I’m looking at the perspective of how life expresses itself from inside out.
The something that seems to come from nothing…
The potentialities/fires that seem to arise in the inner space…
It starts off from the pure desires/abstract feelings,
And then projects and focuses itself into the outer realm.
I feel the very act of being alive is the burning of these inner fires.
Using 2nd person perspective narration:
Your life in the world,
Is like the sex between your inner fires with the world.
You are always in the state of sex (as a verb).
Your inner fires are penetrating into the world and that is what allows you to see it.
In fact whatever you see is what your inner fires are sex-ing with.
So you could say, you are always in relationship, and relating.
All experience is from relating.
This act of relate-ing, sex-ing, is going on and on, and is content agnostic.
It is like how when your eyes are open, you simply keep seeing, no matter what is in front of you.
That faculty is simply shining its light unconditionally on whatever is outside.
Similarly your life energies are simply in a state of relating and sex, being content agnostic.
This is where I think the sayings that ‘we are love itself’ come from.
Because all that you experience, is from this unconditional perfusion into the world, propelled by this longing force we call love.
The fire within burns unconditionally,
And unconditionally burns all that it touches,
And unconditionally lights up everything around it.
This is true for all of life i.e. the non-physical fire that animates.
All life is this unconditional fire.
This burning, and lighting up, is a kind of touch.
Even light falling on something is like the subtlest touch.
‘The burning’ is a more intense penetrative touch.
Even to simply just see something, is to relate with it.
You are Shiva, the fire(energy),
Penetrating into Prakriti(matter),
In a state of unconditional total relating/sex-ing.
ALL relating is sex at various levels – from the lightest touch to the most intense.
What we generally call sex in essence I think is the most intense form of relating.
To be in contact with the fire itself vs. being in its light sphere or heat sphere.
Ultimate sex is the ultimate union.
From this perspective/context: Sex = Yoga = Union.
One’s Personality = One’s Subtle Body.
Personality = Likes and Dislikes,
Forming the 0s and 1s of reality perception (tapestry).
There is a vision/awareness and then there is relationship (1,0) (like, dislike).
# When you like something, you strive to see it more, bring it more into your awareness.
# When you dislike something, you strive to see it less, push away that from your awareness.
So avoidance is a manifestation of dislike,
And approach is a manifestation of like.
Push = Avoidance —vs—– Pull = Approach.
That is the dance of Push-Pull, Attraction-Aversion, Like-Dislike.
The world is a fractal and holographic.
…To Zoom out —— To Zoom in…
In both cases you get infinity.
The more you see in one thing, the more you see everything.
The more you see everything, the more you see in one thing.
The intensity of seeing is independent of the content of seeing.
When we like, we open up the full intensity (towards 1).
When we dislike, we try to close down the intensity (towards 0).
And there are all the inbetween mixtures.
The intensity of this seeing depends on the vibrance of life energies within.
All liberation is about unconditionality, to become unconditional,
To just be full on and on, for its own sake.
Karma, Samskharas, and the completion process
Karma means ‘action’ (verb).
Samskhara means ‘imprint/engram’ (noun).
In colloquial usage though, karma and samskharas are used interchangeably.
The mind in its clear pure state is like a clear mirror,
Where it simply reflects reality exactly the way it is.
Now, imagine a mirror that holds memory.
Suppose you go on a trip and carry the mirror to various places.
On returning home, you would be seeing colorings/ghosts of the past all over the mirror image, right?
This is the nature of a mind loaded with samskharas (impressions/imprints from the past).
The completion process (samskhara dahana kriya) is about thinning out these imprints, so that you can eventually see clearly through them.
One good visualization to imagine this is:
Imagine you are holding a ‘color checker board’ in front of you.
If the color slots on the checker board are totally opaque, then, you can only see the color and nothing through it.
If the color in the piece is made more and more transparent (decreasing opacity), you would gradually start to see what is behind the color piece more and more.
After reducing the opacity i.e. thinning the color to a certain point, you would be able to easily see through it even if there is a bit of coloring still present, right?
This is what is done in the completion process.
Generally in psychology, when the light of your consciousness shines through the color pieces in the checkerboard, it is known as ‘projection’.
# If the color piece is totally opaque, then there is ‘total projection’.
That is, you are entirely seeing your past imprint and nothing of the actual reality in front of you. Total projection completely obscures reality.
# If the color checker board has no colors and if all the colors are replaced with clear glass pieces, then there is no projection at all, and you are directly seeing what is in front of you with no coloring. There is then 0 projection.
So essentially, the spectrum is like this:
Projection(0% transparency) ——- (50% transparency)——- Reality(100% transparency)
For most of us, there is a wide spectrum of opacity variation for these color pieces.
It is neither 0% nor 100% transparent but somewhere in the middle.
