The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

[TraineeHuman]

One way to view what spiritual evolution (traditionally also known as "ascension") gives us is that it makes our conscious experience broader, not to mention deeper, truer, higher and more complete. It's a little like we were living in a world where everyone "normally" insists on keeping their eyes closed at all times, and their ears blocked. In such a hypothetical world, anyone who dares to ever open their eyes will be considered very weird and to be behaving in a totally improper and dangerous way. But certain individuals -- those who follow their sensitivity to wherever it leads them -- do open their eyes and even keep them open.

In this way "the world of blindness" is literally seen by such individuals in a new and superior way from how the blind "see" it by means of braille and walking sticks and so on. Here, sight becomes something higher that is brought into the "lower" world of the voluntarily blind. Sight brings into existence things (e.g., color) that were previously unknown and treated as non-existent. This is how sensitivity works. I would even say that sensitivity is always a type of "sight", metaphorically speaking.

Notice that all that was characteristic of the world of blindness -- all that was "lower" -- gets transformed into something with qualities from a "higher" plane. In a similar way, I would say that all that was animal or egoic in us doesn't totally disappear so much as get "upgraded", radically transformed, and imbued with new, higher values, with true intelligence and more sublime awareness.

[TraineeHuman]

Vulnerability (and sensitivity) is usually dangerous, though we can't live without it. We have to make ourselves vulnerable in order to have a romantic relationship, for example. More generally, let me suggest we live fully -- in the sense of not behaving like machines -- solely by means of the process of making one leap of faith after another into the unknown. Indeed, that's the only way to reach anything that's on a higher plane, or to be at a higher plane or even see what's there. And the only way to ever break free of any fear is, ironically, to take a chance (on "optimism") without knowing what all the dangers that await us might be.

The problem is, unless vulnerability is vulnerability to the Divine, it always brings some disappointment and suffering. The dilemma for so many, though, is that they don't consciously know what the Divine, or even the infinite, truly is; and yet, the only way to find the Divine in the first place is through being hugely vulnerable to it.

It's common for individuals to make themselves very vulnerable to a romantic relationship, and also to a parent-child relationship. The problem is, our social conditioning vigorously teaches that a successful romantic relationship, or family, is what brings us happiness. That isn't true. Only the Divine can bring us true happiness. And it's only rarely, in our culture, that a couple can grow their romantic relationship into something that involves and encompasses a relationship with the Divine (which is quite impersonal, for instance). Without the Divine's involvement, the expected payoff of "getting" true happiness doesn't come. Once it becomes clear that it isn't going to come, some degree of trauma ("heartbreak") or attachment is inevitable.

Vulnerability to the Divine is very useful at the time of our death, because vulnerability (in combination with positivity of the will plus the perception or certainty of that which lies higher) is the only way out of fear. If we carry fear with us at the time of death, that (and that alone) enables certain dark forces to temporarily impede our ability to rise into the higher planes. What you believe is what you get: be afraid and you'll get something scary. But if we're vulnerable to the Divine, our attitude will be one of dissolving into the vastness of the infinite or even of the Divine. We won't actually dissolve, either, so much as expand and free up.

[TraineeHuman]

In recent posts I've been looking at sensitivity because it's a different way of approaching the Divine, as a gateway to experiencing higher planes. The Divine, in turn, is something essential for us to make contact with to see reality in the fullest, and ultimately the most accurate, way.

As I've said, sensitivity is the "technology" for our perception of beauty. Most of the ancient Greek philosophers took it for granted that if one explores beauty deeply enough, in doing so one will automatically uncover very deep levels of truth as well; and vice-versa. This is a long way from how most Westerners see things today. That's so even though the former outlook fits quite well with Vedic and Tantric and Taoist understandings. And even though the inventors of major new scientific theories invariably do so by finding some very "elegant" or beautiful new way of viewing things.

Not only that, but it's easy to find examples of how truth and beauty certainly do seem to be closely related. For instance, love is something beautiful if it's "true" love. And it's beautiful exactly to the extent and intensity that it's true love.

