The hard problem of consciousness” — trying to understand how the brain produces consciousness — is only hard because science is predicated on a false premise.

Let’s go back to the pre-Copernican days.

Astronomers had “the hard problem” of explaining why certain planets, particularly Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn appeared to go backwards or retrograde.

The reason why it was hard was because they were operating under an incorrect presumption that the Earth was the center of the solar system.

Once they corrected that incorrect presumption, the hard problem of retrograde disappeared.

So it is with Consciousness.

Science is predicated on the unfounded belief that physical reality is the only legitimate realty and that all things must derive from the physical.

And so they believe that the brain must be the source of consciousness.

But since their presumption is incorrect, they can’t explain how consciousness derives from the brain.

That is because it doesn’t.

The great sages of the Yogic and Buddhist traditions, those who have direct experience of how Reality is actually structured and operates, tell us that Consciousness is primary and all things (including the physical) arises from that.

Of course this is way outside the narrow physical box that science keeps itself in.

Until science has its “Copernican moment”, it will never be able to understand where consciousness comes from.

It’s actually not that hard a problem once you see things from the correct perspective.

🕉

Original post is here.

My suggestion is to become aware of being aware.

Now be dedicated to being aware of being aware.

However, make no effort to be aware of being aware.

Being aware of being aware is our natural state.

It is effortless to be aware of being aware.

It is here now.

Trying to be aware of being aware entails effort.

Since effortlessness is a state of being aware of being aware, any effort introduced is a self-willful act that impedes or blocks being aware of being aware.

So relax and let go of trying.

Simply be aware of being aware.

Here now.

The more you allow yourself to be aware of being aware, the more you naturally focus inwards.

Ever deepening awareness of our true nature.

Ever deepening peace.

Awareness is corrective.

Awareness is your superpower.

This one [effortless] “practice” is an ever deepening portal that can take you all the way.

Original post is here.

Firstly, there is no “struggle” with living in the present. Zero-in totally to this here and now. Are you actually struggling right here now? Probably not. Struggle is a mental construct that enters in when we are actually not present here and now.

The next thing to get is that the ego has an absolutely upside down incorrect understanding of time. It is this misunderstanding that traps people in emotional pain.

Sure there is clock time but that's not what I'm talking about. The ego thinks that time is linear with an ever increasing past and an ever diminishing future and a razor thin moment. How do you stay present if the moment is razor thin? That's what we can call psychological time and it is completely fictional. If you want to test this ask yourself "where is what I call my past?" "Where is what I call my future?" Nowhere! Only in your mind. All that actually exists is the present here and now.

It is our belief in this false idea of linear psychological time (a perception that a past and a future that actually exists) that enables the following:

The mind tries to avoid pain and discomfort, especially emotional pain and discomfort. The way it usually does this is by going into the imaginary past or future -- in other words anywhere except the present. In effect, the mind hijacks our awareness out of the present and into the past or future. That creates a problem because the past or future doesn't actually exist except as figments of our imagination. So the problem then becomes how do you solve something that doesn’t actually exist?

There is only one place where life is actually happening, where you are actually alive, and that is here and now in the present.

So if you are asking how do we be more present - that starts with being willing to simply be with what is as it is in you here now. That willingness opens to door to everything, including anything you need to resolve emotional wounds.

Original post is here.

Oh boy, so much and all of it perfect for where I was at in my life journey at the time. Let’s see:

Hebrew school (against my will) until I was Bar-mitzvah’d at 13. At 11 I mysteriously became the Cantor (the one who leads the congregation in song prayer) of the junior congregation. What I learned was there was already an active spiritual awareness in me and that there is something about the vibration of the prayers themselves that brought about a deep sense of Light in my heart in spite of religion.

Silva Mind Method around 20. Learned to meditate to get into an alpha-state. Learned how to remotely sense what was going on with someone’s health and send healing energy. Had a surprising experience on stage as they asked me to demonstrate the technique (which I never did before) where my whole body was almost twitching with what I thought was my own nervousness when I found out that the subject I was asked to tune into halfway across the country had a neurological disorder that caused her to twitch! Mind = blown. Learned that distance and time are not as solid or real as we think. I have subsequently had numerous experiences to proved to me that what we call reality is not as solid as we think either.

