Loving What Is as PART OF action and success.
Yes
That works
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Applied contemplation of the nature of psyche, and of the implications of that nature.
If not the whole of my vocation, this is at least an important branch of it.
I remember that in my youth, I experienced an insight. My intuition is that it resulted directly from meditation. It’s so important to me, but it’s not so verbal. But I’m still going to try to narrate it.
It didn’t come all at once. For sure it didn’t, since I’m still not done exploring it even decades later. So it still hasn’t finished emerging yet.
It’s easier to describe it by describing what it’s not:
Our mind has something that could be called a normalizing function. It’s not a matter of choice. It’s a biological aspect of the mind, as far as I observe. Our minds, to preserve a sense of stability and coherence, project an artificial sense of normalcy and normality onto our experiences.
It is SANE to exercise this normalizing function. It is also fundamentally irrational (in the sense of being utterly contrived).
Altered states reveal the normalizing function by disrupting it. Sometimes meditation brings about these kinds of states.
When I was younger, I was thinking about the fantasy that humans have long had about being able to fly bodily through the sky. One day, it struck me that if this power were to manifest on a mass level, it would not take very long before people were complaining about it or about conditions related to it.
We would say, ‘Oh, damn it. It’s 12:45 pm, I have to fly back to a work meeting.’. Some of us would be distracted and depressed as we flew on our various errands.
Around the same time, it struck me that we all literally have super-powers that we normalize. I looked at a recently healed cut on my hand, and it struck me that I literally had the power to knit my physical form back together if it was damaged. Someone or something rips or slices it apart, and it just knits back together. All physical movement was telekinesis. Moving your physical body with the power of mental intention. I noticed that the whole thing was basically nuts.
Later, also during a phase of comparatively intense (for me) meditation, I had the experience of waking up and looking out the window of my room and seeing the moon. A white orb of stone just floating. It hit me that ‘this is very strange’. And there was a feeling of awe.
Again, I’m using words to describe physical sensations. It doesn’t really work. But if you’re reading this, you’re imagining whatever these words might evoke in you. Hope it’s nice. I can’t describe the precise cocktail of impressions, sensations, cognitions, and perceptions that were in me at that moment. So, I use these terms.
Gradually, at some point, these sensations and experiences gelled into the realization that there was in fact nothing normal in the Cosmos. Normalcy was a condition that my bodymind had been imposing onto my flow of perceptions in order to establish a sense of stability, coherence, and mastery. Not mastery in the sense of ‘consummate control over all I survey’, but mastery in the sense of ‘my world basically holds together whether I’m particularly impressive or not’. We don’t realize or acknowledge how masterful that is, but it is.
Nothing is normal. Everything is miraculous.
Any perception of sufficient magnitude overwhelms our normalizing function and we experience awe until our poor bodymind can assert normality again.
Recognizing the inherent miraculousness and mysteriousness of existence is not an accomplishment. It’s nothing to brag about. It in itself is also the most normal thing in the world. If mystery and miracle is everywhere, what’s impressive about finally noticing it?
I also realized that so-called enlightenment was also nothing to feel superior about. It’s basically just realizing in a deeply experiential way that everything is miraculous. I have not done that, but I’ve caught a whiff, and that’s been enough to occupy me for a good, long time. Anyway, enlightenment, or a big part of enlightenment, is the apprehension/realization of the intrinsic miraculousness of everything.
So guess what that means? 5 minutes before you were enlightened, how intrinsically miraculous were you? Completely. 5 minutes after? Still completely. All that’s changed is you now see how miraculous you and everything else are. See? Nothing to brag about.
It would be like me bragging to you and saying ‘Hey, look at me? I can see that you’re a miraculous genius, but you can’t see it. I’m so amazing!’ Who cares? You’re still a genius. You’re equally amazing.
The Buddha was basically like a kindergartener who learned how to write his name in print. To the rest of us younger children, this seemed like great magic. Enlightenment seems like magic to those who are trying to get it. (Buddhist scholars would correct my terminology here. It’s more accurate to call it ‘awakening’.)
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The practical upshot of all of this was that my sense of importance got simultaneously seriously downgraded and seriously upgraded. I am of Cosmos. Unequivocally so. That’s the meaning of Cosmos, it’s All-That-Is.
