Tag: Existence

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The concept of negative vision

There was a story I heard Sadhguru narrate, and that played a great role in helping me reach this insight.
The story goes like this:
There was once a man who was a painter.
He acquired some disease from which his vision started slowly deteriorating.
His friend asked him, “What will you do if your vision gets too bad to paint anymore?”
The painter answered, “I will continue to paint until I can see.
If my eye sight gets too bad, then hmm, I will become an art critic.”

This story is hilarious and has a lot of irony.
But it also contains profound wisdom in it.

Positive vision = Presence of presence
Negative vision = Presence of absence
Then the question would be: How can there be ‘presence of absence’ at all?
The answer to that would be: Right! Absence cannot exist.
Presence of absence is the absence of the presence of something else.
That is ‘negative vision’.

The algorithm is:
It is like if I present a variable X, to you.
You see it as “not A”, “not B”, “not C”, and so on.

Like if I show you a laptop:
With negative vision, you would see it as, not a desktop, not a tablet, not a TV, and so on.
But that would preclude you from seeing the laptop as it really is.
Another example would be, if I show you a pink bottle, the positive vision person would really experience the pink bottle as pink (as it is).
But the negative vision person would look at it and say, this is not blue, not red, not green, and so on.

Positive vision is to see how “‘this’ is ‘this'”.
Negative vision is to see how “‘this’ is ‘not that'”.
The ‘that’ here is a holding on to an ideal or structure from memory like a ghost image in your perception and then using that to not only obscure what really is, but it also actively resists what is.
Negative vision is a disease, because it is dis-ease, you resist what actually is, with what you are holding on to from your memory which imposes itself like a ghost image in your perception and creates the resistance.
You hold on to this memory ghost, impose it and obscure ‘what actually is’, and also actively resist ‘what actually is’ in the process.

This concept that I explained above, has DEEP PROFOUND implications in illuminating this in-articulatable disease we carry in our lives.
My own life is replete with zillions of examples, where I have seen things with negative vision.
How many times, have you perceived/experienced/seen your surroundings/yourself /others with negative vision?
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Control and Freedom are opposites

Control and Freedom are the opposites of each other.
The spectrum:
Control (holding on to control & having the need to control) ————- Freedom (letting go of control & not having the need to control)
To let something free is to relinquish control over it.
You let it return to its “natural” state, without your interference/intervention/action/effort.

Every controlled action cannot be sustained indefinitely.
Consequently, when it is dropped, the result swings to its opposite.
All opposites inevitably swing between each other:
# Extreme pursuit/seeking ——-vs——- Extreme retreat
# Extreme outgoingness ——vs——- Extreme withdrawal
# Extreme activity ——-vs——– Extreme tiredness
Like a spring:
# If you pull the ends of the spring, it contracts when you release it.
# If you shrink the ends of the spring, it expands when you release it.
Essentially:
# Extreme Rajas (activity) ——vs—— Extreme tamas (inertia)
Activity and Inertia follow each other.
The “middle or 0 point” of these poles is not a location or a quantity but a DOORWAY.
Now, I must speak more about what I mean by “middle or 0 point” here.
The “middle or 0 point” is not in the same “plane” or “number line” as the 2 poles are in.
0 or the middle is not a quantitative thing here, rather it is representative of the doorway/portal/wormhole to the next dimension itself.
Passing through this doorway = transcends both the poles and opens you up to the higher dimension.
A more 3d analogy of this would be a whirlpool.
The dualities spiral around each other and lead into the doorway/wormhole that acts as a portal to the next dimension.
This permeation/dissolving of you into the higher dimension by the relinquishing of control/effort (which happens naturally in time once you experience and acquire true understanding) is true freedom.

That is why controlling any one aspect of life will never lead to transcendence but rather it will only lead to a swing in the opposite direction when your will power runs out.
You can allow this process to happen fast by moving with the intensity of a hare and lose will power much faster, or you can walk like a tortoise and exhaust your will-power supply after an eon.
Once that happens, your state will swing to its opposite pole, and the attainment will be lost until the next cycle begins.
Just like how, if you work very hard one day, you will feel very sleepy that night and fall into oblivion for a while.

