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Someone filled in with info by asking "Have you ever had any eating disorder?" I have been leaning towards bulimia, and the coin dropped... When everything is chaos, the only thing one can have control over is oneself.

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The mind looks after the body all right, I need not interfere. What needs to be done is being done, in the normal and natural way. I find myself talking to people, or doing things quite correctly and appropriately, without being very much conscious of them. It looks as if I live my physical waking life automatically, reacting spontaneously and accurately.- - - I realized my true being, I left behind my human nature to look after itself, until its destiny is exhausted. Occasionally an old reaction, emotional or mental, happens in the mind, but it is at once noticed and discarded. After all, as long as one is burdened with a person, one is exposed to its idiosyncrasies and habits.
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One can function rightly, responding well and fully to whatever happens, without having to bring it into the focus of awareness. When self-control becomes second nature, awareness shifts its focus to deeper levels of existence and action.

Q: Don't you become a robot?

A: What harm is there in making automatic, what is habitual and repetitive? It is automatic anyhow. But when it is also chaotic it causes pain and suffering and calls for attention. The entire purpose of a clean and well-ordered life is to liberate man from the thralldom of chaos and the burden of sorrow. - - - Once you realize that the person is merely a shadow of the reality, but not really itself, you cease to fret and worry. You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown.

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I have all my life been interested in psychology - the knowledge of how the mind works - the relationships between thoughts, emotions and behaviours.

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As a child, when almost everything is out of ones control, the mind tries to order what it can... and for many girls today that is to at least control the food intake.

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I ended up in that behaviour for a couple of years as a reaction to childhood events. It's long ago now,

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I don't think there is a relationship between thoughts, emotions and behaviours. We normally think there is, we think that we think something, and that causes us to feel some emotion and that causes us to behave in a certain way, or vis versa. So it appears that there is some causal relationship happening. Actually I think that all these things are effect, not cause. They are all bubbling up from something deeper inside. Thoughts bubble up, feelings bubble up, and behavioural patterns bubble up, and our mind makes it look like there was some causal relationship between them.

What is really happening is much deeper, and more significant. Less on the surface of things.

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It is irrefutable from my perspective to deny that there are thoughts which trigger emotional reactions and then corresponding or reactive behaviours, I have observed such patterns often enough in myself, though would be happy to pass on them! where the thoughts originate, now that’s a great question.

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I don't think there is a relationship between thoughts, emotions and behaviours. We normally think there is, we think that we think something, and that causes us to feel some emotion and that causes us to behave in a certain way, or vis versa. So it appears that there is some causal relationship happening. Actually I think that all these things are effect, not cause. They are all bubbling up from something deeper inside. Thoughts bubble up, feelings bubble up, and behavioural patterns bubble up, and our mind makes it look like there was some causal relationship between them.

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It is very interesting what you say and I admit I never heard this one before! Could I maybe ask you to elaborate on this one? I, like Anthem, have the perception that thoughts can trigger emotions (and vice-versa in some cases, but less likely) and this leads to certain behaviours.

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But, in your opinion, what then controls the thoughts that arise in the mind? Pure randomness?

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And how can an emotion appear without an associated thought or behavioural pattern

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Originally posted by Shanti

I have realized something that I would like to share. Feelings arise in us.. good and bad.. and once you learn to observe your mind/ego (I will use the word mind in this post).. you will see that any time a feeling arises, the mind tries to make sense of it and runs it through a life filter. It will either pass it through a filter of something that is happening right now and associate the feeling with it, or if it cannot fit it into anything happening right now (like everything is going great.. and yet you feel sudden sadness in your heart).. it will go back and look through it's memory bank and find something from the past that will fit perfectly with that feeling.

The feeling is just there.. it was always just there.. till the mind decided to do its job and process it by passing it through a filter, put a label on it and tuck it away somewhere in memory for future reference. When you learn to watch your mind, you can see this clearly.

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Originally posted by Christi

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It is irrefutable from my perspective to deny that there are thoughts which trigger emotional reactions and then corresponding or reactive behaviours, I have observed such patterns often enough in myself, though would be happy to pass on them! where the thoughts originate, now that’s a great question.

