Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? Yellow Tree 3/13/21 10:38 AM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? George S 3/13/21 11:12 AM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? Sam Gentile 3/13/21 12:22 PM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? Yellow Tree 3/15/21 3:58 AM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? George S 3/15/21 9:57 AM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? Yellow Tree 3/17/21 5:36 AM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? George S 3/17/21 10:43 AM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? Yellow Tree 3/19/21 8:07 AM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? George S 3/19/21 11:04 AM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? Yellow Tree 3/19/21 12:44 PM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? George S 3/19/21 2:24 PM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? George S 3/13/21 1:14 PM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? Ni Nurta 3/14/21 5:02 AM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? Yellow Tree 3/19/21 8:09 AM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? Pepe · 3/17/21 8:00 AM
RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward? Yellow Tree 3/19/21 8:08 AM
Yellow Tree, modified 3 Years ago at 3/13/21 10:38 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/13/21 10:38 AM

Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 58 Join Date: 3/13/21 Recent Posts
Just found out about Daniel two weeks ago. Went through MTCTB quickly, interesting read but I don\t understand any of the insight stages or any of the Jhana states.

I would gratefully accept any feedback and guidance.

These are notes I wrote from my last few days\ experience.

I had my first mystical state just a few months ago, and ever since then things have gone fast. Not sure what is what. Meditation doesn't seem to help at all. Only silencing the mind and listening to the silence, along with some basic self inquiry. 

What am I going through here? Pitfalls? How to move forward? Etc. Not that it actually matters because I feel so happy and at peace pretty much around the clock. But, yeah, would still like some guidance here.
_______________________________________
- The yearning for liberation is a thought appearing as desire. There is nothing to be liberated from.
- There is no self. Only thoughts appearing as a self. If only observed and accepted for what they are they pass through like the wind.
- Listen inward. No self appears anymore. Only two things left, empty silence and a watcher. Listen to silence and become the silence. Silence is infite, eternal, and perfect.
- Peak states arise and pass away. The clinging to them is "self" appearing as clinging. It can be let go of and allowed to be like the wind.
- Everything has immense beauty. Can it be a coincidence that it's all so beautiful?
- Language is limited. The word Beauty doesn't do justice to the beauty of creation.
- All humans are drawn to beauty. Even "lower consciousness" humans such as psychopaths want beautiful displays of their power such a sculptures, placaces, women, etc.
- Humans have an innate desire to create beauty.
- Are we drawn to beauty because we have a subconscious remembering that we are the creator? Or did Intelligence just create our minds to be drawn to beauty because it wants a never-ending creation of more shifting beauty to happen?
- Sometimes it feels like being a camera, just walking through this creation and simply being aware. No one is seeing. I'm just like a camera.
- Form changes. Formless doesn't.
- Non-conceptual awareness is impossible to communicate.
- Silence is the ultimate Guru. Listen to silence and it will show you everything.
- Meditation re-inforces the false sense of self and 'doing'. Who is meditating? Who is trying to achieve liberation? Who is it that isn't liberated? No one. You are liberated, there are only thoughts appearing as non-liberation.
- The desire to speak is diminishing with the rapidly increasing realization of the extreme limitation of words and the deepening realization of Silence being the Guru.
- Am I here just to observe the beauty without interfering? Possible possibility.
- "I am that I am" is the closest language to truth. It's an incomplete sentence without a beginning and end. It\s just a continuation of beingness. The mind can't grasp. it points to the Ultimate Realization.
- People are beautiful and deserve help. But am I helping anyone by speaking, or am I helping by being silent, non-conceptual awareness?




______

​​​​​​​Again, thank you in advance for any feedback and guidance!
George S, modified 3 Years ago at 3/13/21 11:12 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/13/21 11:12 AM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 2722 Join Date: 2/26/19 Recent Posts
While there is still dukkha, there is a need for your help emoticon
Sam Gentile, modified 3 Years ago at 3/13/21 12:22 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/13/21 12:22 PM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 1310 Join Date: 5/4/20 Recent Posts
Pierre de Sousa
Just found out about Daniel two weeks ago. Went through MTCTB quickly, interesting read but I don\t understand any of the insight stages or any of the Jhana states.

