Sunday, September 1, 2013

Freedom from 'Self' is a Brain Process...




You have no soul, no spirit and consciousness is entirely brain centered and produced.

I recognize that for some that fact may suck, but this allows you to be one with the universe that gave you that existence (as a brain controlled organism), which also allowed the environment you exist in and, when you understand this “spiritual” fact fully, you will be free from suffering through your short monotonous existence that is as meaningless as the dust bunnies under your couch.

It is true, however, that this fact contradicts your need to construct all types of stories to make your monotonous existing more bearable but that, paradoxically, only creates more complexity and confusion resulting in your continued suffering. You’re not surrendering to some nebulous conceptualization of kumbaya spiritual “energy,” some magically mysterious ether mist or a dogmatic, all powerful “god” entity/being/thingy, but simply to the physical organ that allows you the power to conceptualize anything at all, because it grants you the power to “think” and BE conscious in the first place. The universe that gave you existence, gave you that, so why seek to negate the fact through some confabulation of truth?

You did not choose to be brain-centered with an intellect amazingly adept at constructing fictional stories for which to conjure up meaning out of nothing. The universe gave you this capacity and the universe can take it away. You have no free-will and, hence, you have no autonomous ‘self’ for which to claim such freedom and act as if that claim were true. It’s that simple!

This is the “surrender-to-oneness” that many authentic guru’s claim to have realized, but that most of us will completely fail to understand by sitting in the lotus for 50 years “meditating.” Any so-called “spiritual teacher” who claims meditation as a way to enlightenment is either totally ignorant, mentally ill (most clearly demonstrate bipolar symptoms) or need to sell books to pay their alimony and child support.

Nevertheless, meditation is a good exercise to test your complete lack of free-will in relation to “thoughts” in your brain that are aligned with your genetic and socio-cultural programming. Sit back and try not to think and watch how fooking impossible that is. In fact, not only is it impossible to stop thinking but in the process of trying not to think, all manner of thoughts consistently pop up out of thin air, completely outside any capacity to control. One thought will then lead to another, thereby, influencing the next until finally the thought; “I must not think” (obviously influenced by the “thought” that you’re not supposed to be “thinking” while meditating or else how will you achieve your socially conditioned “enlightenment”?) will ultimately engage the whole process to begin again, resulting in the same programmed thought patterns spewing out, helter skelter, all over your brain circuitry.

Hence, you have no free-will to stop thought, control thought and all thinking is either influenced by current environmental factors or programmed brain circuitry that simply fires up without any decision on your part, because it is either wired up that way or provoked by external factors outside your control. When sheit happens out of the blue, you react based on the tangled up sheit in your skull and you had nothing to do with the formation of either. That sheit just started happening the moment you were born. This is your freedom.

Essentially you live your “life” like you drive your car. Until the texting idiot behind slams into you, the last thought in your head had nothing to do with driving. You’re completely programmed to drive a car with robotic precision and you needn’t give it a thought, until the external environment influences you to direct conscious attention on a specific external event. Hence, while you are driving, thoughts anarchically bounce around your cranium having absolutely nothing to do with driving, with most influenced by some previous or future event or simply influencing one another. You have absolutely no free-will to think whatever you want and most thinking just occurs outside any conscious awareness until the environment outside your head demands your attention.

Is it any wonder egocentrics become alcoholic and drug addicts? It seems to provide freedom from the uncontrollable. You literally hate your brain...

Sometimes I like to think (though I know better) that I have volitionally chosen in this moment to think specific thoughts about writing this blog post even though, through careful analysis, I can see how my decision to write in this moment was influenced by myriad of factors outside my control. Each sentence written influences another electro-chemical “thought” impulse that joins up with new electro-chemically induced “ideas” that then lead to even more.

How did I even come to the realization that free-will is an illusion when, for decades I believed “I-me” made choices completely free of any influence? I have no clear idea, just a broad recollection of past events that caused my circuits to generate impulses that directed me to this very exclamation point…right….here…!

What is “thinking” if not electrochemical synaptical impulses processed within the language centers of the brain? All sensation runs through language centers to facilitate conceptual understandings we abstractly refer to as “intellect,” but that are nothing more than neuro-circuits conditioned from birth to provide quick neuro-linguistically programmed scripts learned through years of socio-cultural conditioning.

So relax….why feel guilty about what you were “thinking” if you have no free-will to choose specific thoughts anyway? Your perverse fantasies of Miley Cyrus were formulated through many years of neuro-synaptic impulses passed on through millions of miles of circuitry linking up to other impulses that you consider, at times, “perverse” (itself a circuit all its own).

