also mean losing a lot of your investment like the carpenter-electrician example. There are transferable skills but a drastic switch could leave very little commonality. If you decide to leave your company, again all the internal knowledge, processes and the relationships you acquired in the company would be lost. Certain patterns could be metaphorically applied in other companies too, but this would be an abstract learning for the most of it. Basically, you would have to start all over again in the new company with the abstract learning from the previous company experience.

From a first person perspective:

Freshening of perception is the best thing in the world. Sleep does it. So does advanced meditation.

Mirrors!!! Each person is like an amusement park mirror. These mirrors represent me in all kinds of funny ways – some show me as fat, ugly, beautiful, with a big face, short etc. I cannot look at myself, just as an eye cannot see itself or a fire cannot burn itself. So I try to judge who I am from these reflections shown to me. I record these reflections in memory during early childhood. The recorded reflections then became ‘ME’. Later I begin to pursue only those mirrors that show me these recorded reflections. If my early life reflections were good and if people accepted me well, I would believe ‘I am a loved individual’ if not, I would form a negative image about myself.