Author of The Coven series. I also conjectured that time-travel was not possible in a stable universe and made a tiny, futile attempt to demonstrate this. All of my writing is human generated and human edited.
Bridgett Kay
Karma: 513
I would agree with you if I’d believed the coach as soon as she told me. I honestly didn’t believe her- it didn’t feel like rationalizing or pretending. It’s possible I’m misremembering that detail, but at the time that’s what shook me up so much.
Because of nostalgia
I’m not sure there are specifically 4 layers, but I do assume my mind is finite. There are probably many subconscious layers I can’t perceive, but I doubt I could control or focus them if I can’t even perceive them, so I don’t worry about them.
Meditations on Meditation:
I’ve always noticed something about meditation that I’ve never thought to articulate aloud before. (Note- I’m using mantra meditation as an example.) A beginning meditation practitioner- which is all I have ever been- is told to focus their awareness on the mantra, notice when their mind wanders without judgement, and then redirect their thoughts to the mantra. Similar instructions are given when the focus is the breath, etc. However, my experience of meditation has never been that simple; my attention comes in layers. The first and most shallow layer is the part of my mind ‘going through the motions’ of reciting the mantra. I can recite the mantra while thinking of or imaging all sorts of things with my ‘thinking mind.’ So I gently turn my thinking mind toward my mantra, and there is another, quieter layer of awareness behind that- a meta-awareness noting a little more quietly that I am turning my awareness toward the mantra. I pull that layer of awareness toward my mantra, and there is another, still quieter awareness of self behind that which feels and acknowledges how peaceful and luminous this experience is. Each layer behind the second feels quieter, and the further back I go, the longer the layer takes to interrupt my concentration. I haven’t done extensive reading on the subject of meditation, but from my shallow research the explanation that is closest has been the yogic concept of the 4 layers of the mind (Manas, Buddhi, Chitta, and Ahamkara, which almost but not quite matches what I’ve observed.)
I have 2 hypotheses regarding this experience. The first is that if I manage to pull the last layer of awareness into focus, that is when I would experience ego death. My second hypothesis is that if I pull the last layer forward the first layer will fall away, so that it all goes in a circle I need to tighten with each meditation.
Any experience, insight, or helpful reading for this phenomenon would be extremely appreciated.
In very complex systems there are usually emergent trends that make a simplified model somewhat workable, though not with a fine degree of accuracy. It’s a very “spherical cows” scenario, though.
I’ve been doing reality checks for a while. Sometimes I can lucid dream and sometimes not, but it’s inconsistent and seems like something else prompts it- not me.
If I can keep my presence of mind to do this in a dream, instead of dreaming an excuse not to, then I’ll try.
I’ve tried this one. There are times when I’ll try this in a dream and stop breathing out of panic. Then there are also times when I plug my nose IRL and it almost feels like I’m breathing (my lungs go through the motion without taking in air etc. even though they are not, and it becomes hard for me to tell the difference.) In either case, I have to either pass out or wake up, in which case I could have been thrown into another dream.
Then thank you!
I’m really sorry about that- I had wondered if I should put some content warnings on the story, but I couldn’t figure out what categories would be included in such a warning. Existential horror?
After all of Mr. Humman’s condescension toward Ms. Tessa, I couldn’t help but think of this when I read the ending.
“The girl he had dragged along to the pub with him had grown to loathe him dearly over the last hour, and it would probably have been a great satisfaction to her to know that in a minute and a half or so he would suddenly evaporate into a whiff of hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide. However, when the moment came she would be too busy evaporating herself to notice it.”
That ambiguity was my intention! Though I do like the concept of the (metaphorical) death of the author.
It is normal! That’s the point :)
There was no special connection to the truth in this koan. It was actually a little lame- just my brain pattern-matching. But pattern matching can do some odd things things. I won’t reach enlightenment with this koan- I’ve already followed it as far as it will go. It was “where is your voice located.” It’s a very “if a tree falls in the forest” type of koan, but I learned just a little from following it in its expected loop.
Ah- thank you. In retrospect what seems like “the obvious thing” to me is not always so.
I’m glad you liked it :)
I always wondered why, at the before-Christmas battle, Hermione didn’t give her wish to Sunshine to incentivize them to work together instead of defecting and turning traitor (that is to say- make the wish for sunshine and announce it before the battle.) I think it was the obvious course to unite the army, and it was the obvious Hermione thing to do. Did she fail to do this just because Dumbledore got to her first, or was this a true blind spot on her part?
It looks like it’s difficult to wear with glasses. Do you have any ideas for adjustments that might make them fit better?
I had a related (and admittedly somewhat strange) experience to this. I had a dream in which I was given a koan and told to use it to seek enlightenment. When I woke up I wrote down the koan and decided to meditate on it. I gained some wisdom from it, but I also noticed that I was starting to feel empty. Not a peaceful one-ness kind of empty- just empty empty. I realized that if experienced anything like ego death in my present state, it would go very, very badly. It seems counterintuitive, but knew I had to find myself before I continued on the path- to find myself before I lost myself, if that makes any sense. It’s as if in order to reach transcendence, there had to be something worth transcending.
Ah- I agree with you, here. I addressed this in my post “My Weirdest Experience Wasn’t.”
“Catherine presented me with a truth that I did not believe- that I was dreaming, and that my real self lived in a different reality. I rejected this knowledge, even though it was correct, until I tested her claim and awoke. But though it may seem strange that a character in a dream should know something that I did not, I have had similar experiences in my waking life. I’ve often questioned memories that surfaced in my mind- with good reason. Memory is notoriously unreliable. There have been many times when I’ve remembered things and said to myself “wait- that can’t be right.” Sometimes these memories proved to be correct, and at sometimes not, but each time, my memory was supplying me with something my conscious mind rejected, similar to my dream. The way the subconscious mind supplies memories does not necessarily indicate the activity of a separate entity within our minds. That claim may be researched further, but my dream does not offer any special evidence. ”