Meaninglessness

[Cambo]

Yeah, I think it's theta waves that are the dreamless sleep ones, but as Vraith said, during meditation your brain is doing other stuff too, and the meditator is fully conscious throughout (unless they're doing it wrong- I admit there have been a couple of times I've fallen asleep while meditating- I meditate in a half lotus, makes for sore legs when I wake up )

[Avatar]

Not for me, anymore. At least, unless I decide to go out Aldous Huxley style and get LSD injected on my deathbed.

Hell yeah!

To fathom hell, or soar angelic...

Yeah, I dunno...I'm always aware of the unified nature of the world. (As in "not just when tripping" or whatever.)

This is a cause and effect universe...everything is connected in some way. But that is different to everything being the same thing.

I'm equally aware (more so perhaps) of my own individuality. I'm part of the whole in that I exist in an environment which can be acted upon. But my "ego" is an observer of that environment, even while it is being affected / altered by those environmental events.

--A

[ussusimiel]

This is a cause and effect universe...everything is connected in some way. But that is different to everything being the same thing.

I'm equally aware (more so perhaps) of my own individuality. I'm part of the whole in that I exist in an environment which can be acted upon. But my "ego" is an observer of that environment, even while it is being affected / altered by those environmental events.

This puts me in mind of a quote of T.S. Eliot's, from the start of 'Four Quartets':

Time present and time past
Are both present in time future,
And time future contained in time present.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

And, this for me is one of the defining characteristics of the ego. The ego is tied to time (in a similar way that it is tied to feelings). A lot of the work that is done to reduce the ego's influence on being relates to these two aspects of existence. The impermanence of the ego is, for many, a source of suffering. The body, even though it dies, is created from stuff that will go on afterwards. The ego has no such promise of continuance. Yet many have a sense that being is unlike ego and this leads to a search outwards, beyond conventional regions.

u.

[Vraith]

Just riffing here, cuz I'm in a flux point on this kinda stuff...
Av is onto something...connection and identity are different.
I'm not sure the common understanding of "being one with the whole," and losing ego is necessarily correct [assuming there even is an ongoing ego, which I highly doubt, but there's enough oddness in my experiences to doubt not deny]
If it is ongoing, I suspect [back to Av] perhaps more like a conscious hand. You are aware of your hand...it is both part and independent of your awareness...imagine it had an ego of its own.
I love Eliot in some things...can't stomach others. That quote is only so if there is only one end, one future, if all past/present are leading to a single place...but what if not? what if [and I suspect this more so] it all started one place and is branching towards infinite arrays? The present does not contain the future...it breaks it open and scatters it across the universe.
The ego feels its limits and ending and chains...really?...the point isn't to reduce its influence, it is to open its eyes...after all the truth is even if some part of my body goes on and the ego itself does not, the fact is that in 1000, 10,000, infinite years there is a small chance...infinitesimal really...that someone will know what I say here and now...even if only to laugh or disdain, and it is only my ego that made it...There is no chance, whatsoever, that anyone at all, will know one bit of nitrogen contained in a protein that created the mote in their left eye was once part of the muscular fibers in my index pinky finger that I now use to do.......!

[Linna Heartbooger]

This is a cause and effect universe...everything is connected in some way. But that is different to everything being the same thing.

I'm equally aware (more so perhaps) of my own individuality. I'm part of the whole in that I exist in an environment which can be acted upon. But my "ego" is an observer of that environment, even while it is being affected / altered by those environmental events.

I think I'm on the same page with this.

[ussusimiel]

the fact is that in 1000, 10,000, infinite years there is a small chance...infinitesimal really...that someone will know what I say here and now...even if only to laugh or disdain, and it is only my ego that made it

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that being is timeless and that ego is time-bound. Yes, what I do now has a chance of existing and having influence over infinite time but to the ego, which is gone, this is not existence.

There is no chance, whatsoever, that anyone at all, will know one bit of nitrogen contained in a protein that created the mote in their left eye was once part of the muscular fibers in my index pinky finger that I now use to do

This has to do with a sense of all being one. The person won't 'know' it but if they experience the unity the bit of your pinky will be part of that experience

To quote another poet; from 'In the Waiting Room':

I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.

This gives a good indication of the feeling of terror that the ego (of some people, including myself) experiences when intimations of unity are felt. To quote Eliot (probably referencing Freud). (The start of 'Four Quartets' again):

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.

u.

[Holsety]

Just riffing here, cuz I'm in a flux point on this kinda stuff...
Av is onto something...connection and identity are different.
I'm not sure the common understanding of "being one with the whole," and losing ego is necessarily correct [assuming there even is an ongoing ego, which I highly doubt, but there's enough oddness in my experiences to doubt not deny]
If it is ongoing, I suspect [back to Av] perhaps more like a conscious hand. You are aware of your hand...it is both part and independent of your awareness...imagine it had an ego of its own.
I love Eliot in some things...can't stomach others. That quote is only so if there is only one end, one future, if all past/present are leading to a single place...but what if not? what if [and I suspect this more so] it all started one place and is branching towards infinite arrays? The present does not contain the future...it breaks it open and scatters it across the universe.
The ego feels its limits and ending and chains...really?...the point isn't to reduce its influence, it is to open its eyes...after all the truth is even if some part of my body goes on and the ego itself does not, the fact is that in 1000, 10,000, infinite years there is a small chance...infinitesimal really...that someone will know what I say here and now...even if only to laugh or disdain, and it is only my ego that made it...There is no chance, whatsoever, that anyone at all, will know one bit of nitrogen contained in a protein that created the mote in their left eye was once part of the muscular fibers in my index pinky finger that I now use to do.......!