Good! Welcome to thhe Dho! You don't need to understand any of the insight stages yet. That will come especially if you get a teacher in this tradition. I can recomend one. Just start practicing. Have you figured out any practice style? I am assuming Vipassana sice you read MCTB and came here. Good begining practices are concentration and noting. I recomend noting for all the reasons Daniel lists in his book. Noting sensations quickly will advance your mindfulness ahd help you with the 3C's especially impermeanance - the arising and ceasing of things all the time.

I would gratefully accept any feedback and guidance.

These are notes I wrote from my last few days\ experience.

I had my first mystical state just a few months ago, and ever since then things have gone fast. Not sure what is what. Meditation doesn't seem to help at all. Only silencing the mind and listening to the silence, along with some basic self inquiry. 

What am I going through here? Pitfalls? How to move forward? Etc. Not that it actually matters because I feel so happy and at peace pretty much around the clock. But, yeah, would still like some guidance here.

This mystical state could have been an arising and passing  event but we would need more data. Can you describe what happened in detail? Lights? Bliss? etc?
_______________________________________
- The yearning for liberation is a thought appearing as desire. There is nothing to be liberated from.
- There is no self. Only thoughts appearing as a self. If only observed and accepted for what they are they pass through like the wind.
- Listen inward. No self appears anymore. Only two things left, empty silence and a watcher. Listen to silence and become the silence. Silence is infite, eternal, and perfect.
- Peak states arise and pass away. The clinging to them is "self" appearing as clinging. It can be let go of and allowed to be like the wind.
- Everything has immense beauty. Can it be a coincidence that it's all so beautiful?
- Language is limited. The word Beauty doesn't do justice to the beauty of creation.
- All humans are drawn to beauty. Even "lower consciousness" humans such as psychopaths want beautiful displays of their power such a sculptures, placaces, women, etc.
- Humans have an innate desire to create beauty.
- Are we drawn to beauty because we have a subconscious remembering that we are the creator? Or did Intelligence just create our minds to be drawn to beauty because it wants a never-ending creation of more shifting beauty to happen?
- Sometimes it feels like being a camera, just walking through this creation and simply being aware. No one is seeing. I'm just like a camera.
- Form changes. Formless doesn't.
- Non-conceptual awareness is impossible to communicate.
- Silence is the ultimate Guru. Listen to silence and it will show you everything.
- Meditation re-inforces the false sense of self and 'doing'. Who is meditating? Who is trying to achieve liberation? Who is it that isn't liberated? No one. You are liberated, there are only thoughts appearing as non-liberation.
- The desire to speak is diminishing with the rapidly increasing realization of the extreme limitation of words and the deepening realization of Silence being the Guru.
- Am I here just to observe the beauty without interfering? Possible possibility.
- "I am that I am" is the closest language to truth. It's an incomplete sentence without a beginning and end. It\s just a continuation of beingness. The mind can't grasp. it points to the Ultimate Realization.
- People are beautiful and deserve help. But am I helping anyone by speaking, or am I helping by being silent, non-conceptual awareness?
​​​​​​​All good insights



______

​​​​​​​Again, thank you in advance for any feedback and guidance!
George S, modified 3 Years ago at 3/13/21 1:14 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/13/21 12:54 PM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 2722 Join Date: 2/26/19 Recent Posts
Pierre de Sousa
What am I going through here? Pitfalls? How to move forward? Etc. Not that it actually matters because I feel so happy and at peace pretty much around the clock. But, yeah, would still like some guidance here.


​​​​​​​Sustained awareness of emptiness, silence, no self, the infinite, eternal, perfection, beauty, happiness, the watcher, non-conceptual awareness ... these are all very refined mental states. The pitfall is the subtle clinging involved in maintaining them, which can be very hard to see, at least initially. They are not called "golden chains" for nothing! One can start to pick them apart in meditation to see the drawbacks, the clinging, the avoidance, the subtle dukkha ... if one wants. But of course the strong temptation is to continue enjoying them while one can :-) If you need to ask how to move forward then evidently it's not the Ultimate Realization ... it's not that mental states don't matter - there's nothing wrong with cultivating them per se - but it's the clinging that gets you every time.
thumbnail
Ni Nurta, modified 3 Years ago at 3/14/21 5:02 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/14/21 5:02 AM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 1072 Join Date: 2/22/20 Recent Posts
- The yearning for liberation is a thought appearing as desire. There is nothing to be liberated from.
Yearning for liberation is caused by what I call "relief seeking" because this whole desire for liberation begins and is sustained with indulging in a kind of pleasure that gets available when there is some kind of suffering and this pleasure is experience of dukkha subsiding. Ways to get relief are fairly easy to find and itself are just not very good mean to deal with suffering. Short term there is no issue using this unsophisticated method of pain relief, especially if cause for dukkha is also short lived but for sustained suffering indulging in any relief has tendency to make dukkha worse over time.

