Have you ever questioned why experiences are important to you? Why certain memories you hold onto, while others you throw aside? You may hold onto the memory of the greatest sexual encounter you’ve ever had, or the time you had the hell beat out of you. But why?
Why do we hold on to these things, and who is deciding what to keep? It means something to someone, but why does it have to mean anything?
Please take a moment to look within, right now. Then come back and tell us what you’ve found.
Is there more to you than experience?
35 Comments
Experience, to me, is one of life’s many teachers to expand our capacity for love and understanding.
Thank you, May.
That is very true, as long as we are able to listen.
For the experience-er there are endless combinations of outer events they can hold themselves up against. To look and compare, to this and to that. And perhaps that is all there is to experience; comparison.
It is difficult to see beyond experience, if the instrument of seeing is also experience.
Am I more than experience? Is there more to me than experience? Hmm….
There are two answers that come when I look. First, I am more than AN experience, more than even the sum of my experiences. It seems that I am ALL experiences. Yes, that seems to be true.
But then, the second answer: “I” am less than experience. Much less. Infinitely less. As in NOT. Who is having the experience? Who is choosing which experience is good and which is bad? Ah…. no one there.
There is experiencing. But no experiencer. And yet all experience is here.
As for your why question: why are some experiences important while others are not? When I pose this question, I get a lovely answer: Silence.
Tom,
They both seem to be true…
If we look at the first – ALL experience – and consider the ‘mechanism’ that holds fast to experiences and knowledge and so on, it is certainly true. This we share with all other human beings.
And as for the second – less than experience – there is none of the attachment of the experience-er wishing to extend the experience, or a desire to force the continuation of experience.
I wrote a bit on this in the post Fundamental Decency – Part 2. In it, we went into how experience is and is not unique at the same time:
I suppose experience is valuable for the person needing the experience to be valuable.
Am I more than experience? The response I get is “huh?” I am not experience so to ask if I am more than it is meaningless.
As Tom says, there is experiencing, but it takes place of itself. Action at play within its own field.
Experience is the entertainment, not the audience. (laughs)
As for why we hold one thing and throw away another, that comes back to the story. If it supports the story we are telling ourselves, we keep it, add to the story. If it does not, we don’t. It fails the context-to-illusion test.
Davidya,
It is easy for us to say all of this. But I wonder how a listener, perhaps a first-time listener, hears this? We are, after all, well-acquainted with this world in different ways.
But for an ear that has never heard these sounds, what will they do?
True. But not so easy to explain the loss of experiencer and experienced in a blog comment. (laughs)
But then, even the explanation will largely be another story per below.
What will they do? If they’re smart, they’ll read more of your blog
Davidya, this thought strikes a chord for me: “As for why we hold one thing and throw away another, that comes back to the story. If it supports the story we are telling ourselves, we keep it, add to the story. If it does not, we don’t.”
The mind is the great storyteller. Beautiful stories. Terrible stories. Heart warming stories. Heart breaking stories. All mezmerizing. All with ourselves at the center, as the reference point.
The question is, what am I without the story? For surely it is easily noticed that no story lasts forever.
Hi Quiddita
Yes, precisely – the me sits at the center of every story, separate. Who are you without your story? Everything. Limitless, unbounded being. Who you really are, under the mask.
The story is the illusion, that which helps the ego sense feel separate. It feels it needs this to protect itself from ‘other’. But once the truth is seen deeply enough, the story is seen through and winds down.
But not completely. Just the terrible parts, the should’s and needs. As long as we live our life, there is a story playing out. But it is the ‘true’ story, the story of the whole playing out through you rather than the story of the me, playing out through pain.
That’s my story. (laughs)
Hi Takuin!
I think we hold what is emotionally more in content deeper like a death of a loved one for example like your other two examples. This is our hearts way of keeping us centered. Experience is part of us and and builds thorugh out our lives, some actually call it wisdom. At least it can be. I think our deep emotional experiences can be what makes us connect to others more profoundly and be in tune with compassion and empathy and love and kindness, etc. Sometimes a story/experience of a life is what is so fascinating and beautiful and makes life rich beyond imaginings. Its like listening to a persons life experience can be such a life honoring and enriching experience at least to me.
Thanks Diane.
That is a possibility. It could also be the self’s way of keeping itself attached to something no longer available.
It might take great strength to see the reality of how we operate from moment to moment. These kind of questions are not for the timid.
Some of the most memorable experiences this mind remembers have been the small moments, deep in the flow of life, watching a sunset, watching children playing, standing out on the balcony as wind rushes through my valley. The traumatic and blissful experiences have become stale, because of later over analysis, after the event.
