What the f**k was I thinking?

The words “what the fuck was I thinking” came up in a conversation I had with a friend the other day. My mate just came out with it in a conversation we were having and I exclaimed “that is gold mate that is one of the ultimate realisations!”

Allow me to explain...

Basically upon liberation, this is the realisation. It is simply the seeing of reality for the first time. Then it dawns on you how ridiculous everything seems. All that time you spent trying to crack no self, this is the realisation that cracks you up. It is literally just that “what the fuck was I thinking” thought and I laughed out loudly to myself.

You see all your life, your reality has been based on a flawed assumption, that there is actually some kind of separate agent responsible for producing thought. When seen as how ridiculous it actually is, when you bother to take the time to look, then you have witnessed the core mechanism responsible for dysfunctional thought. Then you can not take it seriously any more.

The mind carries on as it always did but there is just literally the seeing of the illusory nature of  the reference to "I" in conscious thought. There is no separation from the experience of existence, that is all there is in reality. There is a body experiencing existence, that is it. You are not your body or mind, you are not awareness, there literally is no you in real life. It does not exist in objective reality and in the subjective realm it is wholly illusory. There categorically is no you whatsoever.

You can dress up this realisation as true self or the realisation that “you” is something other than the many labels of the brain throws up such as “I am a teacher”, “I am love” or “I am awareness”.

There is no entity there whatsoever. There is just a life living itself as it always has done from the moment you were born. That is it. That is all there ever was.

Now you can live your life free from the burden of maintaining a façade of an illusory self that is never satisfied with its accomplishments, crumbles when one of its identifications is shown to be false and is constantly drawing its image from the feedback of other people.

It could be that you have been chasing your tail all your life, looking for answers that you have never found. Maybe you are looking for the answer to:

Who am I really, or what is the meaning of life?

You don't know who you are if you are honest with yourself, you may say “I am a mechanic” or “a father” but what really does that mean? 

How does that differentiate you from the countless mechanics and fathers there are throughout the world. You can keep looking at all these labels but that is all they are, labels that a false sense of self is identified with. You can draw as many labels as you like but at the end you will just have a list of meaningless labels that will not differentiate you from any other person alone.

Maybe you try and find the meaning in everything, after all we are human, we are driven to find a purpose for our lives and a purpose for everything as we operate on this chunk level cause and effect programming, which is as we know, illusory anyway.

I can tell you the two answers to these questions.

1. A fictional reference in subjective thought
2. What is the meaning of a carrot?

Does not seem so profound really but seeing with clarity, it becomes so obvious (well the carrot reference was to make you think and you will probably conclude that a carrot has no meaning it just IS. There is your answer). There are many other questions to be answered but these ones no longer pose an existential problem. More answers leads to more questions, more understanding of the nature of reality and some beautiful discoveries. Life is a gift, this experience of existence is a precious gift. Time to drop this nonsense idea of a self and get with reality. That is all this is, the pure unadulterated truth, that there is no separation from thought, experience and existence.

Look and see if there is any truth in the statement there is no you, you are an illusion. Then you will have your ultimate realisation of “What the fuck was I thinking?”

Advaitan conspiracy

This was an extract of a FB discussion, in the RT days, about the Advaita mob who proliferate many spiritual internet forums and the like. I originally masqueraded as 'Chan' on Ruthless Truth before I later became known as ghostvirus.
At the time this was written my understanding was minimal and full of assumptions, as it was before I realised that Advaitan conceptions of true self and buddhist conceptions of no self are pointers to the same thing. 

Its not really fair to criticise another way of going about the same thing, however, the way I saw things at the time was that these folk held steadfast to their beliefs and they saw what we were doing as contradictory to their religion. When they were preaching "I am awareness" we saw it as identifying with the self through the back door, and they were also going great lengths to sabotage the work of RT. 
Like ourselves, there were many spirtualists who were guilty of being judgmental, and they saw this Buddhist approach we were using as dangerous, and confounding their religious doctrine. 