Over a three year period spent many weekends studying all eight rungs of Raja Yoga and holistic health at The Himalayan Institute. Learned that there is a compatibility between spirituality and science (the medical system) when the mind sees no separation between the two.

Studied with Swami Satchidananda. Went to the opening of his Yogaville ecumenical center. Learned that lightness and laughter are essential and that you can tell how stuck you are in your ego at any point in time by how seriously you are taking something.

Spent a good amount of time studying with Ram Dass at several retreats and multi-week programs. I never met another being in the physical who had so much Light radiating from his eyes and heart. Learned that service to others and spiritual growth are one and the same. Learned that service is a matter of attitude and not necessarily any particular form of work.

Spent time on retreats with Stephen and Ondrea Levine. Learned that spiritual work was fundamentally about being with and working through your own pain so you can learn to access compassion for yourself and for others.

At 28 I spent four months at the Siddha Yoga (Muktananda) Ashram in Ganeshpuri, India with Gurumayi. Was like being on a microdose of LSD for four months! 1) I learned never give a coconut to a guru (which is symbolically giving over your ego) unless you are serious about getting all your ego defenses destroyed! Had I known what I was stepping into when I did that, I would have hid all the coconuts in the ashram! 2) Was the most painful and powerful experience of my life up to that point. (In retrospect now at 62 (as of this writing), was one of the most important experiences of my life as it helped cut me free from defenses that could have delayed or blocked my gradual awakening.) Prior to that, my ego had used my evolving spiritual awareness to create defenses to hide from myself the deep pain and trauma I internalized from growing up as the child of two Holocaust survivors. I thought I was going to India to become enlightened. I became enlightened alright, just not at all like what my ego expected! 3) Learned to love doing Seva, to chant, to meditate for long hours. Increased my discipline. 4) Learned that spiritual organizations are highly prone to dysfunctional groupthink that requires that you develop a deep sense of discernment to navigate through. That has served me throughout my life. 5) Learned to use that discernment to distinguish between the truth of the teachings and the rationalizations of quasi-cult-like-groupthink. And most importantly, 6) learned that my true guru was somewhere inside myself. Now I just needed to turn around my search from the outside to the inside.

Connected inwardly with Paramahansa Yogananda. Got Kriya initiation from his Self-Realization Fellowship organization. 1) Learned about Bhakti (devotional) yoga and the power of a lineage. 2) Learned that organizations even one generation away from the living master are already prone to deadening dogma. 3) Learned that I do not need any organization to go deep and far on my spiritual path.

Did my training in counseling and transpersonal psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). Learned that Einstein was right when he said you can’t solve a problem from the level at which the problem was created. Therefore I learned that you cannot solve ego problems by doing conventional therapy alone (which Ram Dass amusingly called “rearranging the furniture in your jail cell”) and that to be free, it is far more effective to combine therapy with direct deep spiritual experience and practices, (and psychedelics where appropriate), to open the flood gates of healing and to allow transformational energy to run the process.

Did my masters at Stanford University in Health Psychology focusing on Mind-Body interaction. Learned that a program centered around a core of stress management is incompatible with a school that stresses the hell out of you with insane demands!

Brought sacred medicine (entheogens and entactogens) into my personal and professional practice for healing trauma, emotional wounds, and for expanding into what I truly am. Adding this to all else I have practiced has been a powerful catalyst that has allowed me and those I work with to experience profound change.

Ultimately, the take away for me is that all groups are made of up humans who are all learning to be fully divine and fully human which means all groups will have their meshugas (Yiddish for craziness) so don’t expect any spiritual organization be fully healthy or have all the answers. So for me, the ultimate learning is that each of us ultimately can only find what we are looking for by looking within. We are the Source of that which we seek.

There’s more but that’s all for now folks…

Original post is here.

Meditation can help you learn to witness thoughts and feelings.

You may have noticed that the more you try to control thoughts and feelings the more messy things become.

The only issue is your identification with thoughts and feelings.

Thoughts and feelings arise on their own.

What makes you think you are a separate being who has its own private thoughts and feelings?