No ‘experience’ is any different than any other, they all arise in form, but when pure experience arises unimpeded my the mind-fog of concepts, oneness shines like a beacon through deep murky waters.
Thank you Lune.
As I sit here now, I can’t say that any memory is more ‘memorable’ for Takuin. There are no better or worse in the mind, if that is the right way to say it. This might be close what you’ve called pure experience, in your second paragraph.
Takuin very quickly loses all that happens from day to day. I can tell you what I might have done today, but even now it seems so far away. And to remember yesterday would take such great energy to resurrect.
That is not to say it should be this way for anyone else. There may be something wrong with Takuin’s brain!
(laughs) Nah. I have to make note of it to “remember”.
What is coming up? Just this. Simplicity, nothing complicated or clever.
Any words I come up with seem to do with clever distinctions of experience versus experiencer versus experiencee and getting into the jabber of spirituality or non-duality–both of which are becoming tiresomely trite and repetitive.
We don’t remember good experiences and forget the bad–in fact the reverse. We can’t let go of many experiences. As Davidya points, we remember what fits the ego’s stories, good or bad.
Thanks Kaushik,
So in other words, these stories help to solidify ourselves further. It brings more weight to the belief in our own existence, and we can look in the mirror and say, “YES, I am a real person experiencing this or that.”
I can feel some sympathy for those seeking. They hope to see beyond the self, through manipulation of the self.
Hopeless.
You make an important point.
When we are unconscious, we live by stories. When we come to awakening, we live by stories–the stories change to the beautiful concepts of spirituality and clever and pithy sayings and levels of consciousness–essentially it’s the story of how the ‘me’ is advancing spiritually. It’s an obstacle of course.
But what’s the choice. In the absence of a ’spontaneous’ awakening, when we have the insight that we are not me, what choice is there but to use techniques and pointers to help us see.
Thanks for your thoughts, Kaushik.
It’s the debate that exists behind blogging about awakening. You saw my article on the benefits of “Concept Fatigue”. (laughs)
If we consider some teachers of yore, they used things like parables and stories to explain. While these built stories, they were better stories, closer to truth.
I suppose that’s where the idea of Maya evolving into a ladder comes to. The stories, experiences, and visions are not the truth but can take us closer, to a place where we can shed them and step into it.
It is the play in its essence.
These are only thougts produced by the brain. Only thougts. Playing around. Playing the great play, you are forced to by existence. Being thrown into it you have to play and you will play until you are stopped by existence. This what we are doing here, there and everywere, there is no alternative, we have to and we will, and we can not escape by thinking the wildest and and most uncommon ideas and also not by doing the most uncommon things or living the most uncommon live. Lets play on.
Thanks iamasimpelman.
There is of course nothing wrong with thought as it is. Problems seem to arise, however, because we hope to manipulate a pleasing outcome through it.
Your words sound familiar…
Hello Takuin,
I’ve been following your posts as well as Davidya’s and Tom’s for quite some time now. Sorry I haven’t posted sooner. I’ve noticed that my experiences no longer hold as much importance as they did. Some memories that I’ve held onto for most of my life and the associated emotions that tag along with them are now muted and vague. I can say to myself now “ah, that’s how I used to feel” about this or that. I don’t hold them. There doesn’t seem to be the need to nurture those experiences any more.
I like what Davidya said, “If it supports the story we are telling ourselves, we keep it.” Maybe my story isn’t so much fun to tell anymore…
Dan
Dan,
Thanks for your attention to the question. It is good to have you here, regardless of when you might join in.
That may be a possibility. But does that mean you have exchanged a lame story for a better one? Or is something occurring within the teller of the tale, affecting every possible storyline? Or neither?
Don’t answer too quickly…just look closely to see if anything is there.
hmmm… experience…
The idea about strengthening the ego and attachment to the idea seems to be something to look at deeper…
To see the experience to observe it with wakefulness (Awareness) is where I’ve come to dwell. For wouldn’t experience be of the past, only a memory. When the experience is gone We are undoubtedly still here, in our entirety, nothing has ever diminished, and how could it?
Agreed Takuin about thought itself not being a problem, there is nothing wrong in it, but to be aware that it is not us, we are not those things. We are the sky and the thought is the clouds in which float along the sky, its the ego or personalities attachment that brings them back from the dead. Isn’t this like clinging to a dead body?
I can see that this bodies experiences are full of dreams from deep sleep and even in the wakeful state, that undercurrent of dreaming. I like you have been re-discovering awareness, what I am, on more than an intellectual level and it has been an experience to say the least, the journey has led me to drop belief, because what is there in belief to begin with, what is the meaning to our natural state and what purpose does it server?
liberatedself,
Thanks for your comment…
Some people like to say, ‘Life has only the meaning you give to it.’ That is true, but only in a very limited capacity because any meaning we can give is limited by the description.
