I know it’s a bit of a personal question, but can you elaborate on your ego diluting experience?
So before dilution I had this strong idea of who I was. I had this back story. There were certain things I do. And certain things I don't do. I used to judge everyone. I had a very high opinion about myself and used to constantly do or find things to validate that.
Now I don't have a story in which I live on. Each and every moment is intense. Sunsets are absolutely beautiful that you cannot describe through words. Spending time in nature is surreal. You do the right thing instead of doing things to validate your narrative. The dopamine hit I used to get when I used to do certain things is gone( i use to confuse these dopamine hits as me doing something right). This unlocks doing things more from Intuition and less from memory. There is less fear. There is more flow. More creativity. No regard for authority or beliefs. Everyone is equal. You want to know and not believe.
That said it's not all great stuff. You also have to work through some existential questions which you were previously isolated by the ego. Like mortality. Impermanence of everything. Aging body. What happens after death. Nature of awareness. Why I am aware. Is awareness eternal and it's implications etc etc.
Lately, I've had this intuition that we change by sort of tricking ourselves. The mechanism for that change is by settling on like this one kind of character, like someone out of a movie that’s playing in your head, and acting like that person. Then, as time passes, we simply forget who we were before we started acting and the only way we know how to act is as this one character.
You say you've lost your 'story' and your 'character', that you don't 'act' anymore.
But, it just feels like you've made another story and another character for you to fit into. You've got a new aesthetic, a new ideal, and your appreciating sunsets and nature is another thing you do because that's what the 'character' you try to fit would do.
And by acting like that person in your head would, you start to feel the same way too.
I think it's a lot more complicated than how I'm thinking. But I really do have a strong intuition that people feel the way they think the person they're acting like should feel, when physical feelings are non-factors.
Really, I don't actually know. Like, what we actually do and what we say we do; what we actually think and what we say we think. What we say we do and think feel like things we're saying to trick ourselves into doing and thinking those things. That's I guess the core of my intuition.
It's hard to describe, because you're still doing the act, just some part of you realizes the unimportance of it.
And some of that realization shines through in the act itself, in your character.
Because I think you are thinking this again through ego.
I don't have a thought that I appreciate sunset when I see one. The sunset looks magical. There is a shift in experience. Before watching sunset was like watching in 420p. Now it's 4k. The consciousness is heightened. You only see the sunset. You don't think of old memories of sunset. Or random events from past or thing you have to do. You just see the sunset.
It's not the commentary that changed from hey yet another sunset to I appreciate sunset.
The commentary is gone or minimised and the resolution is increased. And there are no memories from past to distract you from experiencing the sunset.
And this applies to most things. It's just nature has a lot of stuff that work well with heightened awareness. You don't want to spend your time with a heightened awareness and live next to a highway. That works against you.
Everyone typically has their imagined "edge", the thing that they believe makes them special and unique and superior in some way. Nerds look at jocks and say "they're athletic, but I am the smart one." Blue collar people look at rich people and say "They have a lot of money, but I know hard work and have principles." Everyone has some internal mental defense for why other people that are outperforming them aren't actually "better" than them because, hey, we're the main character!
It seems OP has just replaced one of these with a different version regarding ego shedding.
Currently I’m reading "La marche à la lumière – Entretiens du Bouddha"[1]. What is laughed at here precisely describe what the Buddha is making through the whole book. While apparently, just like Socrate, Buddha didn’t let any directly written legacy, it’s clear he has been attached to the notion of an egoless person discussing the topic with whoever would like to ask about it.
Now of course it doesn’t necessarily mean that the person laughed at went through some accomplishment. But whether they did or didn’t is not relevant. What matters here is can it be believed that some human accomplish an egoless experience of life and still continue to discuss with people who didn’t.
[1] https://www.babelio.com/livres/Shantideva-La-marchea-la-lumi...
Until you have the same experience, you will continue to doubt it in the exact way you currently are. And that's perfectly fine, and natural and still good.
It's like trying to describe a color in its actual raw experience, or describing red to a blind person. It cannot be put into words, only observed.
It's certainly a hard topic to express.
What else can it be, if not a part of the mind of a state of it?
