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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 18, 2018 - 10:07am PT
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One can sleep through it, or one can try to become fully aware of whatever the hell it is.
No in-between? Where is the balance?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Mar 18, 2018 - 11:05am PT
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Wayne said "No in-between? Where is the balance?"
It is an interesting dilemma and IMO part of the process of practice. That is why they call it practice. Similar to climbing or skiing of you are either on balance or struggling their is not much in between. But if you practice a lot you eventually get on balance most of the time.
It is more awkward and subtle with dual and non dual experience. Buddhist meditation is intended to open you up to a non-dualistic experience. But since our conditioning for a dualistic view is so ingrained it is a very challenging task and a unique practice. The most effective tool the buddhists use to break through the dualistic conditioning is retreat practice ( many hours of meditation for numerous days) and the interesting part of that practice is there is eating meditation and walking meditation. IMO this is intended to help bridge the sitting meditation experience to the everyday life experience (so they are no different in your POV/experience).
One very common misunderstanding is that the meditation experience is some created state; as you practice more you begin to see it is just learning to be less distracted with self oriented pursuits i.e. I want this and I don't want that.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 18, 2018 - 11:23am PT
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Wayno,
Sure, there's an infinite range in-between, I guess we could say. The articulation presents a sort of paradox. There is consciousness, and it seems to present itself as anything. Even delusion would seem to be full awareness, *if* one is aware of it.
Between 1913 and 1917, C.G. Jung was by every account successful. He was, however, very unhappy. Something was not right in his world. It was claimed he had somehow lost his soul (a term which also seems impossible to define). Over those years, Jung would relax while awake at night and imaginatively generate waking dreams, with autonomous characters who often showed up in later waking dreams. In these waking dreams, Jung claimed he met with various incarnations of his unconsciousness. A number of outside professional observers of his journals of his experiences (Jung kept copious notes) claim that Jung's experiences were full-on psychoses. In 1957, Jung wrote that his experiences in those three years were the basis of everything that he was a part of for the rest of his life: his practices with patients, his scientific research, his books, etc., which are considerable.
Can one be crazy / deluded / insane and know it? If reality is perceived through mind, then how can we either be aware or not be aware of it? Reality would, by this account, appear to be mind.
Yeah, it's not something that one can think very much about and get anywhere.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 18, 2018 - 11:27am PT
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Windshield wipers.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 18, 2018 - 11:37am PT
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Can one be crazy / deluded / insane and know it?
I think so. Like being in this world but not being of this world. If I told you what I really thought or experienced, you might think I'm crazy. I know this so I shut up. I know many who feel similarly.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 18, 2018 - 02:23pm PT
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I may be crazy but I'm not stupid.
I may be stupid but I'm not crazy.
I may be in between stupid and crazy.
We nurses do not call anyone crazy. We may say that what you perceive does not match what I perceive, but we would never deny that there is a pink elephant in the room, or that angels are talking to you.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 18, 2018 - 02:40pm PT
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Everyone is crazy. If you know you are crazy then you are sane. Paradox or good drugs?
Crazy makes a great vacation.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 18, 2018 - 02:53pm PT
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If reality is perceived through mind,
Reality is always perceived thru the heart ......
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 18, 2018 - 02:58pm PT
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Reality is obfuscated through the mind. That's why we need windshield wipers.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 18, 2018 - 04:18pm PT
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One very common misunderstanding is that the meditation experience is some created state..
This is so ingrained that most all contemplatives go through a long stage of trying to find or learn or generate some magical state, believing that this is the Higher Ground where you will find out all the marvelous stuff not disclosed to us through thinking etc. This is especially true in the manner we look for or witness with the expectation of discovering something suave and fantastic. When folks start practicing on stuff like the Formless Jhanas, there is no thing to look for and the mind (at least my mind did) spins like a top till it doesn't, when you become aware of all that efforting and waiting for the punch line.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 18, 2018 - 04:57pm PT
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Or you finally find the switch for those damned windshield wipers.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Mar 18, 2018 - 07:22pm PT
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Moreover, an artistic career was tempting. In the end, however, it was a problem of theoretical knowledge which induced me to study chemistry, which was a great surprise to all who knew me. Mystical experiences in childhood, in which Nature was altered in magical ways, had provoked questions concerning the essence of the external, material world, and chemistry was the scientific field which might afford insights into this.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 18, 2018 - 08:01pm PT
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It must be illegal.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 18, 2018 - 08:48pm PT
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Hoffman talks a lot about mathematics and quantum physics, appropriating the mysteries of the latter and injecting them into the macro world. I'm suspicious of these generalities, and we've seen this sort of thing on and off this entire thread. JL has written of a particular interpretation of quantum physics as if it were a universally accepted perspective. And of course the mathematics bandied about from the beginning pages is nothing more than shallow musings.
Remember Tononi's Phi function from information theory? He simply postulates consciousness and presents a mathematical model that is largely unworkable.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 18, 2018 - 09:06pm PT
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He simply postulates consciousness and presents a mathematical model that is largely unworkable.
Like I've been saying all along all the time "consciousness cannot be understood by material means".
As we see again and again it proves the gross materialists are fool mental speculators using only their defective senses.
Consciousness is always beyond the reach of the gross materialists independent attempts.
Otherwise, they would never suffer the dissolution of their material bodies ......
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 19, 2018 - 01:35am PT
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I once had a young, talented friend who stepped off a curb completely oblivious to traffic. He was hit and killed instantly by a car he never observed in any way whatsoever. It wasn't an internal symbolic representation that killed him, it was a car that existed independent of any observers.
John G. has it right: Hoffman overthinks and oversells the proposition when he extrapolates into the macro world and in doing so undercuts his credibility in ways which are both unfortunate and unnecessary.
Bottom line is all observers could be wiped off the face of the earth tomorrow and El Cap would still be there in as an objective, physical reality that very much matches the internal maps of those who have climbed it.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Mar 19, 2018 - 08:07am PT
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Not Hoffman, Hofmann
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