Some however, were trying to be helpful and point out our dogmatism at RT, as they recognised that we had discovered the key to triggering the insight of Anatta. There was a war of words during this period of time which I can hardly be proud of, but we certainly exposed a lot of charlatans and bullshitters. 
Conversely, we were also highlighted for our dogmatism, as we were genuinely convinced at this time that we had discovered how to trigger enlightenment lol! This post was a lack of understanding on the part of RT members and myself in part, however, there certainly is a large section of this spiritual community who are completely lost in their beliefs and are making no progress. 

There are a lot of deceitful charlatans in this community as well as some brilliant enquirers and visionaries. The only way to be sure of what anybody tells you, is that it has a referent in direct experience. 
Until such time as you have discovered this, you need to be agnostic until it is demonstrated both logically and experientially  - Gh0$T 2014 

Re: Advaita Spirituality: Swapping out the "I am"

by danmc » Thu May 19, 2011 1:21 am

Thanks chan, that was very well put.

I hope you don't think I was promoting Advaita belief, I was actually criticizing it. (Maybe I misunderstood your last couple of lines.)

I myself went from believing Zen to believing Advaita and then after lingering around here reading posts came to see the bullshit and misunderstandings in both.

Advaita talks about "no self" but it is also filled with a lot of "you are Awareness"..."you are Love"..."you are Presence" jibberish that a lot of people go for becaue Awareness, Love, and Presence sound a whole lot better than a decaying body and crazy mind that will one day perish. Also, the belief in "no self" simply becomes a belief in a self believing in "no self."

You mention "fullyrealized" and his post and that's an example I think of other people coming from this perspective.

danmc

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Re: Advaita Spirituality: Swapping out the "I am"

by viv » Thu May 19, 2011 2:01 am

Nice rant, Chan. Couldn't agree more.

And Dan: THIS >> "Advaita talks about "no self" but it is also filled with a lot of "you are Awareness"..."you are Love"..."you are Presence" jibberish that a lot of people go for becaue Awareness, Love, and Presence sound a whole lot better than a decaying body and crazy mind that will one day perish. Also, the belief in "no self" simply becomes a belief in a self believing in "no self."

Advaita and neo-advaita and non-duality have become the new Zen Buddhism and Taoism. They don't worship a God, they worship no-self. As though no-self was a 'something' to be attained.

Crayzeeeeeee.

If you're bound, I'm not free.

http://v4vivality.blogspot.com

viv

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Re: Advaita Spirituality: Swapping out the "I am"

by chan » Thu May 19, 2011 9:32 pm

@ dan, No I didn't think that, it just struck the right chord for me to stoke the fire.

Yeah this labelling mallarkey is silly, I certainly think we are justified in questioning advita as it just a distraction from reality that they are offering, it does not tally with reality at all. These sages are just filling peoples heads with shit. Whilst I appreciate they are dismantling their conditioning and beliefs as they go, I think that they are swapping one set of corrupted beliefs for another - not totally pointless but a long winded methodology never the less. Why do you need devotion and karma to realise the truth? These are nothing more than beliefs that are second hand knowledge and not acquired first hand in reality. I suppose when you meditate, it feels right, yeah?

It is simply life living itself, no you it is an illusion.

Why not move beyond the belief system and look at truth, then dismantle the unwanted conditioning?

Well... this is outside their belief structure so they don't entertain it. If RT is against one thing it is belief.

Some of their weak ass shit just makes me sick, it really does, I am sure if they read this they will have some kind of belief like "HUHHHH! If he is enlightened how can he feel sick at the thought of that, he can't be enlightened" and there goes the circular logic process as they believe in this stupid I am love, I am awareness,

"If I am love I can never feel anger"... "oh why do I feel anger, never mind lets like totally meditate for 3 hours and chant I am peace and love This is actually denying what IS in reality, hippie type fucking bullshit.

Newsflash anger is a useful emotion for an organism

You throw insults at them, to engage them and they defend it with the circular logic they learn from their scriptures. "Hostility is weakness" and that usual religious shit where they have an answer for everything, rather than facing up to the truth. Each time it is some quote, every time they are faced with questions, you hear scriptures as their reply. Yes, it is ideology we are actually dealing with in many ways, the parallels are there in christianity. Argue with a priest and he will quote scripture at you all day, until you get to a belief of "the truth is the bible, the bible is the truth". However this circular logic is just a stasis field for belief. The same ideas of universal truth, wrapped in a load of BS.