Positive colored pieces make us see life through positive colorings (seeing through rose tinted glasses). This is commonly referred to as good karma.
Negative colored pieces make us see life through negative colorings/lenses (seeing through a hell bent mind). This is commonly referred to as bad karma.
The very process of living exhausts karma (colloquial usage).
The main difference between a regular person and spiritual seeker is that the spiritual seeker exhausts the karma at a much higher intensity.
Exhausting karma here means thinning the colors out.
All samskharas in a way are partially unlived or undigested experiences.
That is why they continue to color our present experience.
To digest all these imprints is therefore the goal of the completion process.
In a way, these positive coloring and negative coloring set of lenses are what you call your identity (that is, the combination of our specific likes-dislikes).
So in the completion process, you are also thinning your identity out and eventually merging with the actual reality.
Consider the experience of eating physical food from a plate.
At first we have a more intense experience of it in our tongue,
And then we experience the more subtle experience of the consumed food getting digested, right?
Then what follows is, the nutrients are extracted and the remaining food is sent out.
Similarly,
Karma is food for the gods/soul.
Digestion of karma (the completion process), enriches the soul with wisdom which are the nutrients in this case.
How to become ‘Nishkarma’
There is ‘Dharma’,
Which is ‘God’s Karma’.
Deviation from ‘Dharma’, creates ‘Your Karma’.
If you transform, dissolve, and align yourself back into ‘Dharma’,
Then, you become ‘Nishkarma’.
Allotments of desire to serve or take responsibility
Abstractly seen,
There are “quotas/allotments of desires” functioning through us.
I think this is exactly what they call “Prarabdha karma”.
I feel we gravitate and are attracted to the ‘genetic instruments’ and ‘conditions’ that will be best suited to serve those desires.
‘Genetic instruments’ here refers to our choice of which human body to occupy for this lifetime.
And of course, this genetic instrument will be a child of many other surrounding conditions that will be like the larger body surrounding it.
To give an analogy:
Supposing you wanted to do a lot of professional video editing work and are continuously on the move, you might choose to buy a high end Apple Macbook Laptop for that purpose.
But suppose, lets say you wanted to play the latest AAA pc games which require the most powerful GFX card, and are mostly at home, then you might choose to buy a much bigger Desktop PC.
If you live in the US, you would get it cheaper, compared to buying it from India.
Similarly, in US you might also get many more options for the hardware components.
So based off that analogy, here in this case:
We choose an instrument from the choices available in the market,
To fulfill our requirements/desire/purpose.
We are also limited by what is available in the market at that point of time.
Just like how when we desire/need something,
We check out the local market at that time,
And make a choice from what’s available.
I think similarly, when taking birth here we might probably have a similar set of constraints.
Then there is the concept of responsibility.
I think responsibility is something we take up from our own desires.
Generally we refer to the overheads as responsibility.
For example, take the statement:
“I enjoy my smartphone, but I am responsible to keep it safe and in good condition”.
# Here the desire is to enjoy the functions/features/abilities of the smartphone.
# But the responsibility is the overhead of maintaining it, keeping it safe, and so on.
Another example would be, say our desire is for a monthly salary, then we would take up a job (take on some responsibility) so that we are paid that salary (which is the desire).
So in short, all responsibilities serve our desires.
Responsibilities are necessary overheads we take on for fulfilling our desires.
It is desires that is primary.
Responsibilities are its supporting function.
Next let’s cover ‘disposition and attitudes’.
Our personality/dispositions/attitudes are also ways to serve our desires only.
They are like the background/backdrop conducive factors.
For instance: Say I have the desire to be liked by everyone and avoid conflict.
Then naturally, the disposition I would adopt would be: ‘polite, pleasant, diplomatic, highly adaptable’.
So your disposition definitely conveys your desire.
But even here, desire is primary.
The disposition and attitudes are like conducive fragrances to attract the bees that you desire.
Another reason for birth could be for balancing out the personality.
For instance, say someone was an insensitive bully in his former life.
He could then choose a birth of being an artistic, sensitive, and weaker person to experience those opposite qualities.
That would satisfy his desire for balance and neutrality.
After all, we can truly move to non-duality only when we transcend all dualities, right?!
This is a dictum I learned from Teal Swan: “To heal from anything is to experience its opposite”.
So figure out what your real desires are.
And the things that you have taken up in your life to fulfill them.
This is more a contemplation on ‘why’ by conscious observation, and the goal is for ‘revelation’.
Even looking at your mundane life and tiny decisions, will reveal a lot of deeper things about yourself.
All real knowledge is from ‘Samyama’
This post will require some familiarity with ‘Patanjali’s yoga sutras’.
Referring to the terminology from the eight-fold path,
I’ve understood that all real knowledge is from ‘Samyama’,
Which is a combination of ‘Pratyahara + Dharana + Dhyana + Samadhi (union)’.
