Miesiąc: styczeń 2021

Relax and notice any attempt to self punch or to judge yourself. Recognize the mental and emotional pain it brings. Imagine that you are or your awareness is a guardian standing in front of the door to your heart and self punching  activities are some malicious beings or forces that are trying to invade your heart. You are a skillful martial art master who is dispelling these forces by labeling them “self punch”. Notice how the quality of your mind state changes when you label these self punching activities of the mind.

This is an interesting exercise that helps to recognize how a mind is creating concepts.

While you’re reading these words you probably can hear an inner voice in your head voicing them out. You can see that there is some feeling, some identity attached to this voice. Although it’s your mind reading, the voice seems to be the voice of someone else. A voice of someone who wrote this text. Of course you probably cannot know what the author’s voice really sounds like. But your mind is still giving you an impression that there is someone talking to you. Someone else with a certain personality. Certain life on its own. It is important to recognize that all this is happening only in your mind. Your mind is creating this impression, this feeling that someone other than you is talking to you these words.

Actually the whole reading process is a little bit similar to listening to someone else talking.  In reality all this is projected by your mind, it’s merely an impression created in your mind by your mind. This is one example of how the mind creates concepts. In this case a concept of someone else telling  you these words. (It’s quite interesting that even if you write something on your own, your mind starts to create a feeling, a concept of a person who writes and that feeling, that impression is quite different from the other impression of a person who witnesses the whole process and rereading the written text later on. )

Try to recognize this feeling, this impression. Try to see how different it is from the impression or the feeling of ‘I’ that is doing the reading. Notice that both these impressions are created by the same mind. By you. The division between the reader (ie you) and the writer (ie the voice talking to you in your head) is fully conceptual, virtual. But still, there is this persistent feeling that there is someone else talking to you at this moment…

Can you tell what is your flavour?
How do “you” taste?
The trees taste like my mother.
My new trousers taste a little bit like a friend that wears similar ones.
But how do you taste from inside?
How do “you” taste for your own consciousness?

But what is this flavour?
How does it taste?
The taste of life is coca-cola,
So this one is easy…
But the taste of me?

Sometimes the entire world tastes like me,
Only humans inside taste different.
Their bodies taste like me,
But their faces different.
Often nature tastes like my mother and sisters,
After that like me.
But then all world tastes more like a woman
Than a man.

Familiar tastes like this , not familiar like that.
Knowing tastes like this,
Not knowing like that.
Being tastes like this, not being like that.
Blue tastes like this,
Red tastes like that.
Something tastes like this,
Nothing tastes like that.
Real tastes like this,
Not real tastes like that.
Being right tastes like this,
Not being right tastes like that.
Being interested tastes like this, not being interested tastes like that

Big boiling soup of continuously shifting flavours

Boiling
Soup

Is your black tasting like mine black
Is your not seeing tasting like mine not seeing
Is your pain tasting like my pain
Is your “I” tasting like mine “I”???

Do you taste like me?

First open your eyes. Now while keeping your eyes open imagine yourself as an empty space in which all sounds are happening. They come and go. They pass through the empty space of your body. Remember, none of the sounds can harm you. The noise of passing cars and motorbikes, the horns, the voices of people, all of them are happening inside that empty space, the empty space that is you, that is consciousness. Now, check if your mind is reacting to the sounds in any way.  Is it trying to push away any of these sounds? Is it getting tensed or stressed by the sounds around? If yes, don’t worry. Just recognize the tension and try to find a relaxed space around the tension. Allow the tension to be there together with the sounds. Either the sounds or the arising tension are not you. You are the empty space, the sounds and the tension cannot harm you. You are the empty space of consciousness and the tensions and sounds just happened to be passing through you. After a few moments you may notice that the tension in the body slowly subsides, the mind slowly relaxes. You may even notice that you are waiting for new loud sounds to come. Just stay in this open, accepting space of awareness.