Unfortunately most of the dharma and other teachings use word liberation and relief in good light and this immediately encourages people to indulge with relief seeking behavior, and it is not hard to find ways to experience this relief experience when doing meditation. This then creates desire for liberation which is a kind of impossible because at this point we want dukkha to not arise but we also want to experience this relief, so pleasure of dukkha subsiding which itself necessitates existence of dukkha.

- Silence is the ultimate Guru. Listen to silence and it will show you everything.
Silence you can point to is noise without apparent noisiness to it and not true silence.
Proper silence is when both any perceivable noise and anything you would call silence do not arise. There is no experience of either noise or silence as there is no consciousness related to it.

How it works in practice? Since consciousness related to this stuff does not arise the things for which consciousness arise get more awareness. Instead of using scarce resources for useless "silence" you can use it for perception and/or cognition.

The silence you experience is I would say related to relief. This because I know these experiences and I would say after novelty of them expired they are pretty useless. And clinging to them only causes desire for liberation.

- There is no self. Only thoughts appearing as a self. If only observed and accepted for what they are they pass through like the wind.
- Listen inward. No self appears anymore. Only two things left, empty silence and a watcher. Listen to silence and become the silence. Silence is infite, eternal, and perfect.

Thoughts arise in response to content in consciousness.
For faculties which create thoughts normal healthy sense of self and muted broken no-self are only slightly different thing because they ignore it specifically and respond to its location and location is provided by where awareness points to. So if you keep your fake relief induced silence instead of noisy sense of self it will still cause all the selfing to arise, just in this case these thoughts will be irritating and not work correctly because they have nothing to connect to.

Personally I made sense of self to be normal as this actually is correct healthy condition and self has a lot of useful stabilization features in it. For example all this cycling nonsense does not happen when you have sense of self. On the other hand instead of experiencing it all the time whole consciousness related to sense of self doesn't need to arise until it is actually needed. No self thought arise and the same mind faculties create thoughts about objects awareness points to.

