An orientation shift

[Unseeking Seeker]

Alright, the topic being meditation for which we have a plethora of practices and techniques ranging from breath watching, mindfulness, walking meditation, chanting or simply sitting silently, observing thoughts rising and subsiding until they fade out altogether or more dramatically, we have the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra 112 meditations ~ so no, this thread is not about a this or that method but an invitation to look at meditation as not a doing for a few minutes or several hours maybe but as a flowing orientation.

Essentially, what I wish to both share and discuss is how spiritual development occurred in my case, including dwelling in silence, what is loosely called meditation.

First, I have never meditated in as, as a doing, that is, taking time out from what I am to sit somewhere separately for meditation. Rather, what happened was that, upon recognising the futility of searching for joy in the pursuit of material objects, I just shut down the thinking process altogether, since I found it leads nowhere. Just like that, like a bad habit, I stopped.

Looking back I find that most people cannot relate to this simple choice. Sans thought, what are we? Awareness yet is but identity takes a back seat and finally drops away one day ~ but that is another story.

It’s not that I haven’t read a bit here and there, I have. Lower mind questions, it has doubts, that’s its job.

So, thought cessation. It’s a shift, an orientation shift. After that, allowing for some attention oscillation owing to past momentum, our default fulcrum becomes silence and stillness, which in my case was made easier by bliss enablement in permanence by the kundalini energisation process, which happened spontaneously and effortlessly.

For lack of correlation I would say it is a meditation continuum, wherein we resurface from time to time to engage in the external world, when necessity so demands. In the flowing orientation, there is no seeking simply because there remains no active identity which seeks something. All that is, is fullness in emptiness.

It is, we may say, heightening awareness without effort through waking and dreaming, looking without interfering, refining residual responses since if there is a response, there is yet an identity.

Identity or ego too is alright since it is needed just like any limb of the body we need from time to time, to function. That’s it.

Ultimately, we may say, it is not possible to classify that this is body, this is soul or whatever and this is the ultimate. We become all these, as of where our attention pulsates at any given time. There is no effort needed, only an orientation shift.

[Michael K.]

Blessings Unseeking Seeker for this post, I had an orientation shift back in
1974 when i was given three months to live by my doctor, due to chronic
alcoholism, I feel to my knees and asked the great Spirit for help, It came
instantly I was pressed onto the floor by a great weight upon me, and a loud
inner voice asking me what i knew? I tried to answer something but this pressure got some intense i thought my bones were going to brake with this
pressure, I shouted out i know nothing! And immediately the weight lifted and tis voice said, now go to bed, and start your recovery. This is when i started
meditating daily, but had i not had that experience, and three months to live
I would have most likely never started meditating.


regards michael.

[iamthat]

Originally Posted by Unseeking Seeker

... I just shut down the thinking process altogether, since I found it leads nowhere. ... Sans thought, what are we? Awareness yet is but identity takes a back seat and finally drops away one day.

Indeed. Reminds me of the question "Who would we be without our story?"

We tell ourselves a story of who we are, what has happened in our lives, the things we have done or not done. This is all just a thought in our heads. What would happen if we let go of this thought and we were simply present in this moment without all the personal history?

We might find that we are free to be ourselves, just as we are. We might find that we are more accepting of others, just as they are. We might even find that we are at peace with life, just as it is.

Peace

[Unseeking Seeker]

@ Michael post #2 ~ it is remarkable, is it not, that the universe provides us with the jolt we need to enable us to shift. There always is a choice at soul level and essentially it is about shifting our priority from the external to the internal.

In your case, it appears the shift was brought about by a whack on the head, whilst in my case, it was a slow burn, until I reached the point of exhaustion.

The manner of awakening too varies, in as far as I’ve seen; for example, your kundalini awakening was all lightening and thunder, whilst mine was a sublime seduction in slow motion. Probably, our innate affinity comes into play.

[Unseeking Seeker]

@ iamthat post #3 ~ wise words as always. The shift, as I see it is to rest in our natural meditative state. There’s no point in talking about surrender of this (ego) to that (God, universal consciousness), if our prayer or meditation is a part time activity. Hence all time meditation as an ever present orientation. We become it.

Addiction to the thinking process, once boon is now bane. We can think but we don’t need to, not all the time at least. Lower mind is just an instrument, it does not define us and it certainly is not us.

In any path we take, in as a disciplined practice, laudable as it is, showing resolve and all that, in my view it self-limits us, since separation is presupposed and we act as a doer from the fulcrum of mind-body consciousness.

