Journey to the Abstract

Most self help books and websites address all the problems at the level of the mind, but when you talk about enlightenment, you need to transcend the mind itself. I read that Buddhism does not encourage the use of the intellect at all. I thought to myself “Oh, how can that be, are all those guys dumb or live life’s that are highly under stimulated and simplified etc, Why would someone agree to that, the greatest gift we have is our thinking ability”. But then, I later realized that their idea was to transcend the mind itself. Their logic is like “the only way to win the game is to not play at all”. The fundamental nature of the mind is the “wanting state”. No matter what you do, what you accomplish etc you would always remain in that state. So you need to sort of move into a higher dimension. Their lives were kept simple, abstaining from sexual activity etc but this was not exactly a total sacrifice. The reason for that was: Sex is one of the most powerful attractive forces at the level of the mind. So in order to transcend it, you would rather not have this powerful force tightly holding you”. And about the simplicity of their life, the reason for that is, we erect our whole sense of self from memory. If this is too rich and complicated filled with varied likes/dislikes/passions/aversions it becomes difficult to transcend it. When you minimize your likes/dislikes/wants etc. your self is fairly simple and it makes the transcending part much easier. Generally if you completely overcome the fear of death, you would overcome all fears since death is the root for all fears.

Another question asked is that, does an enlightenment person ever suffer? The question of suffering/pleasure is a qualitative judgment at the level of the mind. When you go beyond that, the question almost becomes irrelevant. Enlightened people are in contact with the instrument of life force itself. They would always be like light and pass through any situation seamlessly including death. They would be aware of the mind and its conceptualization but they have the choice to turn the mind off. The consciousness force with them is like an iron ox and even death would not scare them.

People who hate you cause a huge amount of misery especially if they are in the same context as you and where you would need to meet them regularly like a college, office, school etc. The issue is common especially between very close friends when they have a fight or with an ex(GF/BF). A girl friend or boy friend with whom you have broken up is kind of like a failed marriage or a huge expectation mismatch. I think in either ways, its a failure to accept ‘reality the way it is’. The person somehow affects you far more than you would expect. Because you have invested a ton load of emotions and time on that person, that person’s opinion about you carries a huge weight-age. If I would analyze this further, the person manipulates you at a subconscious level. So if they express some negative emotion towards you, you get an unexplainable queasy feeling in the stomach and you might think to yourself “Why on earth do I react so much?Why cant I just ignore it”. Once you’re in that mood, you start feeling vulnerable and get polarized to feel that everyone is looking at you in the same negative way as the Ex.

When the more mature one the fight tries to resolve it, the problem can be compounded if the other one has serious anger issues. Its funny, some people can only express one emotion well, that is ANGER. Generally people who are neglected, physically or emotionally abused, with severe problems in their self esteem, body image etc. sometimes suffer from these anger issues. Anger is a kind of defensive mechanism to protect you from the real feelings. So the person lives in the false sense that everything that is happening is the other person’s fault with so much conviction. The thing they don’t realize is that they are very obviously hiding from the real truth and that the anger burns them far more than the people they are throwing it at. The problem, as with most things, this habit once formed just becomes a self-strengthening loop. In any self help article, the common theme is, ‘face the real visceral feeling without the shield of anger’. That is how you truly overcome past pain. Another problem is that, even if you tell them this, their denial and ego would kick in. Thoughts like “I’m listening to this person who tortured me etc. Whats up with me? What can this know about psychology etc?” come up and whatever is said to improve the situation results in a series of denials emphasized by a “No” at the start of every sentence. It is impossible to rationalize with a person in that state. Even time may not breakdown their ego, because they would keep strengthening their old habit patterns at every moment till the end of their life.

I think the only way to deal with this is to melt them with your nice behavior and avoiding deeper and personal conversations. If you get angry, then you’re lowering your consciousness to that level. So my approach might be, watch yourself when you react to this person, use your evolved reasoning and insights to prevent a lowering of your state. What comes out a person’s anger is more about the person’s anger than the content of what is said. The content that comes out is usually an exaggerated slanted version of all the bad things you did.

Let me attempt to put it in the real context. The allegations represent a very tiny portion of reality in proportion to everything that you are. Secondly, since the person is filled with anger, a distorted, slanted, exaggerated version is created of that tiny fraction. Thirdly, it represents the past which is imaginary in the context of this moment. You might have reacted that way in the past and it might have been the best approach considering your STATE(level of knowledge, personal interests, priorities etc.) at that time. That state might be irrelevant now. So at every level getting severely affected by that person requires you to revisit the context I have described above to dissolve the past conditioning or habit.

Inspiration and Love reside at the highest rung of consciousness. I need to meet people in that vibration to stay in that state. They seem to be difficult to find. Sometimes I see inspired people in specific aspects, but I’m not able to establish connection with them. I mostly form “small-talk acquaintances” with them because our global aspects – mindset, world view, cultural influence might differ a lot. The ideal combination would be people with child like enthusiasm and wonder and who are overflowing with it. So they do not expect anything in return. Its just for the pure joy of sharing the same passion. The synergy when you interact with people that state is an awesome experience.