To be fair to advita at least they are not quite so mired in shit and there may be an end result. Also they are not on a conversion mission and are not trying to scare people in to submitting to some mickey mouse idea of a god in the sky, that is also in your head, ready to pass judgement at the end of your life for every little mistake you made... Give them some credit.

Neither religions though, have the balls to look at this universal truth on face value, as it is contrary to their belief system.

You may say "I am love" but there is no love, it is a biochemical reaction, this has been proven years ago. It is an evolutionary function for gestation and child rearing. Call me a nihilist if you like but nihilism fails miserably as a premise, as it assumes that there is a judgment of what has inherent value in the first place.

Is my life empty?

No because nothing has any value anyway it just is in existence, that in itself IS the actual value of everything.

Love is a concept, a feeling arises that is labelled love and an organism enjoys this but it is a neurochemical reward system. Sorry to piss on your chips but you are really saying I am the biochemical reward system of the human brain. How can "you" be a bunch of chemicals, where does one have the threshold of this ownership of a chemical reaction.

You may say I am deluded, I too have silly beliefs still but one thing I can see, is reality with open eyes and honesty in terms of this concept of self.

If we take away the veil of "I am love" it is nothing more than utter dishonesty with yourself.

GRRRRRR... Fuckers, fuck your beliefs...

Its time for some reality

Things "you" can not do. No.1 Stop and start thought

Looking at the process of mental causation, one of the areas you should investigate in your endeavours - Gh0$T 2014

First of all how do you actually go about the procedure of starting thinking?

I'm deadly serious, how do you start a chain of thought? This is something that you have very likely never bothered to consider before. In order to control thought, there must be some way in which you interact with thought. How exactly do you do it? Experience tells us that thoughts just happen, they naturally occur. What is it that enables us to start and stop thoughts, when they just arise from moment to moment? In other words, there seems to be no quantifiable set procedure, or way in which we can start our thoughts.

Our internal dialogue seems to be a constant flowing stream where new ideas or patterns appear and from these thoughts, new patterns are formed and often there is thought about thought. We could sit there all day lost in thought, it is self sustaining. Really it is just an ever changing flux, thoughts just seem to come and go and there is no real procedure involved in starting thinking. As I write this, the thought arises about what to write about and then I begin writing it. The thoughts that occur are mostly relevant to what I am writing, how to word it and so forth. In other words, attention is honed in on the task at hand. Occasionally, it wanders on to other topics and there are distractions that do occur but for the most part, my attention is focussed on this task.

Now we all know about our attention drifting. I am sure that you can remember a time when you have walked or driven home and got so lost in a day dream, that you actually forget about what you are doing and suddenly, the realisation occurs that you are walking or driving and you had better concentrate on where you are going! This, or something in a similar capacity has happened to everyone at some point in their lives. Our awareness is dominated by whatever is important, in the moment. This can even be to the point where we switch off from an important task and focus on the thoughts themselves. There is some degree of the body being on “autopilot” being involved here.

To say our attention can wander would be an understatement

When we think about ending thoughts, is there a procedure that we can use? We have all had the experience of not being able to stop thinking about someone or something in the past. Even when we decide that we should stop thinking about something, we know it is impossible to get it out of our heads, such is the anticipation, suspense, or drama, be this positive or negative. If it is some basic task, such as making a cup of tea, we know that there is no effort in stopping thinking about such a menial task, once completed.

Of course it carries no real significance in life and we often take something basic like this for granted. However, it is worth noting that in either case, there is no stop message that is being triggered. Either the thought is no longer of significance because the need has been met or, if the need has not been met, then the brain keeps it in awareness. This would make sense, as we are drawn towards goals as such. A goal seeking machine would be required to keep a goal in awareness in order to motivate itself. We may get distracted temporarily but sure enough, the thought will pop up again. Sometimes these thoughts can even be about something that is not relevant to making our lives better and is not a goal, but is something that impacted us be it a new film, the mortified faces of those affected by a natural disaster on the television or something totally random, like a picture of a gerbil riding a miniature unicycle.

Either way, there is no stop/ start mechanism for the whole equation. This is probably what makes us so different from animals, the fact that we have thoughts that are not entirely orientated towards survival. Whilst quite a few animals may have basic social cognitions in some part, it would appear that they do not have the capacity for mulling over thoughts about thoughts in the same way that we do.

