This is something that has perplexed me since childhood.
I’d keep hearing slogans like ‘be yourself’, ‘love yourself, ‘believe in yourself’, and so on.
I used to wonder, what is this self that they are referring to, while pointing at me.
Where is this self? What is it?
Is it my image of their idea of what I am, what I should be, or what I think they want me to be?
Is it my own image of what I am independent of them being around me?
But generally my own image of what I am, is heavily and actively conditioned/influenced by who is around me (in silent or talking level interaction with me) and the larger surroundings in that place.
Even if nobody is around me, my self is some sort of a more diffused response to the environment around me.
My general personality/disposition/investments/ways of thinking-perceiving-feeling etc. are part nature and part nurture.
I can recall an active self forming at the age of 6, then a more developed one at 11, and I think after the age of 28 it seems to have stabilized itself.
But what was that active self that first formed? What existed before the age 6?
It feels like I just emerged from a bunch of situations throughout early childhood.
Ok, then was I born a clean slate? – I don’t relate with that too.
I have no continuous memories of anything below the age 4-5, but I intuit I could have already had a seed with its potentials/proclivities/tendencies/patterns (what they call samkharas and vasanas in vedic literature).
So maybe the selves that formed through 6, 11, 20, 24, 28 etc. were different milestones where a distinctive evolving pattern emerged in my vibrating sands (like the sand patterns in Cymatics as the frequency is raised).
So my deeper self then could be my bio-memory embedded in the whole body (in its trillions of cells)? – Coming from my forefathers, ancestry, genetics, lineage.
That genetics could have passed on its own fantasies, ideals, projects, works, characteristics, goals, preoccupations etc. that I identify with or dis-identify with depending on my own past lives?
In my own past lives, again the same situation might have been there, of genetics, upbringing, conditioning, social environment (the yuga at that time) and its influence etc.
So it sort of loops on itself. When did it all start?
The dilemma is like, when you are a tree, you search for your source.
You find out, you grew from a seed.
But a seed cannot grow without the fertile ground.
So the ground is also responsible for the tree.
But that seed itself has come from a previous full grown tree (the past life), and so on.
It goes into an infinite regress loop.
My whole quest to find an independent self eludes me.
I just cannot grasp a ‘me’ that exists independently.
From my contemplation, I see none of any of this is me.
Because if I can perceive it as an object,
Then the me must be separate from the object right?!
The deeper I contemplate this, I realize that what I am is transcendent of language itself.
It is a transcendent dimension, what they call consciousness.
My understanding of ‘understanding’
The purpose of understanding I feel is to help you let go/digest/dissolve/transcend the thing.Â
Otherwise the understanding is not taking you in the right direction, if it only increases the holding of it.
True solution is dissolution (David Hawkins).
I see understanding as the tool to catalyze the dissolution.
Understanding should carry you back to the state of wonder with greater fluidity and openness.
Bonding with ideals vs. real people
When mothers or fathers do not extend a bond to their children,
The children may create an “idealized fantasy parent” and then seek for a reflection of that in the world.
The reasons for why the mothers/fathers did not extend the bond could be related to their own past.
After all they too were children at one time, subject to parents who might have done the same to them, and so on.
The parents themselves might be victims of the same, pursuing an ongoing project of meeting an impossible ideal [parent imposed or self created (usually an oppositional reaction)] and redeeming themselves.
So like the game of passing the parcel, they pass on their own failed project to their children, who then either continue that or choose otherwise.
PS: The roles of parent and child are in a kind of looping rotation.
…Parent -> Child[Parent -> Child[Parent -> Child…
So this goes on and on in the threads of family lineage and genetics.
In such cases, each next generation gets wounded by the projection of the ‘previous generation ideals’ on them.
Then the next generation either make their own counter ideals or try to fulfill the projected ideals, and accordingly seek in the world.
For such family systems, whole threads of genetic lineage then live off an attachment system that is entirely ungrounded/disconnected and based in the imaginal/imaginary spaces of ‘fantasy/ideals/mythic creations’.
It is a kind of primal disconnection and dissociation from reality itself, by moving attachment to the imaginary rather than what actually exists.
This also has a close connection to idol (imaginary gods) worship,
Which is also based on projection of ideals.
When forming relationships/bonds, I’ve noticed there are 2 clear categories:
# The people who bond in reality/actuality
# The people who bond in idealization/imagination
I’ll talk about the 2nd category here.
When both the partners meeting each other have an attachment to their internal idealized figure, they start to project the ideal onto each other.
The agreement then is more like a fantasy role-play:
“You play my fantasy, and I will play yours.”
