Updated August 3, 2022
In the limited world of the senses, or everywhere and nowhere
July 22, 2016 by
Updated March 28, 2023
No matter how many beautiful photos you get of the mountain in the background, they have nothing to do with its complete look. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
In a world defined by time and space, everybody believes in magic. A child, for example, believes Christmas presents come from Santa Claus, although it does not seem realistic. And grown-ups believe that the more they become and get materially or spiritually, the happier they become.
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The outward-facing senses create such expressive images that we choose to believe in a world where everything is separated by time and space. However, the more the outward-facing senses are turned off, the more the abstractness of the inward-facing senses takes over. Thus, you have glimpses of the Enlightenment of that which is One while still aware of the world of the outward-facing senses.
Experiencing these glimpses can be compared to seeing a movie trailer. But entering the Enlightenment of that which is One cannot be compared to attending the whole movie because that is an experience, and the Enlightenment of that which is One cannot be experienced since all the senses must be turned off to enter it.
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If you are aware of something, although ethereal, you are not in the Enlightenment of that which is One but have glimpses of it through the inward-facing senses. Many mistakes this for being enlightened, thus imagining they have the power to fuse heaven and earth and create a better world.
So they put together a new philosophy based on their interpretation of their glimpses, mixed with speculative ideas about spirituality and ancient meditation traditions.
For example, they may encourage you not to be conditioned so you can be in the now. But the experience of that or anything else is based on the conditioned belief that you are someone in a world defined by time and space. However, according to science, this world is an empty space perceived as something. Therefore, it is not a fact but an idea that you are someone definitive, which you blindly follow to establish your existence in a world defined by time and space, thus disguising the formlessness of oneness.
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This photo of the same mountain in the first photo is shot from another level. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
The tension from consistently doing something to appear as someone makes you feel definite. But the more you feel tangible, the more the Enlightenment of that which is One is fenced out.
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The more you think you know about the Enlightenment of that which is One, the more you block it out. That is why the purpose of Alexius’ Enlightened Non-Teachings is not to help you understand but to help you unlearn what you believe in knowing.
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Metaphorically, the Enlightenment of that which is One is a moment that starts in a dream of something. Yet, at the same moment, the dream is over. But since you were not in the dream, you are not awakened with a new consciousness. On the contrary, there is no awareness of you ever having been someone in a world where there seems to be more than one. There is just one bright light – so intense that there is nothing to see, thus nothing to be. Hence what has been stripped free of the belief in something is sucked through a black gap into the formlessness of oneness.
That is why those who talk about their exciting experiences of Enlightenment have not, as nobody, been sucked through a black hole into the formlessness of oneness. Instead, they held onto their belief in being somebody to fence off the Enlightenment of that which is One, thus only having glimpses of it, which often is used to promote themselves as someone who has seen a vast empty space full of pure love, consciousness, bliss, or something else, that makes them appear to have something better than others. Having something, though, has nothing to do with the Enlightenment of that which is One because it takes more than one to have anything.
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This is a photo of the same mountain as in the other pictures in this article. Again we see that we can have many different glimpses of it and that they are all coloured by the one having the glimpses. However, the Enlightenment of that which is One is not coloured by the one experiencing. It is impossible to do that since it requires more than one. In other words, there is nothing personal about the Enlightenment of that which is One. Yet, describing is like everything else, where more than one seems involved, coloured by the personality of the describer as well as by the one interpreting it. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Maybe Mozart’s inspiration to compose music came from musical glimpses of the Enlightenment of that which is One. That is not to say his music sounds like ethereal harmonies, but its flow resembles the effortless elegance and beauty of celestial harmonies. However, that does not apply when Mozart overrides the natural flow to reach a dramatic peak. There is no drama in ethereal harmonies because they accompany one perpetual present, which has no beginning and end, thus no drama.
The ethereal harmonies may also inspire the electronic music that seems without a beginning, achieved through glitches, other sonic artefacts, slowed-played steel guitar, chimes and bells, and analogue or analogue or synth sounds mixed with piano loops. However, these effects result in a harder edge and a less transparent sound than the ethereal harmonies, which have a crystal clear but transparent sound with no sonic artefacts needed to produce spiciness. Actually, ethereal harmonies arise from not trying to achieve something.
But New-age music that sounds like dreamy symphonies of otherworldly states does not resemble ethereal harmonies because it is not symphonic or anything else that suggests a progression in linear time. Nor is it otherworldly because there is no world since oneness is formless, thus endless.
