The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

[TraineeHuman]

Posted by GuyFox (here)
I am still reading through this interesting thread.

I think this recent interview (that I did) and posted on Youtube fits well here

Introduction to RV and Astral Projection

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Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XJlgnOV9HkQ

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Outstanding video, GuyFox. One issue it raises is the whole relationship between remote viewing and astral/mental travel/projection. The presenter seems to regard remote viewing as something that any astral traveler can do easily. Unfortunately, I believe there's more to the story than he implies. As far as I understand, the best RVers -- the ones that got used by governments (and probably others still are) -- are individuals who have not only attained enlightenment but probably have also developed certain particular skills extensively.

Back when I began nightly astral travel, I'd visit likeminded (living human) individuals in various locations. (A little later I spent most of my time going to classes on higher-dimensional skills, mostly given by friendly non-human beings living in the astral or mental but connected more to some other location than this planet, and covering all over the solar system.) Because I live on the east coast of Australia, a number of my night-time contacts were from the western half of North America (initially). I simply needed to think of a particular contact, and suddenly I (my astral body) was there, in their town and often their bedroom. That was useful, because many of the cities and towns looked much the same, so I would have had trouble finding them by how they looked. I guess you could call my finding of my friends like that one form of "remote viewing" perhaps, even if a narrowly specialized form.

I guess in a similar but more adventurous way, in the Camelot/Avalon Forums a few years before this Forum started, two separate individuals attempted to astral travel to military instalations of some sort. I assume somewhere like Dulce or Pine Gap or Area 51 or whatever. One individual got scared out of his/her wits by some (apparently) very powerful dark being guarding an installation. The other heard a type of alarm go off (I assume in the astral), with various soldiers rushing out to counter the incursion into the protected space; then the message: "False alarm. It's only an amateur." So, it certainly seems that such bases are protected probably at many astral and mental levels. That doesn't make it clear for me, though, whether or not RVers from a different nation (China, Russia, etc) need at some point to astral travel, in an astral level very close to the physical, in order to gather accurate information.

I haven't tried to learn RVing, so that's an area where I too am an amateur. But I'd like to make it clear there are many psychic abilities. And just because someone has developed one, it doesn't follow that they'll be good at all. It's a little like saying that a person's a musician. That could mean they're a composer or melody writer, or it could mean they play a certain instrument. Very often someone who's great at playing isn't so good at composing, and vice-versa. Also, just because someone can play one instrument, it usually doesn't follow that they're good at playing all instruments.

I also suspect that the truly reliable RVers utilize knowing through identity (as in my most recent post). That is, I suspect they consciously access a formless dimension and somehow consciously perform a descension into their target while retaining full-on oneness consciousness. That's impossible for most people to do (at present), but it would explain why the truly reliable RVers are so few in number. It would also explain why the great majority of channelers unfortunately don't seem by any means to be the conduits to pure Truth that they fancy themselves to be.

Initially, my astral traveling was in worlds which included a representation of the physical world, and so looked rather like the physical world. At higher levels, such as the mental level, this certainly was no longer the case. But I suspect much of modern art comes and came from artists who somehow saw the mental worlds rather clearly -- or some of the formless worlds, in the case of the abstract expressionists. And van Gogh's paintings sometimes somehow depict descension of Source into the physical.

Some astral explorers want to explore every nook and cranny of the lower levels. I've always been the opposite of that: I just wanted to keep moving to an ever higher level. To do that, one needs to stop looking at the scenery. Otherwise one will get attached to that level, and be unable to go higher.

[chocolate]

Hi, TraineeHuman!
I found an article which made me a bit unsettled, since I though Michio Kaku to be a bit more than pure scientist:

Dreaming in Code
Michio Kaku's 'Future of the Mind' (a book review)

"For Kaku, the brain is a computer made of meat, and understanding the mind is just a really, really hard engineering problem. The fundamental laws are already known, and Kaku tells us we’ll soon be manipulating the stuff of consciousness with the same acuity we push electrons around in our digital devices. This singular confidence is both strength and weakness as Kaku unspools his narrative, and doubts about his core convictions begin to trail the reader like a parade of ghosts.

[...]

But are you nothing more than the sum of your brain’s connections? Here’s where Kaku stumbles. It’s been almost 20 years since the philosopher David Chalmers introduced the distinction between “easy” and “hard” problems in the study of consciousness. Easy problems, according to Chalmers, were things like figuring out how the brain cycles through signals from the arm allowing you to pick up an object. Researchers developing the next generation of prosthetics will tell you this “easy” problem remains pretty hard, but as Chalmers rightly pointed out, control of the arm is nothing compared with developing a scientific account of the vividness of our own experience. It’s the internal luminosity — the “being” of our being — that constitutes Chalmers’s hard problem and that eludes Kaku’s engineering-­based perspective.

The problem is that we still don’t have much in the way of a working model of consciousness. With a physicist’s eye for economy, Kaku tries to provide one through what he calls a “space-time theory.” It’s a model of consciousness with a graded scale of awareness based on the number of feedback loops between environment and organism. Thus, in Kaku’s view, a thermostat has the lowest possible level of consciousness while humans, with our ability to move through space and project ourselves mentally backward and forward in time, represent the highest level currently known.
I’ve spent most of my professional life running supercomputer simulations of events like the collapsing of interstellar gas clouds to form new stars, and it seems to me that Kaku has taken a metaphor and mistaken it for a mechanism. There has always been the temptation to take the latest technology, like clockworks in the 17th century, and see it as a model for the mechanics of thought. But simulations are not a self, and information is not experience. Kaku acknowledges the existence of the hard problem but waves it away. “There is no such thing as the Hard Problem,” he writes.

