Tag: Psychology

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The sufferings of Rahu Mahadasha (12th house)

This is from my own experience,
Of going through this for the past 7 years.
But I have written this post from the ‘2nd person point of view’.
This post might give some solace,
To all of those going through similar experiences.
I have observed that describing things clearly,
Takes a lot of weight off them.

Actual post:
I have noticed in the Rahu Mahadasha (12th house),
Numerous problems related to senses/nerves/body/pain/brain(mind) appear,
But all of them are unsolvable.
They come and go as they please, outside of your control.
You are only a spectator to all those events.
And if you research, you will get deep into rabbit holes,
Getting totally mired in swamps,
And deep complex pits of despair with nothing working.

The medical industry will drive you crazy into their hopeless universes,
Of terrifying conditions/issues/problems/diseases/syndromes/disorders.
The experience is just off feeling: Confused/Distraught/Terrorized/Despaired/Panicky.
Hopelessness/Futility/Desperation/Obsessiveness/Exasperation are the smells in the air.
You feel more and more inadequate and powerless as you keep researching.
But you can’t stop and you go down the rabbit holes more and more,
But nothing works, everything keeps on failing and confusing you.

Like existence has a conspiracy against you,
Where you helplessly flounder, flail, struggle, to no avail.
You feel assaulted/persecuted/victimized/targeted/oppressed.
All the pure sufferings of the mind.
Since the mind is what creates reasons, this is even beyond reason.
The mysterious moods/feelings/struggles just keep on coming,
And they constantly shape shift,
And escape all your attempts to research and pin down.
They come and go as they please, with you having no control.
You feel utterly humiliated, powerless, meaningless, control-less, and destroyed within.

The sufferings just keep playing out, everyday a new one.
It’s like falling through a valley of shadows, sorrows, miseries, and suffering.
All of it is suffered mostly in silence.
It would not help even if you spoke about it,
Because people would just avoid you like plague anyway.
It is the peak of psycho-somatic troubles.
The mind-body feel so merged, it is not possible to differentiate,
As to what is physiological and what is psychological.
It all assaults you together in ways you simply cannot get a hold over.

It borders on you feeling mad almost,
Because nothing of this world and its methods gives you any idea.
You are carried/dragged helplessly through a storm in the pitch dark night.
Not knowing where you are going or if your actions matter at all.
Nevertheless you can’t help putting a strong front,
And all of your intelligence and might,
To research and research, and figure some way out.

The thoughts that come to you are:
‘I wonder what the learning of this kind of Bardo realm is.
Is it just a quota of sufferings that I must go through to extinguish my karma?
Will this ever end? Will this fog ever leave?
What is the guarantee it will not come back?
How will I ever feel faith again in life if it can do this to me?’
You are then forced to surrender.
These experience unite death and life, and bring you back to the moment,
To a kind of primordial innocence.
When just about anything can happen, in total insecurity,
It challenges everything.
“Let thy will be done” is the feeling.
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Dependent and Narcissist personality spectrum

The brain always chooses the better option, in its own judgment.
Whether Conscious or unconscious,
Depends on whether that mechanism,
Which was formed when young, was owned/claimed.

In dependent personality or narcissistic personality,
There is an unconscious polarization mechanism.
In the dependent polarity it thinks, “the other always knows better and is better”.
In the narcissist polarity it thinks, “I always know better and am better”.
There is a parent imago projection:
Positive parent imago projection = favor the other and self-sacrifice as much as possible.
Negative parent image projection = favor the self, and stick to self as much as possible.
Which is: Idealization or devaluation of parents in the self structure.

Very early premature individuation = narcissism.
Unable to individuate and being dependent on the other = dependent personality.
Individuation at the balanced time = balanced social personality mix.

Generally the kid will take on the opposite polarization of the opp-sex parent,
If that parent invests in the kid (This insight needs more investigation though).
Dependent children usually have a narcissist opposite sex parent.
Narcissist children usually have a dependent opposite sex parent.
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The reflections from others

Every other is a kind of mirror,
Where their behavior towards us,
Reflects how they see us.

How real the reflection is,
And how much we are reflected,
And how selective or whole it is,
Is based on how much the other desires to truly see at all.

Not many desire to truly see things.
Some folk are almost entirely manipulative,
In which case, they see very little of you,
And exaggerate whichever aspect they deem,
Will help them achieve their vested interests,
Which maybe unconnected to you.
This kind of seeing is subservient to their vested interest.
So when that interest is over, the seeing of you will also end,
And they will direct that seeing to their next interest.
Any manipulator always works off a seed of truth.
But the rest of the fruit is usually fabricated fluff.
When this is done consciously, it is called manipulation.
When this is done unconsciously, it is called madness.
But even in the former case,
Conscious manipulation does serve a deeper unconscious madness.