It is the ego which generates such thoughts.

The ego itself is just a thought system.

You are neither thoughts nor feelings yet you currently believe you are both.

As your meditation deepens you start to become aware of a state where you watch the thoughts and feelings go by like clouds in the sky.

You eventually realize you are none of those objects and that you are indeed the sky itself.

Once you realize that, thoughts and feelings still come and go and you know there is no need to control anything.

The moment you realize that, life becomes a whole lot easier and a lot more fun.

Original post is here.

Welcome to your mind! It isn’t that meditation caused your mind to race. It is that you looked into your mind for the first time and saw the rats nest of thoughts that have always been there. As they say in 12-step groups, recognizing you have a problem is the first step to healing it.

Have no fear and be persistent in your practice. Don’t jump around from practice to practice. Find a simple one to settle into it and keep at it.

Over time you will develop awareness of your inner witness. As you do, you will lose identification with the mind. You will go down the rabbit hole of thinking less and less until you simply watch thoughts arising and falling away like clouds in the sky. You then realize you are the entire sky and not the thoughts. You realize you are the infinite space in which thoughts arise and fall away.

At this point, you are no longer deep in your mind and are instead ever deepening into awareness of your true nature. Then it becomes “welcome to the awakened state!”

Original post is here.

Dead people 😂 It is not a matter of having an ego. It is a matter of from where does what we call the ego get informed? From itself, or from Infinite Intelligence? One is hell, the other is heaven. It’s your choice. Always your choice.

Original post is here.

It is worth distinguishing pain from suffering. Pain is of the body. Suffering is of the mind.

Suffering is caused by a case of mistaken identity.

We believe we are our personalities/egos/bodies.

We are not.

Ego/mind perceives everything as separate.

We then take on the belief that we are separate from everything.

The belief that the sense of separation is real is the root cause of suffering.

It is a false belief.

The truth is there is no separation and everything is connected to everything.

I don’t mean that we are a piece of a jigsaw puzzle where the entire puzzle is connected.

I mean everything has a direct connection to everything.

See Indra's Net.

This means that when we drop the false mistaken identity, we realize we are not only connected to everything…

…we are everything.

And that is the end of suffering.

I’m not Eric, I just answer to that name.

Original post is here.

What I found that works very well is to start a practice of self-validation.

One day I was reviewing my life up to that point and started to feel good about it.

I started validating myself for all the good things I had either accomplished or that showed up in my life.

An interesting question came in:

Is it okay that I validate myself or is that egotistical?

The answer was even more interesting:

If you do not validate yourself, then you will constantly look to others for validation and that is a losing game.

So I make sure that I validate myself regularly, especially if I notice any feelings of neediness or looking to others for validation.

Our outer experience is always and ever simply a reflection of our beliefs about ourself and the world.

The beautiful paradox is once you choose to validate yourself, not only do you no longer look to others for validation, but all of a sudden, you get a lot of validation from others.

Everything we ever need we source from within.

We are the source of our own suffering and we are the source of our own happiness.

Original post is here.

For me the primary factor is whether I am abiding in Awareness from where I observe all thoughts without engaging in them, or if I am energizing thoughts by getting entangled in them. My baseline experience is being an infinite open field of peace. And then I see a thought coming through and I experience that as a perturbation of the Field. If I do not engage in that thought, it comes and goes and the perturbation simply settles down and the inherent peace of the Field, that I Am, radiates stronger in my experience. If I engage in thoughts and habitual thinking, those perturbations become so numerous that my sense of peace is more occluded and I experience disturbance.

So the real driver is surrendering thoughts instead of dancing with them.

Original post is here.

Yes. The Buddhists say that awareness is corrective. Awareness is our superpower. Awareness puts us in a space where we can choose. Without awareness people live their lives as robots predictably reacting to stimuli instead of consciously responding. No self-awareness = no choice = no self-improvement. They just spend their lives going around in circles. Once awareness enters into the picture, that moves a person from going around in circles to going on a spiral of increasing psycho-spiritual evolution.

Original post is here.

Because the mind is just doing what it naturally does - generate thoughts.