[...] "

So from affecting water with our minds, or should I say with our consciousness, to this book, I would presume it hasn't been much 'fashionable' to deal with the hard question, and probably not much profitable, too.

Full article here: http://nyti.ms/1geXmeP

[TraineeHuman]

Posted by chocolate (here)
Being-at-one-with is how I would explain my ability to sense intentions and understand people/animals/plants/etc. including feeling sensations in my body as a direct result of that state of at-one-with. I probably haven't reached the post from the past where you have emphasized this, yet.

I don't think I am psychic as some may suggest, but I do have the ability to associate with someone without being that particular someone. I have managed to do something similar with several people. One of them in particular was also very intuitive and creative, and we somehow managed to stay tuned to a similar wavelength. It was a very good experience. We live on the opposite sides of the world right now, but on occasion he sends me some images.

Of course there are those, who I have happened to allow in my more personal world, and who can also manage to send me pictures, but on occasion I block them because of the nature of those pictures. It is a two way communication, but as with every other communication, it should be done with care and responsibility.

Some people just do it, but I don't think we all have the necessary knowledge to put it in words the way you have done it in your post.
All of the above, of course, if I understood the concept correctly.

Running pictures is a way of communicating with animals for me. I mean, sometimes I can see a reaction, but mostly I let them talk to me. I receive either a sensation, or some sort of a glimpse of something resembling an image.

I also had the idea that if one could hold a mental picture in one's mind stable long enough, that would be a direct communication of ideas with everyone around that person, including animals and plant spirits, even if the people cannot exactly understand it consciously. I thought this to be the ultimate way of non-offensive counteraction of the current state of affairs on Earth.

If one can remember Lord of the Rings, the way Aragorn managed to engage all spirits, 'living' and 'dead', together with the trees and the animals for the final battle against the darkness, I think he did it exactly though mental images. I don't know if that concept has been mentioned in the books (I haven't read the books), surely it wasn't in the films, but regardless, that is how I 'saw' it recently.

So if anyone is interested in helping the world in a non-aggressive way, which I think is the only option that has any future, that would be it.

I'm sure everything you've said in this post is valid, chocolate. It's great for me to hear that someone else does use or practice some form of at-oneness, in some sense or other. What I would add, though, is that there are many deeper and deeper "levels" to this. I know it may sound curious that "oneness" has many degrees, but that's how it is. At-oneness may be simple to conceive, or to feel to a certain degree (as genuine love). I'd like to say something about polarity, which is one of the biggest things that need to be overcome or mastered before one is able to develop a very deep level of oneness.

But before I do that, I'd like to say some things about one of the biggest basics of meditation, partly because in my experience someone like sway who wants to learn astral travel fluently does need to master this basic first. It's every bit as much a basic for astral travel as it is for meditation.

To find and experience something new, we have to make our very being truly young. We have to leave all that's old behind as if we were leaving it forever -- which means "all" that's known to us, so far. We have to drop it at least temporarily. And we have to be ever so determined to do this. Everything depends on the strength of that determination in us. In this thread we've talked about intention. Can you totally live it and give it every fibre of yourself?

So now we come to the basic skill that has to be acquired before anything else. This is the skill of being able not to think -- to silence the superficial mind at will. The ability to not-think. Even when we learn to do that, we make all kinds of discoveries. Do it for ten minutes, and you'll get some direct self-knowledge about how you're probably dominated by a swirling maelstrom of habits, of robotically repeating voices and impulses, ruled over by a few competing (sub-)personalities that you're only partly conscious of. And there's no instant "off" switch to that ceaseless thinking. It takes much time, and patience, and meditation, to get there. Proper meditation is initially mostly the practice of doing that anyway -- although I do like walking qi gong, where one gets preoccupied with concentrating on the movements and breathing and there's just no time to think. You can't force the mind into silence. Struggling with it only makes it stronger. We have to let it eventually, gradually subside under its own weight, and under the light of our ceaseless watching ourselves, day and night.

And the trouble is, we don't know who we are. We don't know what may awake and be released in us from deeper and higher within. We just have to keep clearing the ground for we don't know what. And when that something beyond does eventually come, we'll need to live it every moment in our daily lives -- and very especially whenever it seems to be the most difficult to do so in our ordinary lives. That's the only place you'll find true enlightenment, by the way.

And when, as I say, that transition eventually comes -- and subsequent transitions come --, well, let's say I never promised you a rose garden, not yet. Much later on, eventually, yes, a life that's full of roses, and healthy chocolates and a beautiful feeling of a kind of felt coolness and so pleasant inner peace. I've seen many meditators go through months or even much longer in an arid no person's land, where they've seen the aridity and superficiality of the exterior world but no real life flowering or awakening has opened in them yet on an inner level. (And even, they may have got to the point where the current has stopped flowing up the spine but the current flowing down from above the head -- which is the HM's -- won't have started yet. Later on the descension current will slowly get greater and greater and greater, but then just feel normal and not noticeable. By the way, if you practice anything like kriya yoga then I'm sorry to say you'll need an expert teacher to help you get the current to flow down at this point. But if you're practicing awareness, and something like Zen meditation, it'll all happen naturally without the need of any expert rescue at all from an experienced teacher.)

