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emc
2072 Posts |
 Posted - Dec 17 2008 : 01:23:25 AM
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In order not to cause a debate in the quote topic of Nisargadatta, I moved your post here, Yogaislife, to comment on it
quote:
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"Why do you talk of action? Are you acting ever? Some unknown power acts and you imagine that you are acting. You are merely watching what happens, without being able to influence it in any way." (Nisargadatta)
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And how about when we do something and it feels wrong? And then we do something else and it feels right? There must be a degree of free will in there. I might eat chocolate all the time only to find out that it makes me sick afterwards and still, knowing that, I eat it. After suffering for a while I realise I won't eat chocolate anymore because it makes me sick. Then, paradoxically, I am free and feel happier than ever, because I am doing what feels right for me. But who decided what feels right for me in the first place? In any case, I always have the choice to do or not to do. Of course you can argue that the less you do, the better you will be, the less here being the less interefering with what the heart wants deep inside you. But the fact that you can interfere (call it the mind or wahtever) means that you are choosing. And the trick is to know and be well connected to what your heart really wants, which is the tricky part. Otherwise we would all be blissful and happy all the time, which is what we want. The fact that many of us don't have it means we have "free will". Or at least it seems we do, but at the end the higher power always wins, right? May it be for the best.
The way I see it, we are either living from the heart (stillness in action) or are puppeted by patterns (and most often a little bit of both in a weird mix during the journey of purification). When we are puppeted by patterns, the mind wishes to interpret that as "free will". The action takes place, and the mind - which is always a moment behind - makes a pretty good story out of it when it interprets what happened. When it goes the way we had "planned" before, we say "I decided that and it happened". When it goes the other way we say "sh*t, why aren't things going as I planned?". In the first case we take cred and claim "free will" and "I did it". In the second case we blame life for being chaotic and "sh*t happens". Truth is, we never did any of it. It was just a mind taking cred for something Life or conditioned patterns had already formed.
When we do things that makes us feel bad, the way I see it, is we are getting stronger signals that it's time to wake up from being puppeted by destructive patterns. They have served their purpose - to inflict suffering - and we are ready to stop suffering, detach from patterns and start to see what Really Is without our interpretations of good and bad. And when "we" as mind step aside, stillness in action can take place more uninterrupted. |
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YogaIsLife
641 Posts |
Posted - Dec 18 2008 : 07:19:57 AM
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Hi emc, thanks so much for that.
Yes, I agree with you, beautifully put. I can understand the difference between identifying with the mind and living from stillness (or from the Heart as you put it, which also seems like a good way of putting it to me), and I agree that most of the time we are living from a mix from both and hence the confusion.
What can still bug me though is that, when living from the heart it does seem we have no control over our lifes and we are "run" by this higher power. Life flows better and things make more sense but I wished to know "who" is the one that makes the decisions at that level and how. And are this decisions already made?
When we do something that feels bad is, like you say, a sign that we must change. I afterwards read a quote in the last thread from Nisargadatta himself that explained this as well, somethign in the lines of "pain is an action of love as well, pushing us further". Yes, this seems to be the case. If that is so, in the long term we really have no choice at all and can be regarded as "puppets of inner silence" or this higher force. While the wisest thing is probably to just accept and enjoy the fruits of that, because I'm still in the "limbo" between the two states, I still sometimes get bugged by the idea that we have no free will, because on the long term "inner silece" or "love" always wins. I think that may be a good thing though  |
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karl
United Kingdom
1812 Posts |
Posted - Dec 18 2008 : 08:10:36 AM
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Maybe i'm not picking this up correctly but it seems you are talking about fate.
It is certainly possible to wonder what any action really consists of because it is only possible to view action from a personal position. For instance, if you move an arm there is nothing to prove you are moving it, and even if it is an arm. That is in much the same way as action within a dream, it appears to happen, it appears to have a result.