There are different relational dynamics that can happen from here.
One of them is:
One of the parties projects the ideal onto the other, and the other tries to live up to that to secure the bond.
Generally the one with the narcissistic wound will take it upon himself/herself to live up to the other’s ideal projection.
“If only I can improve myself, strive, and be good enough, to meet the other’s ideal, then I can secure my bond with them.”
The one projecting the ideal does so from some kind of primal entitlement that somehow escaped the socialization process.
They are like the demanding baby that expects the whole world to come and serve their needs.
A relationship like this could work, if the fantasy projections are doable and somehow align (socialization generally tempers the ideals to realistic levels).
But most of the time, the ideals are intense and impossible.
In a way, by very definition, ideals are impossible right?
Reality is always something else.
So often in such relationships, there is alternating role play,
Of the projector and the adapter.
Both the parties wound each other’s real selves with each other’s ideals.
The bond is never secured from start to end.
However these relationships kindle the inner flames of longing, passion, intensity, purpose, hope and other such feelings.
In that sense they are like an adventure and gratify you with the above feelings.
They make you forget your pain of disconnection and lostness.
They are exciting but empty and illusory – like an extended more involving movie.
Imagine you were really thirsty and ran with full passion and joy towards a mirage in the desert.
This experience is something like that.
When you do reach the actual sand patch where the mirage was seen,
The water has disappeared, and now the mirage has receded to the horizon again.
This is how ideals are unsatisfiable and impossible.
Even the conception of these ideals keep shifting to more and more complex and impossible forms.
No depiction can fully capture the fantasy/ideal.
Various traumas and deprivations may be instrumental in what directions and forms these ideals take.
Ultimately we long for the infinite.
And when we focus this longing onto the realm of relationships,
The above patterns happen.
Relationships are a stepping stone and not the end goal itself.
If seen that way, and if both the partners are actually seeking god through the relationship,
The relationship will only raise them higher.
The body is an extension of the earth
The body belongs to the earth.
It is an extension of the earth.
Its life is heavily dependent on the conditions present on earth.
The earth-body is a singular system.
The body is what the earth puts out and then reabsorbs/recycles back into itself.
We cannot separate the body from the earth and take it away from it and still survive.
Even when traveling to space etc. we create incubator like setups,
Where we nevertheless still simulate a cocoon of earth like conditions.
So we are still bonded to the conditions on earth.
As a body we can never be free from earth.
Simulating earth like conditions and traveling outside does not make us free from earth.
That is like wanting to experience the Sahara desert, while sitting inside an airconditioned SUV.
We will only experience the same conditions that are anyways present on earth.
Generally we try to extend the possibilities of bodily experience as much as possible.
For instance the experience of 0 gravity, is essentially the experience of an extended free fall.
However it is not true adventure.
The body is still heavily limited to the needs and dependence on earth like conditions.
Identification with the body but no identification with the earth is ignorance.
From a larger perspective, the whole earth is our body.
Bondage to the body is bondage to earth itself.
Liberation from the body is liberation from earth itself.
Can you detach one of your fingers and have it live a life free from your body?
In a way, that is how we are bound to the conditions of earth.
That too, only certain regions of earth, that are hospitable and favorable to the body.
So in essence the body cannot be free from earth by its very nature.
Dispassion and Infinity
Dispassion comes from the knowledge of infinity.
When having infinite desire, how can it be satisfied by one thing?!
Desire then becomes like the sun,
That shines continuously on everything indiscriminately.
There is no real “reason” for anything
There is no real “reason” for anything,
The reason for anything is everything (everything, the way it is).
How can an “infinite multi-dimensional inter-connected oceanic happening” fit into a “single thread of reasoning”?Â
The reasoning is just that, one thread of logic.
It is one among billions of threads, and threads of all sizes.
So the mind is more of an elucidator, expounder, expresser, and reflector.
There is only commentary/expression/reflection/study/understanding.
So there isn’t any clear ‘why’, ‘reason’, ’cause’ for anything.
There are no hard conclusions, only soft ones,
And no absolute causality because causality comes from threads of reason, and there are infinite such threads running forwards and backwards and criss-cross.
The whole moves the whole.
It is all one gigantic absurdity or wonder.
The dream is simply dreamed as an expression of infinite-possibility.
All is but an appearance in consciousness/field.
My musings on death
Death fills me with a sense of deep awe, respect, wonder, and a sacred silence.
I bow down to its power.
Death fills me with a kind of gratitude.
That I have had the privilege of having this stream of experience,Â
And to be a witness of this body’s inner life process.
