Thanks David, the best explanation of letting go, I like the balloon example. Always wanted to know how to let go, knowing it does it itself is great. ❤
I loved this very much! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I could listen for hours, especially because my brain chemistry reacts well to your pauses, letting the words breathe and reshape into meaning. Gives me a new effortless view on meditation. I have been chasing all my life, instead I could just be. Letting go happens automatically if you let yourself see all the angles of something. The parrot example was great!
Wonderful 🙂 Yeah it's like the mediator can be replaced by meditation as a verb, so it's empty of meaning as a specific experience and can become the nature of all experience. Not part of life but life it's self 🙂
Re "letting go of the importance of the thought-based narrative": I wonder what was strong enough to turn the tables and diminish enough the importance of the thought-based narrative (and all its strong, presumably multi-year, roots)... here there was something important indeed, but more of the form of a gradual accumulation of a ridiculously large number of increasingly prominent synchronicities -- eye-catching phenomena so far beyond what you'd expect from mere coincidence that left me no choice but to revise my materialist/physicalist model of reality and replace it with something potentially extremely worrying (as in, triggering deep existential fear regarding the nature of reality). But I'm sure the universe has different tricks up its sleeve, tailored to different personalities and circumstances... What you started describing after ~20:00 with the parrot analogy made sense as a general concept, and it sounded extremely similar, in the abstract, to what other people have reported (for example, Jim Newman, if I remember correctly), even including the triviality aspect (you noticed something that was after all much simpler and lfess noteworthy than your mind had made it out to be). But I still don't know what exactly you're referring to so I'd be interested if at some point you could mention some specifics. Interesting, and very by-the-book, that meditation was able to reveal that illusory mechanism -- good stuff! My meditative skills are probably far worse than yours, so the universe had to come up with something else in my case.
@@gregolas17 Nice one. That first paragraph there could be my own experience. These questions came up into the forefront of my consciousness in exactly the same way 🙂 With this speaking style it's constantly hitting up against the limits of the mind and the ability to understand this objectively. I think with your question, if I understand correctly, you're noticing this limit. Which is pretty much the point of "pointing". Walking the line between the known and the unknown in the objective sense. It's just that I can't really explain or elaborate past that because it becomes so paradoxical and has to be experienced directly. But it's cool you honed in on that straight away 👌
@@Thesilentone089 Yeah it's like the awakening only ever "happens" in retrospect as a fiction that's created now for the purpose of taking about it 😂 which is the problem with talking about it.
It's quite beautiful of how it, through the appearances of others is pointing back to itself, really. On understanding: What exactly is it? Who is it that understands? Here, I'm trying to make a distinction between knowing - which is plainly self-evidential, and the understanding as it applies to something acquired through experience - for example technical knowledge, like language. When a language is heard, there's the primary sensations of sounds, then that sound is compared to a memory of the sound and all the associated ideas with that sound are replayed in a mental conceptual place that then leads to a mental feeling arising that feels like 'understanding'. If this is the case, then it suggests that there's no such thing as understanding, it's just something that essentially boils down to a knowing of an arbitrary mental sensation that doesn't have any inherent meaning in itself. From this it can be concluded that the world we inhabit is completely a mental construct built upon - as an overlay -on the observed (but really unknowable) sensations.
@@AK11020 Yeah that's a good description. I like the mirror analogy. The reflection being the known world through the filter of thought and the reflected being the unknowable. Both appearances appearing simultaneously with the boundary of separation, the surface of the mirror, being invisible.
I have the sense that a letting go needs to happen and feel like it's just not something that I could ever actually do. Letting go in one way or another always came unannounced and unsought when it would happen.
@@pointlessly.perfect Yeah man. This is where I've observed strong parallels between awakening and addiction. The absence of control or the ability to let go with will alone and the release of that will into something bigger by a close investigation of what is happening at the moment it happens. It's like something else let's go from outwith the control of the individual. But it's very much so thought that creates the whole illusion of the autonomous agent (self). That's why I think being grounded in the sense experience is like the gateway "through" the imaginary boundaries of the separate self.
@difficult_to_describe I notice that often there is a tunnelvision like quality to my experience. For example, in the visual, this tunnelvision experience can subside and I notice that the periphery of the seen is much clearer. Also, it feels like the same happens for the other senses, it feels like experience opens up and there's a relaxation felt. For a tiny moment there's a gentle sigh of relief. Is it similar for you? For example, in the visual, is it that there is a constant openness to it, or does a tunnelvision still happen sometimes? Or what would you say David?