So, to stop and start thought seems to be a little beyond our capabilities for the most part. It would probably be best to say that thought doesn't really stop or start, it just continues in a endless stream. It subsides at times and we can even try and focus on the present moment to shut thought out for a while but eventually, thought appears again. We can observe in reality that we can not definitively turn on and turn off our stream of internal dialogue at will, there is no control over that aspect of thinking. If you are responsible for thinking, then how can this be?

Could it be that there is no thinker and the idea of “you” is only illusory?

You don't exist, really there is no you it is an illusion

Test it out and see if it is really true in real life

What is real?

A confused rehash of the post "Mr Whippy's Cannibal Adventure". I reposted it because I was getting hundreds of hits every week and thought it was pertinent to helping people. Unfortunately, it was still a word salad! - Gh0$T 2014

First of all, we know there is existence.

This is one thing we can be certain of. There is a body that is writing these words right now and I'm pretty certain that there is a body reading these words on a screen, although I could never be certain, without experiencing it for myself. I can picture someone reading this but I could never be sure they were experiencing it. For all I knew, the whole world is an illusion being fed in to the neurons of my brain that was in a stasis jar! I can not know anything for sure apart from the fact that everything I perceive exists in some capacity. Imagine if you were sat in front of me reading this, all there would be from my point of view, is my experience of watching you read the words, I can never know your experience.

Now read back the preceding paragraph again, to make sure you get it. You will see from this, the nature of the experience each of us has in existence, actually leads us to believe in a division, or separation in reality. Reality is divided in to your experience and my experience of this situation. Your experience is the reading of the blog and wondering what I am thinking about you, while I watch you. My experience, is of watching you read the blog and wondering what you think about it. With this division in reality labelled “you” and “I”, it completely makes sense for us to make this distinction and label our experiences as separate.

So whilst I could never say our experience is the same (of course it most certainly is not), we do have to make some kind of distinction and the system of language we have in place, is perfect for this, we use pronouns to denote a subject. But... in doing so, we have actually created a paradox.

How can we divide reality?

It is actually indivisible, it contains everything that exists. Even if we cannot be aware of certain things in our experience, they exist in reality, it is simply we are unaware of them. God could be a good example of this. Suppose it did exist, no one has ever seen it and so whilst it could be imagined that it exists, it would still have to be contained in reality.

No one has seen heaven on the way to outer space

but... if it did exist, we would be oblivious to its existence. It would still have to exist in reality though. There may be many things we are not aware of but they are all contained within reality. We can go the opposite way and look at things that we are aware of within our reality. Virtual reality or cyberspace are good examples, they are contained within reality.

Where is the division in reality for these things to exist in?

They exist in the digital realm and without transistors, there would not be a digital realm. But there is no division in reality, the digital realm simply exists within our reality, there is no division at any point. Cyberspace is a part of reality, virtual reality is not a separate reality, it just exists within reality. There is not a reality within a reality, we can only have one reality. We could perhaps make up a new word and call them “meta-realities” but in reality (sorry couldn't help myself) they are not realities, they are just objects that exist within reality. They are not separate in any way from reality, we are only making a simple distinction between objects in reality.

Suppose we had a child who was plugged in to “the matrix” from birth. It would be living in its meta-reality but it would be contained within reality and there would just be the rest of reality it was totally unaware of. Therefore, there never can be a division at any point in reality.

This is an impossibility

Each of our experiences is contained within reality, there are only things that we are aware or unaware of, within reality. In other words, the only limitation on a meta-reality is imposed by that perception within a meta-reality. Or to put it even more simply, the confines of a meta-reality, are simply that, which we are not aware of in this reality.

We can delve in to quantum physics if you like and we can go with the multi-verse theory, where every story has played out from every decision ever made by every creature in the universe and these are all being played out in their own universe. Even if this was true, then each parallel universe would have to exist within reality. There would be no division in reality, as they would all co exist in the same reality. In each universe we would simply be unaware of the other universes but they would all HAVE to be contained within reality, or they would not be real. We can go with string theory which stipulates 10 (or 11 for M - field theory) dimensions in reality but we are only aware of four of these. These other dimensions would still have to be contained within reality, even though we were unaware of these other dimensions.