Or to put it differently the issue never was the sense of self but failing to move awareness off it. If you stare at something for long enough it will complain because everything needs to sleep and in case of nervous system quite often hence proper management of what is active for how long. Normally people do not have much issues with this "self" because they do not stare at it all the time. When something happens and they do look at their sense of self for longer than it can sustain then it starts generating dukkha (this part of mind gets tired of being fully active) but otherwise they do not stare at it. What people who meditate do is stare and stare and stare... then find ways to make experience of it subside, then continuously subside, then call it silence and think they found something awesome... No! I have been there, done that, this is stupid solution to non-existent issue that exists only because of own unskillful actions to deal with issue own actions caused. And worse, all this exercise only causes awareness to get less flexible and after years of this bullshit it takes some time to make it flexible again. Ultimately if you realize how it works awareness can be made to work better than normally but not when you stare at experience of relief of your sense of self all day long. This will only cause you to plunge in to dukkha.
Yellow Tree, modified 3 Years ago at 3/15/21 3:58 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/15/21 3:58 AM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 58 Join Date: 3/13/21 Recent Posts
Hi, thank you for your answer!<br /><br />No real practce as of yet. Self-inquiry is interesting but there is a sense of "trying" when I do that. I prefer to just listen to the silence and then I automatically become aware of being no one, which leads to a sense of no conceptions and just awareness and emptiness.<br />Noting seems fascinating, I will give it a try!<br /><br /><br />Okay, I'll give a few examples.<br /><br />First experience.<br />I watched a video of some guy who had doe 5-meo-dmt saying he realized he was God. And for somereason I had the idea that I can have the same realization if i just accept it. So I sat for 6 hours on my couch saying "I created this, I choose this, this is perfection". And eventually something happened and it felt like my mind just sort of dissolved. Plants were "glistening" with vibrating energy and it was like I could see for the first time. Like I took off some dirty lens and could see the real world.<br />This state lasted for about 4 hours, I think.<br /><br />I tried to get this back but I couldn't. This is in September of 2020.<br /><br />Eventually I paid for a session with an Advaita Vedanta practitioner who did a self-inquiry with me.<br /><br />I became aware of being aware.<br /><br />This was very intense. I felt like I finally had come "home". Total perfection. I was convulsing in ecstasy. I couldn't speak. Just hysterical laughter alternated with weird noises like I was almost speaking in toungeus. I tried to speak but I couldn't really make real words. The way I tried to describe it with words was "Like the entire universe was continuously orgasming inside of me."<br /><br />This is the event that really changed my life. Ever since this time I'm able to just find tis awareness without self-inqury. I just sort of decide to abide in it, usually without these peak states however. It's like my mind realized what a pivotal moment it was and thus released enourmous amounts of dopamine and serotonin. These days it's quite normal and without extreme states that lead me to be completely unable to move or speak.<br /><br />I had a nice period of about 2 months of consistently abiding in, and as, silence. But then I started reading more about meditation and various practices. So I started to try really hard to go "deeper", but this put me completely out of it. Then anxiety and some desperation to get "it" back.<br /><br />Then, a few days ago, I spoke to an older guy who's been practicing zen for a few decades told me to stop doing so much and just allow myself to abide in the silence. And then it all came back.<br /><br />So now I just listen to the silence in my mind, realize there is no self, then become aware of all silence inside and outside of me, and that somehow makes me lose all conceptions and "thinking". No real energies. Sometimes bliss but I don't really consider the bliss all that important. It's a bit of a distraction I think.<br /><br />There still is some separation between The Watcher, the silenece/emptiness, and the thoughts. It's as though thoughts are outside occurences. The simply pass by like the wind. Which is very cool, but the sense of everything being me isn't there.<br /><br />I have had a couple of deeper experiences than this though. For example everyting went black and it was like I was dead or in super deep sleep without dreams, but like I was wrapped in a warm blanket of pure consciousness. It made me almost impatient to die to be honest, even though I'm also super super happy these days. Very interesting experience.
George S, modified 3 Years ago at 3/15/21 9:57 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/15/21 8:58 AM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 2722 Join Date: 2/26/19 Recent Posts
In the language of Progress of Insight, this sounds like a classic Arising & Passing experience (mindblowing ecstasy), followed by an entrance into the Dark Night (loss, anxiety, desperation) and then some experience of Equanimity (detaching from the bliss). The deep black experience sounds like it could have been some kind of formless jhana.

What to do? If you manage to stay in equanimity long enough then eventually a true cessation or experience of the unconditioned (nibbana) will happen. If not, then you will probably find yourself cycling to some degree between A&P-DN-EQ and it will require more disciplined practice to see how clinging to the A&P experiences itself creates the DN, and how relinquishing that clinging leads to EQ.

When you're coming off the back of a profound spiritual awakening, it's VERY important to be honest with yourself about the actual conditions of suffering in your life - family, relationships, work etc. It can be a classic mistake at this point to make some dramatic and irreversible life changes - as a way of trying to lock in the new spiritual identity - which are basically a form of spiritual bypassing (avoidance, denial, repression). This may not be much of an issue for you, but I feel like I should point it out because it's almost universal to some degree. The real underlying dukkha always shows itself eventually, and the longer you put it off the worse it is, so it's best to be aware of the possibility from the outset.

The other thing you can do is have a closer look at The Watcher. You allude to a sense of separation between The Watcher and experience, which is because The Watcher is a fabrication of the mind, a subtle reference point designed to provide some comfort and detachment from experience ... hence it is also dukkha, albeit dukkha of an exquisitely refined kind :-) In reality sensations are simply "aware of themselves", without needing the overlay of a watcher. This is covered in MCTB in the section on the Bahiya Sutta.