However it would be a weird plan to have a pre determined result in a pattern, otherwise why engage in the activity in the first place ? Things move forward in a chaotic fashion. There would be little point in having dinosaurs if there was already a pre determined outcome millions of years in the future.
So, although the activity might be difficult to truly understand that does not mean free will does not exist or that chaotic pattens of evolution are not at work.
Is the final outcome already written ? I doubt it very much, the words may be written but it is far from a completed book. |
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YogaIsLife
641 Posts |
Posted - Dec 18 2008 : 1:10:03 PM
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Yes it is a mystery. It is not really fate I meant, is more choice.
A specific example maybe? I came across that post when I was dealing with a very strong particular fear: I am afraid of flying. But because I work and live abroad and I need to take planes to visit my family etc., I have little choice in the matter.
So, you wonder: why do I have this challenges in my life? What am I suppose to do. Life is choice right? There is not a middle ground or a "I just wont do anything" - that is doing something.
So, in this case, my fear of flying is not a fear of flying in itself, it is much deeper than that. I see the same fear in other aspects of my life, in other situations, it just happens to be particularly strong when I know I have to fly. It is a fear of dying, etc. The fear and feelings are so strong that definitevely I cannot ignore them. So, clearly, there is a message of life here. It makes me want to think: why am I so afraid of dying? What if I died now or in this flight? etc. etc. At the end it turns out to be quite a positive thing, because it helps me confront my fears and feelings and look deeply at what my feelings are about life and death, life choices, what I want from life etc. (by the way I feel meditation is great for helping me deal with this strong emotions - in the past I was just a mess whenever I felt that strong emotions, now, although they still make themselves very noticeable, I can remain detached enough to play and work with them.)
So, it comes down to that: life choices? I, for example, wonder how I came to have this fears and what they tell me about what I want from life. Are these fears real? Logical? Rational? Where do they come from inside of me? Are they helping me or handicaping me? Should I give in to them or work with them? etc. I even thought of giving up flying completely and sometimes I am glad with that decision, but deep down I still feel I am limiting myself.
So, you see, this is the dynamic: who decides what? Why don´t I just give up flying altogether for example? What stops me? What's the part of me that does not want to give in to the fear? And what part of me will win? You see, all of this inquiring can be quite positive and enriching and make me evolve in life in the end. But only if I am able to deal and work with it, and only the detachment I gained from meditation allowed me to do this, I very much believe.
P.S.: At the end I took that flight :) It was a very interesting experience! I might write about it in another thread sometime. |
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karl
United Kingdom
1812 Posts |
Posted - Dec 18 2008 : 2:28:24 PM
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Really interesting. I work with people who have fears and phobias which includes flying. What strikes me as relevant is that you have used meditation to overcome that anxiety. By the way, it's irrational fear that is the issue, or fear of something which stops the achievement of results.
Fear does have it's place. For instance you might like to walk along a cliff top at a safe distance from the edge but are unable to because of the fear happening at even the same distance. Now, there are some people who can walk right up to that cliff edge and peer over, there are others that will crawl to the edge and peek over. One thing is certain, it is rational to start having fears if you are perched with your toes hanging over the edge of a cliff......thats survival and survival instincts are good.
Now take something like a fear of spiders. Now, some people dont like spiders regardless of how harmless they might be. They may jump a bit if they see one. In that case, it is not particulary irrational and does not interfere with every day functioning. Another person may freeze or go totally catatonic or faint at the sight of a tiny spider (even looking in a book can trigger it)that is an irrational fear commonly referred to as a phobia.
So whats it all about ? Well its probably too much to explain in a post. Mostly it revolves around triggers which bring up a trance state. Within that state are a whole host of things going on which relate to past experiences and personal viewpoints of the world. It's a complex mesh of beliefs which provide the energy for a response which is inappropriate for the situation. We also struggle to cope with the vast amount of information that our senses throw at us (believed to be in the region of 2 million bits per second while we can only process 7 per second) this results in distortion (the sort of thing that wakes you up in the middle of the night with your heart thumping, you know it was only the heating system but you still check every cupboard), deletion (ever lost your car keys, only to find they were right under your nose, or gone upstairs for something but have trouble remembering what it was ?) and finally generalisation (all men with moustaches are evil).
