Raising your awareness is the key

[ocean breeze]

Originally Posted by ThatMan

It's true that it's difficult and this is why I don't recommend people to ask for the "greater" things from the start, do it with baby steps, otherwise you may end up going mad.Look how many people talk on this forum about that "kundalini" thing that brings confusion and sensation of losing one's sanity.

I've been through many crazy things from the moment I started to meditate and I always take breaks when my mind can't handle what I experience, when it's too much, it's too much.I meditate for hours sometimes but this only because I pushed myself harder and I stayed strong in all the moments of confusion, paranoia and so on.My advice, start slowly, at first just minutes, then maybe after some months, you can go for longer period of times.

Do it on your own way at your own pace!

Such moments happen randomly. Its not so much a meditative experience or anything like that. So its really out of my control. It happens out of nowhere without any effort on my part. The only thing i can do is not resist. Move with it even if it leads towards insanity or death. That's the only thing i feel the need to remember. Easier said than done of course.

[ocean breeze]

Come to think of it, i do much in the way of self examination and thinking. I don't consider that meditation and am not sure if that has any cause to what i mentioned.

[Starman]

It is my experience that awareness is light, light that allows us to see and perceive more expansively. The more light we gather unto ourselves the more our awareness may expand. We have outer sight and we also have insight, or inner sight. The more awareness the greater our insight, or ability to see within ourselves. Within us is a universe vaster than the outer space we see when we look at the stars and planets, as I often do with my telescope.

Committed to surrounding ourselves with light, the world will come in and try to drag us back into the drama, but if you take every opportunity to bathe in your own inner light, that calm, soothing, guiding light will be there readily available in time of crisis. It is and actual light that is within all of us; an incredible conscious energy at the core of our being deep within our ability to feel. Whatever we give our attention to will grow. Here are some quotes on the subject of divine light.

“There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond us all, beyond the heavens, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in our heart.”
Chandogya Upanishad, p. 113

“The light of the body is the eye, if therefore thine eye be single, they whole body shall be full of light.” King James Bible, Matthew, 6:22

“When the divine sight is opened, all appear as equal and one, and there remains no distinction of good and bad, high and low.”
Sayings of Ramakrishna, The Bible of the World, p. 171

“He who knows this light, even in dreams, will be saved.” The Koran, “Light”

“I look forward with confidence to the perfect realization of the Eternal Splendor of the Limitless Light.”
BOTA Kabbalah, Pattern on the Trestle board

“ You cannot see me with those gross eyes. I therefore bestow upon you the divine eye.”
Bhagavad-Gita, 11:8

“Thine own consciousness, shining, void, and inseparable from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, nor death, and is the Immutable Light.”
Tibetan Book of the Dead, 96

“By meditation upon light and upon radiance, knowledge of the spirit can be reached and thus peace can be achieved.”
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: I; in Bible of the World, p.147

Originally Posted by Starman

It is my experience that awareness is light, light that allows us to see and perceive more expansively.

There's a Peter Russell talk on YouTube titled "The Primacy of Consciousness - Peter Russell - Full Version" where he compares consciousness to light numerous times. Towards the end he talks about the speed of light, the spacetime continuum and how light experiences its reality.

While I'm not a mathematician, physicist or astronomer (well, amateur astronomer) I'm quite keen on science and I never pondered the point he drives home. That is when I look at, say Andromeda, through my scope and from my perspective the light took 2.5 million years to reach my eye, crossing 2.5 million light years on its journey. From a photon's perspective it traveled zero distance over zero time and was simply an exchange of action. From it's perspective point of emission and absorption are coincident.

[Starman]

Hi JustASimpleGuy, Welcome to the forums. I have often compared and contrasted traditional mainstream science with esoteric science, metaphysics, etc. I relate to what you have shared and it addresses the everyday perspective of human beings verses another reality.

Human senses only allow us a very limited perspective. Light is to color what sound is to vibration, and according to esoteric science sound is the primordial substance of all creation. Thus according to a few religious texts “In the beginning was the word, “ and that word was a vibration. Vibration at a certain frequency becomes light. Then we also have "the big bang theory," which is about sound and light as well.

The human eye can only see between the spectrum of infrared and ultraviolet, but there are colors beyond that spectrum of infrared and ultraviolet which and expansive awareness can perceive. Animals can hear and see things that human beings can not.

When we raise our consciousness our awareness expands, and the normal human understanding of physics changes. We become witness to a more dynamic existence. The expansion of awareness is not just something that is in our thoughts or in our mind; it encompasses our entire being and is felt throughout our mental, emotional, and physical body.

We can get to a point where our consciousness actually expands beyond our physical body, and we find that we are not in our body, rather our physical body is within our consciousness. It is and aspect of our consciousness which feeds our physical body, our emotions, and mental activity.

Mainstream science, while great, in my opinion is too objective to be able to authenticate our essential nature. Although there is the possibility that material understanding and spiritual understanding will eventually merge and become the accepted mainstream understanding, i.e. quantum physics seems to be on that path.

Thanks for the welcome Starman!

What I've slowly come to understand is not only how little I know but how little the accumulate intellectual knowledge of humanity is in relation to Ultimate Truth.

It's my opinion any intelligence in our reality, terrestrial or otherwise, can never come close to that level of knowing through intellect, hence some turn inward.

So I've discarded belief and disbelief. There's what I understand intellectually through humanity's rigorous efforts of intellectual curiosity and discovery and understanding at best this is models of reality that serve our purposes reasonably well until something better comes along, what I know through direct experience, what I have a sense of intuitively and everything else about which I haven't a clue.

So yeah, in the balance I'm basically clueless.

[Starman]

I was a U.S. Army combat medic during the Vietnam War, and to the dismay of those who were in charge, I rendered medical care to those who we were fighting. My philosophy back then was that we all bleed red blood.

After the military I adopted the philosophy that we all breathe the same air. These were remarks that I embraced to affirm the unity of humankind. But in my spiritual development I have found that unity goes much farther and deeper than just what we, as humans, do on the surface here in this world.

Being clueless can be a very humbling experience. For me it is not only about letting go of what I think I know but also letting go of what I think I don’t know. In my opinion everything serves a purpose, as you have said, in our spiritual growth and development, but along the way we diminish, or let go, of the less efficient models for better models, until we have no models at all.

[shivatar]

You can be aware of the past, and the past is not right now.

Right now is the only truth about reality. Reality is right now. The past is just a collection of right now's that are no longer right now.

One important part of enlightenment is being aware of what is right now. It's not just awareness, because awareness can be of the past and that doesn't serve you very much. It's awareness of what is right now.

Being able to tell when your mind has taken you into the past or future, and being able to train your mind to stay with right now , that is the key to enlightenment. Awareness is how you accomplish it.