Every death is liberation from the form.
Seen from a higher perspective, death isn’t a separate unconnected event.
Birth and Death are part of a singular continuum.
They are different parts of the same process, the same thread,
That continues on inexorably.
We have all done this countless times before,
Living from different points of view.
When moving from form to form, it is the point of attention that shifts.
All forms are temporal in nature.
Every form that is born also dies.
We descend into form and ascend back into the formless.
Birth and death are the grandest events that can happen to anyone.
Birth and Death happen to us as ‘consciousness’.
We are not born and we do not die.
We are the eternal substance (consciousness),
Witnessing the plays of both birth and death,
And all that happens in the middle we call our lives.
The deepest fear and the deepest desire
The deepest fear is the ‘fear of death’.
It is not ‘death’ itself that is feared (because it is unknown), but the ‘fear of death’.
The fear is of the ‘image of that possibility’.
Fear is not about the actuality but about the possibility (as imagined).
Fear is the projection of a negative possibility onto the unknown.
But it derives its substance from the past memories/known.
So the unknown is defended against, by fear.
All fears are illusions though, because:
“Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.”
So in a way, our greatest fear is of total disillusionment.
I feel the deepest desire/longing is the desire for:
Liberation, Mukti, Transcendence, Enlightenment, The highest possibility,
To merge with the deathless source,
The desire for God itself (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence).
I think all other desires and fears are different mixtures of the above 2.
Like how sugar and salt is mixed in different proportions in different foods.
They all taste unique, but carry these 2 essences.
When the heart is fully cleansed,
It radiates deep devotion.
It feels like a boundless vacuum, or an infinite fall.
It is like falling in love, but with the fall never ending,
Because it is a state inspired and generated from within, not from outside conditions.
Devotion is the highest expression/potential/possibility of the heart.
Devotion is just you being really straight and committed to your own deepest desire/longing.
The holographic field
We live in a holographic field.
We are the holographic field in essence.
Birth into form and Death into the formless,
Is from the crystallization and dissolution of the ‘organic structure’,
That creates the ‘point of view/lens/focal apparatus’.
A fully crystallized self structure creates/projects a fully crystallized world.
On the other hand, when the self structure is in transformation,
The world seen/perceived/experienced also appears to undergo a transformation.
Birth and Death is like the shifting of the point of observation/attention/focus.
For visualization: Imagine a 360 degree camera moved around your room.
At all times, all the contents of your room would be visible in the video.
However, you would see the details and sizes of objects varying wildly depending upon the camera’s position.
Similarly, we experience the same general field from all the points of view within it.
Since the field is holographic,
Every point in the field contains the whole in principle,
Just like a drop of water contains the same essence as the whole ocean.
Or just like the structure of the atom is said to mimic the structure of the universe itself.
So through studying the self, all knowledge of the world/universe too can be gained.
The self and the world are complements of each other.
As is the self, so is the world.
As is the world, so is the self.
They both go together.
They arise together and pass away together.
Studying the self is also a study of the world.
Studying the world is also a study of the self.
You are only aware of the world, to the extent you are aware of the self.
You are only aware of the self, to the extent you are aware of the world.
I could say, from more practical terms,
The lens through which you perceive the world,
Would be the entirety of your biochemistry (inc. all neurotransmitters).
So the biochemistry and neurotransmitters would be the switching station to access all possible worlds in the human body.
I am generally witnessing the play of the field/existence/god through a point of attention within my body.
If I move this point of attention outside/beyond my organic body, then it would be called an out of body experience.
Generally when we say out of body, or this concept of beyond or outside, we imagine a certain direction or a different point in space-time.
But in my experience, out of body experience is far vaster than that conception.
It is a non-linear, non-Euclidian movement in the field.
It is like the idea of ‘concepts’.
All ‘concepts/ideas’ actually transcend space and time. Even simple ones like a ‘chair’ etc.
When you shift your mind from one concept to another, what direction are you moving in?
(x, y, or z axis?)!
When you move from between the states of consciousness from waking to dreaming, what direction do you move in?!
Even in general science today, we speak about movement in the 4th dimension, but this is quite inconceivable. What direction would you move in to move in the 4th dimension?!
There are many such movements possible in the consciousness field that are outside of the space-time physical reality framework we generally think in.
Experience Waterfall
Experience Waterfall:
…Infinite/Nothing —>— Finite/Something —>— Infinite/Nothing…
…Infinite filling in —>— Infinite emptying out…
There is only the endless flow/fall/stream,
Creating the dream experience as it moves through.
Journey to the Abstract 