​​​​​​​
Yellow Tree, modified 3 Years ago at 3/17/21 5:36 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/17/21 5:36 AM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 58 Join Date: 3/13/21 Recent Posts
George S:
In the language of Progress of Insight, this sounds like a classic Arising & Passing experience (mindblowing ecstasy), followed by an entrance into the Dark Night (loss, anxiety, desperation) and then some experience of Equanimity (detaching from the bliss). The deep black experience sounds like it could have been some kind of formless jhana. What to do? If you manage to stay in equanimity long enough then eventually a true cessation or experience of the unconditioned (nibbana) will happen. If not, then you will probably find yourself cycling to some degree between A&P-DN-EQ and it will require more disciplined practice to see how clinging to the A&P experiences itself creates the DN, and how relinquishing that clinging leads to EQ. When you're coming off the back of a profound spiritual awakening, it's VERY important to be honest with yourself about the actual conditions of suffering in your life - family, relationships, work etc. It can be a classic mistake at this point to make some dramatic and irreversible life changes - as a way of trying to lock in the new spiritual identity - which are basically a form of spiritual bypassing (avoidance, denial, repression). This may not be much of an issue for you, but I feel like I should point it out because it's almost universal to some degree. The real underlying dukkha always shows itself eventually, and the longer you put it off the worse it is, so it's best to be aware of the possibility from the outset. The other thing you can do is have a closer look at The Watcher. You allude to a sense of separation between The Watcher and experience, which is because The Watcher is a fabrication of the mind, a subtle reference point designed to provide some comfort and detachment from experience ... hence it is also dukkha, albeit dukkha of an exquisitely refined kind :-) In reality sensations are simply "aware of themselves", without needing the overlay of a watcher. This is covered in MCTB in the section on the Bahiya Sutta. ​​​​​​​



Thank you for this incredible answer. This gives me a lot of clarity.

Yes, there is little no no attachment to bliss, in fact I almost see it as a bit of a pleasant distraction and nothing else. It ends eventually and I've had a lot of these bliss bursts now so I even feel a bit bored of "clinging" or trying to "bask in them" like I did the first few times.

I'm going to look into formless Jhanas, thanky ou. The only experience out of all of this that I would cling to would be this one. The total blackness and absolute peace was incredible. But ultimate it was still a "me" having the experience, sort of. And intuitively I knew it would come to an end, which it did.

Yep, I live my life as normal. I'm very very lucky to have build a life where I just do 2-3 hours of coaching and 1-2 hours of writing every day for work. During coaching I can stay in almost like a state of no mind where words flow out without any effort or trying. And so it's almost like a meditation practice of sorts.

I make money with very little effort, have good health (almost died from corona a year ago which made me accept death, I think that's partially why all this is just happening with almost zero real guidance, it was very surreal to find bliss in the midst of believing I was about to die). So my life is good and most aspects of the business is either delegated or automated.


Ahhh! Yes, the watcher, yep got it. I've been having more of a sense that this "watcher" thing isn't quite real because it's contributed to a bit of separation. I will investigate this more.

Thank you for you answers and your time!

I will keep staying equanimous, check out noting practice, and allow myself to move towards this Nidda you're speaking of. I'll check out what that actuallly means.

​​​​​​​Thank you again, feels incredible to have some clarity!
thumbnail
Pepe ·, modified 3 Years ago at 3/17/21 8:00 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/17/21 7:59 AM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 713 Join Date: 9/26/18 Recent Posts
Hi Pierre,

George S and Ni Nurta already gave you good advice.

Nevertheless, if you're strictly interested in non-dual teachings, you may want to check Awakening to Reality group in Facebook (over 680 members). As you have mentioned The Watcher, this article on Four Aspects of I AM may be of your interest. 
George S, modified 3 Years ago at 3/17/21 10:43 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/17/21 9:08 AM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 2722 Join Date: 2/26/19 Recent Posts
I'm glad you found it helpful. Lucidity is always preferable to dreaming. emoticon

I'm going to look into formless Jhanas, thanky ou. The only experience out of all of this that I would cling to would be this one. The total blackness and absolute peace was incredible. But ultimate it was still a "me" having the experience, sort of. And intuitively I knew it would come to an end, which it did.

The last thing you can look into is the fabrication of the experience of time itself. You've already seen through the fabrication of the self and the fabrication of the watcher. You've been into some deep formless states where there is very little sense of self or time, and yet your intuition tells you that the clock is still ticking, that something is missing. If you're honest with yourself then you probably suspect that this will be true of any state you can ever get into - however deep or refined - all states will come to an end. All we can ever really access is the present moment ... whether that be a "pure" experience of the present, or an experience of remembering some prior state, or an experience of imagining some future state, or an experience of clinging to the current state. The answer is not that states don't matter, rather there is no escaping their impermanence.