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Hi Anthem,

Even when the mind is silent, emotions still arise, and actions still take place. Let a thought arise in the mind, and it looks like the thought was the pre-curser to the emotion and the action. So what is causing what?

When we dream, it also appears that we feel things, and then act on our feelings, whilst actually we are lying on our bed with our eyes closed. Same thing happening, mind forming causal relationships to give the appearance of reality.

Christi

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He [Freud] stayed within the realm of the personality and its instinctual sources, which do not operate deeper than the chakra system. However, his topological and structural point of view is very useful for us, as we have already seen and as we will further see as we discuss the continuing development of essence. Since essence becomes repressed (as do affects, ideas and fantasies), the job of retrieving essence becomes simple and obvious: to make the unconscious conscious. This will, however, alter the structure of the personality itself and will change its position in the overall economy of the human organism. This is because, as we discussed in Chapter Three, the structure of the personality is based in large part on the experience of the loss of essence. So when essence is unrepressed and freed, it will change the personality structure.

Awareness

This simple dictum, to make the unconscious conscious, is the most fundamental, basic and necessary aspect of the Diamond Approach and of all other genuine methods of the Work. The individual begins with consciousness and ends with consciousness - consciousness is simply expanded further and further. We must point out here that by consciousness we mean awareness, because the word consciousness is sometimes used to denote other concepts. Some authors, in fact, use the word consciousness to refer to essence.

Therefore, as in all systems of inner development, to apply the Diamond Approach, the individual cultivates awareness. The main method is to erase unconsciousness through psychodynamic techniques. However, even to start this process, the person must learn how to pay attention, how to be aware of inner and outer happenings. Awareness is needed to collect observations that can then be used for the psychodynamic understanding. Without awareness, the person will not know what thoughts go through his mind, what emotions fill his heart, or what sensations there are in his body. So there will be no impression, no material for understanding, if there is not enough awareness.

The ordinary person has awareness, but it is very restricted, confined, and selective. In awareness training, the individual learns to expand his awareness, to let it not be confined by his habitual and compulsive patterns. As awareness is freed more and more, the powers of observation expand, and the material for understanding becomes more available.

Awareness is necessary not just for collecting observations for the process of understanding but really for all aspects of the work of inner development. It is also, of course, necessary for everyday practical living. Awareness is a characteristic of life itself, of all living matter.

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The deepest aspect of the personality is a restriction of awareness. The ego identity, which normally is called the self, exists on the deepest level as a contraction of awareness, a restriction of consciousness. To say it more accurately, the ego identity (the I) as a structure is on the deepest level a hole of awareness, or a deficiency of awareness, because of the loss of intrinsic and basic awakeness. This is the deepest and most defended hole in the personality.

This deepest hole in the personality, around which its identity is structured, is the avoidance (the loss) of the awareness of death. More accurately, the personality does not understand death, and it avoids the perception of its possiblity and its existence. It is terrified of death because it means its own annihilation. We are not referring here to the death of the body, although the personality cannot conceive of any other kind of death because of its identification with the body. We mean the experience of nonexistence, which is the absence of experience. But this nonexistence is the deepest nature of the personality, its very center.

The personality's fear and avoidance of death creates a gap (a hole) in awareness around which the personality is structured. This gap is the kernel of the unconscious. Unconsciousness develops as the personality develops and is structured around this hole. Unconsciousness is ultimately unconsciousness of death, which is necessitated by the lack of understanding of what death is.

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Here we find one of the greatest uses of essence. Essence can penetrate to these deep, dark corners of the personality. Essence can go all the way because it is the deep. And because essence is intrinsically characterized by awareness, it can take our consciousness to these deep and normally inaccessible places of the unconscious and expose them to observation and understanding. This will in turn expose more holes, so that new and deeper aspects of essence is retrieved.

We see here a reciprocal process, in which understanding the personality brings out the essence, and then the essence brings out deeper layers of the personality and so on. This process continues, and awareness expands, until all of the personality is understood, all the way to the experience of its own death and nonexistence. In addition, all aspects of essence will be recognized and developed in the process. This naturally sets the ground for the spontaneous arising of the perception of enlightenment. - - - A person can traverse the path by going through small "deaths", which will bring out the aspects of essence, which will in turn lead to the final experience of ego death.