Our post-modern, Western way of seeing reality today is heavily based on the outlook and influence of one Greek philosopher, namely Aristotle. Aristotle considered that factual truth was the only way to valid insight or knowledge. This laid the foundation for science to develop, but also things like accountancy, AI, economic rationalisation and "the bottom line" and bureaucracy and corporations, and so on. While Aristotle considered esthetics to be a valid branch of philosophy, he marginalised it from from general philosophy, which for him was the part concerned with finding the truth.

The misinformation industry is based on the assumption that if people can't find the true facts, they'll never find reality. I don't believe that's so at all. Not that it's a bad thing at all to try and sort out what the true facts are.

If we can individually develop sufficient sanity and emotional stability to be able to learn how to use imagination not as a form of fantasy but as a tool for finding the truth, there lies the next step for humankind's -- er -- ascension.

In the past I've described some of the many inbuilt flaws in the scientific method. Just to throw in another one that I haven't mentioned, let's look at what's called the paradox of deduction. This is the truth -- well known to philosophers -- that we can never logically deduce anything, from any starting assumptions, that isn't already contained in and a part of those assumptions. So, deductive logic is in itself far more impotent than we tend to uncritically believe.

[Guish]

Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
In the past I've described some of the many inbuilt flaws in the scientific method. Just to throw in another one that I haven't mentioned, let's look at what's called the paradox of deduction. This is the truth -- well known to philosophers -- that we can never logically deduce anything, from any starting assumptions, that isn't already contained in and a part of those assumptions. So, deductive logic is in itself far more impotent than we tend to uncritically believe.

Good point but I don't think proper research is far from proper ways of experiencing "reality" by Zazen or silent meditation. For example, as a Statistician, I have been trained to be objective. There's a concept called hypothesis testing. You take a claim and test it against data without really getting attached to any claim. Hence, it forces oneself to be empty in search for truth which is exactly what Zen or other meditation techniques do. You assume that there exists something beyond the body and mind and truth is revealed by direct experience with that state. There's no learning by books or do's and don'ts.

[TraineeHuman]

Posted by Guish (here)

as a Statistician, I have been trained to be objective. There's a concept called hypothesis testing. You take a claim and test it against data without really getting attached to any claim. You assume that ... truth is revealed ...

Well, a hypothesis eventually becomes a theory if there's sufficient evidence to (apparently) support it. But why, do you suppose, is a scientfiic theory considered acceptable only if it's falsifiable?

And note that a theory can only be falsifiable if it's false -- but it's just very hard to prove that it's false, if it's what's considered a good theory.

I guess that does show that however hard science supposedly tries to find the truth, it can never quite get past falsehoods. It can never directly experience the truth. (I'm not stating anything that's in any way controversial to philosophers of science or well-informed scientists.)

[Guish]

Posted by TraineeHuman (here)

Posted by Guish (here)

as a Statistician, I have been trained to be objective. There's a concept called hypothesis testing. You take a claim and test it against data without really getting attached to any claim. You assume that ... truth is revealed ...

Well, a hypothesis eventually becomes a theory if there's sufficient evidence to (apparently) support it. But why, do you suppose, is a scientfiic theory considered acceptable only if it's falsifiable?

And note that a theory can only be falsifiable if it's false -- but it's just very hard to prove that it's false, if it's what's considered a good theory.

I guess that does show that however hard science supposedly tries to find the truth, it can never quite get past falsehoods. It can never directly experience the truth. (I'm not stating anything that's in any way controversial to philosophers of science or well-informed scientists.)

In testing, there's significance level and a significance level of 100% is impossible to achieve. Therefore, one concludes and gives the validity of the conclusion- how much accurate it can be. Most things like opinions, claims and theories are hypotheses but some closer to truth and some further. Truth is infinite and knowledge is infinite.