That was umm, beautiful?

[Fist and Faith]

Seriously!

[Vraith]

ummm...thank you....I'm blushing...really.
I knew I liked it...but one doesn't often get feedback like that.
If you ever see it in a book, you'll know I actually got published, cuz I wrote it here, then told myself "that's gotta be good for something," and stole it from myself for future use.

[Fist and Faith]

What I like most about the 'experiences' I have heard about and touched on myself is not that they are 'supernatural' but rather, once you get over their novelty, how ordinary they are. Beware the person trumpeting their 'extraordinary' experiences, chances are that person is a charlatan. It is much more likely that the old lady sitting quietly in the corner, who all her life has has had access to inexplicable knowledge about people, is the real deal. To her it will be ordinary because it has always been that way.

I have another great quote for this! Heh. From Conversations With God:

Enlightenment is knowing that there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nobody you have to be except exactly who you're being right now.

And while I'm at it... There's a great movie called Circle of Iron. Martial arts/philosophy at its best. Lol. So a guy is looking for the Book of Zetan, which is supposed to contain all the wisdom of the world. After some crazy trials, both of the martial arts variety and of the wisdom variety, he finally sees the book. When he opens it, it's nothing but mirrors.

Zetan: "The seekers fight their way here, year after year. Willing, eager, to pay a terrible price to see what is in that book. And when they fling it open in blazing expectation of finding all the answers to all of life’s questions... what do they find?

Cord: "Themselves."

Zetan: "Themselves. There is no book, Cord, no enlightenment, outside yourself."

[Vraith]

And while I'm at it... There's a great movie called Circle of Iron. Martial arts/philosophy at its best. Lol. So a guy is looking for the Book of Zetan, which is supposed to contain all the wisdom of the world. After some crazy trials, both of the martial arts variety and of the wisdom variety, he finally sees the book. When he opens it, it's nothing but mirrors.

Zetan: "The seekers fight their way here, year after year. Willing, eager, to pay a terrible price to see what is in that book. And when they fling it open in blazing expectation of finding all the answers to all of life’s questions... what do they find?

Cord: "Themselves."

Zetan: "Themselves. There is no book, Cord, no enlightenment, outside yourself."

Heh...they completely stole that for "Kung Fu Panda."

[Fist and Faith]

Really? I've only seen the first several minutes of that. Which were hysterical! And also completely stolen, from various movies.

[Avatar]

This has to do with a sense of all being one. The person won't 'know' it but if they experience the unity the bit of your pinky will be part of that experience.

But if you don't know it, it's the same as if it's not happening.

--A

[ussusimiel]

But if you don't know it, it's the same as if it's not happening.

To split hairs

It is not that the experience is not known, it is the 'you' that doesn't know it. The knowing is experienced as being.

To quote from 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance':

But before help comes, slowly, imperceptibly at first, the entire consciousness of Phaedrus begins to come apart . . . to dissolve and fade away.

...... He crosses a lonesome valley, out of the mythos, and emerges as if from a dream, seeing that his whole consciousness, the mythos, has been a dream and no one's dream but his own, a dream he must now sustain of his own efforts. Then even 'he' disappears and only the dream of himself remains with himself in it.

My own experience has been that of moving from thinking that there was only one way to know something, to holding that there are a number of ways of gaining knowledge (thought and reason being one of those ways). Some others that I now recognise are: art, symbols (and dreams), intuition, the body and spirits (shamanic). The knowledge is all finally transmitted through language but it is not known as such when it is initially experienced. As I sometimes say to people: I didn't learn how to listen until I started using my heart as well as my ears.

u.

[Avatar]

But if I don't know it, it might as well not be happening.

There are many ways to know something, but there has to be something, an entity, (you) to know it, otherwise it's not known.

--A

[lucimay]

Just riffing here, cuz I'm in a flux point on this kinda stuff...
Av is onto something...connection and identity are different.
I'm not sure the common understanding of "being one with the whole," and losing ego is necessarily correct [assuming there even is an ongoing ego, which I highly doubt, but there's enough oddness in my experiences to doubt not deny]
If it is ongoing, I suspect [back to Av] perhaps more like a conscious hand. You are aware of your hand...it is both part and independent of your awareness...imagine it had an ego of its own.
I love Eliot in some things...can't stomach others. That quote is only so if there is only one end, one future, if all past/present are leading to a single place...but what if not? what if [and I suspect this more so] it all started one place and is branching towards infinite arrays? The present does not contain the future...it breaks it open and scatters it across the universe.
The ego feels its limits and ending and chains...really?...the point isn't to reduce its influence, it is to open its eyes...after all the truth is even if some part of my body goes on and the ego itself does not, the fact is that in 1000, 10,000, infinite years there is a small chance...infinitesimal really...that someone will know what I say here and now...even if only to laugh or disdain, and it is only my ego that made it...There is no chance, whatsoever, that anyone at all, will know one bit of nitrogen contained in a protein that created the mote in their left eye was once part of the muscular fibers in my index pinky finger that I now use to do.......!

That was umm, beautiful?

no seriously. it was. i like it. to quote lenny from Of Mice and Men, i can see it George.