Well, I could go on and on about the basics. But in my next post I'd like to jump to talking about polarities -- which amounts to almost the same topic as that of the ego.

[TraineeHuman]

Obviously, oneness involves reconciling opposites, transcending them. But what does that mean in practice? Such a huge and important topic. So relevant to what mastery over the challenges of living in the physical world involves. Firstly, I would say the ego is that part of us that thrives on polarities, and it's what seeks to exploit them or dramatize them. chocolate has said she recognizes the "roller coaster" phenomenon that I have said centrally characterizes how the ego operates within our life. I would say that phenomenon involves major swings between opposites -- often dwelling at one pole perhaps for days and then jumping to the other pole. For instance, jumping between boredom and excitement. There are, of course, much more short-term swings or clinging to contrasts, such as feeling hurt by another in some way at one moment but contemplating revenge -- hurting the other -- in the next moment.

I'd now like to say some things about polarities from a more general or conceptual point of view. One of the most popular polarities is that of good versus (or supposedly versus) evil. I admit that there do exist demonic beings who are malevolent. But some individuals seem to have beliefs regarding good and evil such as the following, for instance. The view is that the universe needs the evil or dark forces to be in balance with the forces of pure light -- and hence it needs the evil ones to be very strong. Somehow, as this theory goes, a strong opponent is needed for us to struggle against because only that way will we learn how to truly become strong. Almost kind of like weightlifting, I guess. Pardon my flippancy, but I don't buy it.

Certainly, the HM has a very different view of and attitude towards polarities than that. I've already mentioned (I believe in some detail) how the HM overcomes the problem of pleasure or pain with bliss. I guess bliss is a kind of super-pleasure, although the HM feels bliss at the mere fact of existing, at existence or being alive just in itself. That does really take all the sting out of (emotional or psychological, and often even physical) pain. It also takes all the addictiveness and excitement out of ordinary pleasure, because ordinary pleasure can't hold a candle to bliss. (Actually, I've also said that bliss has a second face, of peace/indifference -- but it's not at all escapist either. And I don't want to divert from the discussion right now to explain how and why that's so.)

This is just one example, but all the polarities get resolved in a similar way. What cuts the Gordian knot each time is something super-positive. And to really understand and use "at-oneness" and whatever Light from the Divine Mind comes into the HM, we need to get beyond being affected so much by polarities any more. Let me try a brief indication or maybe even explanation of why this has to be the case.

Because there literally is nothing other than Source, it follows that Source has no opposite, at all. (Or, if you like, Source is its own and only opposite.) Not only that, but everything that Source as a whole ever does -- or that's basically in true harmony with that -- is always good, true, and right. This is because there's no such thing as "opposition," from somewhere outside of Source, that matches or conflicts with Source, at all. Everything Source does (acting as a whole) is truly positive. That's what the multiverse is ultimately like at its deepest level. And the HM always leads one towards insight into what's truly positive.

[chocolate]

Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
Obviously, oneness involves reconciling opposites, transcending them. But what does that mean in practice? Such a huge and important topic.
[...]
One of the most popular polarities is that of good versus (or supposedly versus) evil. I admit that there do exist demonic beings who are malevolent. But some individuals seem to have beliefs regarding good and evil such as the following, for instance. The view is that the universe needs the evil or dark forces to be in balance with the forces of pure light -- and hence it needs the evil ones to be very strong. Somehow, as this theory goes, a strong opponent is needed for us to struggle against because only that way will we learn how to truly become strong. Almost kind of like weightlifting, I guess. Pardon my flippancy, but I don't buy it.

I wrote my post initially, and later on modified it.
I am sure it is not a strange concept to realize that this world is structured based on polarity. It is all around us, in and outside of us.



But I struggle with the idea that living in this world, we need not to become affected by those polarities.
In my view the purpose of being here, right now, is because we need to learn how to handle that balance. And on occasion, some weight lifting is only going to help the overall wellness of the body (that is a proven science fact).

On the level of being at-one-with the HM I presume handling the balance wouldn't be an issue since that would be behind all of us.
But while I am still a mortal human, I guess I am also still learning how to balance it all.


Personally, I think having the opposition, present and alive, is a prerequisite for being (here). Mastering it- and we move on.

I think I am ready to move on.
Thank you, TraineeHuman.

[TraineeHuman]

There's a reason why the yin-yang symbol has a white dot in the center of the black part, and a black dot in the center of the white. I believe that's intended to say that ultimately, at their heart, opposites are the same. Kind of like a mirror image: just with the directions changed, but still more similar than they are different. I believe the yin-yang symbol was intended to suggest that while we need to live in this world of oppositions we need to at the same time find how to maintain a nondual consciousness. That's why various features of that symbol emphasize the integration of the opposites, it seems to me. Opposites don't just somehow cancel each other out, but combine to create something greater, that's not in itself opposed to anything -- or that's how I understand Taoists intended that symbol to be understood.

It's not so easy to achieve stability in the nondual consciousness. And yes, only through growing through and beyond the conflict between dualities is it possible to get there. Basically, the exoteric form of all religions has taught and teaches: "Be good." Unfortunately, it doesn't provide people with much help on how to begin to become good. That leads to easy denial to oneself of when/how one is not being good. Psychologists call that one's "defense mechanisms".