In a way it's like going back to how you were before your recent experiences and recognizing that you already knew this in your heart of hearts, even though you desperately wanted to believe that there was some special future state which would relieve you of this unfortunate knowledge ... which is what set you off on your quest for the holy grail! It's a very subtle perception because it's what you are already looking at. A lot of people overlook it because it is so blindingly obvious and yet not at all what was expected. It's always there, it was always there even when you thought it wasn't, and it will still be there even if you forget about it again. The problem is not that you don't see it, the problem is that you don't recognize it because you are looking for something else, a better state.

​​​​​​Just to be clear, I'm not advocating for the 'you are already there' or 'nothing to do' schools, which are equally troublesome. This perception doesn't magically fix your stuff. But in its way it's the ultimate realization, you might say ... emoticon​​​​​​​
Yellow Tree, modified 3 Years ago at 3/19/21 8:07 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/19/21 8:07 AM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 58 Join Date: 3/13/21 Recent Posts
George S
I'm glad you found it helpful. Lucidity is always preferable to dreaming. emoticon

I'm going to look into formless Jhanas, thanky ou. The only experience out of all of this that I would cling to would be this one. The total blackness and absolute peace was incredible. But ultimate it was still a "me" having the experience, sort of. And intuitively I knew it would come to an end, which it did.

The last thing you can look into is the fabrication of the experience of time itself. You've already seen through the fabrication of the self and the fabrication of the watcher. You've been into some deep formless states where there is very little sense of self or time, and yet your intuition tells you that the clock is still ticking, that something is missing. If you're honest with yourself then you probably suspect that this will be true of any state you can ever get into - however deep or refined - all states will come to an end. All we can ever really access is the present moment ... whether that be a "pure" experience of the present, or an experience of remembering some prior state, or an experience of imagining some future state, or an experience of clinging to the current state. The answer is not that states don't matter, rather there is no escaping their impermanence.

In a way it's like going back to how you were before your recent experiences and recognizing that you already knew this in your heart of hearts, even though you desperately wanted to believe that there was some special future state which would relieve you of this unfortunate knowledge ... which is what set you off on your quest for the holy grail! It's a very subtle perception because it's what you are already looking at. A lot of people overlook it because it is so blindingly obvious and yet not at all what was expected. It's always there, it was always there even when you thought it wasn't, and it will still be there even if you forget about it again. The problem is not that you don't see it, the problem is that you don't recognize it because you are looking for something else, a better state.

​​​​​​Just to be clear, I'm not advocating for the 'you are already there' or 'nothing to do' schools, which are equally troublesome. This perception doesn't magically fix your stuff. But in its way it's the ultimate realization, you might say ... emoticon​​​​​​​



Funny you say that, just today I've been fascinated with time. At moment's I see through it, or I have a glimpse of seeing through it at least. I was struck with the sensation that there are no separate moments, it's just a moment that keeps changing/molding/reshaping. When I enter "deep states" the present seems everlasting yet everchanging, and without past and future. However I still don't manage to see through the time illusion.

I like the whole "you're already there" stuff, it seems to be the most effective for me right now. Absolute letting go of everything and not "trying" seems to make me  one with the moment. I've also let go of the watcher idea since reading your comments in this thread and I've had some incredible moments of "presence-ness" thanks to it.

Whenever in nature it feels like I'm just awareness, for some reason it's a little harder at home.
Yellow Tree, modified 3 Years ago at 3/19/21 8:08 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/19/21 8:08 AM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 58 Join Date: 3/13/21 Recent Posts
Pepe
Hi Pierre,

George S and Ni Nurta already gave you good advice.

Nevertheless, if you're strictly interested in non-dual teachings, you may want to check Awakening to Reality group in Facebook (over 680 members). As you have mentioned The Watcher, this article on Four Aspects of I AM may be of your interest. 


Yes I joined and asked for some guidance in there as well! Will check out the article, thank you!
Yellow Tree, modified 3 Years ago at 3/19/21 8:09 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/19/21 8:09 AM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 58 Join Date: 3/13/21 Recent Posts
Ni Nurta
- The yearning for liberation is a thought appearing as desire. There is nothing to be liberated from.
Yearning for liberation is caused by what I call "relief seeking" because this whole desire for liberation begins and is sustained with indulging in a kind of pleasure that gets available when there is some kind of suffering and this pleasure is experience of dukkha subsiding. Ways to get relief are fairly easy to find and itself are just not very good mean to deal with suffering. Short term there is no issue using this unsophisticated method of pain relief, especially if cause for dukkha is also short lived but for sustained suffering indulging in any relief has tendency to make dukkha worse over time.

