Concentration is like sugar.
Mixed with anything, it adds pleasantness.
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 blind men and the elephant analogy describes our experience with time
Time = Kala/Darkness/Blankness.
When it comes to time, we live like blind men.
Unable to see beyond the present moment,
Living moment to moment.
Someone whose time is good says life is good,
Someone whose time is bad says life is bad.
Who is right?
Someone who is dying says life is destruction.
Someone who is at a thriving stage says life is constructive.
Who has the correct view of what life is?
This reminds me of the analogy of the blind men and the elephant.
Depending on what they feel,
They create a model of what life is based on that.
We live moment to moment, unable to sense time itself.
With our eyes open we can perceive reasonably large amounts of space.
But when it comes to time, we have no such sense.
The longer we live, the more we use our memory to model what life is like.
But we only base our idea by retrospect.
If time changes in a way that is different from our immediate past,
We cannot know.
There is only the ‘perception flow’
The winds of life,
The way they blow…,
Take you along,
For that kind of ride.
What you are now,
Is the result of past winds,
What you will become,
Is the result of winds that are yet to be.
But all becoming is transient too.
We are ever-transforming,
Becoming and unbecoming various things,
And changing with the winds.
The winds of time,
Give all gain and loss.
Time is the giver and also the taker of everything.
But all that we experience as gain or loss, are only of illusions.
The real is the underlying substrate of everything,
Which is ‘nothing’.
Only ‘nothing’ actually exists,
All else are its appearances and creative potentials manifesting.
Everything will change,
Because all of it is ultimately the dance of ‘nothing’.
There is only the dream,
There is only the ‘perception flow’.
The ‘nothing’ is your true nature.
What makes a seeker
When: Experience > Knowledge = The person becomes a real seeker.
When: Knowledge > Experience = There is no real seeking.
About transformation and the revelation of faith
Faith is revealed in times of uncertainty/lack of control,
When your model of life (formed from your past) does not explain your current experience.
It would also apply when your experience is not stable and consistent, flickering all the time, where the doors and access to perception keeps opening and closing beyond your control (appearing to do so at their own whim).
A person will always judge “transformation” as negative since all judgment is only based on the past.
When there is the nulling of everything you were in the past, how can it be judged as positive in any light?
The only way transformation can be judged positively is by faith.
Transformation: Judging by past (negative) —–vs—— Judging by faith (positive)
What is loved has been lost —-vs—– What is loved has not yet come.
To live itself is to step into the unknown and it is to have faith.
The lowest nadir point in transformation,
Is like the point where the caterpillar has entirely de-structured and become the cocoon.
It is like where one walks alone into the unknown into pitch darkness.
It is here, where all movement happens through faith and faith alone.
Faith is the vehicle that carries you through such dark times,
Where one knows not where one is,
Where one knows not whether what is happening is a blessing or a curse,
Or even how to make any sense of what is happening.
Suicide, Depression, Bitterness, Alienation/Separation/Anti-social feelings, Thoughts of destruction of everything, all show a crisis or a lack of faith.
This faith is actually the force of life itself that moves everything inexorably.
In deeper reality, that is the underlying condition at all times anyway.
When growing or dying or transforming, there is a lot more uncertainty.
At such times there is a lot more of stepping into the unknown,
But also, in a sense, a lot more of change/life.
Life = change/unknown/mystery/spirit.
The vortex of time moves you through various stations.
When things are stable and repetitive, there is a chance to build something of your own.
There is then this transition to feeling like an independent individual capable having personal power.
Here, this underlying movement of faith/life sort of veils itself into a clear knowledge of the world/certainty.
However, the greatest mystery of death still lurks somewhere in the recesses.
Although greatly veiled in a steady structured predictable lifestyle lived in the known,
Death has still been the intrigue for all of mankind for all time.
‘What is before birth’, and ‘what is after death’, are still 2 unknowns.
We find our present self and its condition sandwiched between these 2 unknowns.