It is a canvas of a thousand brush strokes. Each time you look it becomes a new color.
Also never claimed I don't have bad thoughts. I did say I suffer from a lot of existential questions. But yes. Bad thoughts about day to day issues have significantly been reduced.
The inner monologue have been lowered on volume. Previously it was at 100 now it's at 4 or 5.
Old memories from past don't show up to affect the current movement.
All this means a higher allocation of bandwidth in consciousness for current movement. There is nothing grandiose here
I still meditate. I still listen to teachers like Adyashanti. I think there is a lot of work remaining to be done.
I see this with some people and other animals. I can't speak. Sometimes I want to shy away because it's like seeing someone naked without them knowing they're being watched. I can see their souls. It's not every animal or even every person. I really strongly disagree that all people are equal. Everyone is different, everyone has a different path, and I feel like people are so vastly different that it's overwhelming at times.
I don't think of it in terms of ego. That's because, I think, there are different kinds of transcendence, and it's easy to think that up is only one direction.
There was a time when I felt unintelligent and incapable of great, technical things. So I kind of just did things that it seemed capable people did. I felt like people who are smart, capable, and rich now, hacked things when they were young and were rebellious and broke the rules and did whatever they wanted and put lots of effort into random interesting things because they were interesting.
So, because the end goal was attractive to me in a way, I tried to do those things too - maybe consciously, maybe not. I feel like that process made me different though. I have genuinely changed into someone far more capable technically, way more interested in super 'nerdy' things.
Anyway, I don't know what it means to think this through ego. I don't really get it.
But sunsets are nice - I like seeing them too. Yeah I suppose what I mean was that the commentary changed. Interesting that for you there's no commentary, I think I've felt like that before. Sometimes I feel like I just exist in a nice feeling - no words, nothing. Just experiencing. But that doesn't last very long, or it turns into something negative like boredom or something. Then I get up with a bad feeling lol
This is the central principle of human psychology and interpersonal behavior, IMO.
Kurt Vonnegut nailed it: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful about what we pretend to be”
That racist jerk? He’s probably not really a racist jerk, he’s just pretending to be one to fuck with people. Except! That is no different than “actually” being a racist jerk.
Same thing with compassion or anything else, including intelligence. When a stranger is helping you pick up stuff you dropped, or a coworker is reasoning thought a complicated problem, it doesn’t matter if they’re “just pretending”. That is who they are, to them and to you.
My personal formulation has evolved into a small riff on Vonnegut’s insight: I think that our entire personality is simply the sum of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Change the stories you tell yourself, change yourself.
One thing I feel is often overlooked in this conversation are our physical urges, specifically the ones motivating us to action that is different from what the 'character' we want to be would do. That adds noise to our personality, and widens the gap between what we are and what we want to be.
There’s also an interesting intersection with stories. I know when I’m pretty hungry my chain of thought is basically “I’ve got enough extra pounds I’m not going to starve, I’ll eat eventually, it’s not that important”. A close friend often tells me she has to eat as soon as she’s hungry or else she gets irritable and distracted. I sometimes wonder if that’s prescriptive or descriptive.
I think most people are familiar with the feeling of being in a 'flow state'. Contrasting this with times when we indulge in a stream of 'self referential thought' is, in my opinion, a good way to grasp how ego influences our state of mind.
Try to imagine being in a flow state without actually doing anything other than observing. It's something I experience at times when I'm in a beautiful natural environment. I try to bring this feeling into my everyday life.
I think you explained this very clearly and beautifully. I think I know exactly what you mean.
I used to find a lot of comfort in being able to get myself into this state of mind easily, usually, like you, by just calmly observing natural surroundings in environments that are special to me.
That was in my late teens and early twenties. I'm now about 15 years older and find it so much harder.
I think it has something to do with living a hectic adult life, and I really hope I'll be able to find back to that some time.
Part of me really believes that to experience life in this way is what we're here for and modern life's way of distancing us from this experience is something we need to be very wary of.
I agree that modern life often doesn't seem amenable to it. However, something I've noticed about this state of mind is that it's not dissimilar to an overwhelming sense of contentment or satisfaction.