I frequently try to bring myself up to that state. Reading high vibe stuff elevates me to that of inspiration temporarily but I get pulled down by mundane talk and pressure transmitted by people at lower rungs.

Time flies by when you are happy, engaged, enjoying etc. and slows down to a crawl when you have extreme pain. More than the ‘proportional theory’ of time’ these experiences seem to have congruence with the general theory of relativity which states “spending 1hr with a loved one would feel like 5-10mins”. In the clock time sense, the theory states that – heavier objects warp space-time and slow down time. Like if you stand next to the pyramid in Egypt, time should be slower for you compared to a person standing far away. I guess time perception is more important than actual time passed since that is what would impact you. I think time perception would be related to how much new information you’re processing from the environment. If the environment is all familiar and you are doing the same things that you’ve been doing for ages, time seems to go by very fast since there is very little new information added. It is also a factor of how aware you are at the present moment with respect to your surroundings and body. Things in the environment need to really captivate your interest to that extent for you to feel time slow down. Time would thus essentially be the slowest when EVERYTHING is new around you and when you are most intrigued by them.

Maybe at the time you were just born or if you visit an alien planet which is fundamentally different in every aspect compared to ours. Even a 1 day visit to such a planet would be the information equivalent of a month or more on earth. Traveling to a new place should slow down time too. Office is the most common environment where time starts to go very fast once you get accustomed to the job. Months pass by and you kind of have a feeling your losing control. Day -dreaming surprisingly makes time pass real quick. Maybe because no new information is added during day dreaming, in retrospect nothing much is remembered and hence we feel the time just flew by.

It is also said that, emotions like fear collapse time while awe expands it. It is also said that for stress free productivity you need to be relaxed first. So maybe relaxation without reduction in alertness should also slow time. The difficult part is that when we think of relaxation we conjure up states of mild hypnosis and stupor, but it is actually possible to get relaxed w/o compromising on alertness. Ive noticed this while drinking alcohol(assuming you’ve already had more than enough sleep to start with). The relaxation greatly increases without compromising attention. Another thing that comes to my mind is martial arts and sports when I think of time perception or speed of perception. In shaolin kung-fu and even bruce lee’s jee kwon do it is emphasized that you need to turn off your mind and stay in a no mind state. Maybe we need to turn off the thinking mind to greatly increase our perception of time. Marital art masters train their reflexes and speed of perception to a level of 0.1sec response. That is if an average person’s movements(0.3sec) would appear to be 3 times slower to the master. Martial arts is a very intriguing discipline as it trains both the mind and body.

Watching movies after midnight is fun and has quite a few advantages:
– The brain resides at the alpha state or twilight zone at this time and is fairly relaxed.
– After watching the movie, anyway you would be hitting the sack, so you do not have to think about all the tasks you need to do for the day.
– There is complete silence in the night – no birds chirping and other nature sounds, very very few cars on the road.
– There are no pending jobs for that particular day
– Have a high quality headphone and viewing screen coupled with a high quality DVD print is a luxury
– This lights can be turned off while watching, and since its night, all you would see is the movie screen

All these factors hugely improve the quality of the experience and they maximize the involvement and reward 🙂

In my childhood, I had a very cartoon like view of the world. I saw reality in a very simplistic way. Most people consider this stage to be a passing phase and will tell you grow up, become mature, understand reality and other such things. Along with those comments they would also include ‘Enjoy this childhood phase while it lasts’. Underlying all these comments is the opinion that child like thinking is inferior to what an adult might think.

In my opinion however, childhood is a magical phase and is no way inferior to the way an adult perceives the world. The consciousness is the same but the experience is still so radically different, just like how you are the same person during deep sleep, dreaming and while awake. These states from the surface seem completely disconnected, but they are all connected at a higher plane.

In creative professions like designing things first start of with very rough and ambiguous sketch. You might question, if the person is so good at drawing, why should he draw a sketch that is devoid of details and why should it look rough and ambiguous? Isn’t that a quality of a non artistic person? The idea of drawing a rough sketch is to explore the breadth of ideas and to stimulate imagination. If the drawing is concrete and embellished with shading and color, it is very difficult to explore ideas using that as a base. Such a drawing would be a prototype and not a sketch. A Prototype is generally used towards the end of the design phase after narrowing down all the ideas. The rough nature of the sketch stokes our imagination and we try to fill in all the holes. A child;s view of the world is similar to the rough sketch. There are so many holes to fill. The child fills in the gaps using his/her imagination and this is not limited to the plethora of constraints the real world poses: social, ecological, anthropological and psychological. So in essence all of us have passed through this magical period where we begin to conceptualize the world and we actively use our imagination. In adulthood, the view of the world resembles more of the prototype stage. Your imagination no longer functions as vividly and freely as before since you are aware of a whole new HUGE set of constraints and most options get dismissed right at the start. It should be noted though, that most of the creative geniuses like inventors and artists did find a way to access this free association state and that is what lead to all the extraordinary work and groundbreaking inventions.