What is an “experience,” if not simply an electro-chemical impulse generated exclusively by the brain being influenced by sensation? You may look to an external world to generate sensational experiences, but it all comes down to brain circuitry. Bungee jumping certainly seems to require specific materials and settings external to the brain, but it will be the brain that provides the experience and nothing else, because your entire life is experienced neuro-chemically.

Your “happiness” consists of just the right levels of serotonin, dopamine, catecholamine’s, endorphins, etc, etc. If it’s all in your brain, then clearly you must be dreaming…

Choices are certainly made as a means of generating certain experiences, but you interpret some choices as good, while others are bad. Where’d you learn that sheit?? You have no free-will in this simply because the neuro-circuit programming has constructed conditional filters through sensations are sifted, processed and evaluated to provide an “experience.” Yet, the experiences will happen whether you evaluate them or not, but your evaluative function will ‘know’ the experience and rate it as a means to promote future acceptance or rejection which directs future seeking or avoidance. This is referred to as excitatory or inhibitory processing.

In fact, you most likely can recall times when you had no idea why you did what you did and this emphasizes the spontaneity of neuro-circuited “thought” impulses and why you are ALWAYS spontaneously in the moment. Without the brain you could have no sensation at all and the brain can even give you sensation were no such external impulse exists.

Hence, because the “I-me” identity neuro-circuit exists in your skull and nowhere else, you generate a delusional experience of volitional choice, simply because you identify the cranium encased fatty material as “me.” You act and then claim the act as exclusively owned by “me” and not another. But you will never say, “my brain did this,” even though, clearly, that is exactly what occurred, since the action whether spontaneous or deliberated on, was prompted by specific neuro-circuitry in a specifically located cranium. The “I-me” delusion is based solely on location and not agency. Everywhere you take your head is where you will find your ‘self.’ You can’t take your head anywhere and not be your ‘self.’ Because you are in a specific skull, you will always find yourself there, no matter where you go, until the brain shuts off and then you will not be anywhere, because you will not exist as “me.”

“I-me” could never find my “self” in your skull, simply because that happens to be where “you” are and it’s a natural law that only one brain be attributed to one head. Even though two heads are possible, there can only be one brain per head. No matter how many appendages and limbs exist on a specific organism, there can only be one brain to control it all.

You don’t have some nebulous, mysterious mind, you have a brain and that organ is firing off billions of electro-chemical impulses every second and the energy generated from that is called “consciousness” and you are simply not in control of that process.

Egocentricity wants to glorify itself by being more than a brain housed in calcium. It desires grandiosity through a self somehow not engaged with the brain at all. A self completely free of electro-chemical impulses and this is how it can destroy everything around it with impunity.

Many claim the argument of free-will is ridiculous and matters not in the least. Yet, it is more than simply whether or not you have free-will and more about whether you even have a ‘self.’ If we claim the self is contingent on free-will, then clearly if free-will is an illusion, so must the self be a brain generated mirage.

The question of the 21st century revolves around the fact that an “I-me” does not even exist and never has and this has deep spiritual significance. If you want absolute freedom then you must exit the prison of ‘self’ and this can occur simply by recognizing each and every impulse of the self is nothing more than brain activity.

Do what you do, until something else comes upon you, because you simply are not in charge of anything.

32 comments:

  1. "You have no soul, no spirit and consciousness is entirely brain centered and produced."

    Ha! Epic sentence should have ended this post right here. (or not) lol

    "I recognize that for some that fact may suck"

    It will suck big time, if you tell em they'd probably tie you to a chair n sellotape your eyes open n make you watch Miley Cyrus (whom I have not fantasied about *cough*) twerk over n over again.

    Abe. :)

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  2. No soul, no spirit? Just a brain? I think that's a bit pessimistic. Do you really think those monks waste their whole life meditating if it wasn't for something useful?

    Sure you could say that spiritual states, for instance Kundalini energy or even unconditional love, gratitude and bliss are just brain activity and there's no real spirit or entity that goes on into a next life.

    But what's the point of this life then? Just phenomena? Maybe.

    I highly doubt my teachers aren't onto something though.

    This Universe is enormous and it would just make no sense if there were no past/future lives and a higher purpose. At least not to this egocentrist. =)

    The self might be an illusion, but it's still real to me. Wish I could see past that.

    Kind regards
    Y.

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  3. "Do you really think those monks waste their whole life meditating if it wasn't for something useful?"