We like to gravitate towards reflections,
That portray us as being lovable and wonderful.
We like to seek people who reflect aspects of ourselves,
That we ourselves love/like/value/cherish,
Which is based on the structures of our beliefs and identifications.

We cannot see who we are,
We can only see our reflection as a perceivable graspable object.
So this attachment to reflections,
Is a subset of attachment to objects(abstract) themselves.

Every person reflects us in their own way,
Setting up a unique dance/music of interaction in time,
Between us and them.
All of these comprise the riches of life.
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Representation, Recognition, and Essence

Essence is from the non-local qualitative space,
Something similar to the 5th dimension ‘Plato’s world of forms’.
From where we are, we connect to these essences and experience them.
We connect to these essences through representations.
All sensory and mental objects are not the thing in itself,
But are all representations of the thing.
The thing itself exists in a transcendent form we connect/access and experience.

When we lose connection to this higher world of essences,
Which all of our representations basically cue to,
We get depressed.
So depression I feel is fundamentally from this disconnection.
Even if you logically lay it out in language,
Like:
“I have xxx bank balance,
I have all these xxx items with me,
These great xxx relationships,
etc.”
If you cannot connect to the higher world of essences,
You would feel depressed.

On the other hand, if you do connect to this higher world of essences,
You would experience great joy/riches/bliss.

This connection is entirely invisible and cannot be directly seen,
But rather it can only be felt and experienced.
Only representations can be studied and seen.
And all of the objects in the sensory and mental worlds are representations.
They all cue/point to these higher world essences.

This connection is quite a bit independent from the circumstances of life,
Apart from fulfillment of all the usual basic needs.
That is why it is difficult to see any direct correlation,
Between a person’s circumstances and his/her level of happiness.

This may explain how some of the pioneers of the LSD experience,
Described their experience in terms like: ‘seeing the whole world in a grain of sand’ etc.
Logically you might think, ‘pff, that makes no sense, how can a sand grain be the world?!, nonsense etc.’
But on deeper inspection, I see that the grain of sand is only a representation,
And it is cue-ing/pointing to the higher object which is the “5th dimensional numinous essence of the world itself”.

There are many games right, where a portion of an animal is shown to you,
And you’d have to guess the animal.
The picture that is shown, (say of the animal’s eye alone) is not the animal right?
The animal that you guess it represents (say correctly) is because you mapped that picture to your mental object.
So the animal really exists only in your mental space as a representation.
And even the picture shown to you is also a fractional representation of it.
But however neither of these 2 things can give us the real connection we desire.
Because both are only representations at some level.
The true connection is to connect everything to god (in religious terms),
Or in philosophical terms I could say, it is to connect the representational forms to their essences.

It could be speculated that this ‘world of essences’ really exists, like Plato speculated.
But the real nature of it, I feel, is entirely mysterious.
All we know is when we connect to it through our representation,
We experience all the sought after feelings of wonder/comprehension/profound understanding/knowing and so on.
It is this recognition I long for,
I wish I could connect through everything to their higher essences.
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Real knowledge must be rooted in direct perception

Many times, when I ask people about what they feel about a certain thing,
They would respond with: I don’t know, or I’m blank, or no idea.
That is usually in the colloquial context.
However, when examined existentially, that is not true at all.
They do know.
They do have lot of preexisting beliefs, frameworks, ideas, imaginations, and preconceptions about that thing.

When it is said ‘The enlightened one is the one that realizes that he does not know’,
We wonder: ‘Ok, what about all the commoners who also say the same about everything?’
In reality, the latter set of people do believe they know,
And have all sorts of conceptions, imaginations, ideations, associations about it, but it is in unconsciousness/darkness and unexamined.

What holds back people from proper atma-vichara is that they do not contact and work with the proper seed essences from the point of view of consciousness.
Generally, as a thumb rule: ‘You always start from what you do know, and from that seed essence, you grow the tree of knowledge.’
It is a kind of contradiction to say, “I don’t know X”, because in that very statement you have already shown you have a conception of what X is.
It is like saying: “Can you see this tumbler, THIS tumbler (you hold it in your hand or point to it), I can’t see it”.
Or pointing to the tumbler and saying, “This is not a ceramic vessel”.
The next question then would be: “Then…What is it?”
When people say “I don’t know, I’m blank, no idea” = it is a sort of negative definition.
They are not seeing the knowing/ideas they do have about that.