So, as you say, if we accept others as they are, we are at peace. We become it by the shift to accept. Imaginary boundaries dissolve, identity vaporises and we see who we are, as living light. This is the aim of all spiritual endeavours but my submission is that the endeavour should be wholehearted, authentic and complete and thus effortless.

In Samadhi, what happens? We don’t attain, we become the flame.

[Michael K.]

Originally Posted by Unseeking Seeker

@ Michael post #2 ~ it is remarkable, is it not, that the universe provides us with the jolt we need to enable us to shift. There always is a choice at soul level and essentially it is about shifting our priority from the external to the internal.

In your case, it appears the shift was brought about by a whack on the head, whilst in my case, it was a slow burn, until I reached the point of exhaustion.

The manner of awakening too varies, in as far as I’ve seen; for example, your kundalini awakening was all lightening and thunder, whilst mine was a sublime seduction in slow motion. Probably, our innate affinity comes into play.

Blessings Unseeking seeker that is so true that we all arrive at awakening via
different routes, mine was a dynamic blast into awakening, and your a gentle glide along the process of awakening.
regards michael.

[iamthat]

Originally Posted by Unseeking Seeker

Addiction to the thinking process, once boon is now bane. We can think but we don’t need to, not all the time at least. Lower mind is just an instrument, it does not define us and it certainly is not us.

Yes, the mind is a tool for us to use in our daily engagement with form.

And as you say, we do not need to use it. The difficulty for some people (including myself) is a subtle attachment to the process of thinking - thinking is our default mode. So resting in a state of not-thinking can feel strange at first.

As always, I come back to Patanjali's second sutra:

Yoga is the cessation of the transformations of the mind.

All the countless books on Yoga and Yogis come down to this one sentence. And we may read about all the apparently miraculous siddhis (powers) of various Yogis, but for me the quiet mind outweighs them all.

Peace

[FallingLeaves]

Originally Posted by iamthat

So resting in a state of not-thinking can feel strange at first.

in my experience, thinking stimulates parts of the body (for me usually in the skin or muscles). Ceasing thinking is like stopping such stimulations and allowing new ones to form, but I want to keep them as they are because I'm comfortable with it the way it is, so I don't want to do something as strenuous as not thinking. so then whenever I get serious I have to go through withdrawals away from various kinds of sensations I've come to like into things I'm not yet familiar with.

For me it is very much, like trying not to smoke after I've become addicted. And it isn't the thinking that does it it is all the side effects I've learned to attach to what is going on my head.

[Unseeking Seeker]

About thinking and thought instantly creating an illusion, within which we immerse our attention and thus get hypnotised by entering trance, we can see ourselves in dreams within dreams, conjured by thought.

From each dream we wake up from, we enter another. Each immersion seems real for the duration we are in the belief that we are the designated object within the dream conjured by another aspect of us, which is the subject or creator of that dream.

Extrapolating this concept, any realm or domain, including this one here, is but a lucid dream. The waking state offers us a sense of continuity, which makes us believe that this is real whilst other dreams are false. However, if we shift into silence and cease attachment to thinking, thought being but another object that has appeared in our sphere of awareness, we do not claim ownership over it. Thought recedes and images disappear. All that is, is silence, first bliss energised, then changing to time stretched ineffable peace.

The initial darkness of the void, wherein we alone are, first seems disconcerting because it is a sort of oneness but not quite, wherein we are bereft of senses, so it takes a while getting used to it. Why I say it is not oneness is because we are in it as an identity, formless but still an identity.

The bliss current fixates our attention in stillness. Yet, we are the experiencer of bliss. In samadhi, identity disappears and we become the bliss flame. So, oneness but as a receptor, since there is no possibility for us to exit samadhi, simply because identity has vaporised and thus there is no actionability.

It is the total annihilation of identity that causes thoughts to cease or maybe the other way around. Whatever. When identity drops off, which it will, being unfed, the self-imposed veil disappears and we are in the self-existent light of of Self, renewing itself within itself, feeling complete and unlike samadhi, with complete freedom. However, in this singularity, being complete, there arises no urge in the conventional sense, to do anything. A paradox. We can but do not, unless it is by spontaneous choiceless choice or will of God.

The rabbit hole goes in deep because once we are here, the truth of being yet needs to be etched into each cell of mind-body, in an unending and unbroken continuum. This, in my view is a transmutation enabled when all aspects or sheaths ~ energy as vibration, creativity of lower mind, connectivity of higher mind and totality of love and light are etched in the dense body apparatus.

So, all here now, not spaced out somewhere else. Or simply stated, to be free and awake all the time, which could mean bilocating between duality and singularity, if it makes sense.

[Gem]

Just my take and nothing special: there's a fine point of balance and everything else is circumstantial.