Looking At Yourself

One might note that there is an aspect of the brain that is excellent in pretending not to be the thing it is perceiving. Then things become realy curious when the brain as a whole pretends not to be itself. Then it can 'look' at itself. But do the idea of looking at one's self even internally consistent? What is it that looks at what? Am I the one looking at myself or am I the one being looked at by myself?There is a analogous case in the idea of a curved space. As we know, things curve only by curving away from or towards other things and/ or curve 'in' an empty background we often term it as space. But if we are talking of a single 'thing' that encompasses everything, then such cannot be sensibly said to 'curve'. So what the hell do relativist mean when he say space can curve but without curving into anything else? How can a single 'thing' be said to curve? A stupid relativist can tell you that it is because a human is too stupid to understand such lofty concepts as 'curved space'. However the correct explanation is that 'space' does not riffer to a single thing. It can be seen as a set of points, lines, planes etc. In this case, 'curved lines' should be the more appropriate wordings than 'curved space'.The question of what is it that is looking at what in the case of awareness of own's awareness is analogous to the question of what is it that curves towards and/or away from what in the case of a curved space, which can be incongruously said to curve relative to itself. In both cases, we solve the paradox by pointing out that the supposed one thing in question is realy not one thing. In the case of awareness, there are many things assuping the the title 'I' and 'myself' when we utter 'I am looking at myself'.VISUAL CORTEXWe compare what happens to light signals when you look at 'other' things to what happen to electric signals say in your visual cortex when you look at 'yourself'. Lets say you are looking at 'yourself' on a mirror, say your nose. Light bounce from your nose all the way to the mirror, then to eyes then,..., then,..., to the visual cortex, then,..., er, things somehow spirals to a blackhole of we know not what. Next time, the nose is appearing in a realm termed 'awareness'. Thus when energy ( light in this case) bounce from a region X, then eventualy tickles visual cortex, we eventual experience what we term it as 'seeing the region X'. So what about when the region X is the visual cortex itself? Does the mere presence of energy in a cortex constitute 'seeing the cortex'?Now you are going to look at your own brain! Be sure you are getting it! I don't mean the brain of another man nor looking at your head from a mirror. I mean looking at your brain using the energy already in the brain! Whill you be able to see it as it were from bird's eye view? That is to say I don't metaphorically mean 'experiencing your thoughts'. I mean litteraly beholding the structure of your own brain and realising, for instance, that it looks like interstines!One might say that when you see somthing, an image of the thing is existent in your brain albeit transformed accordingly. In some sense, we can say that you are infact seeing the aspect of your own brain that pretends not to be the thing it is perceiving. To see itself, the brain as a whole should pretend not to be itself!Now the pretence might be understood in a different way. Infact, the opposite. The signals datting around the brain pretends to be the thing you perceive. Then the signals generated in the brain should somehow pretend to be the brain itself! But any how, my point is that pretence, not 'actualness' can be said to be involved in perception. But my point in 'seeing one self' was a perception caused by the existence of a thing itself and not by the pretence of another thing.To understand more about own's awareness, lets consider the case of seeing another man's cortex in comparison to what would happen in the case of seeing own's cortex. While if perception were done on retina, we would define perception of a thing as the image of the thing, things are not the same in visual cortex as the transformation of the image in the latter is not merely that of scale. There is what look like distortion, however it is strange enough that an image like the one in retina is what eventually appear in the awareness!There is also the question how small we can see. If we are ultimately made of atoms, then we are infact seeing as a whole, what parts donnot see! The limit in how tiny a thing we can see undermines the idea of a perception that doesn't involve any pretence for if at least such and such number of atoms are necesary to form a perception the perception can only be that of the atoms perceiving themselves, non perceives itself on its own, but collectively, they perceive themselves.Lets come back to seeing another man's visual cortex, priferably, a man that looks perfectly like you. The cortex is a set of many neurones. Though there is a one to one correspondence between your neurones and the neurones of the guy you are seeing, the light bouncing from a given neurone will not in general eventually hit the corresponding neurone in your own cortex as you perceive the other cortex. This is due to transformation. So the signal from neurone at point X in the other man's cortex will eventually hit neurone at point Y in your cortex. But compare this to the case of a signal coming from point X all the way to point Y WITHIN YOUR OWN NEURONE. Does that not lead you to seeing your own neurone which is at point X? Doesn't the set of all such intercommunication withing your own visual cortex bring about seeing your own visual cortex?