[seah]

Hello, I'd like to say thank you to all who contribute to this thread, particularly, in earlier times. So much of the information shared is priceless, could never be found in one place alone, and for me has proven to be most valuable. I'm still sorting through it all, but I've had a read from the beginning, and let me say that is quite a commitment.
It's not that agree with everything, some things resonate and others not, but this journey into the esoteric, for me, anyway, is one I make alone; it is good to find validation of my own experiences and findings reflected in what others share. I have found reinforcement here, additional ways to interpret my personal experiences, and of course, more work, but that's okay, this is the work I live for now.

The exercise about visualizing how great it is to just be and connecting to each individual cell in body is now something I practice daily. I know it was given as a protecting exercise but it feels to me that it is opening previously unused receptors that will lead me somewhere new. Some visualizations have visions injected into them, not of my making. Cells have been added where there were none, some appear more alive/brighter than others, etc.

[TraineeHuman]

Hello, seah. Thank you for your very wise comments and the nice feelings and will. Yes, it does take plenty of "practice" for a long time if one seriously wants to get anywhere. I believe the right balance is to be focused about 90% on actually doing the practices, and no more than 10% on any discussion or reading or thinking. I'm very glad to see that you certainly seem to have that balance about right, as far as I can tell.

Yes, connecting and working with the consciousnesses of one's cells is very important. They keep you in touch with Earth, so to speak. All advanced spirituality is 100% about bringing Heaven "down" into and into integration with Earth (once one has earlier truly experienced and linked with Heaven), though it sounds like you're pretty much aware of that.

As I mention in this thread, I don't really approve of most of what's called "visualization". After all, everything that's useful comes strictly out of the world of no thoughts. And it seems to me that most of what most mean by "visualization" is often almost nothing more than some form of thought, or fantasy.

[seah]

That is a good reminder. I must admit I am not at the 90% level of doing, I do have responsibilities that take me away from practice, and loving pets that usually wonder in or on me and distract me, but it all works out.

I have read that you mentioned you were not fond of visualization before, I guess I have adapted the exercise to include it, not intensionally, it seemed to just happen. May I ask how you would do the exercise without visualizing? Perhaps it is because your mind is so comfortable in meditation and mine is still a work in progress.

Do you think that fantasy is a waste of time, or are you against it because it can lead us into risky situations? I do agree that the world of no thought brings great rewards, but having seen in my work with children, and having raised three of my own, how imagination is such a large part of a healthy childhood, I have always felt that it was worth holding on to a bit of it no matter how old we are.

[TraineeHuman]

I would insist that there's a huge difference between fantasy and properly used imagination, seah. Imagination is the main way we ever know anything (that the world even exists, etc). To use imagination properly and more or less accurately ("objectively", i.e. inter-subjectively, to use the term all professional philosophers recognise to be the correct one) for gaining useful insight (e.g. about your life etc), you do need to be grounded and make the ordinary mind and the ego relatively quiet. (And you do need to be fairly free of mental health problems, because psychotic people are at times simply unable to distinguish fantasy from reality.) Your pets aren't necessarily a distraction, because they also use grounded imagination (though not very self-consciously) in order to know anything beyond pure instinct.

In a recent post I've mentioned how logical deduction cannot possibly ever get you anything more than what's in the assumptions your logical deduction is based on. So, how do you ever possibly get any new knowledge/insight/understanding beyond your current presuppositions -- about anything at all? Only through "induction", i.e., properly used imagination. Anyone familiar with indigenous wisdom of any variety can tell you this. It was the point of the exercise in post #24.

If you get any knowledge through your physical senses -- or through experience on any higher plane whatsoever --, what you get is actually your interpretation of what that experience means, and for making that interpretation you use guess what?

Imagination is one part of the working of the Higher Mind, the Higher Self, existing essentially beyond time and space though interacting with them also.

By the way, another method for grounding oneself that I haven't mentioned comes from Taoist healing. You stand and take deep breaths and on the inbreath slowly move your arms in a circular fashion to "pull down" sky-energy (pure white, or, better yet if you can, gold) into your body and energy field, then as your arms come down on the outbreath you turn your palms to face the ground and you draw in Earth energy (which looks a bright orange color if you happen to be able to see the Earth's aura).

