blackness is a thing.
in exactly the same way that the area outside your visual periphery is not black, because it is no-color.

Woopdy doo. who's to say what is what. Except for I.

I could not help but post this excerpt from, 'The Doors - celebration of the lizard'
PLRrrrrrrrrrrr


Once I had, a little game
I liked to crawl, back in my brain
I think you know, the game I mean
I mean the game, called 'go insane'

you should try, this little game
Just close your eyes, forget your Name
Forget the World, forget the PEOPLE
And we'll erect, a different steeple

This little game, is fun to do
Just close your eyes, no way to Lose

And then right there, I'm going too
Release control, we're breaking thru

Way back deep into the brain

Back where there's never any pain

And the rain falls gently on the town
And over the heads of all of us
And in the labyrinth of streams
Beneath, the quiet unearthly presence of
gentle hill dwellers, in the gentle hills around
Reptiles abounding
Fossils, caves, cool air heights....



***
If you try enough you will succeed.

my nothingness or blackness could as well be the color white to you. Or say the color blue appears to me as what you perceive as green. we dont know. The empty space I imagine is colorless or see through to redefine my original post. Some consider black a color, some do not, there is no definitive answer, all a matter of opinion. An absence of light will appear black to us.
something is nothing, nothing is something.

I try repeating "Mind Awake" but I cant seem to get passed 50repeats without drifting into thought... I also find any light source distracting.

Personally Id like to modify a pair of swimming goggles so that they lightly push against my eyelids so I can completely relax them. The complete darkness should help too

Binural beats can help also, but I don't think anything on video or audio uploads will work.
I'm pretty sure you need stand-alone software to regulate the tones properly...

It escapes me why it should be necessary to do anything while sitting still. Just sitting is enough to me. Why this interest in quietening the mind, by aural distractions, use of swimming goggles, or otherwise? Seems to me it has something to do with the assumption that there is something wrong with experiencing Ego. Why does it have to be wrong? Why does it have to be anything? It just is, isn't it?

Probably because most of us have not spent years training the mind.
I'm trying to block out the thoughts because that's what normally makes me fall asleep.

I think the "Ego" or rational part in our brain is what keeps us grounded to this reality, or at least distracts us from going deeper into ourselves.

Last time I got to 50repeats I started hearing the Zoommmmmmm sfx... then I fell asleep

-

Just a thought.... Sharing = Caring

Double Posted --- Delete

criticizing constructively, i see.
*sigh* maybe i will just quote instead of paraphrase



i personally feel alan watts' take on zen can be a great contribution, but perhaps i am mistaken.


and as far as absence of light = black goes, think of it this way:
a blank(black) page is a page devoid of words(light), but that page is not nothing.
the nothing is what the page is 'written' on, blank/black as it may appear.

the great nothingness of reality is not the cold blackness(blankness) of space. it is what the seemingly void space is composed of.

A possible answer to that question came to me in a spice voyage once.

How to quiet the Mind? Well you don't. Not as an active move you make.
The trick is to allow involuntairy thoughts to come in and observe them
as though they were external stimuli. If you see them as Your thoughts,
you tend to get carried away by them. Instead listen to your thoughts
as if they were some radio transmission. See yourself as merely the
receiver of these signals(thoughts), not as the transmitter.

That is not to say these thoughts are yours. Or not. "Who's" thoughts
these are is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.

It is just that, from this perspective I find myself pleasantly detatched from
my thoughts that allows me to reach a much deeper inner peace. This is I guess the
basis of the general practice of Meditation.

When applied during spice journeys I find it to clear my mind and make much more "space"
to receive more information. Being detatched from the stream of distractive, involuntairy
thoughts allows for much deeper journeys. Journeys into deeper layers in which more complex
insights can be gained, but at a higher price: The deeper you go the more the Ego seems to resist
and try to disturb your inner peace & clarity with Fear, Shame, Guilt...etc
Off course I can only speak for myself, but I know the Ego in everyone to resist confrontation
with such deep layers of self. Sometimes it even uses Laughter, Neurosis disguised as Humor, to
avoid the confrontation with self, which it finds terrifying.

And so you have to choose: To go with the Ego in it's Fear, Paranoya, false sense of empowerment
or to go with the other half of you that wants to learn from the messages/visions, no matter how
terrifying, disgusting or otherwise uneasing, to heal and to grow into a better human being.



PS @ Sidefx:
Indeeed. So many ideologies speak of emptyness out of which everything arose and it strikes me as Paradoxically impossible; How can nothing ever grow/change into anything at all.
By the way doesn't "Nothing" define that which does not exist? So it would only be perfectly
reasonable to conlude that Nothing doesn't exist. Nor could it ever have existed.

try holding a yogic position for longer and longer each day while doing pranayama and a mantra, such as; shamadi shawadi shamadi shawadi shamadi shamadi shamadi shawadi

as bob wilson would say, holding the position for a while (preferably after some yoga) calms any basic fears/anxieties and reconnects you with you're body..while the pranayama calms emotional games/compulsions/programs from surfacing, and the mantra blands out 3rd circuit compulsion to rationalize, think, and categorize everything (mind chatter)..

A great technique to quiet the mind for a beginner:

Go for a walk. Preferably mindfully and outdoors within nature. Let the sounds of the surroundings or body sensations hook your attention instead of your thoughts.

great post, ska
reminiscent of the buddhist analogy of stilling the mind as stilling a bowl of water (in that the more you do, the more you agitate the water).


can't get youtube tags to work so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLrMVous0Ac#t=0m50s


because there is no thing to prevent growth or change