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.
Sadism and Masochism: Complementary strategies arising from the same root
Both sadism and masochism are based on attacking vulnerabilities.
A sadist is identified with the vulnerability in themselves,
While the masochist is identified with the strength in themselves.
The interesting thing here is that, “identification is always unconsciousness”.
You are unconscious of what you identify with.
So the masochist is unconscious of their strength/power, but sees it projected outside themselves.
While the sadist is unconscious of their weakness/vulnerability, but sees it projected outside themselves.
The masochist thinks, if only I could end all of my weakness, needs, and vulnerability,
Then I could be fully free to be myself (which is strength in this case).
The sadist thinks, if only I could get rid of all the threats in my environment,
If only I could weaken all the stronger people around me who could be potential threats,
Then I can be fully free to be myself (which is vulnerability in this case).
Accordingly, 2 strategies are used by the sadist and masochist to end the threat to their identification.
For the sadist, the strategy is:Â
To preemptively attack the other’s vulnerabilities, or prepare for doing that,
So that the other is prevented or disabled from attacking yours.
It is a combination of weakness inside, strength display outside.
For the masochist, the strategy is:
To preemptively take on oneself the task of attacking one’s own vulnerabilities,
To try to put an end to them and remove all traces of them.
This is a combination of strength inside, weakness display outside.
But the root for both the cases here is:
The idea of “EXPECTING” the same things to happen – i.e. rejection/attack/abuse.
What unites the sadist and masochist is = The deep expectation to be attacked/rejected/abused etc.,
And this is coming from the deep memories of the same inflicted on them from the past.
The responses to these similar kind of memories are complementary because of opposite identifications.
The masochist is identified with strength, and therefore works to remove his vulnerability – in preparation or in reaction.
The sadist is identified with vulnerability, and therefore works to fight all threats off – in preparation or in reaction.
Since this expectation seeks to prove/validate itself again and again,
It seeks/attracts the same circumstances/people to confirm and justify itself again and again.
So it creates a vicious loop that has a strong gravity of its own,
Which keeps these patterns constantly spinning and repeating in one’s experience.
The sadist and masochist both attract each other,
Because each believes the other is helping them towards attaining their aim.
But the full reality of this is weirder.
The sadist can never destroy the strength of others by attacking their vulnerability.
Often it counter-intuitively makes them even stronger and thereby even more threatening.
Similarly, the masochist in one’s attempt to end all vulnerability,
Feels powerless to do so, because it is impossible to fully rid themselves of it.
So acting out the sadistic or masochistic impulses,
Make one feel even more powerless.
Ultimately the root/source of all of these patterns is in the memories of abuse coming from the deep past (even ancestral/lineage/genetic).
Because it is these memories that create the expectancies.
Then these expectations are projected on others,
And thus these patterns play themselves out again and again.
The 4 layers of past
The shaft of time can be divided into 4 parts.
Traversing from the big bang, origin of this universe through:
# The inanimate forms
# Different life forms
# Human life forms
# This life until present age
The memory of all of this is present now and recorded at some level in the field of consciousness (present within one).
So there is an imprint/record of the entire history of the universe from its origin to the present date within each one.
This further expands upon the concept of past lives because generally we think of past lives only in the human form or at most we extend it to certain animals.
The big bang and the black holes are entry and exit points of space into time.
The explosive emergence of the manifest existence —–and—– The return of getting vacuumed out of manifest existence.
Or I could word it as:
Big Bangs and Black holes are the births and deaths.
They stand at the interface guardians between the physical and non-physical.
The knowledge of death completely rewires you
Death is thought of as an event that happens in the far future.
Nobody even thinks about it, unless there is a real reason to.
Seeing death as an event, is from ignorance (maybe purposeful).
Death is not an event that suddenly happens in the far future.
Death as an experience is continually happening.
“Death is not an event, but death IS, just as life IS”
(borrowed from Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev).
One never steps in the same river twice.
Life experience is constantly transforming.
Knowledge of death or mortality is really knowledge of impermanence.
It is the truth of the statement: “This too shall pass”.
The nature of life is aliveness and change.
Life = spirit = novelty = miracle = change = aliveness = unknown = mystery.
