What do you look for in experience? How is it that you learn? What is it that allows you to even experience what it is to experience?
For me personally, I want to experience everything. Things like joy or excitement, sadness, harmony, acceleration, fear, breaking the fear, etc etc. You'll never be able to fully lose those emotions, so for me I say "you might as well use them to your advantage". By that I mean, use it to become a more fulfilled person. Before I died I want to be able to say that I've experienced a lot of events, a lot of emotion, and of course, tons of learning. I love it, and I think my high "self" does as well.
Action is that natural activity which makes possible the manifestation of the universe.First understand this thoroughly... When the sun rises and sets, it seems to move although it is actually motionless.In the same way, realize that freedom from action lies in action. Such a person seems like other people, but he is not affected by human nature, like the sun which cannot be drowned in water. He sees the world without seeing it, does everything without doing it, enjoys all the pleasures without being involved in them. Though he is seated in one place, he travels everywhere, for even while in this body he has become the universe... The walking of his feet, the speaking of his mouth, and all his other actions are the supreme moving through him. Furthermore, he sees the whole universe as not different from himself. Then how can action affect him?... He is free in every way and, even though he acts, He is free from action. Though he possesses attributes, he is beyond all attributes. There is no doubt about this.
I don't look for experience; I experience it. I learn by paying attention and connecting the pieces. For me, the more thinking I'm doing, the less I'm experiencing - unless it entails learning something new.
Who is it that is doing this? Or is it a process that happens with no 'I' behind it? Are you alluding to maintaining keen awareness of the awareness in which all appearances fluctuate within? How can you ever experience any more or less than what you are experiencing? Why put a distinction between inner vs outer, thoughts vs sight/feeling? Thoughts are just as much of an atmosphere of themselves than the atmosphere around. Ignore neither
Individuals do this. Only the individual has the necessary neurological and biological components with which to receive, interpret, process, and store sensory data. Nevetheless, we are all generally built the same, and thus individuals tend to process such data similarly.
Repeated thoughts are not an experience in my opinion. To me, an experience entails something new. So if I'm thinking something that I have already thought before, and it distracts me from the present moment, then I am not experiencing it as fully as I can. I never said I ignore anything
I agree CK. To truly experience, one needs to be truly present. To be truly present, one needs to be still of mind.
I don't think a stilled mind is a pre-requisite for being present. In fact, I feel like you can be extremely present with a racing mind. However, the power of presence can be so strong that thoughts are almost instantaneously negated in light of the higher experience of 'being'. There is no stilling of mind that needs to be done, it's something that happens naturally in and out of times in our day. To seek it is to lose the way. To recognize it's innate presence beyond all appearances/occurences including thoughts is to come back to the Tao.
If I'm doing something I love, to the exclusion of everything else, but my mind is racing, I wouldn't call that true presence. But I think I know what you mean though. It feels very alive, with a heightened state of awareness, that feels like you're completely where you are. For me, there can be no true presence if the mind is active. It's not about performing an action of stilling the mind in order to become present, presence produces it, as you mentioned. In order to be truly present, there will be no mind, for there is no mind to move in this vibration. When it does, and you notice it, you are no longer in that state of being.
"Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10) There's some pretty smart heads here discussing an interesting but mind-numbingly broad topic, so I thought I'd chime in with my own small nuggets of what quite limited knowledge I have. It's a curious thing that the discussion has drifted to stillness so quickly. To be honest I regard stillness as the source of all knowledge. When the Self is stilled, it becomes capable of taking on the likeness of any object that is presented to it. It becomes able to perfectly reproduce within itself that which is outside of itself, thus it can learn to understand all things, according to the nature and the verity of the stillness within. When we are silent, when our minds are listening with deep intent, that is when we learn. We cannot learn while we are not listening. We cannot truly learn while we are talking to ourselves or making any other sort of useless noise. You'll often notice that moments of intense and deep silence are followed by strong epiphanies or realizations of some kind, even mental breakthroughs. Naturally, when a body is stilled, the life which runs through it will run upwards in order to find expression. It is like squeezing that last bit of toothpaste from the bottom of the tube towards the top, slowly and patiently. Thus when we completely still our physical body, we will find that we can feel many new "energies" that run across the face of our awareness. These energies are the desire-currents which ensoul, move and act upon the physical body. Once one gains full awareness of these desire-currents and proceeds to still them, they will find a completely new and amazing force acting upon their consciousness; they will become aware of all their thoughts on a much deeper level, they will effectively be able to Think while only using the smallest portion of their brain. This is known as the gateway to the first true Jhana. This is the level at which the thoughts and the mind-currents which constantly flow through one's body become as tangible things that can be directed and manipulated much the same way as we would manipulate objects with our hands. I think that while we dwell upon this topic it will be well to draw a strong distinction between those actions of the brain and those actions of the Mind. Therefore to still the thoughts of the brain is a natural prerequisite to being aware of the desire-currents. The Mind is that which acts through the brain although is not dependent on the brain for its expression. Yet the brain is very much dependent on the Mind; a brain without a Mind is like a car without a driver. If there is no driver present then the brain will take the path of least resistance, it will do simply what the mind has taught it to do, ie. Gravity will cause the car to sporadically roll down the nearest hillside. Some of us here are aware of the operations of the brain in regards to those useless operations which the untrained brain faithfully carries out when not attentively watched over. I find it quite funny how most of us would surely fret at the idea of falling asleep at the wheel of our car, yet when it comes to our brain and attention that very same thing happens daily.