~What I’m ultimately pointing to is a rebalancing/recalibration of the Human Spirit through honoring the ‘primacy of experience’… direct experience; not filtered through the incessant chatter in our ‘minds’ that tend to drown out our authentic state of being. Which is why I focus on quieting the internal dialogue as a means to reconnecting with the Higher Self. Whichever way ‘one’ chooses to embark on that journey doesn’t matter, it’s actually following through on the intent to take the first steps that counts; the willingness to have your own experience, unfettered by anyone else’s expectations or projections as to what you should, or shouldn’t be experiencing. So, for me, ‘meditation’ quickly morphs into a very malleable concept… which is as it should be. Like Feather said, Awakening is an ongoing process… & so is the practice of mediation, which can take unlimited forms. I remember talking to a close friend I have a great deal of respect for about his thoughts on prayer. He smiled & said, if you’re referring to kneeling with eyes closed, hands placed together & talking to God? I have no use for that. I simply try to live prayerfully. I like that… & relate it to some of the rigid ways that meditation has been co-opted by ‘guru’ types who’s rules & regulations can effectively muddy the students path. Of course, as the roles of ‘Student & Teacher’ are constantly interchangeable, even this kind of interpersonal turbulence is ultimately part of the Awakening process. Bottom line, one can work on rightsizing the internal dialogue throughout the day, regardless of what they’re doing. The trick is to try & become conscious of the ways that our experience is affected (infected) by those thoughts… again, not demonizing or placing them on pedestals, just taking notice of the ‘roles’ they play in our sense of ‘self’. So, whether sitting in the lotus position in a temple, or walking on a crowded street in Manhattan… the Divine is always ready to be accessed. Regardless of the method, it’s about navigating toward the jumping off point & having the courage, the trust, to let go. I’m also a huge proponent of Enthogens, which are here (among other sacred purposes) to assist Humanity in this Divine endeavor of Awakening. & for those same guru types who scoff at Plant Teachers as cheating, not authentic etc… or even more arrogantly suggest 'I can achieve those heightened states without any assistance’… I’ll simply say, they're wrong! Two different states of consciousness, entirely. & while I’m not saying one is more spiritually pure than the other; I am saying we are biophysical extensions of the Gaian Mind, gifted with direct access to the ‘Tree of Knowledge’… just make no mistake about it, if you don’t eat of the fruit, your 'thoughts' about the lessons garnered by these direct, experiential arenas with the Divine, border on meaningless. Which, is also as it should be… as it is only your own direct experience that truly matters in these multidimensional affairs. ~InLight555

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.” ~Terence McKenna

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Roaring Lovely October 9, 2016 at 5:04pm

Thanks for your contribution Stick. I think I have gotten to understand lots about your view.
Stick October 9, 2016 at 2:12am

~As Humanity approaches the Interdimensional Doorway, ready to turn the key & see beyond the veils of duality, it's important to remember that entrances also represent exits... so no matter which side of the gateway 'one' is standing, we are all entering the realm of infinite possibility. As the inevitability of this Divine Concrescence approaches, it's fun... this looking for the Key Maker. ~AsAboveSoBelow

“What you seek is seeking you.” ~Rumi

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Roaring Lovely October 8, 2016 at 8:23am

Now I do find that as long as a phenomenon need no inferance, It appears as it appears regardless what I think about it. If on the other hand an entirely different world can emerge when we practise meditation, use psychedelics etc, then it is perfectly possible that there is a correlation between how/ what we think and what we perceive. However, corelation does not necesarily mean a causal relationship.

Causality is a phenomenon that can be challenging to discern. Specifically many of what we think is unidirectional causality is actually a bidirectional one. In our case, we do find that thoughts can correspond to 'reality'. For instance, men ever since thought that the earth is round long before they could experience. So even though there is a corelation between what we experience and what we think, we should not be quick to say what is it that necesarily causes what. In this case, the mind do knows what it is that it gonna experience (through prio experiences or just an instinct caused by its connectedness to the universe). Then it makes us think so. When we meditate or use psychedelics, it similarly knows the experiences that follows and so in preparation, it alters the thoughts accordingly. Thus in this understanding, it is the experiences and thoughts are in a state of bidirectional causality.
Roaring Lovely October 8, 2016 at 6:03am

That 'x' button isn't showing up in one browser that I use. But now I have accidentally deleted both lol! But I will retype it.