I'm not sure which exercise you're referring to when you ask how do I do it without using visualization. Could you please clarify?

[TraineeHuman]

I suspect "the exercise" you were referring to, seah, was to do with out-of-body "travel". Firstly, let me clarify that that's not really travel at all, but just the illusion of it -- though it took me a few decades to make that fact more and more fully real for me. For me these days, usually I can just be in another state or world of reality, and travel is unnecessary. The "travel" is a bit like if you were at a theatre play and you were standing in the wings backstage. There the equivalent of "travel" would be the scene changes -- furniture being moved if not removed and replaced, and so on. Going beyond "travel" would be the equivalent of being able to see one scene, then the next scene without a break in between. Which of course we do all the time in a movie.

I take it that you're saying that where you need to use visualization is that you consider you need to visualize a scene (in, say, the astral) before you can be there. I'm saying that you don't actually get there by visualizing, but by (more direct) doing, combined with an act of will. When I say an act of will, though, I mean something very subtle and gentle and relaxed, and not anything remotely like a sledgehammer. Will can take you as far as the threshold to the formless worlds and the infinite worlds. Beyond that, it's a matter of "higher will" or "Divine will", but that's more like surrender than "will" as we might think of it.

Paradoxically, the most powerful kind of wanting almost isn't "wanting" at all. It's more a kind of holding still and gathering one's inner forces, to produce something that works kind of like a laser beam, that cuts through and penetrates everything. And it's at its most powerful when it's also a wanting to become free of all wanting.

[seah]

Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
I would insist that there's a huge difference between fantasy and properly used imagination, seah. Imagination is the main way we ever know anything (that the world even exists, etc). To use imagination properly and more or less accurately ("objectively", i.e. inter-subjectively, to use the term all professional philosophers recognise to be the correct one) for gaining useful insight (e.g. about your life etc), you do need to be grounded and make the ordinary mind and the ego relatively quiet. (And you do need to be fairly free of mental health problems, because psychotic people are at times simply unable to distinguish fantasy from reality.) Your pets aren't necessarily a distraction, because they also use grounded imagination (though not very self-consciously) in order to know anything beyond pure instinct.

In a recent post I've mentioned how logical deduction cannot possibly ever get you anything more than what's in the assumptions your logical deduction is based on. So, how do you ever possibly get any new knowledge/insight/understanding beyond your current presuppositions -- about anything at all? Only through "induction", i.e., properly used imagination. Anyone familiar with indigenous wisdom of any variety can tell you this. It was the point of the exercise in post #24.

If you get any knowledge through your physical senses -- or through experience on any higher plane whatsoever --, what you get is actually your interpretation of what that experience means, and for making that interpretation you use guess what?

Imagination is one part of the working of the Higher Mind, the Higher Self, existing essentially beyond time and space though interacting with them also.

By the way, another method for grounding oneself that I haven't mentioned comes from Taoist healing. You stand and take deep breaths and on the inbreath slowly move your arms in a circular fashion to "pull down" sky-energy (pure white, or, better yet if you can, gold) into your body and energy field, then as your arms come down on the outbreath you turn your palms to face the ground and you draw in Earth energy (which looks a bright orange color if you happen to be able to see the Earth's aura).

I'm not sure which exercise you're referring to when you ask how do I do it without using visualization. Could you please clarify?

I apologize for being MIA yesterday.
I see the distinction now, and totally agree. I was referring, of course, to imagination and not fantasy.

