The extreme devotee and the guru are actually the same being, just separated in time.
Someone who deeply respects me, tells me that this person is basically me, just prior in time.
And the person whom I deeply respect and admire is the the me who is ahead in time.
Hatred and Love are about wanting change or no-change
Hatred is about trying to change something (push).
Love is about trying to preserve something (pull).
Hate and Love are for the ‘External world’ and the ‘Internalized world’.
– The ‘External world’ providing the good or bad experience
– The ‘Internalized world’ holding the good or bad experience
Conditioning is basically the ‘Internalized world’ derived from the ‘External world’.
It ties into craving (love) and aversion (hate).
Wanting to include –vs– Wanting to exclude.
Wanting to keep –vs– Wanting to remove.
Loved things torture you when they are gone.
Hated things torture you when they are there.
Hatred and Love are both responses to impermanence.
They are efforts to negotiate with the flow of change.
The only thing I am craving
In a way the only thing I am looking for is:
Intense/Immense/Profound meaning/voltage(PD)/current/movement/flow.
Be it additive, subtractive/dissolving, transforming.
Motivation is needed only when the reward is not intrinsic
Motivation is needed only when the reward is not intrinsic to the activity itself.
When aliveness itself is enjoyed, it penetrates everything.
It is like when the subatomic particles are singing, all matter is enjoying.
Intensity is the only measure of reality
More intense = More real.
Less intense = Less real.
Nothing is only a concept, not an existential reality
Existentially, there is never nothing present.
There is always something.
It is never the case that nothing is happening.
It is always the case that when we say ‘nothing is happening’, it is more like ‘what I want’ is not happening,
Maybe nothing interesting, sensible, useful, meaningful, worthwhile and so on (as you see it).
That should not remove the pure awareness of what is happening.
Never mix pure cognition and judgment.
The same applies to all our senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling) and the mind itself.
There is never nothing happening, always something is going on.
Nothing is only a mental concept, not an existential reality.
Happiness is an elusive paradox
Happiness is like sleep.
I cannot study it,
Because when I am in it,
I am not there.
Some insights on change and free will
Generally, when we think of change,
We think of it in objective/external terms,
Like day-night cycles, season cycles, the rusting of iron, and so on.
So in this context,
We can study these changes, and make prediction models.
Here the subject stays as a relatively stable witness to the changing objects outside.
Changes of this kind are actually fairly superficial in our experience.
The subject is relatively unchanging while the object is changing a lot more.
Like when some people go on a vacation,
They are mostly the same people in different outer situations.
They mostly feel and act the same.
But there is another kind of change,
That is not objective, but subjective,
That is not outside, but inside.
Here, since the very subject changes,
This kind of change is unpredictable and profound,
It feels more like magic.
This kind of change is like when a person takes a medium dose of LSD.
There is a dramatic internal change that changes everything in their experience.
Childhood also is like that,
Where we go through dramatic shifts in our very view of reality itself with every passing year.
I am using the words objective and subjective in a more loose and colloquial sense here.
If I look at it deeper, all objectivity too would collapse into the subjective,
Where only the “Subjective” would exist.
Similarly I could also argue, that every subjective experience could theoretically be determined by objective factors that we still do not yet have the necessary subtle-enough instruments to define, study, and alter.
Objectivity = 3rd person perspective (3rd pp)
Subjectivity = 1st person perspective (1st pp)
All 3rd pp could be said to be subsumed into 1st pp.
I tend to look at all change as change in your state of consciousness (SoC).
Birth and Death are times of great change in consciousness.
Could equate it to sunrise and sunset?
While our Lifetime is more linear and less dramatic?
Could equate lifetime to day-time and after-death to night-time?
After death could be some unfathomable mystery though.
I think what is generally called free-will is the situation where:
We have a relatively unchanging subject in a changing outer world.
So then the subject is able to exert his/her steady will on the changing outer world and build things.
There is much less free will when we are undergoing any transformations of subject.
Here the subject changes relatively much faster than the outer world rhythms.
Transformation times are like kayaking in rapids.
The free will then has to be mostly used in service of the transforming force,
In navigating the rapid change,
So as to keep maintaining order and balance through the changes.
Free will feels like the mirage illusion
Free will feels like the mirage illusion in my experience.
If I don’t pay close attention to it or without close examination,
It feels like it is always there.
But once I really concentrate on it and pay very close attention,
I find that it vanishes.
Then once again, once my mind moves over to other things,
The free will component seems to reappear.
It reminds me of the illusion of solidity we experience.
When looking deeper and deeper into the atom,
We find 99.99% empty space.
But yet on returning to daily life,
We once again experience solidity everywhere.
The 2 variables of environment and control
There are 2 variables: Environment, Control
This could apply to the external (outer-circumstances) or internal (identity) domain.
From the most pleasant to the most unpleasant, I can think of 4 levels:
1. You could have an environment so good, that is not only already pleasant, but more and more pleasantness keeps outpouring/blossoming from it. No control is even needed in this case. Blessings are simply overflowing without any intervention.
2. You could have an environment that is stable and neutral, such that, you can use your effort to get more and more pleasure. This would be the realm of hobbies, passions, explorations, romances, achievements, endeavours, adventures etc.
3. You could have a hostile environment, that is quite unstable, such that it imprisons and enslaves you even to just maintain stability. Here there is constant struggle, using control just to keep things ok.
4. You could have an environment so hostile, and so unstable, that everything around you devolves and worsens, and even the exertion of all your control only slows and makes somewhat bearable this unstoppable fall.
I could call the first 2 levels as heavens and the last 2 levels as hells.
The 1st world, 2nd world ——vs—— The 3rd world, 4th world
Journey to the Abstract 