    A distinct egocentric trait is self-absorbed ignorance, which is nowhere to be found in a natural order that does not require imaginative intellect to devise fictional stories for which to give life 'meaning.'

    The the natural order of the universe just IS. What egocentric out there lives as if it all just IS?

    Yet, the goal of egocentricity is to remove itself from the natural order and it does this through concepts such as meditation, spiritual states, kundalini energy, etc, etc, all mental states can be brain produced simply through adding specific chemicals to the circuits (LSD, peyote, cannabis, etc), thereby, proving the states are brain produced. Whether you alter brain chemistry through 30 yrs of meditation or a day of tripping on acid, it's all the same.

    Nevertheless, in order to transcend and remove itself from the natural order, egocentrics invent 'sacred' concepts not found anywhere in the universe (which is completely indifferent to our sacred fictions) for which to aggrandize itself above and beyond the causal order of things.

    To be a "monk" is to enlist in a fictional story no different than enlisting in the military to become a "soldier." Both require specific rules, rituals and uniforms that are completely made up.

    Both are fictional stories ascribed value by different groups for different reasons completely missing the fact that both are most certainly conceptual fictions and have no basis in the universe, other than the fact that egocentrica mammalians are so devised by the universe to exist in fictions. They have no free-will in this and so devise ever more complex and complicated fictions for which to invest a fictional "self' in.

    The problem for egocentricity is that it must live out fictional realities. It has no choice. However, can it live out fictional realities while realizing they are fictional?

    Caveat for all who read this blog:

    If you are seeking to find purpose and meaning then please do not read this blog, because deconstructing conceptual meanings others claim real is child's play when you can SEE through the veil, and that seems to have become the purpose of this blog, thereby making it very unpopular with the mass of spiritual seekers who fail to realize that even their 'seeking' is made up of a tangled web of fictions passed down through the centuries and propped up with meaning by egocentrics who need fictions to live and, will often kill themselves or others in order to maintain belief in their fictions.

    Yet, since I have no free-will in this, please do not shoot the messenger.

    Mike

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  4. Not sure I get what you're writing, I'll try: so your point is that everything is meaningless and perceived purpose or meaning is just something we address to something ourselves because of our life stories?

    This addressing meaning to something is what clings us to a self that doesn't exist. Realizing no self ends a lot of personal misery, so why invest energy in addressing meaning into something?

    Maybe I didn't get your point..

    I still believe in clichéd things like everything is energy and connected. Everything the mind perceives (wether imagined or fictions or a memory or current perceptions) is as real in existence as the keys I'm tapping on now. It's all just data in different sizes and shapes. We choose or at least think we choose to perceive this data over that data by going through the required motions.

    That data becomes important to the individual and craving and aversion occur even more. This is suffering and thus detachment is the key out of that. Engaging in spiritual practises can help to make that happen, so why not? Sure, it can be self absorbed egocentric stuff in the beginning, but what is not?

    Just babbling..
    Y.

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  5. "Engaging in spiritual practises can help to make that happen, so why not?"

    Spiritual practices are like putting a fire out with gasoline. In other words, employing one fiction to extinguish and dissolve another is rather ridiculous.

    "Sure, it can be self absorbed egocentric stuff in the beginning, but what is not?"

    Indeed, it starts as egocentricity and ends as egocentricity. Just like a bird starts and ends as a bird, because it has no choice, egocentrics start and end as egocentrics, because they have no choice. However, the bird seems to have no problem being a bird, yet egocentrics so deeply loathe themselves and what they do to one another, that they demand a way to be other than what they are, so endowed by the universe that gave them existence, just as it gave the bird existence.

    Hence, they construct fictional stories made up of fictional concepts to give themselves a 'feeling' of being something other than what they are.

    But in the end, just like the bird, they simply die and are no more.

    Mike

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  6. I don't know if I can agree with that Mike..

    I started spiritual practise to find a way out of my perceived misery. In some ways I succeeded because I've felt the love and forgiveness that was being talked about by religions in books. Glimpses of true happiness and compassion (not pity). Even glimpses of no self.

    I continue my practise because I want to experience more of that and indeed less egocentrism or negative emotions and mental activity. Although I recognize the need to practise is a selfabsorbed activity... In a relatively short time this year I've become a little bit more confident and outgoing, so I conclude the practises do help. It's a slow process and effects build over time, but I don't know any better way. So I see these meditations as going down a road to a better space, not like throwing gasoline at a fire.

    Then again, I sure am no saint and I do not experience such love all the time, not even 5% of the time. So maybe other people are better off without such activities. Either way besides doubt and negativity at times (things not going as fast as I want them to), I trust my teachers and where they are at. They've helped me get this far, so there must be something beyond the physical brain and a higher purpose.