When control is relinquished, things return to their higher harmonic state.
This is because when you step away, all the winds and tides within existence move you into a path, that is very different from what you thought.
Your karmic equation changes, and you become karma-less in this plane of existence.
And the paradox here is that, you cannot relinquish control by controlling.
It happens as a consequence of true understanding/gnosis/contemplation/inquiry/insight/assimilation/digestion.
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Core beliefs and the 4 responses

Core beliefs:
# Is the world real and am I unreal? = Fawn response
# Am I real? and is the world unreal? = Fight response
# Are both me and the world unreal? and only something beyond is real? = Freeze response
# Are the world and me real, everything beyond that is unreal ? = Flight response
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Relationship between knowledge and experience

When, Knowledge > Experience:
The person may tend towards: arrogance, domination, control, imposition of will, conquest, achievement, ambition, demonstration of power.
The negative extreme of this case is “TYRANNY”.
The positive extreme of this case is a “MASTER”.
It is a case where conditioning + acquired knowledge > perception.
This is a stage of judgment, action, and works.
So then the result would be positive or negative depending on the conditioning.
Like most people in society will help a man who has slipped and fallen to stand up.
This is not necessarily because of true perception, but it is the general enculturation internalized knowledge that makes people act that way.

When, Experience > Knowledge:
The person becomes a seeker of knowledge and truth.
The negative extreme of this case is “PSYCHOSIS”.
The positive extreme of this case is a “SAINT/MYSTIC”.
It is the state of the child who learns by context, immersion, intensity, involvement, perfusion.
It is the state of a devotee and contemplation.
Contemplation on questions to ponder and wonder on.
Such a person is open, curious, innocent, and impressionable.
The seeking continues until the necessary awakening happens i.e. until the flowering of higher knowledge/wisdom/intelligence happens.
This is the stage of growth, development, and becoming.

This distinction is not about what is ‘better or worse’ or ‘good or bad’.
Rather, this comparison was only to illuminate the 2 aspects of the flux of existence.
Everyone passes through both these stages of evolution.
We know and do, then we see we don’t know and learn, then again we know and do, and so on.
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Living through the death process

dead_trees

WARNING: This is a somewhat serious and heavy post.
For the readers not interested in the topic of death, this can be skipped.

I am losing control.
I am losing my will-power.
I am dying, fading, receding, dissolving, falling into the ground,
Into a subconscious in-between state.
The state in-between:
# waking and sleep
# waking and dreaming
# life and death
# birth and death
# consciousness and unconsciousness

I am like a dying tree,
Who is in the hands of all of nature’s elements.
I cannot weather the elemental forces anymore.
I submit to them.
I submit to their destruction of me.
The wind blows off my leaves and branches.
Animals eats off whatever they want from me.
Insects feast on me from the outside.
Microorganisms eat me from within.
I am decomposing and falling into the ground of filth,
From where I sprang forth.
It is as if god has given permission to everything in nature to finish me off.
I stand back within this apocalypse and witness tides and tides of destruction, loss, and grief.
The loss of everything I have known.
The loss and destruction continuously happens.
The only function “I” perform with my will, is opening the valve just enough so that it is bearable.
Every-time I open the valve, more of my self is torched in the flame.
Facing death consciously is like facing endless loss and grief.
I know that death is be allowed.
But I am compassionate to the me that is dying,
As every identification is being decomposed, rotted, and reabsorbed.
The process is as pretty as witnessing a vegetable rot in time lapse.
Every death of every part, fills my space with its smoke of grief.
But I only get short breaks, before the next series of deaths start.

My “senses” are going weak.
I can sense/feel/perceive anything only with a lot of strain.
I have to expend a lot of effort to crystallize a momentary perception.
And if I keep doing that, then I will be sent back into a stupor from exhaustion.
My will has become so weak and feeble,
I have to let 95% of things just happen.
I can no longer control my thought and emotion.
I have lost the unity of body mind spirit.
Now they are all fragmented.
It is a descent into chaos like what happens to a kingdom when the king falls.
The various fragments pull and push at each other and scream at the death process, which pulls off their life supports and they all struggle to survive until they fade away.

My mind reacts to the dissolution with painful dreadful suffering visions and agonies,
Which immediately affect the body too with an assortment of painful hormones.
Death is something that is done to you, I am not doing anything.
In fact with the structural dissolution, my power to do decreases more and more.
All I can do with the me that is left is let it happen or resist it.
And resisting it only gives me short breaks.
The flood of the death process, cannot be dammed away for too long.
My motto is: To bear it and allow it as much as possible,
With minimum-damage and suffering, which is the only priority.
The challenge is to go through it with as much grace as you can muster.