I think that deep down, contentment - and not necessarily happiness - is something we all strive for. With that in mind, I've formulated an approach to life that I try to remind myself of regularly. It could be summed up as "meaning in life is found through doing the things that are necessary for life". It can be liberating at times. Mundane things like washing dishes or cooking which I might otherwise put off in favour of some hedonistic activity are given more priority because I recognise that they are an important source of contentment.
A lot of modern life is designed to instill a sense of discontent. Advertising and social media are obvious examples. These things are best avoided. Even the things that provide convenience work against contentment because they preclude you from doing the things that are the source of that contentment.
When I feel more content, it is easier to slip into that state you might call 'silent awareness'. Interestingly, this is very much how I feel immediately after meditation.
I think this is a case of words are hard.
OP was asked to elaborate, and tried to put into words a state of being. It wasn't as another story of self, the previous state of having stories of the self was in the original post. This was an attempt to describe something, I am not sure language is nuanced enough to grasp it, or encompass it. I personally experience it as "inner peace" or "acceptance", very close to the core essence of philosophical Daoism or Epictetus' Stocism; I've never been able to put it into words but as another comment says:
>> The problem is that state cannot be expressed in words or cognition, because it isn't part of your mind.
Which I find to be a great way to express it.
It doesn't mean being a transcended guru or anything; for me, the more I work on myself the more I find things that are leftover relics given to me, and I work on figuring out if that idea or values are actually mine or someone else's, and if mine, are they outdated (why did something trigger it) what needs to be reworked, does it need to be reworked. If it is someone else's, do I want to keep it or discard it. Thats one of the more actionable ways I try and explain the years of inner work to get here (by here it sometimes feels like the starting line, not the finish). One day while hiking I stopped in my tracks as it hit me that I could not think of the last time I berated myself (this use to consume a lot of my time, but no one ever knew it), or was triggered into aggressivly defending my ego or tried to be something other than myself for others. I think we are told to build the outer self (protect and hide the vulenable inner), for me that was backwards, build the inner, "know thyself", and you don't need to build an outer protective shell. It's a much more "authentic" self experience, one I don't have to think about.
Of course there are bad days and negative thoughts, but compared to what it was..., its rainbows and butterflies with a couple passing rain clouds now.
We know this kind of thing happens with history - certain people become famous while others drift into obscurity, things get remembered incorrectly etc - but it also happens with your own memory of your own life. The only real way around it is keeping a journal.
Further posts clearly portray what one might call "McBuddhism", complete with meditation and the new age "don't judge others!". Judgement is an animal mechanism, it's your subconscious quickly putting people in boxes to ascertain their intentions and reliability then your conscious refining that rough estimate. You can't "turn off" judgement, only keep it inside.
Once again, people being misled around by emotions and tone. Judgement is a tool, it's not good or bad by itself, what matters is its accuracy, i.e. truth.
Our self awareness - in theory - allows us to change our habits, or at least temper them.
So my experience of this is that my default animal instinct is to automatically judge people in a negatively biased way (which I think may come from our evolutionary instinct to try to predict danger - or if not, perhaps something encoded in me specifically at an early age) but I have tried to adopt the conscious habit of overriding this initial instinct with “mediating thoughts” like “what do I really know about this person?” and “how would I behave if I were in their position”.
I also try to simply remember my discovered self-knowledge that my instinctive emotional response - pre-thought - is to be distrustful or overly negative. Just keeping that in mind helps automatically attack the judgemental thoughts as they come up. I guess it helps me recognise the pattern and not trust those thoughts.
I’m quite convinced that I’ve done this for long enough now that my “habit” of automatically judging people has lessened over time.
The instinct is still there, but better cognitive habits have been overlaid on top.
That said, I still feel I’m about 5-10% along in terms of progress compared to where I’d want to be! (And in reality there is no “end” to this work).
My outward behaviour towards others is generally “good” - I think - but I find myself often frustrated at the instinctive negativity in my head which I have to proactively counter - each and every time.
And because I’m human, I sometimes (ok… often) forget to.
For a lot of people this is triggered by something unexpected happening in life which breaks the narrative one has been building their entire life.