    Just my 2 cents.. Feel free to discuss.. I'm curious if you understand or what you think. Have you ever had a practise yourself btw?

    Y.

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  7. "I trust my teachers and where they are at. They've helped me get this far, so there must be something beyond the physical brain and a higher purpose."

    Ask your teachers...'if this is all experienced in my brain, how do we know there is something beyond it?'

    The brain has neuro-chemical experiences and then processes these experiences through language circuits to superimpose concepts upon the experiences such as, "confidence," "misery," "love," "forgiveness," "negativity," etc, etc. Yet, these concepts have no basis in reality and are ego-centered inventions used to extract the ego from the universe and make it more than what it is, which is a fragile, frightened, self-absorbed organism headed for the same fate all finite organisms must eventually face...death.

    Egocentrics strenuously do all they can to reject that fate, imposed on them by the causal order and thus, seek madly to circumvent it and by doing so only generate more suffering for themselves with brief episodes of delusional "peace" and "happiness" that do absolutely nothing to thwart that predetermined fate.

    I am sorry my friend, but from what you write, I have no idea why you even read this blog as it is so antithetical to your current brain circuitry and the path that takes you on.

    I have been through years of practices and rituals of numerous brands of "spirituality" and I quite easily deconstructed them into wisps of nothingness.

    Nevertheless, good luck with your spiritual endeavors.
    Mike

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  8. Interesting discussion guys. Mike I'm intrigued by how you can know with such apparent certitude some of the points you raise, however. I don't think it's simply grasping at straws or desperate confabulation (my words) to be open to other possibilities about what our nature is.

    Many 'spiritual traditions' (if not all the ones worth investigating) are also based on "deconstructing conceptual meanings others claim real". To initiate this process symbolic fictions (i.e. language) are employed, just like you are yourself using. To say that any of use of language (or if you like, employing other fictions) is completely counterproductive or misguided is an oversimplification, in my opinion. Many spiritual traditions agree with you that 'seeking' is merely the chasing of imaginary concepts about how experience should appear, so you're not actually at odds with many of them there, be they 'bi-polar' or not!

    The idea that death is the complete cessation of experience is a reasonable one, and one that I personally increasingly don't find overly troublesome. It doesn't really reduce either the intrinsic or or some kind of dependent meaning of life any more than a kind of experiencing which is eternal (or atemporal) enhances it, necessarily. However to presume that death is certainly 'the end', or that consciousness is irrefutably brain-based is to make unfounded presumptions about the nature of reality that we simply do not know at the present time.

    I think becoming rigid about any idea, be it death or limitation, however plausible, may be another fictitious prison with which to entrap and limit oneself. We (or at least) I don't know for certain whether the appearance or sense of separation from the universe (insofar as any 'matter' as generally understood presently by science is ever separate from any other matter, for example having discreet and individual, purely localised, brain-based consciousness) is a genuine perception of the 'way things are' or simply another layer of 'fiction'; of inferences drawn together and made to feel real by my brain and believed to be certain. I wonder what makes you so certain that your brain/mind has not done the same thing?

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  9. You wrote: "confidence," "misery," "love," "forgiveness," "negativity," etc, etc. Yet, these concepts have no basis in reality and are ego-centered inventions used to extract the ego from the universe and make it more than what it is, which is a fragile, frightened, self-absorbed organism headed for the same fate all finite organisms must eventually face...death.

    => If that is how you see people, then isn't that just another ego centered invention as you say? Fragile, frightened, self-absorbed? Why not beautiful, loving and caring?

    There's a lot of people on this planet and they all have a slightly different view on things. Is yours more correct than the others because you see through the veil? Maybe, but I'd rather have my consciousness steered towards love and peace than fear and hate.

    Don't be sorry, I like this blog and try to understand what it is you're experiencing. Maybe I can learn something.

    If you've been through similar experiences of unconditional love and forgiveness through those years of practise, then I wonder how you lost interest in such things. Maybe this is your natural state now and you don't need any practises? If you're free of the concept of a self, then that sounds quite likely. So I wonder how you got here so easily?

    It just goes against what I learned and that's why I'm interested. I learned that in order to get somewhere you have to actually put in some work, intention, an effort.

    I'll ask my teacher about the brain thing.

    Thanks for your patience and allowing my posts, I realize it's probably quite off-topic by now!? =)

    Y.

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  10. "If that is how you see people, then isn't that just another ego centered invention as you say? Fragile, frightened, self-absorbed? Why not beautiful, loving and caring?"