Every structure resists death, every structure wants to live.
And so every dissolution of every structure suffers onto its own demise.
Birth and death are suffering.
The growing pains and the dying pains.
Creation is painful and destruction is painful.
There is no escape from pain and resistance.
There is a fundamental duality of:
Statis(inertia, death) ——- Movement(life)
So because the whole of existence/experience is a play of opposing forces,
Resistance as an experience is going to be felt no matter what.
If you sit still, your life force will push on you.
If you move, your inertia will drag on you.
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Death and Life are both NOW

When we speak of death, or think about it,
That is death as a thought/concept.
The concept of death is always connected to time.
It is a thought about the future, usually the far future.
“What will happen to me after I die, maybe 40 years or 60 years later?”
“How will I die? What will be my state at that time?
“What will I be feeling at that time?”
“Who will be beside me at that time?”
“What place will I be in (a hospital, my bedroom…)?”
All of that is death as a thought.

Fear of death happens when death is thought about.
The more imaginative a person is, the stronger he will feel it.
Because of the extent of deep extrapolation and conception he can do.
A powerful imagination superimposes itself over the base reality overloading it with “context/meaning/memory/past-future/likely possibilities”.
And then the body reacts to whatever picture that presents.

Death as a reality however is always NOW.
You face death now, You face life now.
Every moment is changing.
If you see what was lost(negative existence), you see death.
If you see what was gained(positive existence), you see life.
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Loneliness is the thirst for connection/relationship

Loneliness is a kind of thirst.
A thirst for what? A thirst for relationship/connection.
Thirst for ‘BEING’.
It is the thirst to BE.
BE what? Just to be anything, something…
OR a thirst to be more than what you are.
To ‘relate/connect’ is the same as the ‘Will to BE’.
Greater the ‘Will to BE’ = Greater is this thirst to relate/connect.
It is possible to BE anything only through relationship.
You are a some-body only in relation to other-bodies.
You are a personality only in relation to other personalities.
The self and other are emergent phenomena that are mutually interdependent on relationship.
The other does not have to be a person, it could even be ANY EXPERIENCE including abstract ideas, philosophies, inanimate objects etc.
Remove the relationship, and both the self and other vanish together.
The game gets disbanded, and identity is dissolved with it.
For example: In the movie ‘Cast Away’, Tom Hanks draws a face on a football and keeps talking to it to maintain his identity. If he did not do that, in the absence of all human contact, his humanness ITSELF would fade away (from the disappearance of ‘relationship’)

A ‘Relationship’ is the ‘AXIS’ that creates the respective players on both the sides.
Be it:
To love ——— To be loved [Axis]
To desire ——- To be desired [Axis]
To need ——— To be needed [Axis]
A relationship axis creates polarity, the 2 poles.
The poles are not fixed but can switch too.
A relationship is alive too, it is a dynamic, an alive dance.

We derive profound meaning from each other.
A profound dance transpires in every interaction.
The deeper we understand this, the more it brings out the depth.
Ultimately it is life interacting with itself.
That which is alive in me interacts with that which is alive in you.
I create myself through relationship with you, you create yourself through relationship with me.
Even what we call we call as negative relationship which includes seeing oneself as rejectible, contemptible, unlikeable, unlovable, unworthy, unfit, uninteresting, unimportant, unwanted, undeserving etc. is also a [REAL TANGIBLE INTERNALIZED NEGATIVE RELATIONSHIP IMAGE].
It is not non-relationship, because non-relationship would simply remove everything.

The loneliness is the helplessness of being unable to let go of this [internalized negative relationship image], and being unable to let go of identification with that.
That gets frozen inside us, and keeps getting reinforced in every interaction.
We ignore the interactions where that is not affirmed, and emphasize the interactions where it gets affirmed, and it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
All identity works on this internalized bias, isn’t it? (whether positive or negative)
What would you be without that identity?
Isn’t that thought more terrifying than simply holding on to the known identity?
So it is like being caught between the devil and sea.
We hold on to the known devil, than let go into the unknown sea.
Unfortunately, this is trans-rational, there is no rational explanation that can truly convince you to let go into the sea.
The negative relationship identification eventually fades and wears itself out, plays itself out, and a new era is gently ushered.
We can help this process by accepting and fully experiencing everything.
We transcend this by FULLY EXPERIENCING the negative relationship imprint itself.
Feel your deepest loneliness fully with as much as you can muster, with the attitude of dropping into it, and giving in/allowing.
When fully experienced, when you feel it with your whole being and apply your whole mind and soul to it, even the loneliness will look sublime, and you will see it for what it truly is – a phenomenon.
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Illusion and Madness are relative