@pointlessly.perfect Yeah I know what you mean. For me, what you're describing as a tunnel was a direction of attention ion "pointing out" from me, the looker at objects of attention. There was a single object of attention/importance at any one time when most of my attention was in thoughts I wasn't paying much attention to the peripheral or most of the field of vision. This would change when I observed the night sky or a sunset where the parameters of attention expanded out to like a wide angle view. So when I started investigating the vision sense more, I noticed that the tunnel or direction of attention out towards an object seemed to "constrict" my experience in a contracted way and there was a obvious effort going on to do that. So as I practiced opening the aperture of the looking, I noticed a relaxing sensation which went along with it. This tunnel or pointed, narrow focus of attention that was giving a sense of perspective of me, the one "back here" looking out, was replaced by a semi bubble-like or half dome like a convexed, fish eye lense across which the outside world was appearing. Does that make sense? So the dimensions of "further away/higher up/lower down" kind of flattened out into this half-bubble like screen. So this linear direction out towards single objects was replaced by this unified concave dome with the world appearing on it as a screen. Like from behind a camera lense. Eventually that transparent lens I was looking through at the outside world wasn't there anymore and I could describe it like the "half-sphere bubble" or "dome" no longer had a reference point of a looker anymore. I can't explain it but Frank yang uses a 360 degree camera to try and depict what it's like. It just has no dimensions that can be described because it is what contains all dimensions 😂
The breath is our only anchor, we can push all manner of boundaries with physical and mental exercise or psychedelic use and the breath is always there tethering us to now. Feeling an urge to book onto a vipassana session for some brutalisation of the noodle, have you ever been David? Love to know your thoughts on sustained meditation bouts. ❤
@@mementomori5374 So like you're saying, the experience of it being there is simply a belief. Seeing that directly, that it's not really here, dispels the belief. That's all the realisation is. By swing clearly what you're not, what you are becomes a self-confirming default which is inherent. Does tha make sense?
@difficult_to_describe just see what is between the word self and the word no self….. what is betweeen these 2 words Or another one what are you without language? Or what are you without words ? Or if you can not go to the past nor the future both don’t exist what do you believe now ? Just in this moment… no pas no next no future thats it No problem your sausage typos lol
Thanks David, the best explanation of letting go, I like the balloon example. Always wanted to know how to let go, knowing it does it itself is great. ❤
I loved this very much! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I could listen for hours, especially because my brain chemistry reacts well to your pauses, letting the words breathe and reshape into meaning. Gives me a new effortless view on meditation. I have been chasing all my life, instead I could just be.
Letting go happens automatically if you let yourself see all the angles of something. The parrot example was great!
Wonderful 🙂 Yeah it's like the mediator can be replaced by meditation as a verb, so it's empty of meaning as a specific experience and can become the nature of all experience. Not part of life but life it's self 🙂
Re "letting go of the importance of the thought-based narrative": I wonder what was strong enough to turn the tables and diminish enough the importance of the thought-based narrative (and all its strong, presumably multi-year, roots)... here there was something important indeed, but more of the form of a gradual accumulation of a ridiculously large number of increasingly prominent synchronicities -- eye-catching phenomena so far beyond what you'd expect from mere coincidence that left me no choice but to revise my materialist/physicalist model of reality and replace it with something potentially extremely worrying (as in, triggering deep existential fear regarding the nature of reality). But I'm sure the universe has different tricks up its sleeve, tailored to different personalities and circumstances...
What you started describing after ~20:00 with the parrot analogy made sense as a general concept, and it sounded extremely similar, in the abstract, to what other people have reported (for example, Jim Newman, if I remember correctly), even including the triviality aspect (you noticed something that was after all much simpler and lfess noteworthy than your mind had made it out to be). But I still don't know what exactly you're referring to so I'd be interested if at some point you could mention some specifics. Interesting, and very by-the-book, that meditation was able to reveal that illusory mechanism -- good stuff! My meditative skills are probably far worse than yours, so the universe had to come up with something else in my case.
@@gregolas17 Nice one. That first paragraph there could be my own experience. These questions came up into the forefront of my consciousness in exactly the same way 🙂
With this speaking style it's constantly hitting up against the limits of the mind and the ability to understand this objectively. I think with your question, if I understand correctly, you're noticing this limit. Which is pretty much the point of "pointing". Walking the line between the known and the unknown in the objective sense. It's just that I can't really explain or elaborate past that because it becomes so paradoxical and has to be experienced directly. But it's cool you honed in on that straight away 👌
I recently saw that parrot sculpture too and had a similar thought about how that illusion relates to this. Great pointers here!
Also love the simplicity in your pointers. That idea of assuming something big had to take place was something that kept me stuck for a while.