    Good point. Indeed,the predetermined causal order of the universe is as indifferent to fragile and frightened as it is to loving and caring. Hence, both matter not in the least, so feel free to pick and choose as your programmed brain circuitry directs, just as I do.

    It all happens as it it must and can happen no other way.

    Thanks for the discussion...
    Mike

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  11. Hi Mike, did you receive my last comment? It was the one suggesting that perhaps the idea that death is the absence of experience may be another fiction. If you are sick of people disagreeing with you, or least doubting you though, fair enough. I read this blog personally because I find it interesting, but don't necessarily always agree with you.

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  12. Ha! Actually, I thrive on disagreement and am programmed to receive and process without malice or contempt.

    "It was the one suggesting that perhaps the idea that death is the absence of experience may be another fiction."

    Indeed, the absence of experience might very well be fictional. However, based on Occam's Razor, it is probably the simplest and most accurate of explanations until a more accurate one can be determined.

    In addition, if the fiction of "an absence of experience" were the predominant explanatory world view then we probably would experience less religious conflicts of the type that now seem to be leading us to our eventual annihilation.

    If only more could believe in the fiction of "an absence of experience" upon death the world might finally be a better place. But nope, we have energies, fractals, heavens, Kundalinies, hells, 72 virgins, ascensions, revelations, awakenings, non-dualities, chakras, higher planes, Christs, Buddhas, damnations, enlightenments, raptures, purgatories, channeled beings, prophets, satans, antichrists, messiahs, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, on and on, seemingly ad infinitum.

    Sometimes you just want to say, "dude, it's just death. get over it."

    Alas, hope springs eternal....
    Mike

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  13. Yes that's what I thought! Luckily (arguably) I copied the comment before I sent it. I'd be interested to hear your opinion. I realise now that the comment makes me sound a bit like some 'spiritual tradition-y' guy' which I'm not but anyway:

    Interesting discussion guys. Mike I'm intrigued by how you can know with such apparent certitude some of the points you raise, however. I don't think it's simply grasping at straws or desperate confabulation (my words) to be open to other possibilities about what our nature is.

    Many 'spiritual traditions' (if not all the ones worth investigating) are also based on "deconstructing conceptual meanings others claim real". To initiate this process symbolic fictions (i.e. language) are employed, just like you are yourself using. To say that any of use of language (or if you like, employing other fictions) is completely counterproductive or misguided is an oversimplification, in my opinion. Many spiritual traditions agree with you that 'seeking' is merely the chasing of imaginary concepts about how experience should appear, so you're not actually at odds with many of them there, be they 'bi-polar' or not!

    The idea that death is the complete cessation of experience is a reasonable one, and one that I personally increasingly don't find overly troublesome. It doesn't really reduce either the intrinsic or or some kind of dependent meaning of life any more than a kind of experiencing which is eternal (or atemporal) enhances it, necessarily. However to presume that death is certainly 'the end', or that consciousness is irrefutably brain-based is to make unfounded presumptions about the nature of reality that we simply do not know at the present time.

    I think becoming rigid about any idea, be it death or limitation, however plausible, may be another fictitious prison with which to entrap and limit oneself. We (or at least) I don't know for certain whether the appearance or sense of separation from the universe (insofar as any 'matter' as generally understood presently by science is ever separate from any other matter, for example having discreet and individual, purely localised, brain-based consciousness) is a genuine perception of the 'way things are' or simply another layer of 'fiction'; of inferences drawn together and made to feel real by my brain and believed to be certain. I wonder what makes you so certain that your brain/mind has not done the same thing?

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  14. "Many 'spiritual traditions' (if not all the ones worth investigating) are also based on "deconstructing conceptual meanings others claim real""

    I agree. But then one must deconstruct the "spiritual tradition." I do understand not everyone has arrived at that point, but that is how I write because it was my experience.

    "However to presume that death is certainly 'the end', or that consciousness is irrefutably brain-based is to make unfounded presumptions about the nature of reality that we simply do not know at the present time."

    Death may not be the end. But I see nothing at present to prove otherwise and there is an inherent "spiritual" perspective in that view as well. We may construct numerous fictions about the way we want things to be, but we conduct our existence in the "way things are" but then refuse to accept that conduct of living by constructing fictions to deny the reality of what is. This is often referred to as "spiritual bypassing."

    In response to my rigidity toward other ideas, if you peruse my earlier posts (going back 8 yrs) I have entertained numerous ideas completely opposite what my circuitry now considers. But I now can see how I had no free-will in that direction.