I don't feel that I use fantasy at all while doing spiritual work, nor in general, and only begin from a state of higher mind, always, yet my imagination seems to conjure up scenarios, when I follow exercises such as yours. and so when I first followed your exercise, beginning to feel good to be alive and so forth, which I will copy below, I began feeling warmth in certain parts of the body, and scenery of cells formulated in my mind's eye, as I said previously, that is what I meant by "visualizing".

to quote your explanation of exercise, you wrote: "Now, finally, more description of what to
do to protect yourself as I described in post #45.
Close your eyes and focus on what it feels like just simply to be alive. Hopefully you can say it feels OK. Preferably, you can say it feels good, if not wonderful. But I’ll take OK if that’s the best that you can muster up.
So, the method of protection is to feel what it’s like to simply be
alive, and imagine that feeling as joining up all your individual cells.
At the same time, say to yourself with strong intention that the
healing light is protecting, and will continue to protect, yourself and
all your cells in every way. That’s all you need to do."

There is another exercise I do, can't remember where this one came from any longer, but it is about entering your heart, and the same thing happened while doing that one for the first time. I do not will any scenery to appear, it unfolded in my mind's eye, and I follow its lead as a child might while exploring a new part of a forest.

That is interesting about my pets being grounded, that's wonderful to know. I'm so glad you shared it.

Sometime ago, I was guided to Sufi whirling as an exercise, and also am attempting to fit that into my week on a more regular basis. By no stretch of the imagination do I look as eloquent as the dervish dancers, but it brings an attention to my center which I feel I want to explore more of.

Thanks for the new grounding exercise, I will give it a try. I do have issues at times with grounding, especially in winter, when it isn't possible for me to be barefoot outside.

I will answer your following post next.

[Guish]

Posted by TraineeHuman (here)

Paradoxically, the most powerful kind of wanting almost isn't "wanting" at all. It's more a kind of holding still and gathering one's inner forces, to produce something that works kind of like a laser beam, that cuts through and penetrates everything. And it's at its most powerful when it's also a wanting to become free of all wanting.

I always ponder on this. Do I just let go or do I focus on the no-mind state, the stillness?

[Meggings]

Posted by Guish (here)

Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
Paradoxically, the most powerful kind of wanting almost isn't "wanting" at all. It's more a kind of holding still and gathering one's inner forces, to produce something that works kind of like a laser beam, that cuts through and penetrates everything. And it's at its most powerful when it's also a wanting to become free of all wanting.

I always ponder on this. Do I just let go or do I focus on the no-mind state, the stillness?

The best for me is when, of a sudden, all holding on to the threads of living and doing here in this body are left behind, as I sink gently within and then "up", and sit in near bliss.

There is no wanting for this to occur, there is no focus on a no-mind state - there is merely the brief pause in my living here in which I withdraw and "fall upwards".

This does come upon me with the "tap on the shoulder" by the Father in me. But these are inadequate words used to point the way to what occurs so often each day. There is simply a pause then a touching upon the higher within me.

I feel a tad silly putting these words down, but maybe my experience of this is one gentle non-path-stepping up. Just focusing on getting this written has brought a bliss pressure in my head that nearly stops everything. In the years I lived in the light I had to consciously focus on my partner to hold me "down". Guish has mentioned this kind of thing as well. Often I wonder how Mooji can keep speaking, or Eckhart Tolle, when the bliss descends and takes hold - one's mind goes "out the window" sort of.

[seah]

Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
I suspect "the exercise" you were referring to, seah, was to do with out-of-body "travel". Firstly, let me clarify that that's not really travel at all, but just the illusion of it -- though it took me a few decades to make that fact more and more fully real for me. For me these days, usually I can just be in another state or world of reality, and travel is unnecessary. The "travel" is a bit like if you were at a theatre play and you were standing in the wings backstage. There the equivalent of "travel" would be the scene changes -- furniture being moved if not removed and replaced, and so on. Going beyond "travel" would be the equivalent of being able to see one scene, then the next scene without a break in between. Which of course we do all the time in a movie.

I take it that you're saying that where you need to use visualization is that you consider you need to visualize a scene (in, say, the astral) before you can be there. I'm saying that you don't actually get there by visualizing, but by (more direct) doing, combined with an act of will. When I say an act of will, though, I mean something very subtle and gentle and relaxed, and not anything remotely like a sledgehammer. Will can take you as far as the threshold to the formless worlds and the infinite worlds. Beyond that, it's a matter of "higher will" or "Divine will", but that's more like surrender than "will" as we might think of it.

