Where would you say i am

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jonjohn, modified 6 Years ago at 11/15/17 7:37 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 11/15/17 4:18 PM

Where would you say i am

Posts: 91 Join Date: 3/24/17 Recent Posts
(Backround story, before knowing about meditation) 

My first turning point was the film Fightclub. It had a stong impact on me and was the beginningi suppose of an expression and a strong need for authentic life. After this, my second strong impact and my great teacher for a lot of years was Nietzsche. These years of 

violent and feverish spiral to self exile i tried to deconstract whatever i could deconstructand, and penetrate to whatever truth i could, disdainfuly repressing  any cowarcy and weakness of mine in front of any possibility of suffering. I gained a lot threw these years in matter of intellectual integrity and composure, and a lot other things difficult to attain, but there was a big downside: all this dark period left me with an iron core of repressed emotional world and a huge ocd that made me dwell in my thinking world to the degree that i could literally not be able to see the external world. The moment i was trying to se something, a strong sense of boredom would grab my attention and turn it to my inner thinking life. And this would be the fun part. Most of the day i was fighting a never ending war with intrusive thoughts and totally exhausting compalsive self dialogues. Besides the spycological problems i was suffering from asthma and a weak immune system that made me sick for the most of the year.  

At some point  i tried marihuana. Before this, and for the aforesaid period, i was strictly abstaining from any substances that would supposedly alleviate my phycological suffering, even tecnology. I had only my books, my walks and my thinking. The first times the trips were very good, and being unaware that the bad trips from marihuana even exist, i thought that the biggest the dose the better the trips. So at another point i started to have more and more bad elements in my highs, getting worse high after high, until one a day i smoked alone a high dose joint and had something like pscycotic episode: i was visioning that i tried to touch other human beings but a plastic membrane always was in between and separated us. and as the trip was going and felt more and more isolated and more and more away from the earth, at some point i was a naked ego in the darkness of outer space feeling the lonest human on earth without friends, without parents, without nothing. As the trip was going and the sense of isolation was getting even worse  felt that my sense of self was getting distorted to the point i was turning to something that was beast like and non human, so i feared so much that  my attention went to something else. I continued the use of marihuana and had bad trips every time from then on (big dose, paired with pchycologicaly wrecked inner world, and inability and anwiliness to realise that the good trips won't come) something that got me into depersonalization for the good.

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jonjohn, modified 6 Years ago at 11/15/17 7:40 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 11/15/17 6:41 PM

RE: Where would you say i am

Posts: 91 Join Date: 3/24/17 Recent Posts
(epigramaticaly from the oldest to the newest for a period of 6-7 years)

-I realize that i can simulate marihuana high without smoking.
-I change something internaly, and external world becomes more interesting.
-I watch the external world and that alleviates my ocd which in turn makes me happy and peaceful for the first time in long long time
-With the ocd absent, my main sense of thinking self is easily also absent so i experience some no self states (i watch the sea and  after a while, suddenly, there is only sea.
-The effort to change something in order to make reality more fun, doesn't work so easily any more
-I search the internet for meditation for the first time
-i start sittings, watching the breath
-I reach access concentration
-I suffer from fibromialgia and arthritis and i am no longer able to sit
-My body is in pain all the time and in a sense i have always some contact with the body feelings (but then i was reacting, and with the purpose to alleviate pain. I could descern very good, nonetheless)
-I sit in pain and i manage to sit one 1hour sitting every day for 4-5 days in a row and i'm about to have 1st jhana but i react and i don't attain it. Again i stop sitting. My meditation is again always on moving


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jonjohn, modified 6 Years ago at 11/15/17 7:22 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 11/15/17 6:57 PM

RE: Where would you say i am

Posts: 91 Join Date: 3/24/17 Recent Posts
Some months before

-i try to be mindful more and more despite the bodily pain and being psychologically challenged from negative human relationships. I realise more clearly that in order to solve the problem of awarness, i have to solve it all. To accept it all. Trying to be constantly mindful, i try to find a way to be mindful without effort. I mentally use the concept of awareness instead of mindfulness as in my mind mindfulness is more pointy and awareness is  more diffused.  I realise that trying to  do samatha and concentrate is tiring, firstly because im in pain and secondly because there is suffering in the act of trying itself. So the mind, pressured to find a sollution to this.. kind of unsolvable, problem, lets go of the effort and realises something about non duality.  Forgetting comes and go, and i realise that the effort to be mindful (my basic suffering at that point, and my basic doing),  is already inside awareness and is already known. In some sense i can't meditate. Meditation is now more like walking in the streets: you don't have to make effort for a tree to apear. It is there by it self. With a brief self inquiring i realize for the first time no self. Everything is out there, the boundaries are not existent, and for the first time life feels like doing it self, Like is falling. After 10 minutes the sense of separate self returns.