You can search for Spiritual Awakening and find a lot of examples. Buddha at the Gas Pump is a great podcast to listen to for such experiences.
As I sad it's not all great all the times. There were a lot of times in which I wished I could go back to the old mode. Though I think the overall change was for the better.
Since both got lowered in intensity , I now have to rely on Intuition to make decisions. And not recollection of what I did previously. Which makes things new. And sometimes give an almost child like curiosity. Even doing something as simple as going for a walk is amazing. Since the mind is not constantly trying to predict what is next and characterising things as I have seen this or not. You notice things you have never noticed before. The awareness is heightened.
It's infuriating that you write all that about how enlightened you supposedly are, then conceal the manner by which you got there.
This just feels like trolling or a creative writing exercise.
Instead of demanding answers it's possible to curiously examine where your experiences might be lacking, because then you might figure out where to look.
Many can experience significant stress or trauma naturally leading to heightened physiological and psychological awareness, it's not a stretch to imagine that could give them a better understanding how the self/ego reacts to the world because that is the source of their pain.
This archetype exists many different forms be they drug induced, "enlightenment", kundalini awakening or seen in Buddhist monks, kung fu masters, famous scientists, philosophers, and historical figures.
If you are genuinely curious there is a British Buddhist monk named Ajahn Brahm[1]. He will be able to communicate the ideas in a western style. It just a starting point though as it has to be experienced first hand either with significant life events or through someone who has already experienced it.
There's nothing sad about it and, judging by GP's writing, the concern isn't privacy.
I didn't ask for your opinions on how GP supposedly got this experience, I asked GP. His post comes off as outright fiction or condescending virtue signaling. So does yours, and nobody even asked for your input.
I was naive to do something like that without enough research.
Also as Jung said unearned wisdom can be dangerous.
The comment above yours got it pretty close though.
Also I think if I disclose more I think it's possible someone else who knew me can associate this account with me.
You are absolutely insufferable. This all reeks of ego.
Just don't bring it up if you're not willing to openly discuss how you got there. Not that I believe you, anyway, of course.
Motorcycling home in the morning, I wondered if I was the last human on earth... until I saw someone 30 minutes into the ride.
A great starting point can be Shinzen Young's The Science of Enlightenment and/or Sam Harris's Waking Up.
After that, you might look into Why Buddhism is True or The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali or Mindfulness in Plain English.
The Healthy Gamer Youtube channel also has great videos going into this and how they tie into psychology.
David Chapman's https://meaningness.com/ is also pretty great.
> Needing an answer is an attachment. Attachments causes suffering.
"Radical acceptance : Embracing your life with the heart of a Buddha"[0] may be of interest to you. It won't answer the existential questions for you or get real deep into philosophy or Buddhism; it does have actionable exercises to try and meditation practices/instructions attached to the different concepts covered. At times it will use what I would call woo-woo language, overly fluffy "love & light" phrases--so if that bothers you, simply discard it and take the practical nuggets that are also included. It is more a book to help "come to terms" with (life, basically) and in turn helps (or may help) resolve some of the heaviness in an unexpected/indirect way.
[0] https://search.worldcat.org/title/57351231 (2004 version, version I read)
https://search.worldcat.org/title/1400088877 (2023 version)
There is also a lecture series on Advaita Vedanta on YouTube. That helped as well.
https://youtu.be/gEd22QZF_mM?si=iDIXY1oUhOC9PaHm
Meditation helped a lot.
Spending time in nature a lot helped. Camping under trees helped..
Also Jordan Peterson's biblical lectures also surprisingly helped even though I was not brought up Christian. I know he is divisive but the lectures are not political.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE4zj0nQN08ewq9dl1e8MCz3Y...
Also just praying and believing in a higher power helped.
Having been raised Catholic, then rejecting Christianity upon being confirmed in the Church and surveying the world's religions, I've found the Buddhist tradition to give the most satisfying and complete answers about these questions, with a minimum of contradiction. In truth Buddhism is less a religion and more a philosophy, which resonates with my 21st century sceptical self.