It is ‘Knowing by Being’ or ‘Knowing by Union-ing’ vs. ‘Knowing by Doing’.
You know everything through ‘direct absorption’ with the object.
In Vedanta, all knowledge is from:
‘Phala vyakti’ shining on ‘Vritti vyakti’.
That is ‘Reflected consciousness’ shining on ‘Modification of the mind stuff’.
We think objects exist external to us,
But in reality, everything that we know appears within us as a modification of our mind stuff.
So union-ing with the object is to union with the Vritti (mind-modification) of your own mind substance.
There is tons and tons more to say on this topic,
But I’ll leave this here as an introduction or segway.
What is meditation?
In my understanding:
Meditation = Deep listening = Being = Receptivity.
When I simply be, I notice I automatically get into a state of profound openness, deep listening, and receptivity.
More on Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas.
The 3 states of energy manifestation are referred to as: Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas.
Tamas = The tendency of energy manifestation to maintain its current configuration.
Rajas = The tendency of energy manifestation to move in cyclic activity (or cyclic transformation activity)
Sattva = The tendency of energy manifestation to evolve or transform in a non-cyclic way.
These 3 states can coexist simultaneously in different proportions.
If I have to put it in a single word:
Tamas = Inertia
Rajas = Activity
Sattva = Evolution
I could abstractly picture them to be:
Tamas = Point (maintenance of configuration and solidity)
Rajas = Circle (cyclic activity or cyclic transformation)
Sattva = Line (non-cyclic transformation, evolution, moving towards the subtlest source in a straight line)
Rajas + Sattva = Spiral (circle + line)
All of physicality is basically tamas.
It is only because forms maintain their integrity over time, they are experienced as a persistent reality.
The food chain (i.e. transformation cycle of life forms), birth and death cycle etc. also comes under Rajas.
The wheel of Samsara I would say is Rajas.
Sattva is spiritual seeking, learning, yielding to the higher realities,
And transforming oneself and one’s understanding.
A life form transforming and moving closer to its source,
Or to subtler and subtler planes is sattvic.
The dance and its center
To dance a dance,
You must find its center and first root yourself into it.
If you change the center, you change the dance.
Completing and freeing the dependence on relationships
All relationships are with parts of ourselves projected out to and as others.
The other is that part of ourselves we have projected out “as” the other.
Thus when we reclaim and own that projected part/aspect,
We neutralize the attraction, and free ourselves.
To give an analogy,
Say you have a backpack full of 100s of smartphones.
But say, you only keep 2 of those phones in your pocket,
And you have no active memory of the backpack’s existence.
Now when you see your friend showing you his phone,
You’ll recognize it, it will look familiar,
You’ll feel attracted towards it, and want to possess it.
But if you realize you are carrying a backpack full of them,
And look inside it,
You’d find that you own that exact same model.
Then there is no longer an attraction to the other’s phone,
But rather, you can enjoy exploring the phone’s features together.
Because now there is a commonality and you also own that same model.
The very act of relating is like a play or dance.
The question is then whether it is conscious or unconscious.
A conscious relationship is like a conscious dance done willingly from both sides,
(i.e. conscious projection and introjection),
While an unconscious relationship is like an unconscious dance happening compulsively from both sides,
(i.e. unconscious projection and introjection).
Once you own all aspects of yourself, you become whole,
And realize that all the others are representative of potentials of your own consciousness.
Then there is nothing that you lack, that can only be got from the other.
Rather, whatever you experience as the other, is instantly owned.
The same would apply to ‘aversion to others’ too.
It is the aversion of the projected aspect of ourselves that we believe we are.
So there can be 2 steps:
First the delusion (false Introjection), and then Projection.
To free the identity from all these introjections,
Is to contemplate and realize our essence is beyond all of this,
And is transcendent of all of these appearances,
Which are all but only one of the possibilities of our infinite nature.
Energy transforms energy
Energy transforms other energy.
“Bigger stronger energies” transform “Smaller weaker energies”.
Shakti is the only real currency – i.e. Energy currency.
To be Influenced —and—- To Influence.
You are attracted to what you care about —-and —- You transmit what you care about
They both go on together.
Everyone starts off as an infant right, in the yin receiving state.
We are a conduit for influences passing through us.
[Yin -> Yang -> [Yin -> Yang -> [Yin -> Yang….
Just like the firecracker that bursts forth, and the tinier bits burst forth again, and so on.
The influx of life causes the bursts —–and—– The shimmers/embers (that fall down from the sky) are the vacuuming/absorption action of death (deflux of life).
It is like an endless waterfall = ….Receive -> Absorb with -> Share/Transmit…
…Receive from above and raise oneself -> Serve and raise the others below…
Journey to the Abstract 