@@Thesilentone089 Yeah it's like the awakening only ever "happens" in retrospect as a fiction that's created now for the purpose of taking about it 😂 which is the problem with talking about it.
It's quite beautiful of how it, through the appearances of others is pointing back to itself, really.
On understanding: What exactly is it? Who is it that understands? Here, I'm trying to make a distinction between knowing - which is plainly self-evidential, and the understanding as it applies to something acquired through experience - for example technical knowledge, like language. When a language is heard, there's the primary sensations of sounds, then that sound is compared to a memory of the sound and all the associated ideas with that sound are replayed in a mental conceptual place that then leads to a mental feeling arising that feels like 'understanding'. If this is the case, then it suggests that there's no such thing as understanding, it's just something that essentially boils down to a knowing of an arbitrary mental sensation that doesn't have any inherent meaning in itself. From this it can be concluded that the world we inhabit is completely a mental construct built upon - as an overlay -on the observed (but really unknowable) sensations.
@@AK11020 Yeah that's a good description. I like the mirror analogy. The reflection being the known world through the filter of thought and the reflected being the unknowable. Both appearances appearing simultaneously with the boundary of separation, the surface of the mirror, being invisible.
I have the sense that a letting go needs to happen and feel like it's just not something that I could ever actually do.
Letting go in one way or another always came unannounced and unsought when it would happen.
@@pointlessly.perfect Yeah man. This is where I've observed strong parallels between awakening and addiction. The absence of control or the ability to let go with will alone and the release of that will into something bigger by a close investigation of what is happening at the moment it happens. It's like something else let's go from outwith the control of the individual. But it's very much so thought that creates the whole illusion of the autonomous agent (self). That's why I think being grounded in the sense experience is like the gateway "through" the imaginary boundaries of the separate self.
@difficult_to_describe I notice that often there is a tunnelvision like quality to my experience.
For example, in the visual, this tunnelvision experience can subside and I notice that the periphery of the seen is much clearer. Also, it feels like the same happens for the other senses, it feels like experience opens up and there's a relaxation felt.
For a tiny moment there's a gentle sigh of relief.
Is it similar for you? For example, in the visual, is it that there is a constant openness to it, or does a tunnelvision still happen sometimes? Or what would you say David?
@pointlessly.perfect Yeah I know what you mean. For me, what you're describing as a tunnel was a direction of attention ion "pointing out" from me, the looker at objects of attention. There was a single object of attention/importance at any one time when most of my attention was in thoughts I wasn't paying much attention to the peripheral or most of the field of vision. This would change when I observed the night sky or a sunset where the parameters of attention expanded out to like a wide angle view. So when I started investigating the vision sense more, I noticed that the tunnel or direction of attention out towards an object seemed to "constrict" my experience in a contracted way and there was a obvious effort going on to do that. So as I practiced opening the aperture of the looking, I noticed a relaxing sensation which went along with it. This tunnel or pointed, narrow focus of attention that was giving a sense of perspective of me, the one "back here" looking out, was replaced by a semi bubble-like or half dome like a convexed, fish eye lense across which the outside world was appearing. Does that make sense? So the dimensions of "further away/higher up/lower down" kind of flattened out into this half-bubble like screen. So this linear direction out towards single objects was replaced by this unified concave dome with the world appearing on it as a screen. Like from behind a camera lense. Eventually that transparent lens I was looking through at the outside world wasn't there anymore and I could describe it like the "half-sphere bubble" or "dome" no longer had a reference point of a looker anymore. I can't explain it but Frank yang uses a 360 degree camera to try and depict what it's like. It just has no dimensions that can be described because it is what contains all dimensions 😂
The breath is our only anchor, we can push all manner of boundaries with physical and mental exercise or psychedelic use and the breath is always there tethering us to now.
Feeling an urge to book onto a vipassana session for some brutalisation of the noodle, have you ever been David? Love to know your thoughts on sustained meditation bouts.
❤
Go for it! 😀 No I've never been to a formal session. I've heard it's intense!
How can you let go of something which is not their already
@@mementomori5374 So like you're saying, the experience of it being there is simply a belief. Seeing that directly, that it's not really here, dispels the belief. That's all the realisation is. By swing clearly what you're not, what you are becomes a self-confirming default which is inherent. Does tha make sense?
@@mementomori5374 Please excuse my sausage finger typos 😂
@difficult_to_describe just see what is between the word self and the word no self….. what is betweeen these 2 words
Or another one what are you without language?
Or what are you without words ?
Or if you can not go to the past nor the future both don’t exist what do you believe now ? Just in this moment… no pas no next no future thats it
No problem your sausage typos lol
@mementomori5374 Sounds perfect man 🙂
@ ❤️