Look for anything new in an experience Learn through experiencing different things through different perceptions (saw sum1 talking about a still mind is essential, I agree that it is essential in order to experience things in a certain way but also a racing mind is essential in order to experience things in another way. Through a different perception) What is it that allows me to even experience what is to experience? 1st what do you mean by what is to experience? I'll take it as meaning everything that I could possibly experience. secondly, what is it that stops me from being able to experience what it is to experience? Why should something allow me to experience something? unless you mean by way of senses, not just the five but the infinite other strange senses and feelings which are only limited by what we experience... It's similar to the idea that we are only ever in the present, although you make think about the past doesn't mean you are in it at present. Imagine a pool of experience which is infinite, we can swim through this pool but there are currents which stop, slow or speed up our journey through experience (these are like situations in life which slow our journey or speed it up or makes us find another route). Where we start in this pool is where we are born, we can start swimming from there. We navigate through this pool, with the changing currents untill we finally run out of energy and die. The path we took through this pool of experience is what we experienced through life, and everything away from our path is all the other experiences we didn't experience because it was too far away to swin to, or we got caught in a current or we simply didn't swim that way. If we are born again we may get dropped off somewhere else in this pool to map out yet another portion of it. We die again, are dropped off again, map out some more, die again, get dropped off again etc.... untill we pass through this whole pool of experience and have mapped it all out, then something crazy happens Just a very crude methphor for experience, not really sure if it makes sense I can try to clarify my idea if you want. Edit: totally agree with the fella above, however in a situation where you have a still mind you will experience something different than if you had a racing mind. You will probably take in more, but the whole experience will be different.
I think that the illustration which you painted out was a good one, it certainly gave me the idea of what you were trying to convey and it's actually a very beautiful idea to me. Yes I agree that they are two different kinds of experience. I personally believe that complete stillness is not necessary for complete awareness. I have found it very possible to store a sort of "resevoire" of stillness behind even the most rapid of inner movements, so that I could have my thoughts racing fast and my senses blaring yet be intensely aware of every single movement and the relations that exist between these movements while they are in motion. When the mind is running fast, it is so incredibly easy to become unconscious. It takes a lot of practice and patience to learn how to battle and overcome that powerful urge to become unconscious. That urge will often wait patiently until one's guard is down until it decides to pounce. I have noticed that a lot of people who identify themselves with their thoughts and their feelings, which consequently causes them a lot of unnecessary pain, tend to lack this tiny space between the Self and the Not-Self.
subjectivity retrospection experience itself... it's like a magnetic field, you know. The out comes back in the south and out the north again. I don't really understand this talk about stilling your mind to experience the present. I can't escape the present. It's always present no matter what I'm thinking about because in order to experience life in the nature that we do, we need to be in the present don't we? I mean isn't the present subjective anyway? I feel as if I stilled my mind to fully engulf myself in the present I would loose that since of subjectivity, the idea of the individual self that, I believe, is very important to our ability to not only experience but to perceive, as the subject of individual perspective. I don't care about the whole we are one thing because I know that. I'm saying we are still experiencing individual perspective and in order to do so, we must be subjected to the present. I don't know, whenever I subject myself to the infinity or the whomever I loose sensation of the present because it's so overwhelming I lose the sense of self. When I do that I don't experience it any more. I don't know, that's just me!
I always have a hard time expressing myself when it comes to this metaphysical stuff, but I guess experience really is just growing older to me. It's what shapes everything about you and is always building upon itself making you a more diverse, more complex person if you let it. I feel a lot like Toxy was saying, in that I want to be able to experience everything before I have to die, because I want to be able to know my whole self I suppose, and only through learning about the world around me, am I going to be totally able to learn about everything inside of me, by having it reflected back at myself by my interactions and experiences in life.
If you are in what you call your present, physically, but your mind is away thinking about what you did or will do, YOU are not really there. If you're having a conversation, and the other person is talking, and you're thinking about something else, YOU are not really listening. Most people live like this and assume it to be normal, and for the way most people live, with their ego at the fore, it is. You are right of course, the present is subjective for the most part, and certainly when viewed through the ego's spectacles. But to be truly present and experiencing what is happening as ALL THERE IS, the mind must be still, the ego surrendered, so you feel the presence as is ALL THERE IS. This is not an intellectual concept one can understand, it is a reality that actually changes things. Awareness, consciousness, knowing who you truly are, all come from this presence.
I learn new things and have a desire to create and produce. It leads me down all sorts of wonderful paths.
It's not that I haven't been THERE, ya know? So I get the experience of it ALL, it's just that I forget myself. I have lost my point now though. I think it's the juxtaposition of simultaneous existences that must be experienced separately, as opposed to some sort of overlap as a Venn Diagram, that doesn't necessarily contradict my beliefs but more or less simply frustrates me. So, in truth, I do agree with you. Just because things are the way they are doesn't mean I have to agree with them though, lol.