It service to say that 'consciousness isn't analytic' to those with some bit of knowledge in epistemology. It is a more philosophic wording for the more practical: 'don't try to understand consciousness via the mind chatter'. I agree that our biologists are guilty of trying to understand consciousness through analysis and synthesis. But I capture this by saying 'consciousness is fundamental'. To all fundamentals, we can't understand them via a mind chatter of any sort. What will we be chattering about? The chat congently, we must have had a prio experience. So yes what we know of via a direct experience is more primary than what we can experience. However, this does not make a mind chatter less important at all.

The analyticity of a given experience though isn't always easy to tell. It is as sure a path to ignorance to analyse the non analytic as it is to fail to analyse the analytic. It is of tremendous important that we understand ourselves if we are to meet our needs. It is especially so in our inner needs. For instance, you might hear of some song and find something apparently indescribable with it which makes you like the song. But then it might actually be describable if we put more effort. When you describe it, you now find it easier to bring the joyous effect! At many at times when an experience is indiscribable, it is due to failure to take a carefull look. For instance if unaware of valleys, craters etc we think that the moon is smooth, we might not find much to describe about. Similarly, in loving 'oneness' (hence nonanalyticity), the 'spiritual guys' might dismiss someone for 'describing the indescribable' when he has only looked close enough and found parts in a supposedly 'one' thing.
Stick October 8, 2016 at 2:54am

~When wrestling with these multidimensional Rubik’s cubes, it’s important to try & separate the value of actively quieting Archontically imposed, ‘incessant chatter & internal dialogue’ that effectively governs our perceptions of ‘reality’… from the Magical, Transformative Power of Language. Which remains our most precious tool for excavating the Alchemical Gold from the deepest crevasses of the Holographic Universe. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' & guess who God is? ;-) TemetNosce247

“The syntactical nature of reality, the real secret of magic, is that the world is made of words. And if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish.” ~Terence McKenna
Roaring Lovely October 7, 2016 at 5:37am

So I can say then what counts is for the inner chatter not to act as a filter that cloud the direct experience. Good! But just as the mere presence of a tinted glass in your room does not mean that it is being used to necesarily look through, the mere presence of seemingly endless dialoque in our minds does not necesarily filter experience. The analogy is still poor though as the mind is an expert at integrating many things all at once and it can be trained to become even more expert. While a newbie can find lots of problems in juggling 3 objects in the air, it is a peace of cake to an expert. An expert will dance, sing, do samasoults and even move along a thin rope while juggling. Ergo juggling prevents someone else from balancing along a rope but it does not prevent someone else. So when it comes to mind, it is hard to draw general laws as it is very adjustable.

Now come back to experiences. There is what must be directly experienced and then there is the synthetic ones that must be unwound through stringing together a series of experiences. So there isn't a general rule that experiences must not pass through the 'chatter filter'. It depends on what kind of experience in question. One cannot experience the truthfullness of Fermat's Theorem without stringing together thaosands of axioms. All the axioms though are directly experience. We must not neglect truths that can only be implied/indirectly experienced in our 'journey'.
Stick October 7, 2016 at 4:29am