    For instance: If the brain is merely a conduit of consciousness, does consciousness "choose" to shut down the brain thus ending consciousness or is that brain based mechanism and simply related to conditions in the natural order?

    Any ideas?
    Mike

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  15. Thanks Mike, perhaps 'rigid' was the wrong word, but you just seem to be at least to some degree against or at odds with things which don't share the same (what I would call) belief system as you present as having yourself. i.e. (in a caricature) we have no free will, we are incarnate mortal beings and nothing else, life's pretty pointless and then you die. This sounds to me like a belief system that could perhaps hinder one's fully appreciating this, even (or especially) without the 'spiritual' beliefs tacked on.

    Things are I think more open-ended than any story. This could be argued to be a story, but you can look and see that it's the case presently (just pay me $500 first. Do I sound enough like a guru now? haha), whereas the assertions about free will are purely intellectual, and arguably 'fabrication' too. You could have just been beamed here holographically this instant and never existed! You could be dreaming! What then would you know about free-will or death? Admittedly those aren't Occam's Razor-friendly possibilities, but who's to say?

    Re your question: I suppose IF everything is consciousness then any thing that happens is arguably 'chosen' by it itself. Although chosen seems to be the wrong word as I think it's more like how our apparently individual minds conjure up dreams (in both waking life and sleep). Was that the presumption you were making for the question, hypothetically? If it was then yes, both. The natural order is the same as saying the consciousness. If you're not assuming that then it would just be a natural process. Which is quite a convoluted way of echoing what Morrissey sang:

    "Does the body rule the mind
    Or does the mind rule the body?
    I dunno."

    I dunno. I think spiritual bypassing is a real thing though. I think it's good that you have resigned yourself to the (conceptually designated) 'most likely' way things are. Perhaps I will come to do so myself, but for now my brain-circuitry is leading to me to be as open-minded to all possibilities as possible.

    So yeah that's kind of funny to me, I'm not sure why. Seeing that last sentence be written was quite amusing to me. Weird circuits! Cheers

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  16. "This sounds to me like a belief system that could perhaps hinder one's fully appreciating this, even (or especially) without the 'spiritual' beliefs tacked on."

    Hmmm...I find it to be quite liberating with a complete absence of guilt or an anxiety/fear of future decisions.

    Try to analyze the major 'happenings' of your life that have directed your course and you will find that, not only did you have nothing to do with what happened, but even your reactions were so programmed as to free you from responsibility, since you could only act in accordance to the wired up circuits. There is no exit from that 3lbs of fatty tissue and neuroscience is demonstrating this more every day. I posted a vid on the previous post which is worthy of a listen. In fact, many of my previous neuro-self posts lay out this framework in numerous ways.

    "You could have just been beamed here holographically this instant and never existed! You could be dreaming! What then would you know about free-will or death? Admittedly those aren't Occam's Razor-friendly possibilities, but who's to say?"

    But do you live your life as if you were beamed here holographically or as if in a dream? Rather, you live your live as a brain based organism who encounters every single experience ever encountered right up there in your noggin. Who's to say? You do, simply by how you conduct your life. There are a million phantasmagorical schemes out there as to what it is all about, but we live exactly as it is, only we wish it were different in so many ways and seek to placate our existential despair through afterlife and energetic onenss fantasies. But look at your world and count how many actually live as such.

    The proof is always in the pudding, but the pudding often tastes like sheit and so we seek out dishes more palatable to our tastes, no matter how artificial or disingenuous they are to our actual existence.

    And you are correct. The circuitous route my brain took to get me here was based on a set of blatant and subtle circumstances,many completely outside awareness or tucked deeply within the circuitry, which were initiated in the womb with the first genetically programmed neuron, and was entirely out of my control and still is.

    Thanks,
    Mike

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  17. Great reply, you make your position very well heard and understandable for me to a great degree.

    However personally I'm not convinced that observing experience without belief or over-investment in the overlay of conceptual designations (as I may not have put it before, but this was what I was trying to indicate rather than more 'beliefs') is 'artificial or disingenuous', on the contrary I think that is when we impose our ideas on reality (be they philosophically materialistic, or about 'oneness', or whatever we are -thinking- about it) we are not seeing it for what it is, which is multifarious and irreducible (I would venture. If there is 'one way' that this is, we seem to be having a hard time agreeing on it. Arguably just different circuitry, one 'way things are' but even contemporary physics is pointing to this not being the case in many ways).

