PDA

View Full Version : Inner Circle



Shirley
1st June 2008, 12:23 PM
I have come to this following conclusion:
When you try to supress, fight and control your thoughts you're giving them more energy and making them stronger.
Instead we should step back, acknowledge their presence and their meaning/message and let them flow and disappear by themselves. (Spectator mode)
This way, you use your energy only on the positive thoughts and make them stronger but still you don't supress your negative side because it always carries a message for you.

jehocifer
2nd June 2008, 06:05 AM
I agree with Shirley. Spectator mode is the mode to be in when meditating. To be completely aware of the here and now without the clutter of thought is the goal. This does not single out the "bad", negative thought paths, but the supposed "good" thoughts, as well. Of course, to completely stop the course of thoughts is quite impossible. Let them run their course, whether you view them as good or bad. Just don't continue to dwell on the thought, for that is what gives it strength. Eventually, it becomes more obvious that the division between negative and positive thoughts is very slim. Negative and positive are of the same body. They work together to form the whole....
Always be in Spectator mode...

Korpo
2nd June 2008, 06:32 AM
Of course, to completely stop the course of thoughts is quite impossible.

Thinking can be stopped. In fact, the mind can be relaxed into a state where thinking is a purely voluntary function that can be invoked when needed and rests else. The mode of habitual thinking can be left for good. This is one of the milestones in meditation often referred to as enlightenment.

Habitual thought, regardless of the "negative" or "positive" properties is a sign that things within us are diverging from being present. The thoughts arise to mark this dissonance - that our mind does not want to be where it is (avoidance of the negative) and wants to be where it isn't (clinging to the positive). This pendulum of back and forth of judgement and running to and running from can be slowed and finally halted, and then the mind rests in stillness of its own.

The dissonant energies that we see as "blockages" or "defilements" (seankerr123) must be released to stop them from putting energy into this process. They are the energy that keeps out of balance and prevents us from going with the flow, and they spawn the habitual thoughts and habitual patterns of behaviour.

Oliver

CFTraveler
2nd June 2008, 07:16 PM
I'm not sure if this the answer to your question, but I use different states or styles of meditation depending on the situation. I sometimes center (and that's all), I sometimes 'spectate' when I am having an emotionally challenging time (I find that spectating myself suffering is helpful to take the edge off) and when it's all well I like to observe my 'other' thoughts, not to make them go away, but to experience them in a way I don't in 'regular' consciousness.
It's like having someone else in my head and I sometimes like to know what's going on deep in there.
Of course, this is not meditating for AP, just meditating in daily life for regular things.

Korpo
3rd June 2008, 07:27 AM
Alex,

I never mandated "blanking". Nothing is blanked. You relax and release and let go until it blanks on its own. The mind relaxes until it reverts to emptiness, because that is its ultimate nature.

Irony of life: It takes effort to be non-empty, so actually being empty should be easy. It isn't because we habitually exert energy and effort for the reasons I mentioned. So if you remove these reasons the mind will become empty on its own.

No effort, no control, no change is necessary then. Emptiness happens. If we remove activity, emptiness happens. Emptiness is the background for everything. All that happens has emptiness as its stage. It is the space in which everything unfolds, but not what unfolds. This has led some to say that indeed emptiness is spirit itself. Emptiness is not a state of mind that you produce. It is not a state. It is a non-state that your mind exists in when its habitual workings subside. It's not one of the hypnotic or trance states or whatever. It is the emptiness against which as backdrop every other state unfolds.

IMO methods of *trying* to blank the mind are unhelpful and do not produce emptiness. They just force the mind more or differently. They do not let it be. Telling someone to shut up has a totally different quality to that person to when the person just is quiet on its own volition. Same for the mind. The mind is relaxed until it quiets on its own accord and stays quiet. A mind that is shut down by "commanding it" will just come back and blab on as soon as the mental control is eased.

In my experience, from my personal practice, when I command my mind to be blank it is like someone turned the volume down. It is there, the blab, blab, blab, its just not audible. It can be felt. The mind feels not real peace, the quiet is forced, the tension that creates the blab, blab, blab is feelable. Tension is not peace. While the thought voices are no longer audible that tension gets more and more unbearable. It builds, it is there. It's like holding your breath. After some time a reflex will force you to gasp. My mind gasps and blabs on. The underlying energetic workings have not changed.

I am tempted to say that "blanking the mind" is not meditation at all. It's mind control. It does not let go. It takes the ill-designed grip we have on our mind's function and strengthens it.

Oliver

Korpo
3rd June 2008, 11:00 AM
Meditation has many modes, and all have their uses, I am sincere when I say this. I'm not trying to be an a-hole to say that any voluntary meditation is a form of mind control, what else could it be? Why is the word "control" such a dirty word?

Because it implies you are to coerce your mind into something. It implies that your ego is in charge. The label exposes something - instead of opening up you are instead narrowing your mind. Just because a forced quiet reigns, this does not lead to the same thing. When jumble up everything because it is "kind of alike" then the words are not helpful anymore.

I have seen many descriptions of modes of meditation that are misleading - I thought mantras were a mode of mind control for example. Then I saw how for some the mantra also can be used as a tool of relaxation instead as one that displaces something. Every time "mind control" and "meditation" get mixed up, somebody will get the wrong message - that they need suppress something, need "willpower", discipline, or whatever to meditate. And people will sit and not relax, but tense up more, and wonder what they are doing wrong...