Life is to live, until it is time to die. Anything else we bring to it are ideas of living.
“thought itself not being a problem, there is nothing wrong in it, but to be aware that it is not us, we are not those things”
Everything is accepted and allowed to be, even right down to the conflict memories and interpretations of experiences bring.
What life is, can never be affected by any of it.
“What life is, can never be affected by any of it.”
Agreed, life never travels in a linear progression, and why should it? Who is to say that life itself is “logical” or “illogical” Life merely is what it is, Just like Who we are is what we have been all along, whether we believe ourselves to be something else or not.
life transcends space and time, so why bind it to space and time, and any sort of conceptualisation or perception?
I Am still mystified into what i am, I’m content living with the question though. We could say, “I know that i cannot possibly know” but then the question arises, “Who knows this, who is the knower?”
*lovely sigh*
I know the word opinion is not so very welcome here. My opinion is the best thing to go into are daily situations. There is no use to speak theoretically about things. Lets talk about the last dinner and how someone cooked it, where the things come from etc. Living the live. Try not to use words like “logical”, consciousness–essentially, illogical, awareness. Uses words like Wiener Schnitzel, beer, kiss, laughing, shitting, pissing, eating, running, gras, clouds or applepie, or dry to watch and hear a child which has fun to speak out words and to tell stories. What I always say is try to avoid to do things right. Thanks
Thanks iamasimpelman, as always.
That is quite true…all we can do is deal with whatever is happening at the moment, whatever that may be, and regardless of the words we’ve used to come close to it.
It is absolutely welcome here. But that doesn’t mean opinions will not be questioned by others.
Some people are so attached and identified with their opinions they cannot even begin to question it without causing great pain to themselves and their identity. And that is absolutely fine.
I’ll not force anyone to look into the dark if it scares them to death. That is their domain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=DE&hl=de&v=RT_7ETUM1cc
This is what you are. carelessness.
iamasimpelman,
A very clear message indeed.
Thank you for the compliment, my friend.
Very lovely video iamasimpleman!
Also the feedback is welcome, I think sometimes we get so caught up in theory and philosophizing that we for get to just be who we are. We dream up the philosopher to talk about what could be, what is and isn’t that we forget to just experience to be the watcher, to live life. To go outside and to look intently at two children playing together, how they are free to be who they are… or watching two butterflies dance with each other! =]
There is a point at which believing in this or that just loses its meaning, that the argumentation or debate no longer can nourish anything (i don’t know if there is a point in which it has ever nourished anything for example, people that awaken suddenly, who are not educated in the scholastic sense). In fact how can you be nourished by something when you have already known your true nature, have always been your true nature… how can it nourish if you are the nourishment itself.
I’ve stumbled upon your blog today. It’s fantastic! I started at the beginning, and I guess I can say I’m where you were on November 30th, 2006. Of course, I’m searching for a how, or a what, which I realize will never come. But… so were you, right? I’ve found hope in your words (that should mean absolutely nothing to you, right?). Thank you. I’ve got a blog, too, so you can watch me squirm.
Anyway, I’m hooked. I spent a week in Japan in ‘05, and I loved it! I’m jealous on multiple levels (ha!).
Mike
Thanks for the compliments, Mike. Feel free to stop in and comment on the posts, or on the comments themselves. We’re all glad to have you here.
It is funny…I never read the old posts. Usually, a few days after the post goes up, I forget all about it, even if the comments are ongoing. I just can’t seem to hold onto it.
You have a nice blog. You are looking in the right places. Just keep it simple. If anything, it is reduction, and not addition. But beware of the one in charge of reducing. Don’t trust him.
Why think about experience? Why think about expanding love? These are all ego games. live your life as it is, like a chuild, as natural as when you wer three years old, but better because you are more intelligent and careful. How sweet not to philosophise and try to be.
Thank you, cute.
That is good of you to say but of course, we cannot trust what you say to be true anymore than we can trust Takuin to be correct. If we read what you say, believe it, then try to replicate it, are we living? Or have you just become the flavor of the month; the latest guru to follow?
Awareness, natural living, or whatever you call it, does not happen only in the dojo or on the cushion for one hour per day, but it is not a matter of doing. You might follow certain gurus, or you may be the kind of person that tries to see their fraudulent actions, but it is not a matter of like or dislike.
These things only take you away from what you truly are.
Thank you very much for your comment, cute!
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