On the other hand, the esoteric ("advanced") teaching in virtually all religions has been that you can only become good by totally facing your shadow -- and by facing it integrating all polarity, at least to a considerable degree. Only then will you be eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good Without Evil.

Through thousands of hours of practice, I learnt to refine at-oneness with any individual person, and to some extent with groups. However, I also learnt to somehow stop myself from consciously knowing, or remembering, what I was seeing. This was because it was interfering with the privacy of the other individual. So today I'm still partly in the strange situation where if I have an individual in front of me I'm able to say things relevant to their deepest concerns or secrets. But I don't consciously think of that as their secrets. I just let my intuition take over what I say, and it knows their secrets. Also, sometimes I'll find my intuition saying things which aren't to my advantage but the other individual needs to address one of their issues somehow -- and if they get angry at me it's what they needed to vent somehow, to further their own process. Also, human communication involves such things as the inner child, which doesn't properly understand nonduality. I'm still gradually learning to make sure I communicate through my inner child and yet also use my HM to consciously know their secrets if that's helpful.

[TraineeHuman]

Your thoughts are not your thoughts. They actually come from outside of you, much like the thoughts of others, ultimately. But let's start at the beginning, with more about how the ability to not-think is very relevant to astral travel, and various other important things.

Once you begin to learn, after regular practice, how to not-think, then at times during the day you'll be reminded to "change gears" into pausing for a moment and doing that. Then, after a while, you'll notice a split, where you constantly feel the not-thinking part of you. That is actually the HM, and a true center. You'll also feel the other parts of you, which are busy with practicalities of living and so on.

At some point -- after some years, for some people -- you'll notice something very curious. Now that I'm pointing this out, it hopefully won't take you years. You'll notice -- eventually quite precisely -- that all thoughts come from and occur outside of you. Not only that, but they're quite mechanical. They -- thoughts, thinking itself -- contain no knowledge in themselves. All knowledge comes from within you, from a space wholly beyond and above thoughts. It descends down into the mental, where it finds expression in words -- or pictures, or symbols. Thoughts are just dumb receptacles, like chess pieces. That's why through not-thinking, through silence, you can know everything you ever did using thinking, but you know it more fully and more directly.

Not only that. You'll discover that you can access not only "your" knowledge but any knowledge you like. I guess that's beginner RVing. The knowledge could be about someone or something on the other side of the world. The HM is connected with everything. In my experience, the whole thrill, the whole essence, of astral traveling -- and even more so of mental traveling -- is in being able to know and/or experience anything, anywhere. Even though it takes at least years of practice to learn to do that with great accuracy. But it's easy very, very early on to experience the overall "feel" of whatever you'd like to visit. In other words, the thrill and fascination and pleasure of the experience lies almost entirely in the experiencing of "exotic" or useful knowledge. And that's done by and through the HM. Not by hypnosis or affirmations. Nor do you need to move your awareness out of your physical body as in astral travel, either.

Strangely, all you need to learn to do this is how to "feel" in you the all-pervading Silence at all times, the Silence that watches all. You need to gradually learn to let its knowledge, its ideas take priority in your life -- even though they seem to come out of "nothing", out of some kind of whim. You have to gradually unhook from all your old, mechanical inner habits more and more. Only then will will you be able to "point" that silent Mind to anywhere or anything or anyone in the multiverse, and receive all the knowledge you need regarding that.

And as I say, eventually you can learn that you only "borrow" all your thoughts. You may even learn to see them entering into your energy field before you "think" them. They look like little rotating balls of electricity, and you can learn to actually see them all coming in from outside of your energy field. You don't create your thoughts. The Divine Mind created and creates them all, every last one.

[Reinhard]

Hi TH,
....co-incidently non-thought has been on my "mind" for quite a while now. Since the weather has warmed up, I restarted my daily walk through the woods, close to where I live. I started to calm my mind-chatter down and 'be' on my walk---at least for part of the way. Sometimes I can almost 'see' pieces of mind-chatters from previous walks still hanging in the trees --- I'm ignoring them. I consider those walks my daily meditation --- with more and more stretches of thought-lessness and being-ness.
It hasn't occured to me that thoughts come from the outside....I'll have this in mind on my next walks......before I switch over to thought-lessness, of course
I don't post much, but I am following some threads regularly (yours being one of them). I just don't want to be glued to the screen too much.
In case you remember our few thread and PM contacts quite a while ago, I'm still trying to enhance my field of conscious perception (OBE etc).....No direct success, yet........

One reminder that might help you and chocolate in your dialogue about duality ('good' vs 'bad', etc): the (2-d) yin-yang symbol seems to exclude (or take it for granted) the (3-d) position of the observer....only an observer 'outside' the symbol would notice the black dot in the white. For me that indicates that detachment from the duality 'plane' could be the first step to deal with e.g. 'good' and 'bad', without denying either one of them..............oh, well, my 2 cents.
Reinhard

[TraineeHuman]

Yes, I certainly remember your earlier posts, Reinhard. It's with people like yourself in mind that I've been trying to explain for some time now in this thread that you don't need to master the skill of astral travel to get the essential part -- based on my own lengthy and ongoing experience of it -- of most of the benefits that could come from doing so.

I hope my latest two posts on not-thinking clarify this further. I'm very glad to hear that they seem to have gotten the "message" across to you in a way that you can now confirm as the truth. It's simply a matter now of learning to trust that the Silence in you is the real you. A little like learning to drive -- or to ride a bicycle "no hands". It involves trusting the Silence so much, eventually, that you listen only to it, pretty much, regarding anything important at least. After that, you mostly just let it be your guide. After all, it is your Light anyway, and always has been the real you.