Unfortunately most of the dharma and other teachings use word liberation and relief in good light and this immediately encourages people to indulge with relief seeking behavior, and it is not hard to find ways to experience this relief experience when doing meditation. This then creates desire for liberation which is a kind of impossible because at this point we want dukkha to not arise but we also want to experience this relief, so pleasure of dukkha subsiding which itself necessitates existence of dukkha.

- Silence is the ultimate Guru. Listen to silence and it will show you everything.
Silence you can point to is noise without apparent noisiness to it and not true silence.
Proper silence is when both any perceivable noise and anything you would call silence do not arise. There is no experience of either noise or silence as there is no consciousness related to it.

How it works in practice? Since consciousness related to this stuff does not arise the things for which consciousness arise get more awareness. Instead of using scarce resources for useless "silence" you can use it for perception and/or cognition.

The silence you experience is I would say related to relief. This because I know these experiences and I would say after novelty of them expired they are pretty useless. And clinging to them only causes desire for liberation.

- There is no self. Only thoughts appearing as a self. If only observed and accepted for what they are they pass through like the wind.
- Listen inward. No self appears anymore. Only two things left, empty silence and a watcher. Listen to silence and become the silence. Silence is infite, eternal, and perfect.

Thoughts arise in response to content in consciousness.
For faculties which create thoughts normal healthy sense of self and muted broken no-self are only slightly different thing because they ignore it specifically and respond to its location and location is provided by where awareness points to. So if you keep your fake relief induced silence instead of noisy sense of self it will still cause all the selfing to arise, just in this case these thoughts will be irritating and not work correctly because they have nothing to connect to.

Personally I made sense of self to be normal as this actually is correct healthy condition and self has a lot of useful stabilization features in it. For example all this cycling nonsense does not happen when you have sense of self. On the other hand instead of experiencing it all the time whole consciousness related to sense of self doesn't need to arise until it is actually needed. No self thought arise and the same mind faculties create thoughts about objects awareness points to.

Or to put it differently the issue never was the sense of self but failing to move awareness off it. If you stare at something for long enough it will complain because everything needs to sleep and in case of nervous system quite often hence proper management of what is active for how long. Normally people do not have much issues with this "self" because they do not stare at it all the time. When something happens and they do look at their sense of self for longer than it can sustain then it starts generating dukkha (this part of mind gets tired of being fully active) but otherwise they do not stare at it. What people who meditate do is stare and stare and stare... then find ways to make experience of it subside, then continuously subside, then call it silence and think they found something awesome... No! I have been there, done that, this is stupid solution to non-existent issue that exists only because of own unskillful actions to deal with issue own actions caused. And worse, all this exercise only causes awareness to get less flexible and after years of this bullshit it takes some time to make it flexible again. Ultimately if you realize how it works awareness can be made to work better than normally but not when you stare at experience of relief of your sense of self all day long. This will only cause you to plunge in to dukkha.

So much deep and profound insight in this post I struggle to write an adequate response. Thank you so much, I will read this a few times more before responding properly. Thank you!
George S, modified 3 Years ago at 3/19/21 11:04 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/19/21 9:28 AM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 2722 Join Date: 2/26/19 Recent Posts
Whenever in nature it feels like I'm just awareness, for some reason it's a little harder at home.

This is a normal state of affairs! The problem is wanting to remain as pure awareness all the time. Obviously there are people who arrange their lives in a certain way and claim to have achieved this, but it's important to realize that is a beguiling proposition which feeds our desire for permanent relief from samsara.

This is where the riddle 'samsara is nirvana' comes into play. What you are talking about - the everchanging flow of experiences and states in the present moment - that's just samsara. Seeking permanent relief from samsara ... is also samsara. Accepting samsara for what it is - that's nirvana.

I like the whole "you're already there" stuff, it seems to be the most effective for me right now. Absolute letting go of everything and not "trying" seems to make me  one with the moment. I've also let go of the watcher idea since reading your comments in this thread and I've had some incredible moments of "presence-ness" thanks to it. 