In a dream, we are practically unconscious, but we still retain conscious traces of it for a short while immediately after waking up. We go through so many virtual worlds which are sometimes so intense and filled with so much emotion. There is this unreal element to them. What happens to us during this period? Its still a mystery. There are so many theories floating around. Some say it metaphorically fulfills our day’s residue of expectations. Some of the other neuro-scientists consider dreams to be random electrical activity in the brain and after waking up we try to interpret this random electrical pattern using our conceptual or rational mind – prefrontal cortex.

Somehow a dream sleep feels more fulfilling than a dreamless sleep in my experience(assuming you are sleeping comfortably for more than 6-7hrs). I sometimes feel that dreams are a higher form of communication far beyond things like language we have in our waking life. The communication through dreams happens at a different plane or dimension itself. Its might probably be the next breakthrough after language. We may be able to communicate with others directly by using thoughts or visualizations. Basically all that we see with the mind’s eye can be transmitted directly as electrical impulses to another person’s brain. So in essence the person on the other end would see exactly what you see. Maybe language itself might become obsolete and we could share far deeper bonds with people than is ever possible today. The virtual world and the real world might become almost indistinguishable. Each person might choose to live in his or her own concept of utopia. Choosing to live in the real world might actually become a ‘choice’ or we could slip in and out of it at will. We could explore crazy depths into our imagination potential in a collective way. Artificial intelligence can be created to address exactly what you need in the visceral form itself and not what you think you need. So you would kind be living in a miracle world where everything is a miracle. Such inventions would fundamentally change the concept of how we view ourselves and may open up new vistas or paradigms for exploration itself.

Among all the numerous goals we have in our life, concentration and awareness lies beneath all of those. Everything stems from that. Awareness is an effortless state reached once you reach a certain level of concentration by training. Awareness is our natural state. When we just entered this world, we were fully aware. After that there are numerous things that happen to us in childhood and the unfortunate part of that is we are quite helpless at that age. Most of us have lost huge amounts of ability to really see reality due to all our childhood conditioning. Our every thought and action is conscious at first, it only becomes an ingrained habit after doing it plenty of times. Maybe the habit or behavior created was the best option at that time but it may not apply anymore. Even after we identify that we are still not able to adapt since habits, beliefs and conditioning seep into our unconscious mind like a tetris game. So many opinions, beliefs and habits prevent us from seeing the real multifaceted nature of reality. These opinions, beliefs, habits and over reliance on rational thinking are like a prison. We need to undo this conditioning to free our attention.

Instead of having a lot of discrete goals I was thinking why not have a single goal, that “I would be completely aware and mindful of whatever I experience and am going to be completely honest with whatever I feel w/o any judgment”. This would initially be a strong resolve and an endeavor and later it would transform itself into a state of higher consciousness itself which is awareness. Wont all the other things just follow? You might even discover what really matters and what doesn’t? Get some new insights into reality – like your perception, beliefs, conditioning and how all these aspects influence you in your daily life, interactions and dreams? If you are mindful at every moment, you would obviously take the most optimum decisions and choices since you are completely in touch with yourself all the time? Its kind of like moving into another dimension itself. Wont you be living a self actualized life in such a case which is also deceptively simple in its rules?

Momentum is everywhere. In the wind which carries the leaves and moves the blades of grass. There is so much momentum even in the small waves of the beach. Roller coasters, tsunamis, hurricanes etc. show us how powerful this force can be. Even partner dancing like salsa, jive, tango etc involves creating momentum and maintaining it and that creates excitement and flow with the interplay of push, pull – domination and submission.

We need to create sufficient momentum to achieve or learn anything. Its so easily observed in sports too. I noticed this making the transition from badminton to tennis. Badminton is more about flicking with the wrist while tennis needs an entire shoulder motion. When I was learning football for the first time, a small kid with half my strength was doing a far better job than me. Momentum is classically used even in martial arts or boxing. Even while swimming, in my initial stages, my movements were both pushing me forward and backward, thus canceling each other. So I would never generate any speed. Similarly, while learning roller skating the same thing happened. After pushing with one leg, when I would go to the other I would lose all momentum. So that is like the difference momentum can make. This is taming and utilizing momentum in the physical world.

In the mental world, there is so much of invisible momentum. Its like an invisible force. I think this is what high achievers generate within themselves. Our fears, preoccupations and habits usually prevent us from acquiring the required momentum to achieve our goals.

Personally, with work related stuff, I procrastinate till the pressure starts channelizing the mind and a stage is reached when I know that the work needed would take exactly all of my time and probably even a stretch. At this stage, I start working with momentum directly proportional to the pressure. Towards the end of it as i race towards the finish I almost reach a state of flow. That kind of gives me proof of how much momentum I can generate. However, this momentum depends on external factors and situation. I need to explore and find a way of generating that level of momentum internally, at will, independent of the external context and situation.