I'm reminded of the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song:

My love, she speaks like silence,
Without ideals of violence.
She doesn't have to say she's faithful,
Yet she's true like ice, like fire.
People carry roses, make promises by the hours.
My love she laughs like the flowers.
Valentines can't buy her.

In the dime stores and the stations
People talk of situations,
Write books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.
Some speak of the future,
My love she speaks softly.
She knows there's no success like failure,
And that failure's no success at all.

(I forget the rest, though there's a line "in ceremonies of the horsemen even the pawns must hold a grudge", which Avalonians will appreciate as a reference to the conditioning coming from the ruling elite.)

[TraineeHuman]

It takes powerful concentration to be able to silence all your thoughts and really hold them off. But if you ever manage to do that, and hopefully repeat it a hundred times, then you'll know for an absolute fact that the thoughts all come strictly from outside. At that point you won't believe that any of "your" thoughts are something you need to hold onto. You'll be able to throw them away ever so quickly, like used tissues. Can you imagine what a liberation that would be? If no thoughts are yours in particular, then you are, or can be, everywhere, and everything.

Well, if you master not-thinking, or careful self-watching, fully enough, you'll discover something even more shocking. It's not just that all your thoughts come from outside of you -- even if their coming does happen at the invitation of whatever it is that lies inside of you. All your feelings - except for basically one -- also come from outside of you. You'll discover that too. Ditto all combinatioons of thought and feeling, such as all desires. Even all -- or virtually all -- your intentions. And would you believe all your impulses, in the usual sense of that word?

You may be protesting: "But, they're my pains, my feelings, my desires! That's who I am, and all that I am!" Poor Reinhard, and others -- just getting used to looking at the proposed fact, or beginning to discover the fact, that everything inside is in reality in a state of no-thought. And now I want to add no-feeling and no-everything, just about.

Well, at least I'll concede you one feeling -- the feeling of aliveness. That is, the feeling/sensation of what it's like just simply to be alive. And whenever you're truly in touch with that feeling/sensation, it does feel very, very good. That's where I profoundly differ from mainstream sociology, which claims that your individuality is just a myth, a social construct, and nothing more. It's also where I differ from behaviorism, which claims you're nothing more than a "black box" which doesn't contain anything inside, and that "you" are just a space for stimuli to come into the black box and leave it as responses attributed to that black box.

The feeling of aliveness is actually Source (well, the Divine Mind, to be exact -- which is the active face of Source), but its true nature will be veiled from you until you can raise your awareness to the point where you can see that that really is the ultimate Divine.

[Joe Akulis]

Okay, so your last post brings up the question:

Different types of thoughts originate from different places then, don't they?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the notion of the brain being a transmitter/receiver linking with whatever is actually doing the thinking. The mind is external, that kind of thing. So, if my inner voice can't stop singing a song in my head, does that come from some place other than the HM? What about all the more dualistically influenced thoughts? Like your example of someone being hurt and then dwelling on a desire to exact revenge. Would those thoughts also come from the HM?

My guess is that they are more tied to this "personality" we create which exists at a lower level than the HM, and is part of the thing that you talk about us shedding on our way back to integration with our HM after we leave our physical bodies behind.

Hopefully this isn't something already covered in depth here, and I just missed it or can't remember it...

Joe

[chocolate]

seeker1972, I want to join you and expand in a certain direction:

From time to time we tend to experience what some call 'possessions', other call 'interference', etc. All of the above, doesn't it appear as some sort of a thought-feeling?

I know TH has explained a lot about what possession is, and the energies involved, not only here, but on other threads as well, but I think it might be very useful for a lot of people around to receive some more down-to-earth explanation of all of that related to our mind-thoughts-perception-reaction etc.

There are many ways one can approach the issue, but from my experience on this thread I think this is the best place for a question such as this to be answered.

It is not an easy question, so I don't expect a fast and easy answer.

But I know, whatever the answer implies, it will be very useful for a lot of us to know how to look at life without the fear that the terms 'interference' or 'possession' carry within.

Thank you, TraineeHuman, in advance.

[TraineeHuman]

Posted by seeker1972 (here)
Okay, so your last post brings up the question:

Different types of thoughts originate from different places then, don't they? ...

Joe

Absolutely. For instance, your HM or even the deeper "I" selects certain thoughts, words, actions to express itself and to give its knowledge/knowing flesh. I've hopefully been doing my best to confine most of the words I put in this thread to that category of words in the relevant situations/topics. The HM lies just beyond thoughts and words, but it adopts certain words and brings them in briefly. It hires them, so to speak.

Before I respond to more of your post, Joe -- which probes deep as usual --, I'd like to mention an example of something that's beyond thoughts. I'm impressed and touched by some of Reinhard's actions. Specifically, by his zeroing in on two activities which he just happens to have "picked' as the ones he's had some success with. It isn't the words or so much the thoughts, it's the doing. Back in April or June or whenever he "got"' at least some of what's genuinely involved in the art of feeling the aliveness. Now, recently, he's having at least some success at learning to not-think. What a great choice. He's zeroing in on what's important, and doing it -- and that somehow cuts beyond thoughts and words.

In one or two of my next posts I'll respond to more of the many issues you bring up in your latest post.