Death is the knowledge of unbecoming that follows becoming.
Like the outbreath follows the inbreath.
So imagine breathing in more and more without letting out anything.
Eventually at one point, the tension will become so great,
You will just drop and let go of everything.
The nature of life is like the Breath.
We enter this planet, take on a body, project all of our emotions here.
We get deeply involved, and then later leave everything behind, and exit.
The cycle of [incarnation – death] like [inbreath – outbreath].
The knowledge of death is what breaks the spell of ordinary egoic life.
It is the great disillusionment.
It casts its shadow on all desires/dreams/plans.
The thought that comes is:
“What is the use of doing anything? OR becoming anything?
If it is all going to end in dust?
Why should I bother to fight for my survival and thrive?
If I am just going to be cheated and mocked in the end by death?”
This may create an existential crisis/dark night of soul/depression.
When the knowledge of death enters your vision.
If one allows this process to fully pass through,
They emerge on the other side transformed.
It is like how you digest food and get energy later,
The knowledge of death digests “you” and liberates you,
And you emerge as a phoenix from the ashes.
For the phoenix, life is lived in the “now/present”
The past is seen as present only, i.e. the past incarnating in the present.
The future is seen as imagination done in the present.
The phoenix lives with identification grounded in “formless life/aliveness” itself.
All else is seen as the play of life, “as form” and “with form”
Nobody even thinks about it, unless there is a real reason to.
Seeing death as an event, is from ignorance (maybe purposeful).
Death is not an event that suddenly happens in the far future.
Death as an experience is continually happening.
“Death is not an event, but death IS, just as life IS”
(borrowed from Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev).
One never steps in the same river twice.
Life experience is constantly transforming.
Knowledge of death or mortality is really knowledge of impermanence.
It is the truth of the statement: “This too shall pass”.
The nature of life is aliveness and change.
Life = spirit = novelty = miracle = change = aliveness = unknown = mystery.
Death is the knowledge of unbecoming that follows becoming.
Like the outbreath follows the inbreath.
So imagine breathing in more and more without letting out anything.
Eventually at one point, the tension will become so great,
You will just drop and let go of everything.
The nature of life is like the Breath.
We enter this planet, take on a body, project all of our emotions here.
We get deeply involved, and then later leave everything behind, and exit.
The cycle of [incarnation – death] like [inbreath – outbreath].
The knowledge of death is what breaks the spell of ordinary egoic life.
It is the great disillusionment.
It casts its shadow on all desires/dreams/plans.
The thought that comes is:
“What is the use of doing anything? OR becoming anything?
If it is all going to end in dust?
Why should I bother to fight for my survival and thrive?
If I am just going to be cheated and mocked in the end by death?”
This may create an existential crisis/dark night of soul/depression.
When the knowledge of death enters your vision.
If one allows this process to fully pass through,
They emerge on the other side transformed.
It is like how you digest food and get energy later,
The knowledge of death digests “you” and liberates you,
And you emerge as a phoenix from the ashes.
For the phoenix, life is lived in the “now/present”
The past is seen as present only, i.e. the past incarnating in the present.
The future is seen as imagination done in the present.
The phoenix lives with identification grounded in “formless life/aliveness” itself.
All else is seen as the play of life, “as form” and “with form”
Depression and Anxiety are 2 sides of the same coin
My depression is of “the pain” of the past.
My anxiety is of “the expected pain” of the future.
They are both like 2 sides of the same coin.
Memory and Imagination work with each other, and go together
Depression is from memory.
Anxiety is from imagination.
Anxiety is from fear.
Depression is from pain.
Pain comes from memory.
Fear comes from imagination.
1. Anxiety is the fear of the possibility of “inevitable pain that will come from the past conditioning the future (that belief is the depression)”.
Anxiety is the fear that “the past is doomed to repeat (that belief is the depression)”.
2. Anxiety is the fear that “the future too will get poisoned by the past (that belief is the depression)”.
3. Anxiety is the fear that “the desires will never get fulfilled (that belief is the depression)”.
Anxiety is the reactivity to depression.
You see how intertwined and connected both of these are!