‘NOT’ is always a comparative statement.
Like defining: A as A, and B as ‘not A’.
But B is also B, it is its own thing.
Nothing can not exist. There is only existence.
‘Not’ simply means that thing which exists, is not something else.
So contemplation and gaining knowledge requires you to contact “the essence object/the root rasa” in your consciousness first,
I.e. the knowing/ideas/concepts you do have about it.
Then you can proceed to add on/investigate/deconstruct and so on.
Without contacting this essence, the foundation of all your knowledge is belief based and therefore unstable (relatively unreal).
It is without rooting in your own direct experience.

You are the root which the tree of your knowledge must be attached to, and come from.
If this root is in unconsciousness, then your knowledge will be a flimsy tree without real rooting.
It would live only off consensus.

There is experience/knowing all the time.
Generally, if you ask someone to close their eyes and ask them what do they see, they would say “nothing”.
What they mean in a way is: nothing relevant/significant/important,
Or nothing worth even calling a thing.
But it is important to note that, it is never nothing because nothing does not exist.
They are seeing something (some inchoate murky patterns/fluctuations/forms etc.) which can be artistically and imaginatively described.
By saying nothing, they are essentially saying that whatever is seen is irrelevant and therefore “ignorable”(treated as nothing).
But this is where ignorance lies too.
Seeing is always on, whether your eyes are closed or open, because really it is the mind that is tuning to the sense of seeing, and therefore seeing.

There are essences and degrees.
The essences you perceive in your inner/outer space, are your real riches.
They are the 5th dimension, all the possibilities of your current condition of existence.
This direct perception of essences is your REAL KNOWLEDGE.
These essences are the seeds of real knowledge from which you can build trees and connect them up.
Once the “essence” is perceived, you have the fundamental riches, you can then play around with “degree”, and manifest them fully.
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Society as a giant

The whole human organization is:
Giants standing on top of shoulders of giants, standing on top of shoulders of giants…and so on.
Differences are obvious —- Similarities/connection/unity are non-obvious.
The process of “enculturation/socialization” is the programming that initiates a child into the mega-giant of society/culture.
All the smaller giants stand on the shoulder of this giant, and the fractal goes on getting more and more refined.

There is a difference between:
INTERNALIZATION/IDENTIFICATION —and—– CONFORMITY
They both may look the same from the outside in actions/behavior.
But they are coming from vastly different places.
Identity is the passport to get into anything in society.
There are doors and doors everywhere.
You are let in, if you conform.

But without identification/internalization = there is no actual deep investment.
All investment in society then is only out of “VESTED-INTEREST”.
And it is difficult then to take on too much.
Because heart of hearts you would want to return to your identification.
Society in such a case, is not perceived as a HOME w/ BELONGING,
Rather it is perceived as a place you have to conform to get certain needs met for your real identity which lies elsewhere.

There is a difference between:
INSECURE SOCIETIES —and—- SECURE SOCIETIES.
When insecure, societies impose that all its denizens cooperate. It is forced to a much higher degree.
While secure, societies include people who do their own thing also, as long as they do not disturb the working of the societal machine much.

In the light of all this:
Deep mental illness is an ALIENATION of COLOSSAL PROPORTIONS,
Because you are literally disconnected from the largest giant itself (that of
Humanity),
And are dehumanized and sent to the mental asylums,
And other such quarantine-institutions etc.
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Symbolic systems/models

# Myers Briggs
# Strengths finder
# Big 5 personality traits
# Psychological DSM disorders
# Attachment theory types
# Role in family = Hero, Problem child, Mascot, Lost child.
# Physique type = Ectomorph, Endomorph or Mesomorph (Fat %, Muscle %)
# Astrology [ Eastern = Nakshatra, Birth Chart, Dashas | Western = Sun sign ]
# David Hawkins LOC (level of consciousness)
# Ken Wilber AQAL chart
# Debraoski theory of positive integration (5 levels)
# MCTB (Mastering Core Teachings of Buddha): Stages of insight and 8 Jhanas
# Michael Newton: Journey of souls (infant, child, young, mature, old)
# Ra Law of One: 7 Densities/Dimensions.
# Dark night of the soul theory
# Kabbalah Tree of Life
# Kabbalah: Five Levels of Desires
# Tom Campbell’s theory
# Sant Mat model
# Hinduism = Chakra system, Koshas, 3 gunas
# Ayurveda = 5 elements, 3 body types.
# Joseph Campbell = Hero’s journey
# Nine Levels Of Increasing Embrace In Ego Development, Susanne R. Cook-Greuter.
# Ego and the dynamic ground.
# 8 circuits of consciousness – Timothy Leary
# Advaita Vedanta
# TCM (traditional chinese medicine) = Meridian system accupressure
# Scientific Model of human body: as superposition of 10 systems: digestion, respiratory, nervous etc.
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The deep decision to choose life

This thought current was inspired by ‘Sadhguru (Jaggi Vasudev)’.
This writing is part of my effort to gain clarity.
I still have a lot of work to do myself.