[TraineeHuman]

chocolate, I suggest that to talk about what possession is does implicitly involve talking about what trance is. So here are some comments regarding that. Firstly, there are a number of quite different kinds or meanings of "trance". There is indeed one sense where "trance" is always something quite safe, for any sane person. That's where a person is having a direct experience of and absorption into Source, or the Divine. To do that, one does in a sense need to leave some of one's lower faculties switched off or almost switched off, in order to fully experience or be the higher. Also, it's true that we can't bring back any record of the Divine. We can maybe manage to say some things about what it was like, but they'll always sound paradoxical. Such as: "There was total oneness." Someone else, who hasn't had the experience, may say that total oneness doesn't make sense, that there's no such thing as that in this world -- and they would be right, there isn't, within this lower world. (Incidentally, in another thread recently I wasn't referring to "trance" in this or some other senses I'll mention here. But people can jump to (false) conclusions easily, unawarely.)

Another sense of "trance" is basically how, as I understand it, Source sees its entire presence in matter. Ultimately, everything is Source. Even matter. But the infinite consciousness of Source is present as matter only in what to it is a kind of deep trance or deep sleep. For various reasons, I like and love to try to "read" Source's point of view about all topics, as far as I can possibly manage to do so. And this seems to be the most obvious or prevalent type of "trance" from Source's point of view, so I admit when the word "trance" comes up maybe I'll tend to first think of "trance" in this sense.

There is also at least one sense of "trance" that involves something like sleep, but with staying awake or being awake in a way we (most people) normally are not. It involves pulling back some of the veil that in our surface existence makes us (or most of us) blind to where all our thoughts and ultimately our being is coming from. Astral travel is one example of this. It's also possible to basically pull back the entire veil that is the personality. As far as I''m aware, astral and mental travel unfortunately involve still being largely within parts of that veil of personality. However, as far as I know most dreams involve temporary removal of the veil of the personality, leaving the HM in an unveiled state while we are having many of our dreams. Unfortunately, by the time we wake up the veil has come back, and it distorts our memory of what we really understood at the time of dreaming. This isn't exactly the sense of "trance" I was referring to in the other thread. But people could mistake it for that. And certainly, if people go astral traveling without first learning how to come from and remain in a positive space while OB, then I guess that does indeed amount to an example of "trance" in the sense I strongly object to.

The problem is, our personality is intertwined with the negative side of the subconscious. If we want to go deeper than the surface, we need to do it in a safe way. Traditionally, astral travel/projection was taught only to people who had first learnt meditation -- not some kind of self-hypnosis! I guess there was also traditional shamanism, which as far as I know usually involved some self-torture, by exposing one to the negative side of the subconscious (as, I believe, does marijuana). The idea, as I understand it, was that the way you experience heaven was through being plunged into hell -- and thereby you would be forced to make yourself strong in a hurry, strong enough to get out of hell and therefore to get into paradise also -- once you've somehow healed all the deep scars. Sounds like abuse to me! So, as I have emphasized in this thread, you need to learn meditation first, if you're sensible and you're kind to yourself. The safest kind is awareness meditation, such as I described one simple form of in post #283. In fact, even some kinds of concentration meditation, as distinct from awareness meditation, can land you in that trouble we're trying to avoid. Though Eckankar, for example, do use mantra meditation, which is a type of concentration meditation. So maybe there's a safe way to use that too. I don't know. I'm not a member of Eckankar.

[Jake]

TH. I have recommitted myself to my meditative practices. I took a hiatus.. I have learned to stay away from trying to 'induce' the conditions for OBE. (last night, I was being taught by myself some of the nuances of mentally navigating through the dense astral that is the 'out of phase' projection of the 'real world'...) Yet, I didn't have the presence of mind to turn and face my 'teacher'. I have learned not to try and induce levels of trance, as they will occur naturally, and safely,, if I simply focus on my meditations. Sometimes I will drop into trance very fast and heavy. Sometimes it is smooth and slow. I can't help but think that my natural ability to 'project' comes from a natural tendency to drop into trance. And it is that simple!! I am also learning not to call EVERY single transcendental experience as an OUT OF BODY experience... Peeling back layers of consciousness,,, is a much better way to describe it than mind-awake/body-asleep. (Which is the traditional, Robert Monroe approach.)

Thank you for your commitment to knowledge and truth... It takes courage to embrace these aspects of self... THAT I CAN tell you, without hesitation...

I may not comment often,, but I am on the edge of my seat,,, Thank you....

Jake.

[TraineeHuman]

When I say that thoughts and feelings and so on come from outside of you, that's quite true and verifiable -- within the "matrix" or the "spectacles" with and through which most people view reality. You may ask, though, what does it involve to throw those spectacles and that matrix away altogether? I can tell you the answer quite simply -- as long as you understand that I'm using English. And English grammar (like the grammar of all Indo-European languages) is flawed in that it thoroughly incorporates that matrix.

It happens to be the case that everyone who experiences enlightenment experiences the complete transcending or collapsing of the subject-object distinction. That leaves them with the truly real. (I suspect chocolate has also done it, for example, even though she doesn't choose to describe it the same way.) The trouble is, English grammar dictates that every sentence you or I speak or write must be of the form subject-verb-object. English grammar dictatorially presupposes -- and creates by fiat -- subject/object divisions absolutely everywhere you look. When a person has an enlightenment experience, they see that this is a false and fallen presupposition, a pure fiction. But how to describe this -- in a language like English -- and bypass the inbuilt fiction masquerading as "the rules (of reality)"?