    I actually am with you on the whole free-will thing. I have to go back on something I said earlier and go with you actually in that there is more than an intellectual component to the issue and there is a tangible unwinding that can happen when contemplating not having free-will. Maybe you have got to the place where you don't have to contemplate it anymore, it's simply a 'lived experience' (consciously), but for me it is still an analytical process I have to go through, however brief, to even ask the question of if there is 'someone in control', which is why I said it could be a 'fabrication' to decide either way; the categories may not be sufficient in relation to reality (which may be, or I'm going to say certainly is! stranger than anything capturable in language.)

    There probably isn't a 'self' but there is something here, very much aware and present here too, which is self-reflective, and I assume I am talking to another one of these! But when it is looked for it can't be found as anything. It kind of is and isn't perhaps. Language fails.

    I don't think this is beautifying or making vague an essentially crappy state of affairs. I think that the crappy state of affairs is just more egocentric or at least 'human-terms only' interpretations of something which is WAY beyond being either crappy OR fantastically amazing (or whatever). This has been my intuition anyway, sometimes this has been blatantly in my face obvious, other times I need to be more observant to look past my habitual ways of looking at the world.

    Maybe you are right and I am wrong, you have been through all this and seen all the pitfalls and contradictions, but for me I am happier when I am not telling stuff what it is as much, and just enjoying it. I certainly don't always feel like that but the times when I don't I can look and see I was dreaming up a whole 'way things should be' in my imagination and getting negative feelings from it not happening. Your way is a good way of perhaps not having too much expectation on life, and relaxing into that?

    Anyway very much just my musings, thanks for letting me express them. Let me know if you have anything to add I find this thing fascinating so thanks.

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  18. "There probably isn't a 'self' but there is something here, very much aware and present here too, which is self-reflective, and I assume I am talking to another one of these! But when it is looked for it can't be found as anything. It kind of is and isn't perhaps. Language fails."

    Unless you subscribe to the mechanistic view that 'awareness' is nothing more than the experience of electrochemical impulses firing off in different regions of the brain giving an experience of locale, as opposed to agency, within 3lbs of fatty tissue imprisoned in the complete darkness of a cranial shell, which is then also processed through language circuits which provide 'concepts' for which to define each specific impulse grouping. But most are loathe to adopt let alone seek to understand the neuroscientific perspective due to its reliance on abject materialism. I can admit to many years of demanding "I-me" be more than that.

    "Your way is a good way of perhaps not having too much expectation on life, and relaxing into that?"

    In a sense that's fairly accurate. However, it was a long and difficult road coming here, due to the resistance, since I am of the Zen/non-duality schools. Nevertheless,I now completely (well, almost) accept that it is what it is and I am where I am. I can look forward to the surprises yet to come since, based on my current neuro-circuited perspective, I ain't got nothing to do with "me" (and I must admit that at time I am quite happy with that fact)

    Thanks and your comments always welcome!
    Mike

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  19. Mike S - I am of the opinion that you are one of the clearest expositors of the Ineffable on the internet today. (sic)

    For the vast majority of homo sapiens organisms on the planet today, life just plain sucks. There are perhaps two billion of us who have the luxury of contemplation, introspection, and the variegated experience to stimulate such exercises.

    If you attempt to explain your insights into Reality (the Ineffable) to a beggar in the gutters of Calcutta, he or she will look at you with the same vacant stare while the flies cavort freely across their eyeballs. (assuming you are capable of communicating with them)

    If you are a Caucasian from Western culture, and you attempt to communicate your insights to a radical Muslim, your head will be separated from your shoulders forthwith.

    If you don't believe me - go ahead and try to prove me wrong.

    Try to incorporate these simple, inevitable facts into your intuition of what exactly Reality (the Ineffable) is, and your desperate hope that perhaps your life is not a complete fucking waste of time. Which it is - just like the beggars in the gutters of Calcutta and the radical Muslims who prostrate themselves several times a day in the direction of Mecca and invoke the wrath of Allah upon the infidels.

    I am not going to be rude and hit the Caps Lock button, but: there is no entity, conscious or unconscious, upon whom (or what) life is imposed.

    Life IS the Ineffable, or Reality, or God, or your great aunt's dirty underwear. (pew!!!) Hey you, stop that!

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  20. Hi Mike

    I asked my teacher.

    She has had her own experiences, in the astral planes, while clinically/scientifically declared brain dead.

    Besides that, she has visited people in the astral and met up with them in the physical, and then conversing about what happened there. This is nothing new, I've heard this from other people as well.

    She said some other things as well about free will, but there's nothing I or anyone can say as you seem to have made up your mind already?