As an example: Imagine if your parents told you that men with moustaches were evil, now, up to that point you are unable to confirm it but then you watch a TV program and the bad person turns out to be a moustacheod villain. Now, that is strike one, you know there is some truth in this, others seem to have picked up it. Later on you over hear a conversation about a photograph and one person mentions that the person in the photograph has some 'dark' secrets and guess what, they have a hairy lip.
Humans are good at looking for similarities and confirmations for proof (thats why we do so much work around statistics)and we go looking for the proof in a very proactive way, the more we look, the more we find something that agrees with our philosophies. Bit by bit the moustache comes to represent evil and all interactions with people in moustaches are conducted from that perception. Of course when you start out projecting evil on to someones character, you tend to alter your body language and the conversation becomes harder and you begin to encourage a slightly puzzled and annoyed person that further perpetuates your deep seated belief.
The trigger for that state is the moustache and it's strange just how much someone would find themselves focusing in that very thing to the ignorance of everything else. It figures large in the eye of the beholder. This is similar to the state that comes up in the less developed and older part of our brains when danger threatens, we focus, we freeze, adrenalin builds our muscles into explosive action and we run fast or we stand and fight it out. In our modern enviroment we cause this irrational state to come up for other reasons and if we cant run or fight then we just wind ourselves up to incapacitating states which stop us using our natural resources to deal with the situation. |
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YogaIsLife
641 Posts |
Posted - Dec 18 2008 : 6:18:55 PM
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Very interesting Karl, indeed. What you say makes sense and I admit of having been a victim of all the symptoms you describe and more. You get "run over" by this avalanche of feelings alright. It feels natural but at the same time "wrong" and irrational and you try to overcome this. I am doing my best, and, as you say, I have been using meditation to better be able to cope and understand. It works by the way.
I think no one is immune to this conditioned patters (the men with moustache, spiders, airplanes) and the strong associations that our minds seem to make all the time (even without our noticing) except maybe a truly enlightened one. I think meditation works because you start noticing what your mind does. You start seeing how you react, you see the triggers more clearly, you are able to see the whole process more clearly, almost point at it piece by piece, step by step, deconstructing it.
I am still very far away from this state, I just know meditation helps and it's working. I am curious to see how it is to be free from conditioning. I believe I have a little taste for it now and then. I notice clearly how situations that used to affect me termendously now have little effect on me. I stand amazed at this because I always believed (or been told) that I run my life, and I have free will, and I am completely responsible for my life. I tried to be "strong". Turns out, when I was humble and accepting that I had no more control over the situation, was when answers slowly started coming. It was hard to accept this, I was very stubborn. Thankfully I found something that works, thanks to AYP. I really don't know where I would be now without the help from meditation, I was really getting mad as I was seeing all this conditioning affecting me and I could do nothing to stop it, it was really strong. Felt like a sane person watching inside an insane body and not being able to do nothing to change things, no matter how hard I tried. I am still amazed how a simple method of meditation is enough to harmonise our "inner self" with our "outer self". I still don't understand exactly what meditation does, or how it works, but whatever it does, it is powerful and appears to be beneficial. Thank god. |
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karl
United Kingdom
1812 Posts |
Posted - Dec 19 2008 : 1:18:49 PM
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Thats fantastic and totally true. One of the elements of coaching is to allow the coachee to see their own truth and realise the goal. I work in business coaching and see so many advisers trying to tell their clients what to do instead of allowing them to figure it out for themselves.