By the way, languages like Tibetan, Eskimo, most Polynesian and some American Indian don't have any nouns. As a result they have no subject/object distinction grammatically "legislated" into existence prior to and in defiance of reality. Instead of saying: "The cat sat on the mat," they say something a little closer to: "There is past-wise sitting mat-fashion cattishly." That's only a rough indication, because what they do actually say is partly unsayable in English.

The problem is, as every enlightened person knows or implicitly knows, nouns are a pure fiction. And unfortunately, we consider thoughts, and feelings, to be very noun-like. Actually, if one could truly, deeply understand "thought" and "feeling" as utterly nothing like nouns, as neither subjects nor objects, then I wouldn't have to say: "Practice not-thinking." One would be there already.

This does also make it tough to talk in English "about" anything like Source or Oneness. If you imagine, for instance, that Oneness is something that you can in any way treat or regard like an object, then I'm afraid much of what you'll suppose you understand about it will be way off.

Subjects and objects are pure fictions. That's the plain enlightened truth.

Having said this, in a further post or two I'll move on down and respond to Joe's recent questions not so much from the enlightened view as from the coalface of how the people around you see "reality".

Still, behind or underneath all else, there's a question that won't go away, for eternity, however much we may ignore it at times: "Can you have a relationship to, e.g., thoughts that treats them neither as objects nor as subjects (that pull your strings or your buttons or whatever)? Can you find the cracks in between subject and object and slip through them to the "other side of the looking glass", where there's the one true reality, largely or fully unveiled?"

[TraineeHuman]

Even if your thoughts and feelings do come from outside of you, nevertheless, you'll be saying, there's someone, something that's alive, that's the "you" or should I say the "I", that has or adopts or dons various thoughts, feelings, impulses, sensations, and so on.

But let's not forget here how deceptive thought -- the ordinary mind -- can be. (Particularly if we have some attention on the topic of possession. Not that I at all want to preempt hearing seeker Joe's views on this subject too, if he cares to comment.) Quick as lightning, the ordinary mind immediately seizes on absolutely everything all the time, and tries to stick a label on it. Unfortunately, like some magic sleight of hand trick it then pretends that the label is the reality, the only reality -- that the word is the thing. What's more, this isn't totally a bad thing. Thought is the only "organ" of consciousness that covers everything -- all that lies above and all that's below -- and invites at least some attention to be put on all of these. Thought, the great labeller. Superficial, yes. But also -- what a paradox! -- the great little torch that lights things up so that we can see them and put our attention, and thereby awareness itself on them. Otherwise, the world of the unconscious and all lower worlds would remain outside our attention. Until, that is, we stumbled into them the hard way, getting trapped in them. Likewise perhaps, all the higher worlds which perhaps may be too inaccessible for us at present.

The problem is, thinking -- thought -- constructs a whole faux-universe. And you get so strongly and subtly conditioned into mistaking that for reality -- which also means mistaking it for you, the real you. You protest: "They're my thoughts, my desires, my choices!" and so on. And I have to insist that no, they're just your personality, or mostly your personality, your self-image, and not you. At what point, then, you may wonder, can the real you please stand up, so to speak? Well, only, I claim, when we realize that the real "me" is ultimately sustained and moved by much greater forces, by something much bigger, by many higher planes of consciousness acting in harmony and in hierarchy. Leaving the superficial "me" that has all those desires and thoughts and so on to be just the surface froth of a cosmic wave that's quite different from that "me" and overshadows it in almost every way. For instance, that deeper reality within doesn't really concern itself nearly so much with "my" problems and "my" desires. Nothing belongs to us. It all comes from outside.

Having said this much, I finally feel I've laid enough background to attempt to respond specifically to Joe's recent questions.

[TraineeHuman]

Posted by seeker1972 (here)
Different types of thoughts originate from different places then, don't they?

Yes, our thoughts come from many different places. I wonder, though, if you've considered the possibility that many thoughts are the thoughts of Source? In science and so on we imagine we understand how things work. But I sugggest we don't fully understand anything. We know that if you combine X and Y you get Z or whatever, but we don't deeply understand the basics. Such as, say, just to give two examples, what is existence itself? Surely, to us, that's unknowable . How could we grasp and seize and hold the Infinite in our embrace? As if existence itself had only one particular state of being,or could ever even be defined. As if we could ever divide the indivisible. Or, what is time really, and why is it the way it is? And what would be the alternatives to it -- in some very different possible universes?

Obviously, then, it looks like I'm hinting I consider that the world we see is some sort of product of the thoughts of Source. And I do so consider. One may straight away ask, though, why did Source have such imperfect thoughts, thoughts that seem to invite so much unhappiness and conflict and limitation? The only answer to that that makes sense, I suggest, would have to be that Source itself is somehow present and working everywhere within the limitations. That Source is right here incognito, forever opening up new possibilities and pathways to creating something better.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the notion of the brain being a transmitter/receiver linking with whatever is actually doing the thinking. The mind is external, that kind of thing. So, if my inner voice can't stop singing a song in my head, does that come from some place other than the HM?

