Journey to the Abstract

 A somewhat strange/novel thing has happened to me recently. I have been intensely questioning and seeing various mind bending kind of youtube videos for the past 1.5months. It had almost reached the peak of its intensity around a week back. Three days back in the afternoon, I tried a guided meditation for around 25 mins and reached a hynogogia state which was the deepest in a while. After coming out of it, I could feel the boiling water like flashes in front of my eyes, similar to the way we see when just woken up from a dream. Then, that day night I decided to sleep early at 12:30am. This was unusual since I usually slept at 3:30am. When I got up in the morning, I was surprised to find that I was surprisingly awake and not groggy. This awake feeling has a different feel to it. It was like there is something beyond my body and brain that is awake. It lasted throughout the day. In the night, I was feeling elated for no specific reason and I couldn’t pinpoint it. It was like my experience baseline was uplifted and my conscious mind was blanker than usual. It was really quiet. Even if I put effort into thinking a thought, the thought did not affect my emotional state. This was highly unusual. Usually even if I was in a good mood, I would get affected by bad thoughts but this state seemed to be the same unaffected by thoughts. I looked up this on the net and found out that it was called “Affective ego”. Meditation affects the affective ego. In my experience it seemed to have reduced it by around 50%. So I felt pleasurable feelings and painful ones with only 50% deviation and the basic baseline was elevated. I feel a sense of freshness, brightness and clarity which is difficult to put in words. Also I do not feel sleepy for the entire day till 12:30am in the night.

The best analogy I can give is that, imagine an AC filter that keeps getting clogged often. You take it out, clean it a bit and again it gets clogged after a while. Imagine if the filter itself is punctured. Then the cool blast of air would come out from the hole in full force and the filter wouldn’t affect it. If I compare, the filter is probably my false self. Maybe it has suddenly loosened up releasing the real self energy which is the cool blast of air.

This seems to be a hockey stick graph kind of development since I’ve been trying meditating for 2 yrs almost but nothing has created such a strong impact till date. The odd part about this experience is that, your wellbeing level is so high that your afraid you may lose your sensitivity for pleasure. If you cannot feel pain at all, how can you enjoy the pleasure. Similarly, since the connection between automatic thoughts and emotions has been broken to an extent it creates a very different experience. My emotional memory seems to have suddenly faded. I cannot recreate any powerful feelings by using thought. The positive feelings and negative feelings created by thoughts are numbed and I can feel an elevated baseline. As of now, its a mixed bag, but I’m learning to enjoy and appreciate this new state.

PS: The experience lasted for around 3 days total. After that, I got back to my old self.

Top of the list – Youtube vids:
Shinzen young
Eckhart tolle
Adyashanti
Bashar
18th april –  Terence Mckenna
Ken Wilber
Sadhguru

Blogs:
Steve Pavlina blog
Imaging the 11th dimension blog
High Existence
http://goodshare.org/wp/the-experiential-reality-beneath-the-language-game-illusion/

Cool websites:
http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/
http://www.berzinarchives.com/ – use site map
http://www.eruptingmind.com/
http://www.abundancetapestry.com/
http://fundamental-shift.com/
http://www.messagefrommasters.com/
http://www.psitek.net/
http://shambhalasun.com/

http://www.calmdownmind.com/

Best general insightful website:
Ted Talks

I think art forms exist only because of subjectivity. Is everything was objective there would be no art. Each of us sees different patterns in this matrix of reality. Artists are able to extract, articulate and communicate these patterns to us, rich in emotional value. Art is a form of communication. It can communicate subjective experiences in ways that verbal, math or logic cannot.

The most classic example of subjectivity is revealed in dreams. Each persons’ dreams are completely unique. As an experiment, try to write down what you saw and experienced in your dream today morning. It is incredibly difficult to express it in words. You would have to use all kinds of analogies which are again based on your previous experiences. You may even need to diagram out some stuff, but it would still just represent its skeleton.

My roommate stuck to the idea that everything including the mind originates inside the physical brain and there is nothing non physical. Though I felt my gut totally opposing this thought, it was difficult to really justify the existence of a non physical distinct mind overlapping the physical brain and body. I looked it up on the internet and it was interesting to find that very exact question in: Philosophy – Epistemology – Dualism vs Monism. It does seem like a perplexing question without an easy way to answer. I think the only way to really answer this is to maintain awareness even in deep sleep since in this state the brain activity slows down to 1hz – almost dead.

After intense probing on different questions, it sometimes appears to me that, if you strongly look for a particular pattern in reality, you end up finding it. And this applies to almost anything. That is why it is probably said, for psychic powers to function, belief that it is possible and that you can achieve it, is the foundation. Almost anything I examine, for example greatness, light, brightness, sound intensity, intensity of emotion or feelings, state of mind etc. all of them derive meaning from their opposite which means opposites such as evil, death, darkness, silence etc are equally significant. Every event’s meaning is equally intertwined it its opposite. So you can find significance in almost everything. In absolute terms, every event is equally significant. It is just society that has created this game or dream.

Even in quantum mechanics, a lot of phenomena are related to the observer observing them. The whole physical world itself is an illusion and it is said that even our bodies are actually a condensation of our thoughts, emotions, spiritual condition. The movie “Peaceful Warrior” is an awesome movie for the purpose of insight. No moment is insignificant or every moment is a manifestation of divine intelligence.

A strange thing is happening. The more awareness and equanimity im bringing in from moment to moment, the more im feeling I do not know anything. My thought process itself is continually warped by my moods, diet, situation and environment. I seem to be more objective at times and subjective at the others. Even in those sporadic objective moments, I can see that I have a lot of beliefs that are still holding me back and that there is room for even more of it. I feel the wall of my ego in the forehead and middle chest that is protecting me in some way. It seems to serve a deep purpose, something which I cannot fathom yet. My chest feels like a huge pit that wants to be filled. Whenever I long for things, the pit gets even deeper and begs me to do actions that fill it.