The more you “try” to focus, the more you are actively generating thoughts.

See the conundrum?

So we do not try to stop thoughts from arising.

We simply observe them come and go.

Dispassionately.

Without judgement.

Simply witnessing them arise and fall away.

And in doing so we no longer put energy into the thought stream.

Eventually the mind calms down.

And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter.

Because all we ever do is witness the process.

Eventually we see that we are not these thoughts any more than the sky no longer thinks it is the clouds.

The mind calms down,

And the peace that is what we are at our core becomes apparent.

Original post is here.

My Self has not transformed. My Self is what it is, always evolving, always expressing, always being.

What has transformed is my resistance to allowing myself to simply be as I Am.

What has transformed is I no longer judge myself for what I see in myself from moment to moment.

What has transformed is the perception that I am an ego mind thinking of itself as a separate entity.

My Self has always been and will always be.

What it is is this is what it is.

And this is all okay as it is.

I Am - nothing else.

So what has transformed is the dropping of anything other than I Am.

Original post is here.

Humans are not stuck in that state. The human ego is. Believing itself to be a separate entity, it is cut off from the Whole. Being cut off, it experiences a constant state of discontent, a constant sense that something is always missing. This misperception falls away the moment we stop identifying with what we think we are and instead know what we actually are, our true nature. Since our true nature is one with the Whole, we see the perfection of Reality as it is, exactly as it is now and discontent is replaced by contentment — not complacency but contentment (“santosha” in Sanskrit.) So as long as you think of yourself as a collection of ego needs, wants, desires, you will continue to be in a perpetual state of discontent. Once you see through that illusion and stop believing what you think you are, you then realize what you actually are and peace arises from within.

Original post is here.

The purpose of overthinking is to act as a defense against feeling things you do not want to or are afraid to feel.

It is a resistance to feeling.

Once you allow all feelings to come, to be, and to go, the need for overthinking stops and then the overthinking simply falls away.

And then instead, the mind becomes far more peaceful, quiet, spacious.

Original post is here.

I’ll answer from personal experience.

You realize more and more that it is true that everything comes from within.

You feel an increasingly stable sense of inner peace.

You walk around in a relaxed state of flow.

You increasingly recognize when you are projecting onto others so you can stop it.

You are no longer at the effect of other people’s projections.

You get to radiate a strong field of peace and goodness.

You get to watch the outer world reflect back to you peace and goodness.

Original post is here.

No. If it does show me where it is?

The future does not exist either.

Both the past and the future are mental constructs that we carry because we *believe* that psychological time exists.

It simply does not.

There is no past and there is no future.

There is only the eternal now in the infinite here.

Here now is the only “place” where Life is.

Moreover, what we call memory is not even accurate.

The belief that the past or future is real and not simply a construction of the mind is the source of a lot of suffering.

So how do we work with feelings and thoughts that arise that we identify as relating to what we call our past?

That’s for another thread to get into.

For now, if all you do is try on what I am suggesting in this post, this shift in perception has the potential to be a game changer for you.

Original post is here.

Does a tree change because it has to or because it wants to?

Being a part of nature, the tree is simply following its design.

It has no choice but to grow and change.

Are we any different?

Granted, the insane ego believes it is separate from nature.

So it lives in the delusion that it has choice about change and growth.

The only thing that does not change in this Universe is the fact that everything is constantly changing.

Buddha said the source of suffering is the clinging of the mind.

So out of fear, the ego mind clings. It tries to stop the flow of change.

Lots of luck with that one.

Clinging arises out of fear.

Clinging is resistance to what currently is.

It is resistance to “what is” that is the root of suffering.

More profoundly, it is resistance to your own true nature!

So I practice letting go of all resistance to what is.

This also allows change to unfold.

And I find myself in the most exquisite flow.

Because I can trust the Flow of Life, which is the Flow of Change.

And with no resistance, I Am this Flow.

I am the One Life.

So are you.

Original post is here.

First of all, I’m not that concerned with enlightenment for that is beyond this personality. That process is running on its own and Infinite Intelligence is in charge of that so I can relax about it. My job is simply to continue to say YES to whatever Life brings me. I’m more interested in being as aware as possible and the expansion of that. Being aware of being aware is our primary power. Awareness brings choice.