What is reality? What is sanity?
What is illusion? What is madness?
The cultural/social/political/consensus way of seeing/interpreting existence forms the core of [REALITY and SANITY].
The most solid/enduring/unchanging formation (relatively speaking).
To diverge from this [consensus state of consciousness] and explore other states of consciousness is referred to as exploring [ILLUSIONS].
Illusions are by definition more fleeting because they are not reinforced and commonly held by the collective.
When this feedback mechanism stops, reality becomes illusion.
The sensory world gives the most consistent and enduring feedback and it is shared by all other sensory creatures. So we feel comfortable to call that the REAL WORLD.
Like you have a dream at night.
It is considered to be the most illusory thing because it is not validated/shared by ANYBODY around you and neither is that validated by the sensory input that kicks in the minute you are awake.
So it seems to me that [ILLUSION/MADNESS] represents reality that is [NOT SHARED], while [REALITY/SANITY] represents reality that is [SHARED].
Like if you imagine a BELL CURVE, anything at the ends of the bell curve slides into ILLUSION/MADNESS, while the CENTER of the BELL CURVE represents the CORE of SANITY/REALITY.

Another way to look at this from the personal level is to look at your own personal conditioning.
When you are in a state of mind that is fully in alignment with your DEFAULT MODE OF EXPERIENCE (CONDITIONED BY YOUR CONDITIONING) – you say you are SOBER/SANE/REAL.
Whereas, when you are in a state of mind that is very different from your usual mode/structure of perceiving existence – you say you are in an ALTERED STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS/IN ILLUSION OR FANTASY.
Like say, to feel HUMAN (the experience of being human in a body) is normal/ordinary/sane/real.
Now, how will you interpret an out of body experience, say you feel like a bird and you are flying? Is it real? Is it an illusion?

To me, this question of real or illusion is more related to SOLIDITY than its PURE REALITY.
It also ties to the question:
What is more real? the visible or the invisible?
OR What is more real? – SOLID? OR LIQUID? OR GAS?
OR What is more real? – PHYSICAL BODY? OR HEART? OR MIND/IMAGINATION?
Suppose I release a bunch of smoke and it looks forms a figure.
Would that be less real, than if I showed you the same figure made in stone? or sand?
Usually what I notice is that – the reality of something is associated with its ENDURING-NESS and SOLIDITY.
What is fleeting, relatively unformed/fuzzy/wispy, is referred to as illusion.

In summary, what others call reality and illusion, I see it as:
PERSISTENT ILLUSION(Reality) ———-vs———- FLEETING ILLUSIONS (Illusion)
This is if I consider everything to be an illusion of different degrees.
OR I can also put it as:
PERSISTENT REALITY ———-vs———– FLEETING REALITY
UNCHANGING REALITY ———-vs———– CHANGING REALITY
This is if I consider everything to be reality in different degrees of enduring-ness.
This kind of breaks the duality between illusion and reality.
Illusion is real and reality is illusion.
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Reality as a platform for the play of duality

Let’s revisit the various forces at play.
Reality is the platform that supports all of the below force spectrums.
Like imagine each of the spectrums below to be columns in a spectrum analyzer (like the one in your stereo system).
It is in this platform that the music of reality plays.

Supporting forces ————— Opposing forces
Loving forces ——————- Hating forces
Enhancing forces —————- Thwarting forces
Constructive forces ————- Destructive/Scattering forces
Inspiring forces —————– Depressing forces
Pleasurable forces ————— Painful forces
Life forces(with memories of death) ———————— Death forces (with memories of life)
Creative forces —————- Destructive forces
Other serving forces ———– Self-serving forces
Truth telling forces ———– Deception spreading forces
Eros forces ——————– Death drive forces
Forces the synthesize/stitch ———— Forces that analyze/separate
Forces of transcendence —————– Forces of the world
White suns —————————— Black holes
Memory creating forces ———- Memory forgetting forces
Light shining forces ———— Light absorbing forces
Healing forces——————- Disease creating forces
Anti-entropy forces ————- Entropy forces
Forces of becoming ————– Forces of unbecoming
Forces of doing —————– Forces of undoing
Forces the fill you ————- Forces the empty you
Harmonizing forces ————– Disharmony forces
Ordering forces —————– Disordering forces
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Chronic anger develops from Chronic violation