We know not where we come from, and we know not where we are going,
But life/god makes itself more or even most visible in times of great change/transformation, removing all apparent refuges/securities, and revealing that this was the only thing that was real and all else was only its appearance.
About time
Time in ‘experience’ is change.
It is a subjective experience.
One could say, there is only psychological time,
Objective/clock/mechanical time is only an inference and not an experience per se.
Time itself has infinite potentials/possibilities,
Because it is a whole dimension.
Any dimension that way is infinite in its nature.
So the determinant of what time is experienced,
Is based on the ‘psyche-lens’ through which the time-dimension is modulated.
This ‘psyche-lens’ I see as different layers of memory and their energetic activations.
In a sense, we are always experiencing eternity at every moment.
Every moment is a combination of …past…present…future…
All 3 are experienced as a single swath/continuum in experience.
They are all completely intertwined and inter-influence each other.
The past memory that is held in mind sets the expectation/imagination for the future.
The present experience influences which past memory is accessed and also the predictions about the future.
A promise from the future can influence your entire present experience and past memories,
And so on.
Fixed self in a changing world or changing self in a fixed world
How do you experience reality?
# Do you feel like a [relatively fixed self] in a [changing world]?
OR
# Do you feel like a [changing self] in a [relatively steady world]?
This relationship between self and world experienced,
Depends on the relativity of rates of change between the 2.
# A more changing world, unchanging self = fixed self in a changing world experience.
# A more changing self, and unchanging world = changing self in a fixed world experience.
Time is the creator, maintainer, and dissoluter of the self.
Time is the ocean, that pushes out the wave of self -> makes the wave ride through -> and reabsorbs the wave back into itself.
This process is however not a single linear chain.
There are multiple overlapping dimensions.
For instance, the biological cycle itself is one of the important dimensions.
There is the process from:
Childhood -> Teens -> Adulthood -> Old age.
So in childhood, the self is growing and changing much faster than the environment around.
Something similar happens in teenage years too, there is a lot of change and growth in other dimensions.
So in both these times, you are relatively changing much faster than the world around you which may appear to be more fixed/steady/cyclic of sort.
In adulthood, once the self is stabilized, there is the maintenance (more or less) steady stage, there might be an experience of:
# Being a fixed self in a fixed world
# Or fixed self in a changing world (if there are catalysts from the environ).
The other dimension I can think of is the astrological sign,
Whether it is: Cardinal, Fixed, Mutable.
# Cardinal signs not only maintain but also build/grow the self further.
They are like the rising wave.
They are equivalent of the Brahma creation principle.
# Fixed signs maintain the self, like the steady wave.
They are the equivalent of the Vishnu maintenance principle.
# Mutable signs are like the returning wave,
Merging back into the ocean.
They are the equivalent of the Shiva dissolver/redeemer principle.
Then there could also be the soul’s age as another dimension,
The larger cycle on which the subtle body rides in time.
From: Infant soul -> Child soul -> Young soul -> Mature soul -> Old soul.
So this is similar to the biological stages in principle but pertaining to the subtle body.
I have outlined 3 dimensions,
But there might be a plethora of such dimensions,
Determining the character of one’s experience.
Doors open, Doors close
When something looks possible/doable to you, that door is open.
When something looks impossible/undoable to you, that door is closed.
Every relation/person is also a door,
That is open or closed to you.
They in-turn open other doors to things,
And/or open doors to other people,
Who then act as doors to more things and people,
And so on…
Doors can open in a cascade, like dominos falling,
And open a whole new vista of experience for you,
And all of it could be from a single door (a person you suddenly made contact with).
The reverse can happen too,
That is, all of your current vast arrays of doors can also start closing up in a rapid cascade.
A bodily problem can do that, it can just shutdown your open doors rapidly in no time.
Similarly a single relation with an difficult person can bring so much destruction,
That most of your doors could close off from that.
A good time in your life is when doors were opening and opening for you,
Keeping fresh enjoyments piling over one another.
A bad time is when doors keep on closing imprisoning you further and further,
Giving you the grief of loss again and again.
Journey to the Abstract 