At the same time, my customary, constituent processes, narratives, agendas, and views, are tiny. And laughably contingent. I don’t care. They’re mine and I love ‘em. I don’t need the fate of the Universe to be at stake to feel passionately about my passions. I’ll live and die for them, and they’ll blow away. That’s okay.
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So, engaged contemplation/禪/Chan/Zen feels like my vocation. And it has for a while now. I call it Experiential Ontology. Exploring the unfolding context and phenomenon of the feeling of existence.
It’s okay. It’s good.
This is my spirituality. It can contain narratives, but is neither born of nor bound to them.
It seems to be ‘in pursuit of’ nothing in particular.
It’s okay.
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This post comes partially because I’m experimenting in writing directly in a way that feels Real and Natural to me. ‘What if I could just write directly as myself?’
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Fuck You.
I want to be kind
Alright?
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Not a lot to say right now.
Working to clarify actions and goals.
Two Statements:
- What is the problem with doing it right now?
and
- Loving what is as part of action and success.
Taking Action to Build What I Want
Balance taking care of the responsibilities of my current job; with building the opportunities that will transition me to a new work situation.
I do have a couple of ideas, so let me try those now.
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Interestingly, I was thinking today of exactly this point.
I heard a quote one or two days ago:
Vision without Action is just a Daydream.
Action without Vision is a Nightmare.
It led me to reflect on Conscious and Subconscious contributions to outcome. And on what precisely actually happens when a person uses a method that develops a subconscious orientation but without taking action.
To what extent is there a kind of accumulation of subconscious strength even if no action is taken? If this were the case, then when one did finally take action, might change then occur powerfully and quickly?
Then there’s the view that nothing at all useful happens unless subconscious orientation is paired and aligned with conscious effort and action.
I guess that connected to this also is a second question of ‘at what precise moment does action begin?’ It’s not always quite so obvious. Often the assumption is that action begins when ‘the body is in motion in support of a chosen outcome’.
But I’ve suggested elsewhere that we might approach Intentionality itself as occuring along a continuum from subtle to gross. With the subtlest section of the spectrum containing what are usually called ‘thoughts’, further along the continuum these condense into ‘desires’, further along into ‘plans’, past that into ‘goals’, and past that into ‘organized physical movement’.
Just as with other continua, where a given person perceives it to begin will depend on the thresholds of that person’s acuity, sensitivity, and degree of attention.
Anyway, it’s clear that there is such a thing as a ‘mental action’. One example of this would be taking a moral inventory; a very powerful mental exercise of remembering and scrutinizing one’s actions with emotional honesty. It results in clarifying one’s values and decisions.
All forms of planning are ‘mental actions’. On the other hand, you can’t eat your plans for dinner, not unless you’ve at least written them down somewhere.
So, I’m distinguishing ‘Action’ from ‘(Establishing) Physical Manifestation’. Even though there’s a tendency for people to use them interchangeably.
But this brings me back to the first question:
What, by themselves, are the subliminals doing?
or more broadly:
What, by itself, is the subconscious mind doing?
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I remember from every successful person who built their their future while still at a job, they always say: “Wake up early, and dedicate the first 1h of your day to building the opportunities that will manifest in the future.”
Maybe this idea can help you on your journey 
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much appreciated.
we’ll see.
at present, i wake up, help my young people get ready for a 6:45 am school bus departure, and then do an hour of (non-negotiable) meditation if i’m not too wiped out.
but, there are windows of opportunity with which to work. especially at the moment.
this feels actionable. Thank you for your discernment, @AMASH!
Yes, and if there were a way to “clean up” those windows so that they show you more, and to spend more time looking through those windows of opportunity to see what is available outside that you haven’t seen before, what could some examples of any of this be?
I plan, when I begin Ecstasy of Gold stage 4 to integrate Inner Circle into my stack/playlist.
I was reflecting and it seems to me that this may be an important missing link for me.
I understand, in terms of my past experiences, how it happened that I developed a pattern of self-isolating, there was even some reasonable logic to it at times; but in doing so, I cut off one of the main avenues to both reality-testing and accessing opportunity.