One of the funniest things is that if you ask a coachee a question following one of their statements it can often result in the coachee answering something like "I dont know", I usually follow that up with "yes, but if you DID know, what would be your answer". Inveriably they then produce an answer
What becomes obvious is that it is the sub conscious mind that has all the conditioning and all decisions are based on this. The conscious mind is only there to assimilate new information very much like the RAM of a computer. If you think about all the muscles in your arm there is no way you could make it move with a conscious response. Next time you are driving down the motorway and realise someone stole your exit , or arrive home without remembering the journey as yourself "who was driving"
I am interested in doing some work on the ways in which Yoga and NLP techniques can be used together to increase the effectiveness of an intervention. Sometimes with NLP techniques there can be a level of acceptance which erodes over time. Its a bit like Yoga being used as every day training and NLP for quick change. Using Yoga seems to steady the quick change technique so that it remains totally stable, also there seems to be a point when using both techniques simultaneously results in deeper and more lasting change even in a very short session. I have tried Time Line Therapy and deep meditation together and found an incredible synergy and faster results.
There is also something about the physical application of Yoga to states. Put simply, you can use a physical movement such as a smile to bring up a state of happiness. You can see people who are doing 'stress' are usually stooped and have furrowed brows, by simply changing that physical state to a happy persons physiology begins to bring up the state of happiness. Yoga has so many positions that might be a key to bringing these states up much faster.
As another example for you to try. If you are beginning to focus on something you don't like the look of then simply take a deep breath, go inside for a moment and withdraw your senses, then go into peripheral vision and allow your vision to expand ever wider until you can almost see behind your own head. It takes practise but is very effective for reducing irrational symptoms. This gets taught to Police pursuit drivers (they place awareness on all 4 corners of the car)as well as car and bike racers. It is also a great learning state to use when in the classroom, for Kids they can use the state during learning. When they come to do an exam, they bring up the peripheral vision learning state before starting the exam, this allows them better access to the information in their heads as it is the same state that they learned in. |
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gumpi
United Kingdom
546 Posts |
Posted - Dec 19 2008 : 2:44:02 PM
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| it seemed to me that emc was saying that the mind is somehow getting in the way ie it is a bad thing. but then i thought, "yes but they are using their mind to communicate that to me" which obviously leads to the concept of hypocrisy. In which case i do not buy ideas that state you are living from the heart instead of the mind. You cannot interpret anything or communicate anything without a mind. It is impossible. It is more likely that the sun would black hole tomorrow. |
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Shanti
USA
4854 Posts |
Posted - Dec 19 2008 : 5:31:58 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by gumpi
it seemed to me that emc was saying that the mind is somehow getting in the way ie it is a bad thing. but then i thought, "yes but they are using their mind to communicate that to me" which obviously leads to the concept of hypocrisy. In which case i do not buy ideas that state you are living from the heart instead of the mind. You cannot interpret anything or communicate anything without a mind. It is impossible. It is more likely that the sun would black hole tomorrow.
Hi Gumpi,
Let me see if I can explain this with something I experienced a few days back. It was snowing and the kids had a school delay and as I sat there ready to leave for work.. but enjoying the comforts of a warm place, I thought to my self, "ahh would be nice if I could stay here for a bit more, can call work and say the kids have a delay so I will be in late". My mind jumped in and said "but you promised your client you would take care of her problem the first thing in the morning". So I got up and left for work.
Any other time, my mind would debate, "but its so nice here, and a half hour more wont matter. but I really do need to go, my client could complain to my boss, and she was sweet enough to agree to wait till this morning, she is waiting for the fix, it's holding up her testing, but I work so hard and I am sure they would understand, and it is so nice here, and I really would love to be here a bit more, but I shouldn't, I promised her... etc.etc.etc.." an endless mind story.
This mind getting in the way is what causes suffering. The mind is a wonderful tool made to help us go through life, but we distort it's use, we give it full control, we allow the mind to run our lives. In order to be liberated, all you have to do is to drop the control the mind has over you. I have heard people say, mind is not an enemy.. it really is not.. it's a wonderful tool to have.. but as long as you are living min by min and not giving up your entire life to your mind.. not allowing the mind to make up stories and dwelling in those stories.. there is no suffering. |
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