Now I mentioned 3 primary beliefs creating the weight of depression:
1. The past is doomed to repeat.
2. The future too will get poisoned by the past.
3. My desires will never get fulfilled.
Now, no experience can happen without there being some degree of truth to it.
The 3 points mentioned above are not just beliefs.
They also have some truth in it.
If there were no truth in the above 3 points, depression cannot exist at all.
They are not the whole truth but a good part of the truth.
In the sense:
1. Pain does exist.
2. Conditioning does perpetuate. There is definitely a drag.
3. Unrealistic desires do never actualize.
The truth is both: Pain and Possibility.
So depression happens when only one side of the truth is seen.
When one is submerged in the pain dimension.
It is a dissociation from possibility.
Similarly, overly unrealistically magical positive people may see only one side of the truth.
They dissociate from pain, and see possibilities that are all ungrounded.
Overly positive people (unrealistic positivity) live like ungrounded dissociated ghosts = live in strong rajas
Overly depressed people are inert like rocks = like in strong tamas
When rajas runs out, it falls into tamas.
There are so many interconnections.
Often a depressed person has at one time been overly positive magical and ambitious.
Since he has dissociated from the pain dimension, the pain part keeps building up, and finally breaks the threshold and forces its way into his awareness as pain.
Now the strength of his depression depends on how separated he was from his pain, and how far high up in the sky he flew.
Greater the height of flight, greater is the fall, and more painful is the fall, i.e. when gravity catches up and hurls him to the ground.
This impact may shatter the bird, and damage the power of possibility for that person.
This personal power then gets critically injured.
This extreme positivity, flight of fancy, wild imagination AND pain/depression are highly connected.
Greater the ignoring of the ground and gravity, harder is the fall.
Often the very depressed person, when given a drug that dissociates from pain (any pain killer aka. endorphin, opiate action), will cause him to fly away as high as he possibly can.
It is reactive.
But then the drug wears off, and once again there is a hard fall to the ground and its gravity pulling you back.
This then causes the cycle of addiction, and the cycle of pendulum like oscillation between the extremes.
Each extreme potentiates the other.
When crippled on the ground, the desire to fly is so intense.
When in the highest of flights, the fear of the ground is so great.
So there is a internal war,
A split in the psyche.
Between what is called “hard/sober reality” vs. “wild/flight/imagination”.
Until the person reconciles these 2 dualities,
The depression-elation alternation keeps playing out intensely.
Another paradox of depression is that,
Depressed people are often hyper ambitious with crazy and extreme ideals.
Depression is ultimately relative.
Only if you have a very strong desire for reality to be other than what it is, can you even be depressed at all.
Depression is from identification with the part of the psyche that wants to flee from itself.
This is often due to shame of being oneself (programmed in early childhood).
So it feels encumbered, burdened, and constantly weighed down and restricted by the part that is manifest.
Another clarification is needed.
When I speak about pain and possibility, pain is related to non-acceptance.
When fully accepted and owned, pain ceases to be pain.
Pain is pain only because of resistance.
So when pain is accepted, that is the end of pain.
Because the person hates themselves, their self causes pain.
If they completely own and accept themselves, there would be no pain.
So this again shows how interconnected and relative these terms are.
In the duality between: samsara —-and—– nirvana (note the smaller case alphabet),
Depression is from an attachment to the nirvanic side of life.
So the craving for nirvana, makes samsara depressing.
But real “NIRVANA” transcends both.
As long as you are attached to any one polarity, the other pole will keep restraining you, creating a constant tug of war in the psyche.
And it is also ignorance of the truth that the 2 poles go together, and one cannot be had without the other.
If you try to attach to samsara, an uneasy longing to break free will distress you.
If you try to attach to nirvana, then the pain of ‘samsara/cyclic existence’ will keep dragging you down.
My anxiety is of “the expected pain” of the future.
They are both like 2 sides of the same coin.
Memory and Imagination work with each other, and go together
Depression is from memory.
Anxiety is from imagination.
Anxiety is from fear.
Depression is from pain.
Pain comes from memory.
Fear comes from imagination.
1. Anxiety is the fear of the possibility of “inevitable pain that will come from the past conditioning the future (that belief is the depression)”.