Does it conjure up images of a dictator oppressing the masses? The choice to use any form of meditation, even the choice not to do anything is still a choice, and a choice is a form of control over our inner and outer reality.

There is a difference in degree and extent of control. If the choice is to surrender it is totally and fundamentally different from when the choice is control.


How do we enter a state of "oneness", or our "natural state", without making a conscious choice to do so? What is the stimulus provoking the choice? Why is such a choice any different to any other method of mind control?

The choice of giving up control is a choice that changes the rules. The choice for control has different outcomes. I believe that the choice of control is ultimately upholding the ego and therefore is sowing a certain seed from the beginning - at some point you will just hold back. You might wonder why nothing seem to progress, but the choice is actually quite clear. You want the control of this process. This narrowly limits what can happen in a spiritual sense, or so I believe.

In the end it is a question of faith: Do I trust in spirit, do I trust that something good is beneath the layers of personality, do I trust in emptiness? Or do I distrust it at every step and must be in charge.

Oliver

Korpo
3rd June 2008, 08:47 PM
You're playing with words instead of understanding. You're not open to the idea that there is a fundamental difference, and try to hammer the square peg into the round hole to make it right again.

That's an ego thing. ;)

Letting go starts with a decision. But is not an action. It happens to you. That makes it fundamentally different from control. Control just goes on and on, it requires action again and again.

You can try to make it into an action by insisting that it is a verb in our language, but that is just the inadequacy of language and not a property of letting go itself. Language is an enormously inaccurate tool in this, almost unusable. I wrestled enough with language to see it mostly hinders meditation or the understanding of meditation.

So, decision and intent are different from action. Even if I do a lot of energy work to release things, which in itself is an action, I would not consider that fully meditation. Weird, huh? To me, the real meditation happens when this release allows letting go - which is an in-action because it implies a natural stopping and easing of the habitual actions that attached to something. It's a process, but it happens on its own, I'm not the agent. It's therefore not an action.

And then emptiness happens on its own. Actually emptiness does not even happen. It just is. Is that an action? Being? It is not. It just is. It's a state, but even that is misleading. Words fail.

Several meditation teachers I respect said something like this: When there is meditation, there is no meditator.

The ego cannot meditate. It can set the intent and then meditation might happen.

Silence and emptiness are not the same. Stillness and silence are not the same. A mind that is still is naturally silent. Emptiness in a meditation way implies way more than just silencing the thoughts. When there is emptiness, there is truly nothing. No tension, no conflict, no limits, no bounds, no thing, no state. For the moment of true emptiness there is simply nothing, and out of this everything may arise.

Oliver

jehocifer
4th June 2008, 07:01 AM
I'm sorry, Korpo, that I'm a little late with this discussion. I've been very busy. I only wanted to correct what I've decided was foolish wording on my part. By spectator mode, I was only referring to unfettered awareness. "Spectator" was not the best word to use for this, and I can only speak for myself and not for Shirley. From my study on meditation, and through my own consideration of the topic, I have defined meditation as awareness; the constant observation of the here and now. I personally believe that meditation is not a state that you switch off after a formal meditation session is over. Meditation is awareness of the moment (and since every second as a sentient being constitutes a moment, you are always in meditation to some degree or another).

Korpo
4th June 2008, 07:10 AM
I'm sorry, Korpo, that I'm a little late with this discussion. I've been very busy. I only wanted to correct what I've decided was foolish wording on my part. By spectator mode, I was only referring to unfettered awareness. "Spectator" was not the best word to use for this, and I can only speak for myself and not for Shirley. From my study on meditation, and through my own consideration of the topic, I have defined meditation as awareness; the constant observation of the here and now. I personally believe that meditation is not a state that you switch off after a formal meditation session is over.

I agree wholeheartedly.


Meditation is awareness of the moment (and since every second as a sentient being constitutes a moment, you are always in meditation to some degree or another).

Only the moments for when we are aware. When sitting down with the intent to meditate we try to open our mind for more of these moments, and this in the long term also opens more of our "every-day awareness" so that we are present more and more, and then meditation starts to enter our lives for sure.

Witness, observer or spectator mode are synonyms IMO. This is a step towards deep meditation, but when meditation happens on its own accord, then even the observer drops away and only awareness remains. Is that what you try to describe with "unfettered"? Please share your experiences. :)

Oliver

jehocifer
4th June 2008, 04:34 PM
This is a step towards deep meditation, but when meditation happens on its own accord, then even the observer drops away and only awareness remains. Is that what you try to describe with "unfettered"?

This is what I mean, yes. Awareness without restraint, without the bonds of ego, is perfect awareness. Of course, this is naturally the understanding that I strive for. However, I appreciate the fact that I am aware to some extent everyday. A certain amount of awareness cannot be avoided, or at least from my point of view. Once any organism becomes sentient, I can't comprehend how awareness could be lost. This is why the idea of death does not make sense to me. You're here...and then you're not. So at all times, you are to some degree in meditation.

Korpo
5th June 2008, 09:15 AM
That sounds very interesting, indeed. It's an interesting solution for a very real problems a lot of people have, including me.

Oliver