Paradoxically, the most powerful kind of wanting almost isn't "wanting" at all. It's more a kind of holding still and gathering one's inner forces, to produce something that works kind of like a laser beam, that cuts through and penetrates everything. And it's at its most powerful when it's also a wanting to become free of all wanting.

Hello TraineeHuman, I don't remember the exercise you mention here, but you now understand which exercise I was referring to originally.

I think I know the subtle willing you are speaking of. I actually feel it as not part of the personality at all, more the higher self's wants. For some time, What I sense It wants generally happens for me. There is not much of anything I want these days beyond basic needs.

I don't use visualization in astral traveling. Most of the traveling I experience these days is in tandem with another self, who may very well be my higher self, I am not big on labeling. I don't think we are always in the astral. It has a process and I am learning from it.
Had a lucid dream not long ago of a baby breathing into another baby’s mouth. My other self looked at me and said, ”he is breathing life into you".

I don't have obe's where I try performing tasks which my personality has predetermined while awake and never had much interest in pursuing this type of experience. Though, as a child I would wake up in the night to find the ceiling on top of me, or that's how it appeared to me. I realized later that it was I who was going up to the ceiling.

Again, thank you for your comments and insights even with the little info you had to go on.

[TraineeHuman]

Posted by seah (here)

I think I know the subtle willing you are speaking of. I actually feel it as not part of the personality at all, more the higher self's wants. For some time, What I sense It wants generally happens for me. There is not much of anything I want these days beyond basic needs.

Since, as you describe, you're pretty much getting beyond wanting, seah, that means you're getting beyond unhappiness, which I regard as a very important level or stage of enlightenment. (The body-consciousness, the "human animal", will often still continue to experience some unhappiness, and the body will still (perhaps, and probably) usually experience pain or tiredness or disease. But your inner self will be free, beyond unhappiness.)

In terms of the ten Zen Oxherding Pictures, this stage is the beginning of the Ninth Picture. Once you've become free of unhappiness, at your core nothing can rock you, not even the deepest descent into matter, into hell.

People who are at stage Eight or earlier believe (as, for example, Mooji clearly does, or pretends to) that the experience and realization of the One or the Unknowable is the ultimate and highest and most evolved one can reach or be.

I guess I'll be making a post shortly to explain why the Unknowable isn't the highest thing there is. But you don't need to bother about that, seah, because you already implicitly know it and are moreover living it. I would suggest you merely need to keep doing what you're already doing. Then again, I guess freedom does also mean continually doing things in a new way in some non-superficial sense. "If you want something in your life you’ve never had, you’ll have to do something you’ve never done." ~ J. D. Houston. But you'll be doing that naturally, no doubt. I've encountered a few other individuals like yourself through PMs or emails or other encounters. They usually haven't posted much at all, or even not at all. But it was very joyful to hear about what they were experiencing, at such advanced levels.

[TraineeHuman]

If you seriouisly want to believe that Source or the One is just pure unity, let's consider what that belief necessitates must be true. Because the One is total unity (according to you), there can't be any space in it, because space implies difference, and therefore disunity. The very notion of space must be utterly meaningless there, in the One. Ditto with time, for similar reasons.

The One, if it's pure unity, therefore can't include in it anything that's physical, because such a thing would belong to space and time.

Similarly, because the One (when conceived to be pure unity) can't contain difference, it follows that it has to be the plainest, most boring blancmange. And it can't contain one thing inside it, because the latter would get swallowed up and stripped of all identity.

If experiencing the One as pure unity were in fact the ultimate experience, I therefore suggest -- and insist -- that that would be an experience of the uttermost blandness. Obviously, that's not what happens.