If you keep hearing a song in your head, maybe that could be a message from your intuition, which roughly amounts to the same thing as your HM, for these purposes. Intuition comes from the other side of a big veil that thoughts keep us within. Of course, the song may simply be one more part of the repetition process out of which we form "our" own personality. I don't know if you know that it's been proved that if you see a movie, it goes on replaying subliminally inside your head for about the next three days -- and it takes up about half of your consciousness for that length of time. The reason why it could be a message from your HM, though, is that the HM has a foot in both worlds. Although it knows that a person's personality is usually largely ego, the HM plays along and deeply respects and accepts the personality, all the while knowing how illusory it is and how greatly interconnected everything is. I suggest the HM's great respect for the personality is what some people are in reality talking about when they say: "God loves you, just as you are" -- because they're mistaking the HM for Source itself.

What about all the more dualistically influenced thoughts? Like your example of someone being hurt and then dwelling on a desire to exact revenge. Would those thoughts also come from the HM?

My guess is that they are more tied to this "personality" we create which exists at a lower level than the HM, and is part of the thing that you talk about us shedding on our way back to integration with our HM after we leave our physical bodies behind.

Those thoughts are, of course, egoic, as is almost everything that features polarity. I'd say that although they come from outside of you, you choose to take them in. You can choose to bring in thoughts "egoically" or not.

[TraineeHuman]

Stillness has many practical applications and interconnections-- including to OB travel. So far I've mentioned very few. I've also often talked of stillness as "silence". It's a major part of most things that I would call "detachment". Because I've said little so far, that's made it sound almost like it was nothing. Which, of course, it's not. Fortunately, by now people will have at least some experiential grounding in it.

Although thoughts and feelings etc come from outside us, they come strictly at our (mostly unknowing) beckoning. Everything we call "daily life", with all its problems and complications, is an exact image of what we identify as ourselves -- unknowingly in large part. This is where stillness is very valuable. We can learn to create and carry around with us a kind of "protective layer" that keeps us from identifying with, or latching onto, negative emotions or thoughts. Maybe not 100% of the time, but certainly most of the time. And not so fully at first, perhaps. That "protective layer" is the stillness. Not so protective in some ways, because there's a type of insecurity it keeps plunging us into -- which is fine, though, because of the inner peace.

We probably won't realize this when we're meditating or otherwise practicing stillness, but while we're doing that we've actually somehow let go of "our story" and "our history" and "our personality". For at least that short time, we're no longer under the temptation to compulsively grab at and identify whatever is happening as "my problems", "my temperament", "my restlessness", "my discontent", "my desires". The key, though, is to be able to detach from all of those, even throw them all away, while you are about your daily life. Although it isn't possible to live a life involved in all the complexities of mingling and working with others without adopting an identity, the key is that word "adopt". The stronger the stillness gets inside you, the more you can see your identity as something that's provisional, almost like a disposable tissue. The key is to see the world of identities and personalities and at the same time to see through your own identity, to know that it's temporary and somewhat arbitrary. And to feel the stillness at the same time. The more you learn to do this -- almost constantly, after some time --, the more free you will be to throw away your current identity and history and take on an entirely new identity tomorrow. (Of course, even with your new identity you'll still need to take responsibility for any consequences of what your old identity did.)

Stillness, and holding it for a period, is very important in psychic healing. The healer needs to have it. Otherwise the healer will take on some of the negative or weak energies being healed in the client.

To travel/project in the astral world with greater control and ease, surely it's helpful to "unglue" yourself from "your" feelings, "your" desires. Otherwise you''l be at the mercy of the latter, because you're "glued" to them, and they have a dark side you're not normally even conscious of. This is also important because in the astral world forces and energies become stronger, more intense than what they are in the physical.

[Highwhistler]

In my experience as a meditator, the words "stillness, emptiness & silence" ... all describe the same thing. They are words that we use to describe a foundational quality of the Universe that appears to be everywhere. That is: not only does the meditator sense, feel and know stillness-emptiness-silence during the meditative process ... but also even when she sees & feels any object in the physical world, or listens to sounds, or is talking with or touching a person ... she senses the stillness that is underneath, behind and supporting the entire Universe.

Stillness, emptiness & silence are the most natural common "elements" of all Creation, and they also are the most over-looked, under-appreciated, the most mis-understood and under-valued qualities within the human psychic Universe.

Once the meditator realizes that emptiness, stillness, silence and peace are at the foundation of all things perceived ... she realizes that she is also describing aspects of her fundamental nature.

The perception, feeling and knowing of the qualities of emptiness ... is a quantum experience. You realize in the truest sense: you are also the emptiness, silence & peace of the Universe of Universes. All of Creation, including you, is living, dancing and swirling forever within fields of emptiness.

Once you understand that you and emptiness are One -- entangled in the quantum field -- with absolute ease your perceptual & knowing abilities are set free. The emptiness that you perceive, feel and know ... is the same emptiness in the atom and between the stars. On the wings of silent emptiness, the meditator's attention can focus on the microcosm, the macrocosm, past lives, saints and sinners anywhere and everywhere, anything and everything ... for all realms of the so-called "real" & "imagined" Universes can be summoned forth, for you to experience.

You are the non-physical Presence. You, the Presence is silent and quantum. It has the ability to enter temporary bodies and empower creative existence in this world and others. Your Presence is with you in thoughts, dreams, memories ... it visits worlds within worlds, travels through infinite time, and explores, perceives, ponders, changes & assists in the expanding-evolving Universe.

But now: sense and feel it for yourself ... where are you, the Presence, living? The Presence is living in a vast world of silence, peace, tranquility, emptiness. In fact, that's your home.