Here are my musings:
A deep decision is made first:
Are you FOR life —OR— Against life?
This is also a bit confusing.
Because: It is like asking are you for white or black.
It seems like there isn’t a right answer?
And it is just about polarization.
That is why I think Sadhguru was saying:
‘Make a stronger choice, else you will be in the middle.
Being totally dead is fine, being fully alive is fine.
It is being half alive half dead that is the torture and strife.’
If I am for life: I have to give myself completely into enhancing my life and all other life around me.
If I am for death: I should commit suicide.
Anything other than these 2 choices, puts me in the middle.

This would be in line with the larger cycle of life-death existentially.
When life is on, you are on.
When death is on, you are not there anyway.
Death is sorta like deep sleep, it is not something you do, it happens existentially.
We can only facilitate it, just like we facilitate sleep at night by turning off the lights and lying down.
Similarly, even life can only be facilitated and harnessed.
So we are sorta facilitators/channelers of life energies,
And in a sense, we do not create anything fundamentally.
We are only co-creators/active-participants in creation.
This is the deep humiliation our ego/self has to accept.

There is only an appearance of choice,
Which is no choice really, because it is only a choice of suffering or not-suffering.
All resistance against the existential = suffering.
One has to be compliant to it.
This free will is only for supporting and enhancing life.
Else, all the free will does is create more and more suffering and unawareness.
The only real desire for everyone is a LARGER experience of life.
And it is the wavering in moving downstream with or upstream against this longing,
That is causing suffering.
The strife between the life drive and the death wish (Eros and Thanatos).
Facilitation of life —vs—- Facilitation of death.
Trying to die is like the same struggle of trying to sleep when the hormone has not yet released.
Trying to live is like overexerting yourself and getting debilitated as a result.
Any effort in any direction seems to be counterproductive unless it is done with total vision/clarity of the higher world of forces.
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All qualities simultaneously exist

Sometimes, I keep taking the opposite position and arguing with people.
Many a time, I feel compelled to take the opposing position.
Then I contemplated, and wondered about ‘why do I do that’.

One of the reasons I felt was,
To attain independence from people.
To test whether I could hold the opposite view vs. the person in front of me,
Instead of always getting absorbed into their point of view.
But this would often be really difficult for me.
Because I would end up seeing their point of view too,
Which would not only dilute my position,
But often even completely overshadow it.

Also, I realize that this does not give me any real independence,
Because this is still based on the other’s position only,
It is a reaction and not a true action.
I allow the other’s position to completely fill my inner space because:
# I want to maintain harmony with them.
# Because if I don’t then it will lead to vain/futile resistance and may be a threat to my well-being.
But within me, my inner space is so mercurial that it is quite hard to see what I want or feel about anything.
Everything could substantially dramatically shift in a dime.
Everything is so mutable and changeable, it’s hard for me to access my foundation.

This inability to ground into or take/maintain/forward a position/perspective,
Makes me feel quite powerless.
Because conventionally power is associated with force.
And unless you structure yourself into some position, no force can be created.
“Identity structures/foundation” are what generate force.
For instance, a tiger is completely grounded in its instinctual structures.
So the tiger carries enormous force in its very being.
You cannot talk it out of being a tiger.

Maybe I am somewhat disconnected from my animal nature and instincts,
Which is what makes me feel like I’m living in an “imaginative field”.
(This could have been a dissociation survival adaptation to high levels of childhood neglect/abuse/violation from others.)
I am profoundly confused as to what is my relationship with others or with the world/society itself.
On the plus side, since I can see all perspectives/points of view,
In the simulator function of my brain or imagination,
I gain a systems/ecological vision of things.
An impersonal w-holistic vision which is not about any particular thing or particular identity.
And it is easy for me to see that the only doer is god/field/consciousness,
And that everything is a temporal appearance.

After constantly living in a soup of all superimposed positionalities,
I realized that trying to polarize myself,
To any one extreme polarity,
In any of the dimensions,
With my efforts,
Has been the cause for a lot of strife within me.
I realized that I can:
# Neither be not affected, nor can I be affected completely.
# Neither be totally powerful, nor can I be totally powerless.
# Neither be completely good, nor can I be completely bad.
# Neither be completely with, nor can I completely avoid.
# Neither be completely clear, nor can I be completely unclear.
# Neither be completely truthful, nor can I be completely false.
# Neither be fully right, nor can I be fully wrong.
# Neither be completely loving, nor can I be completely hateful.

So this kind of throws light on my fundamental resistance to life.
Because life happens on its terms, while I am struggling against it.