~What I’m ultimately pointing to is a rebalancing/recalibration of the Human Spirit through honoring the ‘primacy of experience’… direct experience; not filtered through the incessant chatter in our ‘minds’ that tend to drown out our authentic state of being. Which is why I focus on quieting the internal dialogue as a means to reconnecting with the Higher Self. Whichever way ‘one’ chooses to embark on that journey doesn’t matter, it’s actually following through on the intent to take the first steps that counts; the willingness to have your own experience, unfettered by anyone else’s expectations or projections as to what you should, or shouldn’t be experiencing. So, for me, ‘meditation’ quickly morphs into a very malleable concept… which is as it should be. Like Feather said, Awakening is an ongoing process… & so is the practice of mediation, which can take unlimited forms. I remember talking to a close friend I have a great deal of respect for about his thoughts on prayer. He smiled & said, if you’re referring to kneeling with eyes closed, hands placed together & talking to God? I have no use for that. I simply try to live prayerfully. I like that… & relate it to some of the rigid ways that meditation has been co-opted by ‘guru’ types who’s rules & regulations can effectively muddy the students path. Of course, as the roles of ‘Student & Teacher’ are constantly interchangeable, even this kind of interpersonal turbulence is ultimately part of the Awakening process. Bottom line, one can work on rightsizing the internal dialogue throughout the day, regardless of what they’re doing. The trick is to try & become conscious of the ways that our experience is affected (infected) by those thoughts… again, not demonizing or placing them on pedestals, just taking notice of the ‘roles’ they play in our sense of ‘self’. So, whether sitting in the lotus position in a temple, or walking on a crowded street in Manhattan… the Divine is always ready to be accessed. Regardless of the method, it’s about navigating toward the jumping off point & having the courage, the trust, to let go. I’m also a huge proponent of Enthogens, which are here (among other sacred purposes) to assist Humanity in this Divine endeavor of Awakening. & for those same guru types who scoff at Plant Teachers as cheating, not authentic etc… or even more arrogantly suggest 'I can achieve those heightened states without any assistance’… I’ll simply say, they're wrong! Two different states of consciousness, entirely. & while I’m not saying one is more spiritually pure than the other; I am saying we are biophysical extensions of the Gaian Mind, gifted with direct access to the ‘Tree of Knowledge’… just make no mistake about it, if you don’t eat of the fruit, your 'thoughts' about the lessons garnered by these direct, experiential arenas with the Divine, border on meaningless. Which, is also as it should be… as it is only your own direct experience that truly matters in these multidimensional affairs. ~InLight555

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.” ~Terence McKenna
Roaring Lovely October 6, 2016 at 3:30pm

Most of the benefits of meditation that I experience comes after, and not during meditation. This is to say when I get back to normal thinking (but of course its nolonger 'normal'). It isn't hard to understand cause if everything is dynamic, then paradoxically, motion is relaxation! Trying to be stand still in a windy day is actually movement through a path of resistance while moving with the wind is the true relaxation.

Sure, it won't realy be a quiet mind if you are thinking. Rather its a calm mind. It only survice for thoughts not to feel noisy nor iritating and not for them to disapear. They cannot disapear anyway and neither is it necesary so. We can say you are in line with them.
Feather Winger October 6, 2016 at 2:38pm

A ´´quiet mind´´ is clear, alert and aware.....not only during meditation, but as we go about the day when talking and thinking. In fact, it may be quite noisy during meditation for it is clearing things.

Depression is quite often caused by low serotonin....drinking lots of green tea is a good way to increase serotonin, also eating yogurt is good for much of the serotonin is produced in the gut.
Roaring Lovely October 6, 2016 at 1:59pm

I have never been against meditation at all. I understand its benefit. Infact last year, I 'prescribed' it to my sister who have been suffering from dipression (as per the doctors). I tell you she has been disturbing me with phone calls now, trying to tell how wonderfull it is. She has thrown a heep of antidepression drugs that she had received from doctors and that she could not leave without. But now a year has passed, instead of depression, she now report ecstacy and ever present bliss!:) what an healing!

BUT,..., and a big 'but', there is a very common and subtle fallacious reasoning that follows. You know we can see that when it get dark, bird ceases to sing. Or that before it rain, it must first be cloudy. It is with such reasoning that true causes can fall on our blind spots. We will be supprise when birds go on to sing even during a total eclipse.

In our case, the following reasoning goes:

1.) Meditation bring about spaces in between thoughts.
2)Meditation brings about higher level of consciousness
3.)Therefore thinking incesantly leads to lower level of consciousness.

This reasoning is fallacious and is the one that I disagree with. It put together 2 correct premises, 1 and 2, but arrives at a wrong conclusion, 3. Before one can draw a general LAW, one must first consider EVERYTHING that accompany an event that brings about a given effect. In this case, it is not well known all the events that necesarily accompany meditation. But since thought is partly voluntary and partly involuntary, one can note that meditation involves a conscious influence to autonomic nervous system. (i will say more about this latter) but now I must say that thus it isn't meditation that I am against but a certain philosophy ABOUT it. It is my understanding of what exactly goes on during 'silencing the mind' that differs. But since pple in this forum often don't use the word meditation but rather use 'silencing the mind', I appear to be against meditation when I try to point out the above fallacy for I never use 'silencing the mind' and 'meditation' interchangeably.

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