weirdway

"Discussion Thread"

Originally posted by u/AesirAnatman on 2018-07-26 08:42:37 (91wnig).

Ah, another discussion thread. :) Cool, time to ramble.

I've been really really enjoying the recent times. I got access to some legal cannabis again, and I've been exploring what is possible with it a second time. So I am leaning toward a conclusion that it's basically like a psychological microscope. That's not a novel idea by any means. I've seen this idea mentioned on r-psychonaut. I notice it also very much follows intent. So if I am absorbed in some activity on a relatively low dose, it's like I am not even high. Nothing interesting happens. On the other hand, with that same dose, as soon as I focus my mind a certain way I am high again. And another thing is that this "highness" seems pretty arbitrary. The more I focus, the crazier it gets.

So I've had some sessions where I've focused pretty intensely and I experienced unusual for me degrees of concentration and a very clear ability to think at the same time, so I could see exactly what was going on. I got into some absurdly deep places in my psyche and I have touched upon what some of my very hidden fears were. I mean, the kind of life I really want to live eventually, a life of manifestational power, it's no joke. There is sooooo much psychological baggage in my mind that gets in the way, and concentration + cannabis make it so obvious when I focus properly.

The biggest thing I have found is that I still live outside myself. I still think in a way that often requires me to resolve all my stories to some seemingly external standard. On the other hand, I also got a much clearer sense about what it would mean to completely shift the center of spiritual gravity inside myself and it was awe-inducing (I was going to say "awesome" but that word has come to primarily mean "really good"). I definitely want it. But it's easy to see how this might take a bit of further adjusting for me to get used to further shifts in my own mentality.

There was one moment when I concentrated so well, I could feel my entire experience becoming like malleable jelly. I started hearing strange super-wide echos from sounds that I "knew" should conventionally not have such echos. I started to be aware of a "place" inside me where if I adjust myself, I could make the experience flow in a radically different way, but then this is what also was so awe-inducing. I could feel what it would feel like to start treating all of manifestation as a joke and as a play thing.

I played with a bunch of concepts, because concepts are so magickal and powerful. Currently a really fascinating concept I like is the one of taking a VR (virtual reality) headset off. I've had this idea for a long while and later this idea was reinforced for me when I listened to Tom Campbell as well. And the idea goes like this, in two steps:

1. First I get myself to feel like everything I am experiencing is a result of a special "headset" that I am wearing. I get myself to feel like I am looking into a gameworld, basically, of a really really advanced game that is able to render smells, tactile sensations and so forth. I first try to get this sense of my experience being virtual stabilized a bit before getting to the second point.

2. Then I focus on what it is like in my "real room" so to speak, in the place where I am "sitting" when I am playing this virtual reality game here. That "room" is obviously completely outside this entire world. It's a very interesting experience.

Also, I mean this mostly metaphorically, because I am not visualizing a literal headset, for example. The idea is to get a feel for what it might be like to live in a space that is outside this world while at the same time subjecting myself to an experience of this world with its own separate space. It's a pretty wild feeling.

I though that if I trained myself to "take the VR headset off" really well, it could become an astral projection technique. I'm just having fun playing around with this, so I am not committed to training this into an AP technique, at least so far. For now, I am more interested in figuring out what is happening on deeper levels of myself, the levels that I ignore or pretend aren't "there". Once I get a much better idea about the inner content that I tend to keep overlooking, I think I will naturally know what kind of further techniques will be suitable for me, if any.

Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-07-30 07:16:48 (e398bsm)

I'll never stop being inspired by the audacity of the men who dreamed a dream as big as SI. But it doesn't fully satisfy me and here is why.

My main beefs with SI is 1) lack of merging with other Souls through the heart, 2) lack of merging with God through the violet ray / top of head / prayer and 3) predilection for self-involved magical endeavors.

I love the "Magic Lab" feeling of the thought experiments here, I love the tremendous respect given to the imagination. So much respect for the mind, it has impacted me deeply to read about it and think about its concepts.

I see SI as a practice for adepts who have achieved 'the gateway' - e.g. found the place in the skull which, when the mind is focused correctly, splits light into a very fine spray and parses out the secret information held within it. SI (or solipsism?) may be somewhat misguided from my perspective because without a practice anchored in points 1 and 2 above, you have a tendency to end at 3 - which is somewhat masturbatory magickal self-exploration which seeks to prove its central conceit through perceptual shifts.

There is a gravity well here which many have warned about. The alienation from others which can result from the ongoing embodiment of the magical personality, is counter to most people's true metaphysical purposes - which is to regain the consciousness of unity. Don't become God, instead realize that you and all your brothers and sisters are God. If the latter perception is lacking, be cautious encouraging the former.

However, from what I've been informed, anyone who has attained the gateway is free to do as they like. They are Gods. Therefore I cannot fault you even though my aesthetic and spiritual inclinations are not fully satisfied with this. Its a beautiful thing you have done, honoring the power of the mind so much.

Originally commented by u/fortunatefields on 2018-10-25 17:57:02 (e8evgx5)

I like to imagine supersized objects sometimes. So for example, if for whatever reason you wanted to imagine a pencil, you can imagine a pencil that is larger than the sky. If you're imagining a foot, it can also be larger than the sky and so forth.