-I get into marijuana bad trip, and for an hour i meditate very focused . At some point i am concentrated mindful of the act of a self seeing an object,  and by investigating closer i realise that the self is absent and the illusion is due to a back and forth of attention between some bodily sensations and the visual object. The moment after, something changes, and i realize again but more clearly, that everything is out there. This time thoughts are more clearly seen as being manifestations in space without reference point. I realise for the first time that the present is all there is. Present for the first time doesn't feel like it is something that i can pay attention to, among other things. It feels like it is all there is. I realize that i can now relate with the teachings of dzogchen (that i couldn't before) as the state seems to have been discribed very well. I come and go into the state many many times,  constantly reminding to my self to familiarise with the state so to not forget its quality. It is somewhere near mindfulness but not exactly there.  I also realize with this coming and going  why they said that the self is a thought: for the first time self has a clear thought quality, it feels like thought. Whenever i forget, im in the bad trip with all the confusion and judgement and fear.Suddenly space is awake again, animated. Again out, to the judgement and fear and confusion. Again awake.  "See it, see it again, to remember it"...

That was my story emoticon Feel free to make any comments you like, it would be appreciated. Thank you.  
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jonjohn, modified 6 Years ago at 11/15/17 7:24 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 11/15/17 7:18 PM

RE: Where would you say i am

Posts: 91 Join Date: 3/24/17 Recent Posts
Not to forget to mention that now that i'm writing i am still a suffering self. I feel like i am in a dark night period and i suppose inevitably in the near future i will make a commitment to try to solve the thing that i feel there is to be solved (and i feel capable to solve) with a personal retreat. The last days my mind is utterly distracted dew to an unexpected woman in the horizon. Hindrances...emoticon Fortunately, my mind easily connects with the "things being there by their own" and "present being all there is" qualities of awarness-mindfulness, so... we'll see
Jinxed P, modified 6 Years ago at 11/15/17 10:33 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 11/15/17 8:26 PM

RE: Where would you say i am

Posts: 347 Join Date: 8/29/11 Recent Posts
You need structure to your practice. I highly recommend getting The Mind Illuminated book by Culadasa and working through it. Your first step is to develop a consistent meditation practice of 1-2 hours per day. Once you have done that, you have passed stage 1 in the TMI ( 1 of 10). So that's where you are by that methodology.

I was like you, prone to massive overthinking (Highly adhd). Samatha is the way to go to calm your mind down.
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jonjohn, modified 6 Years ago at 11/16/17 1:53 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 11/16/17 1:50 AM

RE: Where would you say i am

Posts: 91 Join Date: 3/24/17 Recent Posts
Hi Jinxed P

I no longer have ocd and i do not overthink. These are things of the past that i dealed with meditation. And i am more experienced than the impression i may gave you. Dahmma is my main inclination in life.

Thank you for your comment
Yilun Ong, modified 6 Years ago at 11/16/17 2:18 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 11/16/17 2:07 AM

RE: Where would you say i am

Posts: 623 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
I think you know that you are well underway, on the non-dual path towards liberation. You also know that continued being the identity of "I am" or as awareness and acceptance/understanding these 2 things will help: Uncertainty & Suffering or 2 words "Let Go"

So why are you still holding on to this or trying to create another identity to cling to?

Best wishes! emoticon
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jonjohn, modified 6 Years ago at 11/16/17 2:31 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 11/16/17 2:24 AM

RE: Where would you say i am

Posts: 91 Join Date: 3/24/17 Recent Posts
At this point i suspect that there is a knowledge and an insight that integrates completely the duality of forgetting and non forgetting. I think I had recently have the first hinds of this, as it seems to me, and practice accordingly, that the solution must have the quality of being present in all states at all times.  This would be the thing i will try to clarify next. Another thing is that altough the mind has seen no self clearly, and for a duration of time, the realization didn't stick. I suppose it has to be seen more deeply and with more stability, for the realization to reach the deeper levels of the anconcius mind.
Yilun Ong, modified 6 Years ago at 11/16/17 2:42 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 11/16/17 2:42 AM

RE: Where would you say i am

Posts: 623 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
You are further along than I am. So I can only intuitively suggest letting go of knowledge and whatever last bits that you are clinging to, for integration to happen. I don't know, is it the drama/story, the pride, the longingness for certainty, the bitter-sweet seeds of the past? 

Just hang on for the ride, soak it in and don't think emoticon

Much Metta...