Letting go of everything and resting at one with total presence in the present moment is a really good idea. Trying to turn it into a permanent state is a problem (not saying you are). A lot of the time you just need to get shit done and deal with people and the past and the future. The more presence you can bring to that the better, but be careful not to turn the medicine into the problem!​​​​​​​

'You are already there' is one of those statements that is both true and not true, so it's a problem if you cling to only one of those possibilities (not saying you are). Ultimately there is just the present moment and no one to get anywhere. Realizing that is liberating, but it doesn't free you from having to keep working on your stuff. emoticon​​​​​​​

EDIT: re-reading what I wrote I can see it sounds a bit preachy. Sorry about that. I am speaking to myself as much as you at times!
Yellow Tree, modified 3 Years ago at 3/19/21 12:44 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/19/21 12:44 PM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 58 Join Date: 3/13/21 Recent Posts
George S
Whenever in nature it feels like I'm just awareness, for some reason it's a little harder at home.

This is a normal state of affairs! The problem is wanting to remain as pure awareness all the time. Obviously there are people who arrange their lives in a certain way and claim to have achieved this, but it's important to realize that is a beguiling proposition which feeds our desire for permanent relief from samsara.

This is where the riddle 'samsara is nirvana' comes into play. What you are talking about - the everchanging flow of experiences and states in the present moment - that's just samsara. Seeking permanent relief from samsara ... is also samsara. Accepting samsara for what it is - that's nirvana.

I like the whole "you're already there" stuff, it seems to be the most effective for me right now. Absolute letting go of everything and not "trying" seems to make me  one with the moment. I've also let go of the watcher idea since reading your comments in this thread and I've had some incredible moments of "presence-ness" thanks to it. 

Letting go of everything and resting at one with total presence in the present moment is a really good idea. Trying to turn it into a permanent state is a problem (not saying you are). A lot of the time you just need to get shit done and deal with people and the past and the future. The more presence you can bring to that the better, but be careful not to turn the medicine into the problem!​​​​​​​

'You are already there' is one of those statements that is both true and not true, so it's a problem if you cling to only one of those possibilities (not saying you are). Ultimately there is just the present moment and no one to get anywhere. Realizing that is liberating, but it doesn't free you from having to keep working on your stuff. emoticon​​​​​​​

EDIT: re-reading what I wrote I can see it sounds a bit preachy. Sorry about that. I am speaking to myself as much as you at times!


First off: Doesn't sound preachy at all to me, just a ton of incredible advice. Thank you.

I'm in a life situation that allows me to basically be as awareness almost as much as I like. If I wanted to I could "meditate" for 8 hours a day. Even more than that probably. So the idea of remaining as pure awareness IS very interesting to me. My business requires about 4 hours of focused work per day, and is 100% online. I also don't have kids or any other ties to any location, time schedules, etc. I'm incredibly lucky.

Right now I allow myself to go out of awareness/presence simply because clinging to it would defeat the purpose. But in 6-12 months my business will (hopefully) run without me needing to work AT ALL. So I'm considering doing a 6 month silent retreat then either by myself somewhere or attending retreats/ashrams/temples or a combination of the two. This is interesting because on the one hand, most highly developed spiritual seekers seem to have done extended periods of time in solitude and tons of time spent in hardcore practices. Yet this is a bit of a seeking relief from "normal life".

However, my seeking of being relieved of normal life isn't because I don't like it. I actually do what I love ALL DAY LONG. It's ridiculously easy these days (I spent 14 years working 15 hours a day and finally got my dream life, only to completely lose interest in all the success lol). I just have come to a place where the only thing that interests me is going into solitude.

Wanting relief from Samsara vs Accepting Samsara for what it is - Yes, this is why I'm not clinging to the states. In fact I'm welcoming less pleasant states so that I can practice full acceptance. Not just acceptance for the sake of getting A&P/EQ states but to become completely fine with all aspects of Samsara. This is hard though. 

Thank you again for all these answers.

Noting practice, accepting Samsara as it is, not identifying as "witness" seem to be the next things to focus on.
George S, modified 3 Years ago at 3/19/21 2:24 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/19/21 2:24 PM

RE: Silence, awareness, etc. What is this? Where am I? How to move forward?

Posts: 2722 Join Date: 2/26/19 Recent Posts
In fact I'm welcoming less pleasant states so that I can practice full acceptance. Not just acceptance for the sake of getting A&P/EQ states but to become completely fine with all aspects of Samsara. This is hard though.

That's usually the best option - follow the dukkha, or else it will follow you! emoticon

Breadcrumb