Roy: Hi everyone that reads this. I hope things are going well with you. I just wanted to add a quick update to this journal. I’ve been feeling good for most of the time lately.
The problem I was trying to resolve was the fact that I thought too much about myself all the time. These thoughts were mostly about the future, so they were basically just worrying about the future. It’s hard to experience the present moment when you are lost in thoughts…
I realized that most people in this forum had past experiences with spirituality and found out it was not the answer, but maybe it was a necessary step for them in the journey. I always dismissed in my life everything that was about spiritual experiences, but this time I ended up doing some very basic meditation for the first time in my life. Just sitting and seeing what happens, and it seems the problem is the lack of attention. After a month I finally internalized what I think people mean by “you are not your thoughts”. I’m not my thoughts in the sense that I don’t seem to consciously create them. They appear out of the blue and there’s nothing I have to do about it. And by internalizing this now I know I don’t need to engage with them. They show up and… here they are… and then I can pay attention to them and let them go. This not only gives me a lot of peace and relief but my bad moods now also start and end a lot quicker. Because these negative feelings seem to always be a consequence of these thoughts, which I now am able to dismiss. I can’t prevent them from showing up, but I don’t have to entertain them. So I still feel anger, fear, etc. but I return to a state of feeling good and in peace more quickly.
Hi Roy,
Welcome back.
Because you decided to try out spirituality and now believe that “because these negative feelings seem to always be a consequence of these thoughts” – let me acquaint you with some fact which perhaps spirituality (which has a history of 3000-5000 years) has not yet taken on board –
• [Richard]: This seat-of-the-emotions ‘soul-self’ or ‘spirit-self’ – an instinctual ‘self’ born of an amorphous affective ‘presence’ in utero, an inchoate intuitive ‘being’ in vivo, which the genetically endowed instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) instinctively form themselves into just as, analogously, a vortex or eddy forming itself vortically as whirling air or swirling water does – is not to be confused with the ego-self (an affective-cum-cognitive entity).
The ego-self arises out of the ‘soul-self’ or ‘spirit-self’, somewhere around age two, as the doer of all affective-psychic eventful experience (a.k.a. the ‘thinker’), as opposed to the beer of all affective-psychic experiencing (a.k.a. the ‘feeler’), and is, typically, experienceable as situate in the head, rather than in the heart region from whence it arose, immediately behind the forehead at a midpoint just above the eyes.
Furthermore, the ego-self is not the social identity-cum-cultural conscience and/or inwit as, by and large, not until approximately seven years of age does a child know the basic difference between what each particular society and culture regards as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, or ‘good’ and ‘bad’, or ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’, and the parents’ attitude reflects this (as is evidenced in a parent taking the child to task with an oft-repeated “you ought to know better by now”).
Thus the socio-cultural identity is overlaid, via socialisation and culturalisation, over both the ego-self and the soul-self – as an incorporeal cultural conscience or social guardian … [emphasis added] (Richard, the Formation and Persistence of Social Identity).
Just to be clear, this is not only something Richard says but it has been verified by scientific experiments by Joseph LeDoux, that sensory input comes first, thoughtless emotional response comes second (12 milliseconds after the sensory input) and thoughtful instinctual-emotional response comes third (24 milliseconds after sensory input). (Library, Topics, Brainschemes).
As such negative thoughts are obviously a consequence of negative feelings/instinctual passions.
Roy: One thing however is that during the day, I feel a lot better but it doesn’t feel like a PCE, because I’m “aware that I’m aware”, if that makes sense? I’m not absorbed in the moment – I consciously choose to be engaged with the moment. In PCEs everything happens automatically without me intervening. At the end of a PCE, it feels like I didn’t choose anything consciously — things happened without consciously thinking? I wonder if with time, it will become “natural” to be present in the moment without putting any conscious effort into it.
As usual I write this and don’t edit or sit on it too much so I can be a bit more honest with myself… (link)
So that you don’t confuse a PCE with other choiceless or thoughtless happenings, and thus miss out on the genuine experience of perfection – here is one description of a PCE –
Richard: A peak experience (PCE) is when everything is seen to be already perfect – it always has been and always will be – and that ‘I’, the self, have been standing in the way of the perfection being apparent. Normally the mind perceives through the senses and sorts the data received according to its predilection; but the mind itself remains unperceived … it is taken to be unknowable. In a PCE there is apperception operating. Apperception happens when the ‘who’ inside abdicates its throne and a pure awareness occurs. The PCE is as if one has eyes in the back of one’s head; there is a three hundred and sixty degree awareness and all is self-evidently clear. This is knowing by direct experience, unmediated by any ‘who’ whatsoever. One is able to see that the ‘who’ of one has been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential nature of this moment of being here becoming apparent. Here a solid and irrefutable native intelligence can operate freely because the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ are extirpated.
Then what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the world as-it-is (the actual world) by ‘my’ very presence. (Richard, List B, No. 20, 15 Feb 1998).
And here is another sent in today by a forum-member –
JesusCarlos: I remember a wonderful moment in particular during that PCE. My gaze was fixed on the horizon, far away, and beyond the horizon, towards what was no longer visible. A thought associated with infinity arose: what I really am has the capacity to see very far, further than what is considered normal. This is its true capacity. To be able to see beyond the present, towards the enormous and infinite of this vast universe. And with that gaze, to look again at the immediate: there was perfection. (link)
Cheers Vineeto