    Kind regards
    Y.

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  21. Yes, numerous claims are made along these lines. Yet, one cannot be clinically brain dead and have experiences, since once revived, memory circuits attesting to an experience means the brain must have had the experience and, hence, could not have been clinically dead in the first place. For a brain to recall an experience it must have first been impacted by the experience for the recall circuitry (memories)to be formed.

    I have had many experiences through years of meditative practice as well as numerous hits of acid. But they mean absolutely nothing to me.

    I can only wonder about the motivation of a "teacher" to impart to students the value of experiences that really do absolutely nothing to change or alter the causal fabric of the universe and are essentially worthless and, therefore, simply apart of the causal order of meaninglessness.

    For thousands of years numerous individuals have had OBE's, astral projections, meeting with phantasms, etc, etc, and many of them wound up food for worms the same as you and I will one day. There is no impeding that process as it is stored in the DNA.

    Have these experiences even made a dent in man's inhumanity to man and his progressive destruction of the environment? What is the point then?

    The point is egocentric narcissism...

    The very nature of egocentricity.

    Hence, one must sift out the narcissism from the truth.

    Thanks,
    Mike

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  22. Mike

    You asked earlier in the blog's comments wether I would ask my teacher and I said okay I will. This has nothing to do with influencing me or you to believe anything. She is okay like that and stands in her own truth.

    Sure, you can think what you want about the brain and free will and you may be right. I just don't know. For me it seems that indeed there's more to things than just physical reality. Psychic ability, astral travel, all seems more likely to be real than not, as has been my experience.

    I'm actually amazed that people meet up in the astral, have experiences and then look up each other in the physical and can share what happened verbally or written. It would make no sense for people to lie about such things.

    Also I wonder about your experiences and why you write them off as nothing. It would be interesting to read more about those.. your life path, spiritual practises, how things ended up to where you're at now. Forgive me curiosity, it's none of my business really.

    Of course, we will all die at some point, no denying that. Afterlife, past life, or not. Carpe diem I guess :)

    Kind regards
    Y.

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  23. "It would make no sense for people to lie about such things."

    "lie" may be too harsh a concept and connote intention and intentional lies by teachers are less likely than believing in their own fictions.

    If everyone's truth is relative, how can there be truth at all? If the definition of "truth" is what any individual wants it to be, what need for a teacher? If one can claim riding astral planes, for which no proof can be obtained, than that is no different than my claiming to be Jesus Christ incarnate. Who's to say I am not? It seems apparent to me that egocentricity is highly adept at spinning fictional yarns that it believes true and real. Hence, if I believe it then it is not a lie, no matter how many can prove I am not Jesus Christ incarnate. If truth is relative than lies must be as well.

    Death however, is truth no matter how relatively we spin it and if death is the truth, why care about astral planes? What's the difference between bungee jumping and riding astral planes? Both require different external settings, equipment and rituals, but the experience is in your head nonetheless. Just some more sheit to pass the time till dead.

    I believe that if one wants to engage real spirituality then study death. Specifically your own.

    Mike

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  24. Why invest so much energy in making everything meaningless with your intellect? Does that even work? Are you helping yourself or others? How do you study death?

    Y.

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  25. Indeed, the intellect can only construct or deconstruct, add or subtract, assemble or dissemble. I tend to believe the less circuitry the better, while others tend to subscribe to the meaning-maker role and work diligently toward finding newer more effective meanings to superimpose upon the world. Both are inherent to the individual intellect. However, what we seem to now be experiencing is a massive crash of meanings resulting in rampant contradictions and mass hypocrisy.
    Nevertheless, we continue to demand our life mean something. I simply suggest the opposite. deeply considering ones death can be helpful in stripping away meaningful fictions.

    Mike

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  26. This article I have to say has its own UNIQUE style of getting REALITY, THE WAY IT IS, etc....across to the reader....I sincerely mean that....I have been practicing Atma-Vichara for many years and can say the Sri Ramana Maharshi's are EXTREMELY RARE in this world but at the same time it is sad because seeing reality the way you, me and however how many others do is actually very simple just like all the sages say it is.....the PARADOX of realization!!!!! Thanks for the great writing......Frank F....

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  27. Frank,

    Glad you enjoyed the post.

    Thanks!
    Mike

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  28. I'm not sure of anything, but it seems to me, existence is merely the product of the transformation of energy, which itself is infinitely cyclical.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. good point and that "energy" may, in fact, be purely electro-chemical.

      Thanks,
      Mike

      Delete
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    ReplyDelete