What do I trust now? I cannot trust my senses, feelings, thoughts, beliefs. All I can do is be open, vulnerable, helpless – maintaining equanimity and observe. The only thing that seems to be constant is me observing. Not the pleasant/unpleasant moods, feelings, sensations etc. Everything else seems to be highly dynamic and fast. Too fast for me to hold on to, process in my working memory and understand. Its like a flowing river on which we impose this illusion of control. I used to believe that insight would make permanent changes. In a way they do, but these changes are usually subtle just like when you just hit the gym, your muscles pump up and then come back to their original size. So insight itself might be a state of mind which I cannot hold on for too long in this flowing river.

There is this illusion of significance in society and standards for defining yourself. If you do not conform you stand to lose A LOT w/o identification. Without people to relate to, the energy level drops by a huge amount and you just start feeling lifeless and purposeless. Why cant every moment, action be equally significant if that is the truth? The irony is that you simply cannot make people think that way since it is just too ingrained. I’m fortunate to have explored this aspect and unfortunate because I cannot amplify and grow those feelings with society. Society is like a bonfire and I’m like a single candle. I need much much more energy. I need to create and need to be heard. I want to identify and amplify. This is lonely and low, I don’t feel alive or important. My behavior and feelings are manipulated by the my perception of the people around me. I don’t seem to have much control. Its like the feelings work at a more fundamental level which I wish to tap or control. I think the problem is something at the belief level. I believe that other people are somehow right no matter how many intellectual games I play with myself. It seems like I derive my formula for survival from other people. At some level, I’m simply overwhelmed by the expectations of society and I want to rise above it. I find ways to escape and to preserve my sanity by exploring topics that are extremely broad in the clouds. I live in the clouds for a while and then I’m dragged back down to the ground where I get disoriented among all the other settlers. I need to master survival at ground level and then only i can move up to the clouds w/o worry.

Something feels like these problems which I faced in childhood are simply not going away. The exact same problems are festering me in different problems. I was under the impression that they would go away as I grow up but they seem persistent. I need to really observe harder and extract the blueprint that is causing these problems. With awareness I can clearly see, patterns repeating themselves. The completely different situations just masquerade the same underlying problems. Along with identifying them, I need to simultaneously work on them because I could spend a whole lifetime just understanding. Deep understanding itself would eliminate almost all the problems but maybe I could work on the ones that impact me the most first and then actualize it.

I want to be heard, understood, respected, revered, loved. I want to inspire, motivate, energize people. I want to belong at least somewhere. I want to be instrumental in helping myself and others reach their true potential in the purest sense. I want to understand things truly and pass it on. I want to help others and be part of win-win situations and get out of this scarcity mentality.

I think the reason for all the forms of communication we have today is because of this subjective reality each one of us lives in. That is probably the origin of art too, which tries to express things and feelings that are beyond verbal and mathematical languages. We are deeply interested in knowing what it feels like to be another person. We innately want to be one with everything. Sex probably comes the closest to feeling one with another human and imagining what it feels like to be them.

Verbal and written languages were created for this purpose. There are probably around 6000-7000 known languages in the world. Then we have art which always supplemented these to express the more elusive. A day might come when technology can recreate the mental/emotional states we experience. I wonder if language would even be necessary in that case. Maybe as shown in the TV series “doctor who”, satellite 5 episode, we could just access a portal of all shared experiences logged.

1. Casio CT 636 – for 1yr – 4th Std – (1996)

2. Yamaha PSR 510 – for 1.5yrs – 5th Std – (1997)

3. Yamaha PSR 630 – for 12yrs – 6,1/2th std – (1997 to 2011)

4. Korg PA500 – for 1 year – 2012

The smell and sounds from these keyboards contain a deep element of nostalgia for me. I wonder what would give me the same sense of wonderment and excitement today. Since it was purely instrumental, the sounds directly induced a mood in me with no verbal thinking. A direct translation from music to feeling. The sounds from these instruments had incredible variety and though I’ve heard over 15000 songs by artists in the market, the sounds from these are still totally unique.

While watching movies etc., I cannot seem to generate a “feeling” of attraction towards all the typical idols people have in their minds. For e.g..: Angelina Jolie, Megan Fox etc. My thinking mind would look at their proportions, skin texture, facial features and conclude that they are beautiful. But surprisingly, I would get no accompanying feeling of sexual attraction. In other words, I just believe that they are sexually attractive but do not feel the sensation. I can appreciate white women aesthetically, but I just don’t get the tingle of sexual attraction. Considering the fact that I usually feel attraction only when I see girls face to face, I thought if I saw them in real life things might be different.

Now, I am here in US. Everyday, I see people from different races, Asians, Americans, Mexicans and Europeans who have almost perfect bodies, but I do not feel the attraction. Its almost like I’m looking at aliens/wax dolls. I feel absolutely no connection. I haven’t been able to relate to anyone here beyond a superficial level, be it emotionally/physically, this could probably be one of the reasons. The boners seem to have minds of their own, driven by biology.

I even wondered if I’m racist, but then I guess sexual attraction has nothing to do with racism. As long as we don’t consider our choice to be objectively more beautiful than everything else, it would not be racism.

Firstly the term ‘highest’ is vague by itself. Highest in what aspect is the first question that comes to mind.
The different forms might be:
1. Painting/Visual art
2. Music
3. Mathematics
4. Verbal
5. Body language
6. Communication through our energy fields(maybe involuntary)
7. Love