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It does not dissolve into stillness... What happens is actually that I have this atombomb constantly blowing off above the head now, with a sucking black hole behind it, and as attachments to emotions are released, they are sucked into that black hole, back to... . Often arms are raised up straight when it happens.

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And what if the secret of violating time or harnessing the power of a black hole (via gravitational weight) is within the concentrical value of all of these chakras combined. In other words, not viewing the chakras in a straight line,(up and down)within the body, but as a single circle (flower), as if we're looking down on these charkras - one atop the other - as illustrated by this Yantra:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ruct.svg.png

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Thank you, Christi, but I have never felt as grounded and sane and clear in my whole life! It's all unfolding very beautifully.

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Just to be clear, I was saying above that it is irrefutable from my perspective that it can go in this direction: thoughts leading to emotions leading to behaviours, I'm not saying this is the only direction. I agree the mind has an amazing ability to paint a lovely story about reality.

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Or rather... not keep an eye on it, so to not direct more energy up there. Thank you, Christi.

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Originally posted by Christi

Hi Anthem,

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Just to be clear, I was saying above that it is irrefutable from my perspective that it can go in this direction: thoughts leading to emotions leading to behaviours, I'm not saying this is the only direction. I agree the mind has an amazing ability to paint a lovely story about reality.

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Imagine every day you go and sit by a river. And every day a man comes downstream paddling a canoe. You go every day for a hundred days, and sit by the river, and every day the man comes downstream paddling the canoe. After a hundred days you say "I have irrefutable evidence that the man is going downstream because he is paddling downstream".
Then on day 101, you go and sit by the river, and the man comes downstream in his canoe, but he is no longer paddling.


And then you will say "I have irrefutable evidence that the man is being carried down the river by the river itself".

This is what has happened during the few awakening experiences I have had. It is like... "O.K. I thought it was like this... but actually it's like this. I thought I was the person thinking/ feeling/ doing... but I never was. I thought I was going downstream because I was paddling downstream, but I never was. I was always being carried by the river."

The relationship (in time) between thoughts feelings and emotions, requires a connecting entity... a person which links them in time. So the question of a causal connection between thoughts feelings and actions really comes down to the question of whether or not there is a thinker of thoughts, an experiencer of feelings, and a doer of actions.

Christi

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Hi Christi,

Yes no argument from me, it is the divine paradox of duality v. non-duality and really there is no "v." it is both. However maybe the question we should be asking ourselves is "is there a sequence of cause and effect" in the world of duality and from my perspective there seems to be. Hence all the practices we are doing here at AYP.

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I have noticed in the past few days.. I have a lot of energy moving (this is what I call feelings above.. actually feelings, emotions are all just energy.. till the mind attached a label of happy feelings or sad feelings or grumpy feelings or bleh feelings or..).. and I have a buncha stuff going on in life.. and before I would have to make a effort to not connect the energy with what's going on, so as not to get pulled into a low phase.. but this time it is clearly two distinct processes going on in me. the mind has not connected the everyday life stuff to the energy arising in me.. it's like the connecting factor.. the mind has given up trying to attach the two.

This is still very new to me.. and hence feels a bit strange.. my mind thinks I should get pulled into all that is going on.. and the energy (emotions) are because of what is going on around me.. but the two process are completely separate.. and this really feels like surrendering to what is.. without any stories. Noice!!!

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Virginia: Can you describe what the emotional body looks like?

Hathor: We perceive the emotional body as a shining, eggshaped energy field with hoovering light particles - millions and millions of small light particles. And some of them have very different colours. Some are dark, some are grey, some very black. Some are shining white, shining gold, blue - all types of colours - and they identify where the memorypattern of the feeling is located. /from "Hathor", Tom Kenyon & Virginia Essene

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I suddenly saw, with my third eye, the emotional body in the form of a spacious egg. In the egg were several different forms, shapes floating around. They had different colours, taste and smell also.

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