I can only answer from experience.

Thoughts don’t end. Habitual thinking does. Intentional thinking can still be a tool where appropriate. But then it is intentional. We can start and stop that focused thinking at will.

The difference is, when you can see from outside the ego, and no longer perceive from inside the ego mind process, you are not identified with the ego or what it produces. It does what it does and when I notice it, I know that is not me. Often, I just go back to being with whatever mantra is arising, or watch it in quiet Awareness. And I continue to watch it all happen, in peace.

What I notice is that perceiving from inside the ego is like living in a tight suit, with a mentally ill roommate (to reference Michael Singer), or a jail cell (to quote Ram Dass). As such, it is not very spacious. And it’s not an empty jail cell. It is loaded with networks of thoughts, usually pretty twisted up and looped, like a thicket.

It is difficult to pop out of that as long as you “think” you are that personality/ego mind, that you are your thoughts. It is a case of mistaken identity. Perceiving from Reality is infinitely spacious, and seamless, and unified. There is no separation at all when you perceive from Reality. There isn’t even an entity called the ego. That’s a thought. There is only a single, unified flow of energy. And you realize, this I Am.

From this perspective, thoughts of an entirely different nature arise. In my experience, these are thoughts of guidance, insight, peace, creativity, love, wholeness, clarity and the like. And should some thought come by that came out of that personality/ego mind layer, I can see it for what it is and just let it go without engaging in it. Thoughts like that only get stronger when we choose to turn our focus to them, and wrestle with them mistakenly thinking we have to think our way out. As if that’s the only way out. This wrestling keeps energizing those thoughts. So that’s never the way out. that just generates more thoughts. That just gets you more stuck.

The way out is to drop them — drop the thoughts, drop the thinking. Breathe. Go to mantra if that works for you. Just drop the thoughts as they arise. To surrender them and not engage with them means you are no longer using your creative power to energize them and they run out of energy - in other words, they die, dissolve, vaporize.

Just be.

And then all that’s left is peace.

🙏🕉

Original post is here.

I had a wise therapist once.

After meeting with me a couple of times he said, “when you completely love and accept yourself unconditionally exactly as you are now, does it matter what others think of you?”

My first reflexive answer was “of course it does!”

And then he asked it again.

And I realized the truth was “no, it won’t matter.”

That moment of realization set me on a path to see all of me and learn to love what I see.

No matter what I see.

It is a process, so be gentle with yourself.

And there is nothing, and I mean nothing that heals like extending Love to all you see in yourself.

And then, since the “outside” world is always and only a reflection of your own inner relationship with your self, the reflections you will see will blow away all the illusions and distortions of the personal ego-mind-self.

🙏🕉

Original post is here.

Simple. Consciousness is the superset which contains mind. Mind is what tries to define things. How can mind define something that it is a subset of? Impossible. Fortunately we do not need the mind to experience consciousness. Per Dr. David Hawkins, it is consciousness itself which experiences mind. Once we become aware at that level we realize we are not the mind. We have a mind but we are far greater than the mind. We are infinite.

BTW, hard core materialists, of which science falls into, insists that consciousness is an artifact of the brain. No wonder they cannot understand consciousness! This is no different than scientists coming up with all sorts of convoluted explanations for how planets and stars moved in unexplainable orbits when their unquestioned presumption was the Earth was the center of the solar system. One day science (which is just another belief system predicated on the belief that the physical plane is the only causal reality - shhh, don’t tell them that, they get very arrogant and angry at the thought) will have its Copernican moment when they realize that the brain is not the center of it all but instead the end of the manifestation chain. Read Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science and Spirituality if you’re interested in this.

Original post is here.

This may not be the answer you thought you were seeking when you wrote the question - I hope it is helpful anyway.

Firstly, I seek no such experiences. They seek me! I am deeply steeped in them (we all are, and see them when our attention is very much present.) I am blessed with many such experiences (again, paying proper attention is how we see them.) Secondly, “magical” suggests “magic” which suggests well-crafted illusion. I am under no illusion that I am not interested in illusions! ☺️ In fact I welcome disillusionment because anytime that occurs, it busts one more false illusion I had been perceiving through. So now this leaves us with the mystical and miraculous.