Some time ago I was riding my bike to town. Suddenly I saw a body of a dead cat, possibly killed by a car. As I was approaching the carcass, my whole body reacted with disgust and all related emotions and thoughts. As I was getting closer, suddenly my perception shifted. It wasn’t a dead cat anymore, it was a big dry leaf. The emotion of disgust disappeared, the negative thoughts had gone. The mind and the body had understood, without any thinking involved, that it had been just a leaf, nothing more, nothing to fear or avoid. All this process had happened automatically, without any intention involved. The mind had been gathering more and more data about the object, and the perception of it had been shifting according to the amount of data defining the object. When the perception shifted, the mind and body reactions changed accordingly.

Some optical illusions are a result of purposely limited information. The creator of an illusion withdraws certain information/data from a picture, leaving only the cues that lead to a wrong interpretation of the picture by the perception of a viewer. When that missing information is revealed to the viewer later, the perception automatically shifts and the viewer’s mind understands that it was subjected to an illusion. Then, when the data is withdrawn again from the picture, the perception flips back to the previous, ‘deluded’ state. The viewer intellectually recognizes that she experiences an illusion, but her perception stays on the ‘deluded side’.

This process is nothing uncommon. It is happening all the time. Our minds are continuously proceeding data from different senses, and our perception is being shaped and shifts according to the amount of data the mind gathers. Perception of ourselves and of the world we live in. Based on this perception our body and mind reacts with happiness and sorrow, with love and anger with liking and disliking. Based on this perception, we define ourselves and our place in the world.

The attention of the mind moves around the senses, allowing the perception to organize data into percepts. If we focus our attention on something (a good book or a movie) to an exclusion of the outside world, the perception of the outside world ceases or becomes very limited. With this limited perception, our reactions to the outside world will change as well. We might react with fear or anger to certain sounds, sights or touches that would bring about an entirely different reaction, if we were paying attention to the world (let our mind gather the sufficient amount of data). Similar situation takes place when we pay entire attention to the storyline of our thinking. This thinking becomes a good movie (can be a love story but can be a horror movie as well) that takes our attention away from the other senses causing a shift of perception of what is actually happening. This movement of mind’s attention, conditions our perception and therefore our reactions to the experience. Like in the case of the dead cat or an optical illusion, the mind with the limited data perceives the world in a ‘deluded’ way. That brings about a whole range of misreactions (misunderstandings) on the emotional level. The only way to move out of this, is moving our attention away from the thinking process and allowing the mind to gather data about the present experience. Constant flow of sensory data describing the present experience will gradually shift the perception of what is actually happening. And that shift of perception will bring about deep relaxation on the emotional level. The dead cat will become a dry leaf. There will be nothing to fear, nothing to run away from…

Rabbit – duck

What do you see? A duck or a rabbit? The perception continuously shifts. The precepts of the rabbit and the duck are competing for the space inside consciousness. Or rather, the perception creates either a percept of a duck or a percept of a rabbit. If one plays with it for a while one may notice that the emergence of a given percept (duck or rabbit) depends on where the attention is placed. It’s possible to move the attention around the cues in the picture in order to develop better control over shifting perception. Now the question arises, Is it possible to hold both percepts, the rabbit and the duck in consciousness at the same time?Trying to do so can get quite frustrating. Seems like the mind is designed in the way that it has to choose only one of the percepts at a given time. In other words, the perception can create a percept of a rabbit or a  percept of a duck only. 

Small mind –  big mind

Now, let’s become aware of the sense of self, the small mind. Let’s stay with this percept for a few moments. Now, let’s shift the attention to the perception of the big mind.  Now again the small mind, and then the big one. It’s exact situation isn’t? The feeling is very similar to the one you get from the rabbit/duck picture.  The attention is moving, different precepts emerging. One is the small, boring, slightly annoying sense of self, another cool, calm, spacious big mind. But… similar to the duck rabbit illusions, this too is just an emerging percept, just something that the mind conjures ad hoc, in the very moment.

The percept that is dominating, that stays longer or more often within the consciousness conditions what we think the reality is and conditions our responses to it. If you like eating ducks, and consider rabbits cute, depending on what percept is emerging your emotional response will be different. You may get hungry seeing a duck or you may get a loving feeling seeing the rabbit. 

Similar in the case of the small and the big mind. If the perception of the small mind is dominating, emotional responses and related actions differ from those that would have taken place if the perception of big mind was present. 

The question that comes next is, how to hold both of them, or is it possible to hold both percepts in the consciousness at the same time? Or is it needed at all?