Days of decompression
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
I’m noticing some definite decompression in these few days of not doing spiritual activity. It’s like there is a clearing of the decks in the higher spheres of the self. As if some part of me was put under pressure by the intense focus on spiritual beliefs, and now that I’ve stopped there is a relief and a reorganisation.
I was reading ‘I Am That’ by Nisargadatta Maharaj, and in that he recommends some basic techniques such as focussing on the sense of being. He says, do this and believe in my words and things will start to happen within. But what I felt on New Years Eve was a sense of turning away, almost revulsion and nausea.
It seems I do value these intense feelings, as a kind of form of advice from the beyond. So I have two options: continuing the decompression and returning to what for me is the natural state, or resuming spiritual activity which was becoming almost a kind of conditioning. For a few days more I’ll do the first, in any case.
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The Guest House (Rumi)
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
Meet them at the door laughing,
And invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent
As a guide from beyond.
So I thought I would do a little reading about mythology, and I came across a passage of how our being is sheltered by a soul, which brought to my mind that what speaks to us about stories with a mythic quality resonates in us with the soul that shelters us and directs us.
Which is a very spiritual quality, it seems at the moment I cannot escape it.
I guess that depends on if what you were reading is correct.
Is there a "soul" at all? From a Buddhist POV, you should examine where this so-called soul can be found. If the soul is supposed to take an active role in your lives, we should be able to find it. I cannot. Can you?
Yeah, yet also according to Buddhism something of us or in us is reborn over and over again. We can't call it a soul - I might think that is because the word soul is being conflated with the ego self, which does not exist because we can't find it. But "something", according to Buddhism, would appear to exist, even though we can't find that either. Or can we? Your call.
I cannot recognise it directly, but I can feel its influence, for example an inexplicable feeling of gladness when I banish a source of hate from my mind.
A girlfriend said to me, “as long as you are respecting your own life and that of other conscious beings, being kind and trying to be a better person you are still being spiritual”. And I kind of agree with her, these are spiritual values, not societal values.
You call that "soul". Ok.
I have found that in my studies of the stars and universe, that physics (something The Buddha knew a fair amount about) is somehow to me beginning to pinpoint something that makes sense. Quantum Entangle and Quantum Signatures. Both related and could answer that long begging question of what gets reincarnated.
The more i read the more convinced i have become that our Quantum Signature is what is reborn into a suitable host. If you are a stream winner then clearly your Quantum signature is more complex yet simplified due to the attachments you've let go of. So in a comical sense a squirrel who has learned NOT to cross the street when the car is coming, probably has written into it's Q.S. that which it's learned. That increases it's "volume" or complexity of the Q.S.! So it can't really return as a squirrel but perhaps and cat, dog or whatever.
Buddha challenged us to find the soul. We won't find it because quantum is at a level that we can't quite detect YET. Does this makes sense to anyone?
Yes, what you wrote make sense, but is it accurate?
The Buddha didn't teach that there was a soul to find, and teachings on the emptiness of phenomena, and the mechanics of rebirth would wait till the Mahayana.
AS far as the Buddha and physics are concerned, who actually knew anything about what we call physics in 500bce? The Buddha set out to find the cause of birth, old age, sickness and death. This led him to the truth of suffering, it's cause, it's cessation and the path of cessation.
Rebirth is a function of karma and very subtle level of consciousness that acts as a karmic storehouse. It's all in the Mahayana. This level of consciousness could be the same thing as these quantum signatures you describe, but are they? I don't think it matters, because knowing it, won't hasten enlightenment.
Physics and Buddhism teach different things. Similarities are coincidental.
How is the decompression going? Has the repulsion or nausea mitigated?
Yes it has… it only lasted about twenty minutes, and I recently did an experiment of reading the first discourse in ‘Tantra: The Supreme Understanding’ by Osho to see if it would return, and it has not. I only managed one discourse though, on naturalness, I didn’t like the subject matter of the second.
I think it is difficult to associate modern knowledge with ancient Buddhist views on reincarnation. It calls to my mind the thicket of views…
“Vaccha, the position that 'the cosmos is eternal' is a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. It is accompanied by suffering, distress, despair, & fever, and it does not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation; to calm, direct knowledge, full Awakening, Unbinding.”
The Buddha to Vaccha the wanderer.
To make these kinds of equivalences will cause more questions to arise. The mind will go chasing after each consequence, yet more will arise and you will never be done answering questions. Hence the ‘fetter of views’. It is better to let the mind rest and avoid such.
Ultimately what matters is the mind’s drive for knowing ‘more’. It can never be satisfied. It is also not beneficial, leading to dark corners of human knowledge like the functioning of biological or nuclear weapons. When you come to abandon this search for ‘more’ you will have found a key to just Being.
I came across a story…
When Lin Chi was asked, ”What has happened to you? People say that you have become enlightened,” he shrugged his shoulders and said, ”Happened? Nothing. I cut wood in the forest, and carry water to the ashram – carry water from the well, cut wood because the winter is approaching.” He shrugged his shoulders – a very meaningful gesture.
He is saying, ”Nothing has happened. What nonsense you are asking! It is natural: carrying water from the well, cutting wood in the forest. Life is absolutely natural.” Says Lin Chi, ”When I feel sleepy, I go to sleep; and when I feel hungry, I eat. Life has become absolutely natural.”
The days pass, and I feel as if there is something unfinished.
In the meantime I have discovered the Joe Rogan Experience, and have listened to one with Hamilton Morris and one with Graham Hancock. I really appreciate the long form, three hours of conversation gives you a lot of time to dig into the detail.
In a way, I feel as if I have lost something? It felt like the sharp, dark part of me was turning against more beautiful parts, and now some of those beautiful energies have departed. Something to do with childhood. I only really see this when I turn myself to look at my energy as a whole.
But you know, things come… things go… it is all clouds under an eternal sky.
"It is all clouds under an eternal sky."
I have more or less abandoned the abandoning. I’m currently reading more in Osho’s book Tantra: The Supreme Understanding about Tilopa’s song of mahamudra, but slowly, so I can consider the passages I consider significant at some length.
I am just about to enter the 5th Dimension ...
... I wonder if I'll meet a Quantum Buddha/Bodhi?
I think I'll call her, Maha-HaHa if I do (hope she knows some good jokes ...)
I am just about to enter the 5th Dimension ...
... I wonder if I'll meet a Quantum Buddha/Bodhi?
I think I'll call her, Maha-HaHa if I do (hope she knows some good jokes ...)
Strangely I now feel like doing more abandoning, having finished the book. I feel like I have lost my stable base in the body, and everything is going loose and tingly. Very odd.
Welcome to the 5th Dimension