Your question is “what…experiences…” While I can write about several such experiences, I feel those stories, while fascinating and deeply personally meaningful, distract from the essential importance of your question which is really “what kind of effect has having such experiences had on my life perspective?” So that is where I will focus. Each time I have one of these experiences I am left with a clear sense that “reality” is not what we’ve been taught (the dominant paradigm), and is not nearly as solid as we have been led to believe it is. That opens up a really deep topic on which I can write a book. Those times shook up my ego structures and opened the door for deeper inner inquiry.

Each such experience is an invitation to deepen our relationship with own Being, our one collective Being. For me, these openings gradually lead me to trust ever more that what is running the show is an infinitely intelligent, unconditionally loving, completely safe, benevolent field of energy of which I am totally one with. Opening to this more leads us through our own unique healing process, which leads us all to the one ultimate place in ourselves: the Source, also known as Love (capital ‘L’ on purpose). I find this completely miraculous.

As I allow emotional wounds to receive healing, one essential and natural effect is that I am now very present in the here now. (Trauma and wounds have the effect of hijacking our attention to a psychological past or future - anywhere but here now.) The more I abide in this here now, the more deeply I feel at peace, regardless of any external situation. It is the most powerful and consistently stable anchor I have found in my self. The more I abide in the here now the more I realize how utterly and unconditionally loved I am (emanating from my core Self) and how perfectly guided every single step of my life is. In this I feel very safe. In this my mind relaxes and is no longer buzzing with a low-level anxiety that disguises itself in a variety of ways, driving the mind to distract itself which pushes it anywhere but here now. The more I abide here now the more I see each moment as miraculous, each moment expressing the mystical.

The mystical and miraculous transcends the mind therefore you have to go out of your mind to open to these. The intuitive heart (as distinguished from the emotional heart), also transcends the intellect and is the place in us from where the mystical and miraculous emerges.

To speak to the latter part of your question about a changed perspective, A Course In Miracles (of which I am a constant and grateful student) defines a miracle as “a change in perception” or “true perception.”

Our ego mind is in the business of collecting grievances so it can generate emotional turmoil (and very distorted perception) to fuel its own existence based on the (false) belief and perception that it is an autonomous separate entity. This produces a great amount of fear, or disharmony, or dis-ease in the mind (directly affecting the body.) Such a mind is out of harmony with the Whole. This is the source of all pain and suffering. It then follows that anything that clarifies or reharmonizes our perception, to be more aligned with the core truth of one’s true nature, is a miracle in action.

I suggest that ultimately what we are looking for are not mystical and miraculous experiences. What we ultimately yearn for is to be home, abiding in our deepest Self. The mystical and the miraculous can be vehicles for helping bring us home, which is simply opening to our Self. There is nowhere to go. We are already home here now. All we need do is open to what is already here for us. As we do, we have the lived experience of it all being miraculous and mystical.

I don’t think that pursuing mystical and miraculous experiences is the most direct way because the act of pursuing starts from a belief that something is missing. That’s the false perception of the ego talking. That pursuit then contains the seeds of that false belief and keeps putting what you seek into an imaginary future where you think you will find what you are pursuing. It takes us out of the here now where what we are pursuing is already present in us.

In clear perception we see that everything is here now, so the most direct way to the mystical and miraculous is from a state of gratitude for them always operating in our life here now. We become open and receptive. As we become willing to accept this premise then watch out!

These days, after any mystical or miraculous event occurs in my life, I am never surprised anymore, and I am constantly amazed!

Original post is here.

Notice as thoughts arise and fall away.

Notice the thoughts arising out of and into infinite space.

Notice the thoughts dissolving back into infinite space.

Notice the infinite space between the thoughts.

Notice how you cannot possibly be thoughts if they come and go while you are here prior to and after the thoughts.

Ask “what am I?”

Stay in this awareness without efforting.

Just be and witness.

As you do this more often (it can even be as you go about your daily life), you will see how this awareness gradually transforms your entire life.

You’re welcome 😊

Original post is here.