Reality therefore is all encompassing, all that is in existence., exists inside reality.

How does this relate to our experience? Basically our experience must also be contained in reality, yours, mine, our mothers, everybody's is contained inside of reality. We cannot divide it because it is all encompassing. Nothing can exist outside of reality. If it is not in reality then it can not be possible for it exist, by the very nature of reality. It is either real, or unreal, it either exists or it does not exist at all. It is really that simple. Luckily for us, this IS black and white, there are no shades of grey involved in this equation, we have found some pieces of universal truth.

Nothing can exist outside of reality

Reality can not be divided

All experience is contained within reality

But wait, we are missing one thing we have already discussed, from this list and that is that each of us has our own experience. I am not going to include that on the list for the simple reason being that it is not universal truth. I am sure there is another person experiencing life in the world but without ever experiencing your point of view I can never be 100% sure.

I can go back to the brain in the jar example or use the matrix metaphor again. I could never 100% prove that there is anything other than my direct experience because I could never know what is not my own direct experience.

For all I know, I could be a brain in a jar, that is projected in to a prime time comedy TV show on an alien world called “Humans”. I'm certainly convinced this is not the case (99.99999% recurring) but I could never know this for certain, because anything outside of my direct experience is not knowable to me at all.

Another simpler example of this, is pain. I can imagine your pain but never experience it. I can only experience my own pain but not yours.

Whoa!!! Don't worry this is not rocket science, this is reality we are dealing with so luckily we can not break the boundaries as discussed.

You could ask the question “What about the earth then, can you be sure that exists, can you be sure the sun rises and sets?”.

Well in my experience it exits, even if it was an illusion projected on to the brain in the jar, it would be a meta-reality, which would be contained in reality anyway. The experience exists, the experience of an illusion exists in reality. It is in existence because it is being experienced, that is as far as we can really boil it down: There is “the experience of” that, which “exists in reality”, whether illusory or not. Illusions are actually “real illusions” that are contained inside of reality.

So to some degree we all have a meta-reality but it is all contained within reality. We cannot have our own reality and there are always things that we are unaware of. But wait a minute. Very often, we talk as if we have our own reality, how can this be?

We cannot have our own reality this is impossible. Not one of us can own reality. To own reality means to be separate from reality. This is impossible. Ok then, maybe we can have the thoughts and feelings that occur. In order for you to have a thought, you must be separate from thought or else you cannot have a thought. It is the same as saying I'm having an ice cream. Either you are the ice cream or you are having the ice cream. If your having ice cream, you can not be the ice cream unless you were called Mr Whippy and decided to chew your arm off.

So what is the deal with thought?

Can you have thought? Well if you are a body, the body can not have a thought. Let us say this again, a body can not have thought. Thought occurs within the body, the body does not have thoughts, how can the body be separate from thought? Can thought be separate from the body, or by necessity does there have to be a body present for thought to occur? Does there have to be neurons firing in the brain in order for thought to occur? It is physically impossible for human thought to occur, without a human body, does that make sense?

What about “you?”

Do you have thoughts and feelings? Can you be separate from them to have them? Or do they just arise? We need to think about this one. In order for you to have thoughts, you must be separate from the body. If you are an entity who is watching the 3d visual movie with stereo sound, kinaesthetic sensors, smell and taste sensors, you are having the experience of life. You are observing and interacting with reality through your thoughts, feelings and the sense data. You totally own this experience, the past is yours, the future is yours, everything that you can experience is yours right?

Where do you put yourself in the equation?

Can you be separate from thought or experience? Well if you want to have thought or experience then you must be separate from it.

If thought occurs in the body, that would mean you have to be separate from your body. How could this be, how can there be any separation from the body?

If experience occurs in reality, to have experience means that you have to be separate from it. How could this be, how can there be any separation from reality?

By the nature of what we are dealing with, an external observer has to be separate from reality to have the experience. What is separate from reality?

Are “you” separate from reality?

So you have two options, you could claim that you were not a part of reality, or would it actually be more realistically feasible to say that there is no you and it is only an illusion of self that you have been tricked in to thinking is a real thing?