Anxiety is the fear that “the past is doomed to repeat (that belief is the depression)”.
2. Anxiety is the fear that “the future too will get poisoned by the past (that belief is the depression)”.
3. Anxiety is the fear that “the desires will never get fulfilled (that belief is the depression)”.
Anxiety is the reactivity to depression.
You see how intertwined and connected both of these are!
Now I mentioned 3 primary beliefs creating the weight of depression:
1. The past is doomed to repeat.
2. The future too will get poisoned by the past.
3. My desires will never get fulfilled.
Now, no experience can happen without there being some degree of truth to it.
The 3 points mentioned above are not just beliefs.
They also have some truth in it.
If there were no truth in the above 3 points, depression cannot exist at all.
They are not the whole truth but a good part of the truth.
In the sense:
1. Pain does exist.
2. Conditioning does perpetuate. There is definitely a drag.
3. Unrealistic desires do never actualize.
The truth is both: Pain and Possibility.
So depression happens when only one side of the truth is seen.
When one is submerged in the pain dimension.
It is a dissociation from possibility.
Similarly, overly unrealistically magical positive people may see only one side of the truth.
They dissociate from pain, and see possibilities that are all ungrounded.
Overly positive people (unrealistic positivity) live like ungrounded dissociated ghosts = live in strong rajas
Overly depressed people are inert like rocks = like in strong tamas
When rajas runs out, it falls into tamas.
There are so many interconnections.
Often a depressed person has at one time been overly positive magical and ambitious.
Since he has dissociated from the pain dimension, the pain part keeps building up, and finally breaks the threshold and forces its way into his awareness as pain.
Now the strength of his depression depends on how separated he was from his pain, and how far high up in the sky he flew.
Greater the height of flight, greater is the fall, and more painful is the fall, i.e. when gravity catches up and hurls him to the ground.
This impact may shatter the bird, and damage the power of possibility for that person.
This personal power then gets critically injured.
This extreme positivity, flight of fancy, wild imagination AND pain/depression are highly connected.
Greater the ignoring of the ground and gravity, harder is the fall.
Often the very depressed person, when given a drug that dissociates from pain (any pain killer aka. endorphin, opiate action), will cause him to fly away as high as he possibly can.
It is reactive.
But then the drug wears off, and once again there is a hard fall to the ground and its gravity pulling you back.
This then causes the cycle of addiction, and the cycle of pendulum like oscillation between the extremes.
Each extreme potentiates the other.
When crippled on the ground, the desire to fly is so intense.
When in the highest of flights, the fear of the ground is so great.
So there is a internal war,
A split in the psyche.
Between what is called “hard/sober reality” vs. “wild/flight/imagination”.
Until the person reconciles these 2 dualities,
The depression-elation alternation keeps playing out intensely.
Another paradox of depression is that,
Depressed people are often hyper ambitious with crazy and extreme ideals.
Depression is ultimately relative.
Only if you have a very strong desire for reality to be other than what it is, can you even be depressed at all.
Depression is from identification with the part of the psyche that wants to flee from itself.
This is often due to shame of being oneself (programmed in early childhood).
So it feels encumbered, burdened, and constantly weighed down and restricted by the part that is manifest.
Another clarification is needed.
When I speak about pain and possibility, pain is related to non-acceptance.
When fully accepted and owned, pain ceases to be pain.
Pain is pain only because of resistance.
So when pain is accepted, that is the end of pain.
Because the person hates themselves, their self causes pain.
If they completely own and accept themselves, there would be no pain.
So this again shows how interconnected and relative these terms are.
In the duality between: samsara —-and—– nirvana (note the smaller case alphabet),
Depression is from an attachment to the nirvanic side of life.
So the craving for nirvana, makes samsara depressing.
But real “NIRVANA” transcends both.
As long as you are attached to any one polarity, the other pole will keep restraining you, creating a constant tug of war in the psyche.
And it is also ignorance of the truth that the 2 poles go together, and one cannot be had without the other.
If you try to attach to samsara, an uneasy longing to break free will distress you.
If you try to attach to nirvana, then the pain of ‘samsara/cyclic existence’ will keep dragging you down.
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.
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.
Journey to the Abstract 