The reason for this is because even though we might consider imagination fanciful, but if I pay attention to my own imagination, I have what could be called "imagination habits." So if these habits also align with convention, then I think this reinforces the convention. So for example, conventionally pencils are just a bit longer than one's body's hand, then if I also imagine it like that, I am implicitly giving some weight to convention even in my "fanciful" imagination, which in retrospect might not be all that fanciful.

This is just an idea. I don't literally imagine pencils. I'm just using "pencil" to get a basic idea across. Also "super-large" is also a basic idea.

The main point is to notice any kind of patterns in my imagination and either build new patterns, or simply disrupt the old ones.

Imagination is important and I think imagination is very much related to manifestation. It's possible that one's manifestation might be too rigid also because one's imagination is too small (I don't mean a literal size here). That's how it seems to me right now.

Also, instead of visualizing things inside this experience you can visualize things outside. So what I mean is, instead of me sitting at the table and inside this experience of sitting at the table I am visualizing say an apple, I can visualize that my experience of my sitting at the table is really happening inside a giant apple. In other words, the apple is the context, a platform, a space for other things, rather than an object inside "this" "normal" space. So it's like putting another space outside and over this space and then by visualizing things outside this space we can change the meaning inside this space. That's the idea.

One thing the above kind of visualization does is that it takes away the feeling of immensity from the conventional appearances. So you might think the sky and the earth are so huge, but if you then imagine the whole experience is happening inside a tiny pearl that is held by a child's hand somewhere else, then suddenly even the vast sky seems incredibly tiny. Then after one gets a sense of its smallness, how can it still create the same overwhelming feeling? In the same vein although I think it's better not to associate one's identity with the body, but for those who still have a strong tie to the body, they can imagine their body to be larger than the solar system. At first this might seem silly, but if you do this repeatedly a few times, it can create an after-effect that lasts even when you're not imagining this anymore. That effect would be to feel much less overwhelmed by whatever appears, even if it's the sky, which would be conventionally used as an example of a vast and overarching expanse.

So I like once in a while fooling around with my imagination like that.

Also, Zhuang Zi talks about this when he asks something like "is your arm really small and the universe large?" "Is someone dying an infant" really having a short lifetime? And is someone who lives for 300 years really having a long lifetime? A lot of people would accept this as a fanciful thought experiment that at best needs to be done once and forgotten, without any practical use. But what happens if one trains like this?

Training occupies a gray area between serious and unserious. So if I am training to do a tennis serve, I am not doing an actual serve, it's not for real. But it's not entirely unreal either. Training is liminal activity. Imagination would normally be held as clearly and unambiguously fanciful. But if one trains using one's imagination instead of being purely fanciful it would become liminal. That's because by training one takes whatever one trains a bit more seriously. But because it's considered "training" it's still not 100% serious. So for example, am I training to be a human or am I a human? By convention and I think most people would say, "no, I am actually a human, and I am not training to be a human, I really am and this is it." So training is still less than 100% real, but that doesn't mean it's bad or useless.

Training can be used in reverse too. For example, we take something like "being a human" and we would ordinarily feel like of course yea, I am a human and there is no need to train to be one. But if you live your days as though you're training to be a human, you reduce the weight of humanity in your own mind but you're also doing it in a way that doesn't make humanity 100% fanciful either. So something that was fanciful can be made liminal, and then relatively real. But something that is relatively real can be made liminal and then fanciful.

Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-08-18 11:04:49 (e4dxnx9)

In the other thread Utthana had asked: "Am I a puny spiritual weakling who cannot resist the temptation to become a mindless drone for more than a year at a time? Do these experiences happen on a different time scale for you?" But I'm answering here because I would like that my writing to be taken in a more general context:

I give high priority to the goal of maintaining a mind state of lucidity. I’m more prone to snap out it when I let the intensity of afflictive passions grows out hand, more commonly, craving, anger and vanity.

Lucidity: State of mind in which Mind as subjective awareness recognize Itself as transcendent (I’m not my experience) and immanent (I’m the creator and player of my experience) in relation to its dream. In this state the “world” is not a reality outhere but a creation of my imagination, which exist only in my subjective awareness and is patterned by my will in accord to my commitments.

Craving : Obsession with the desire to experience a specific scenario that is not easily accessible, in detriment of the possibility of employ/enjoy skillfully what is easily available in the present.

Anger/aversion: Obsession with the removal of a particular pattern, when non-confrontational solutions are easily available, the very presence of anger in relation to the pattern makes it persist.

Vanity : Obsession with the idea of “how I’m appearing” instead of give priority to “how good I’m dreaming”.

Someone would like to try to give better definitions to the terms?

Originally commented by u/Alshimur on 2018-08-06 04:38:09 (e3nq5sg)

Does anyone here have experience with the creation of new senses (like sight/smell etc.)?

Originally commented by u/VLSIHeaven on 2018-08-02 07:47:20 (e3ft73w)

[deleted]

Originally commented by u/[deleted] on 2018-10-24 03:23:09 (e8ayx8y)

Many of the habitual impulses that governs the manifestation's dynamics of my world seems to be based upon the belief that struggle/high effort consecrates the results with special value.

Originally commented by u/Alshimur on 2018-12-20 11:22:14 (ec5cquy)