This connected also, in my view, to this concept of ‘Loving What Is as part of a growth and transformation process’. That concept is somehow really catalyzing me right now. (Shout out @AMASH). I knew of that concept intellectually, and have even appreciated it. But I think I see that it needs to be integrated much more practically into how I’m approaching things. You can’t build a joyful life if you’re unable to access your joy. You can’t build what you want if you’re not able to access your sense of what you want.
It’s like someone who says they always hate romantic relationships. It’s like, ‘okay. I hear you. That was true. Now find the one you don’t hate.’. (that unclearly expressed example’s clear to me. 
).
I’m actually suspecting that a significant stopgap for action-taking for me is related to this: seeking out inspiring, complementary/compatible people and contexts.
Pardon the metaphor, but I think that may be a big part of what’s causing the constipation. (I’ve been thinking of this metaphor of ‘action-constipation’. That there can be particular factors/areas that lead to a back-up or traffic jam of action. With those areas resolved, action begins to flow more smoothly.)
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The Slogan
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It may not be best to spend time wagering on the match’s outcome, when the game is still in full-swing…
And you yourself are the captain of one team.
Some days I don’t find or make time to reflect and plan. And the most I manage is to just play the subliminal.
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You are the CEO of your own life 
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Sometimes it seems like there’s so much intuition involved in sensing and tracking the results of the subliminals. That’s the way of the subconscious. It’s the same with tracking magickal manifestations or the results of prayer. The subconscious is fluid and hard to hold down. (I think I’d have it no other way.)
But today, I’m sensing the force of my subliminal programs at work. I woke with a strong awareness of the misalignment between my lifestyle and my motivations. I’m translating it into words now, but of course it was a felt sense. (Shout out to Eugene Gendlin.)
My subconscious seems to be in the process of manifesting two action projects for me to work on in this immediate time. I have a question that I’d like to ask here about one of them, but I may create another post for that, rather than burying it in the middle of this reflection. I have been concentrating on ‘Action Taking’ since I started these programs in September 2019. Now, my subconscious has manifested two projects that make the required actions very clear.
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Reposting this here.
It makes things very clear.
This by itself, the constant testing, is reason enough for me to keep using the subliminal programs.
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Have been feeling a bit unmoored. That feeling is an old friend, unfortunately.
Was feeling uncertainty about direction of plans and efforts.
Decided to play EoG stage 2 to see what that would do.
I think that what might be happening is that there’s too much introversion and not enough extraversion right now. (I’m very heavy on the introversion, and I think I’m prone to this imbalance. Need to remind myself to address it.)
You know your strengths by taking 1) your qualities and 2) the needs of the world, and seeing where they meet in the middle. If you’re only in touch with one side of the equation, it’s not going to work.
If you’re a medical doctor, and for 3 years you’re stuck somewhere in which you have no patients, eventually you may forget that you have anything useful to offer. You could, in that situation, soul-search about your direction in life and about the meaning of life. Alternately, you could just get up and take a train to the next city and go volunteer in a hospital or clinic. That would very quickly remind you, ‘Oh, that’s right. I’m a medical doctor.’
In some cases, you need to get up and engage in order to remember/find out who you are and what you have to offer.
Feel like I’m needing a lot more of that.
So, what’s my version of ‘taking a train to the next city to go volunteer in a hospital’.
(to be continued)
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wow.
Serious reconciliation happened. And happening.
(was questioning everything. paralyzed by doubt. view blocked. wanted to weep. then determination rose, and now i see again my three business ideas. feel like, if there’s a barrier, then learn the skill, pass the test, make the strategy to get through it! it’s just another step taking me closer. if i can’t be stopped, then success is inevitable. it’s just a matter of time.)
Something tells me this is just the beginning. Better start getting comfortable with this shit.
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Similar stuff happening to me. It switches on and off, sometimes I am extremely confident, sometimes I think “Who am I kidding here?”
Have you felt any sensations additionally to that?
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You mean have I felt any sensations similar to what you describe?
For sure!
Let’s get through this, @anon3072973!
Channel our favorite Navy Seals, and march the fuck through the storm.
It’s okay to cry. It’s even okay to fall to your knees. But then stand back up, and keep on marching!
(heh. Tough talk for now. gods help me.)
Let’s go!
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