All that to say, I wouldn't put too much stock in 'the newest' religion, but rather consider that some group of people answered these questions when they were first considered, long ago. To my mind the Buddhists accomplished that feat.
I don't believe Buddhism has an equivalent to the holy book, or quite as many prescriptions in the first place, so it's much easier to adapt.
You would think that, except that an "extremist" Christian who only interpreted the New Testament literally would be a forgiving, loving, peaceful ascetic.
However, I don't know Islam very well! Do you have any suggestions for where to start? A specific translator? Thanks in advance.
Please note that if you ever leave Islam, you are considered an apostate (similar to Christianity, but to a much more severe degree I'd say) and about 10% of the Islamic population are literalists and would consider the penalty for leaving, death.
I'd look into meditation. I discovered something called "Simple Meditation" created by Babaji (the O.G. Babaji, not the copycats), and it's the only time I've ever had an experience I would call "spiritual". I have an audio I produced of it here: https://soundcloud.com/peter-marreck-fb/simple-meditation-ai...
My cultural background originates in the east. But I do not have any familiarity with Islam or with the Russian church, and I want to remedy that.
Some of my interest is aesthetic / intellectual - the bible and the Bhavagad Gita are beautiful! Long told poetry. But I'm also just curious, it's a blank spot in my understanding.
I don't have a problem editing out contradictions in the text, most of old religious books are mixed with that. But you're right, I wince when coming across discrimination based on group. The Bhavagad Gita dwells too much on caste.
One of my favorite classes in college was actually Religious Studies 101. (Mods who are already side-eye'ing me, take note.)
I hesitate to joke that the vast majority of moderate Muslims also do not have any familiarity with Islam (similar to Catholics and the Bible!). I quoted some questionable Quran to a Muslim woman on Twitter and she said "don't be silly, only apostates, atheists and extremists quote our books back at us", which I found to be a fairly curious statement, maybe even an unintended confession...
There are Russian Orthodox folks in my extended family, the whole christian-schism thing just screams to me that when 2 people disagree on a holy book, there is no choice but to split since you cannot argue rationally about it (with the assumption that rational argument brings people into the same viewpoint, which is of course often a stretch)
Here is another curious thing I noticed- If you ask ChatGPT about the "controversial" Islamic passages, it will initially refuse to. (It will NOT treat the Old or New Testament in this way, by the way, or any other holy book.) If you press it and say that you need them for an academic or high-level discussion reason and not to (mis?)represent it, it will cave, but the conversation will get flagged and you won't be able to re-share it. Here is an example of that https://x.com/pmarreck/status/1855353599880056896 where I had to export the whole thing to PDF since sharing got disabled.
"No regard for authority or beliefs. Everyone is equal. You want to know and not believe." I am often amazed / in awe of the internet for leading me toward this place. My mind and equanimity opened much further as a result of the knowledge share that occurred over the last 20 years. Much less judgment, more curiosity. Paradoxically this has led me to revisit areas, like religion, that are often dismissed as irrational.
Although, I try not to use words like that because I am still working through it.
How are you working through: why I am aware?
There is a line in Upanishads that say something like why even the god doesn't know why it was created.
(I mean this partly in jest of course)
Your new enlightenment sounds like the product of a productive drug trip (no judgment implied whatsoever, possibly some jealousy though)
Thus, only death of others is a relevant topic of concern, but taking care of them while they are alive is certainly far more important.
Impermanence of everything "only" applies to contingent matters. So statements like "everything (that happens through some contingency) is impermanent" always match some absolute truth. So the apparent contradiction that "if everything is impermanent was true, so should be impermanence and then not everything would be impermanent", is only indeed apparent.
After all, it means that the universe emerges upon birth and disappears upon death, aka the classic Boltzmann brain.
Meanwhile for anyone who believes in the continued existence of the universe after death is going to need an afterlife. Sure, it might not be the classic Christian afterlife that so many people have in mind. It could be even as simple as having the experience of a corpse, but an afterlife nevertheless.
https://realization.org/p/ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakr...
From an exterior point of view, your behavior seems potentially dangerous, like a disinhibited illuminated drunk that any people or situation can easily point any way as they see fit.
How do you make sure you don't become an "awful" person for those around you ?