Instead, I suggest, what actually happens when an individual experiences one of the Divine worlds is as follows. One experiences the Divine while one is within, and therefore simultaneously experiences with, some lower world, such as the physical. The Divine can only be real and understandable and experiencable to someone in the world of physicality to the degree that that physicality is made real to and communicated to the Divine. In other words, our very experience of the Divine depends entirely on the connection we have between the Divine and the physical or other plane we are in.

And the experience is the experience of the relation between the Divine world and the physical/etc world. It's not an experience of that Divine world itself. That's why the Eighth Oxherding Picture isn't the ultimate. Although the individual at that stage believes they have experienced the Divine, actually they're deluding themselves. What they actually experienced was the relation between that Divine and their physical self. Undoing that delusion fully is what Pictures Nine and Ten are all about.

A very similar argument applies with regard to the Unknowable as to the One.

[TraineeHuman]

Perception of the One (or, rather, of one's true relationship to the One) at first comes in flashes, and is at first quite piecemeal. It usually continues only in flashes at first. It's very important for the ego, and the cruder instincts, to have first been subdued somewhat. Otherwise, those flashes become blinding, and thereby can be very harmful. I think the myth of Icarus is no doubt an attempt to symbolically say that.

This is why it's not a good idea to attempt to have glimpses of higher planes through the use of drugs. I appreciate it can be ever so tempting for someone to seek to gain a glimpse of the ultimate secret of existence. But imagine directly seeing, if only in a flash, that everything you imagined to be reality is just a cardboard cutout, so to speak. And that in the fullest, most complete way possible. The secret turns out to be more shocking than almost any secret could be. Are you sure you would be ready for that? Ready to be torn between knowing and seeing the only true Reality on the one hand, and thereby, initially and for a long time after, being ever so utterly "lost" like a shipwrecked sailor totally at the mercy of the winds and the currents in a wild storm which are far stronger than himself; and meanwhile having to play the game of pretending that the version of "reality" as others see it is real, however tiny and petty and arbitrary it incessantly seems in comparison to the true Reality? Are you ready to do that for the whole of the rest of your lifetime? And will you know how not to "drown", and how to sanely adopt "lostness" as your constant companion in life? And are you ready for a Reality far larger than any you have known or conceived, a Reality that can only be known through pure intuition ("imagination") and inner experience, or by something even higher; but not at all by reason? How unknown, and how proactive, would that be, do you think? A Reality far more complex than anything you have known, yet permeated by a supreme great simplicity that integrates all the complexity? And though reason cannot grasp it, it somehow acts ultimately with supreme reasonableness on its own gigantic scale.

Not that there isn't also a sense of immense significance and connection as well.

[Ikarusion]

well, didnt i pick a good name for myself here.

i dont have much to add. as with anything, some people integrate/manage these experiences better then others.
i actually used to seek heavily altered states of consciousness through drugs. i wanted to see something completely different from regular life.
i havent found what i looked for. dreams are more fantastic then drugs. more surreal and interesting.

almost a year ago, you told me im not commited enough to achive obe's and work on myself. you told me how important wanting and commitment is when trying to achive something. you where right and i told myself to hang loose for a couple of months, until my desire grew. wanna guess? im still not meditating regulary and im still smoking cannabis regulary.

but lately, i get less and less satisfaction from it. drugs in general really. i also am very disappointed for making progress with meditation but now, seemingly regressing.

i guess what i want to say is: drugs are not the answer, everything has to come from within. in the end everyone needs to be as independent as possible.
you cant rely on people or drugs for your happiness or anything else. this is strength to me. this is, what im aiming at.
alas, its still a process though and not as easily fulfilled as going to the supermarket for food.

i have great respect for you and for your input here, trainee. thank you.

btw: can i find anything better in regards to tantra teachings of barry long, then what currently is on youtube?
https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...ry+long+tantra

[TraineeHuman]

Hello, Ika. Thank you very much or your question, which may be helpful to some others. If you go to the Barry Long Foundation website and check the audio downloads at http://www.barrylong.org/reduced_list/Download+MP3 in addition to the video downloads, you may find what you were looking for.

Regards,
TH