emergence

Say you are a child.
And your parents were over-controlling, over-protective, over-bearing, over-intrusive, dominating, smothering, suffocating, over-powering, and infringed on you in EVERY POSSIBLE WAY.
Say they imposed tyranny on you, threatened you in all sorts of ways (psychological, mental, physical), played all sorts of emotionally debilitating games, and constantly used guilting and shaming to get you to comply.
Let’s say, whenever you raised resistance they decried it, minimized it, laughed at it, brushed it away, denied it, gas-lighted it (mind-gaming, perception-blaming), performed circular arguments, somehow twisted the blame back to you, guilted you for even raising resistance, mind-gamed you into thinking it was unreasonable and actually your fault, and so on.
Imagine, this was taken a level even further and you were physically beaten into submission as brutally as possible, until you were filled with nothing but fear and terror.
Supposing they opposed your every attempt to individuate yourself or separate yourself from them, and thwarted every such effort on your part.
Say, they always wanted you to be their slave(but they would never admit this), and fit their image, and be exactly the way they want you to be (a clone of them or living up to their ideal/role/expectation), and always be under their control.
Now, let’s add to the suffering. Supposing you had a sibling whose only mission in life was to compete with you and actively and violently suppress all of your expression and minimize everything that you can possibly do.
Would this not be an EXTRAORDINARY hostile environment for you to grow up in?
Would not your life purpose become just about emerging from all these hostile forces and gain the most basic of freedom and liberty?

When a child is faced with this sort of debilitating, imprisoning, torturous, blind, abusive, crippling, stifling, controlling, maddening, and disabling environment, he shrinks in terror and seals oneself off from relationship (killing off the possibility of love).
In this heart of darkness (like a dark prison cell with a window), the child looks out at the world from the grilled window.
This dark cell the child creates is the protective cover of the heart against this level of assault and it permanently seals off many many possibilities of relationship with the world.
The dark cell always serves as a reminder and houses all the traumatic memory in its very walls.
Every time these situations were faced, tremendous rage and anger was aroused, as a protective system against the assault, but no amount of rage could do anything to stop it.
The child is absolutely powerless and helpless no matter HOW HARD he tries.
This sends him into a deep despair.
Should he fight to live? OR should he dissociate and just let himself die?
If the former option is chosen:
A super high degree of rage becomes the default mode of being because there is always a background of infinite threat against which one has to defend and fight.
An “extreme fear and defense/attack” disposition becomes the default against an infinitely threatening environment and others.
Life itself is then perceived as an ‘extremely hostile other’ that is out to destroy the child against which the child is woefully under-powered to fight.
This takes on archetypal/mythical levels of reality penetration, and thereafter the child will live his whole life in background FEAR AND TERROR – and live in a state of being ever-ready to violently fight at the most primitive levels.
The default mode of perception is of SUPERLATIVE THREAT and SUPERLATIVE DEFENSE.
The ATTACK is nothing but Pre-emptive defense.
Defense is the first goal and attack is from the hope of destroying the threat so that one can do away with the NEED AND PREOCCUPATION AND FEAR about defending.
This leads to compulsive power seeking which can take on multifarious forms such as – physical domination, emotional domination, intellectual domination, social power and status seeking, and so on.
If the latter option of death is chosen:
It could also take on the reverse side of seeking to submit/surrender/give up/self-abnegate/die because that also ends the conflict.
Both the choices of:
Extreme fight ——————- Extreme surrender
They both look like opposites, but the unity in them is that, both endeavor to END conflict, and “suffering” is always from conflict.
The child may alternate too between the 2 options:
Rage at one time —————– Feel depressed and empty at another
Ultimately, the more the child deeply sees and looks into the matter, a lot of dross falls away, and it leads to singular truth seeking.
What is the truth of existence? Why is it so hostile to me? Am I guilty of something? How am I to ever emerge from this hellish circumstance? How can I heal this? Should I fight to live or just resign and die?
This kind of metaphysical preoccupation plagues the child’s mind.
He can never invest in anything like ordinary people do, because his heart carries all the frightening memories of evil that keep voiding all investments apart from temporary reprieves.
This may also take on a morbid obsession and a PTSD like repeating of the torturous memory like a constant repeating playback in the mind, in an attempt to somehow assimilate the experience memories.
Or the child when grown up may keep having a tendency to gravitate towards those very same super hostile circumstances, in an attempt to go beyond them.
He may obsessively seek self-improvement, self-empowering, or self-transcendence.

In this situation, I see no way out apart from taking apart that dark prison cell of the heart brick by brick, and developing more and more courage to see/accept/transcend what’s behind each brick.
That is the singular life purpose for such a child.