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There are no degrees of the Enlightenment of that which is One. It cannot be smaller or bigger because oneness is formless. However, there are degrees of everything in a world defined by time and space. That is why you can experience glimpses of Enlightenment on many levels depending on how much the outward-facing senses are turned off.
However, no matter the level, no glimpse comes close to the Enlightenment of that which is One because there are no levels in oneness. Nonetheless, the glimpses of Enlightenment slowly but surely undo the belief that differences make a difference. Thus you eventually welcome the Enlightenment of that which is One, which immediately erases the belief in more than one.
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Here is yet another glimpse of the same mountain in the other photos. But you do not know the mountain since all the glimpses are different. Likewise, as long as you see glimpses of Enlightenment, you are not in the Enlightenment of that which is One. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Since it takes more than one to be aware of something, it is impossible to welcome Enlightenment of that which is one while sensing something.
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Welcoming the Enlightenment of that which is one is like being transported in a driverless car that drives so fast that the glimpses of the Enlightenment of that which is one merge into one bright light, tone, emotion or taste, absorbing everything definable, so nothing is carried into the formlessness of oneness.
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You do not find the Enlightenment of that which is One like you find other things in a world of something. But when you do not try to find anything, there is nothing to hide it.
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The Enlightenment of that which is One cannot be seen. That is why it appears hidden as long as you look for something.
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Trying to extract a specific way to the Enlightenment of that which is One or its glimpses from Alexius’ Enlightened Non-Teachings will not help you. It is better to forget all words about it and thrust the light, sound, feeling, or taste of the Enlightenment of that which is One to do its thing when you have a willingness not to be someone definitive.
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Many think they are spiritual when they use the inward-facing senses instead of the outward-facing ones. But even though you can say the inward-facing senses are closer to the reality of oneness, they are still part of a world that can be sensed. And oneness cannot be sensed because it takes more than One to be aware of something. That said, the inward-facing senses can be a big help in realising that everything experienced hides what cannot be experienced, namely that which is One.
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Although oneness is endless, it does not last forever. On the contrary, it lasts no time because it is one perpetual present. That is why the story of this never-ending moment cannot be told in a world where everything has a beginning and end. Therefore, if you want to hear it, you must leave the belief in being a limited being. However, without this belief, you cannot hear something specific. No worries. Not believing to be limited, you are the story of one perpetual present.
NOTE: This article is part of Duality Hack #11 Enlightenment and its glimpses.
Life has no secrets
July 22, 2016 by
Updated March 28, 2023
Searching comes from the desire to be and has more than the oneness of life, but there is no more than that since it is formless, thus endless. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Life has no secrets. It is impossible because it is that which is one, and it takes more than one to hide anything. So why do people look for the meaning of life? The answer lies in the previous sentence. Life is that which is One, so if you believe in being in a world where there seems to be more than one, you are without life. In other words, even though the oneness of life makes it possible to experience a world where there seems to be more than one, it is not there – just like a physical body is not in a dream, regardless of being the host of it.
Some like to think, that The Word of God is something written in a book like The New Testament, although nothing in it indicates that. Actually, The Word of God can neither be written or spoken. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
»In the origin The Word had been existing and That Word had been existing with God and That Word was himself God.« John 1:1, Aramaic Bible in Plain English.
Unfortunately most of those reading the New Testament reckon that the book is The Word of God. But as god is that which is One and it takes more than one to write or read, the New Testament has nothing to do with The Word of God.
However, an echo of life can be heard and felt in a world where there seems to be more than one. Christianity calls it The Word of God, and Eastern religions often symbolise it with the words Aum and Sohang. You could say that the oneness of life sends out an echo of itself to call you home. The echo does not reveal oneness but what obscures it, namely the belief in a world where there seems to be more than one. That said, it is, of course, a metaphor that oneness is calling you home because you never left it since it is formless, thus endless,
Nevertheless, this article is written within the context of the belief that it is possible to be and have more than one. Within this context, hearing or feeling the echo of oneness is a call to go home. However, the echo has no beginning and end, so it is not a word that can be written or spoken. Nevertheless, it is very easy to hear and feel it.
No chanting or reading in scriptures is necessary to hear or feel the vibration that Aum, Sohang and The Word of God symbolise. It comes to you automatically when you do not focus or concentrate on something specific, thus not someone definitive but the unpronounceable vibration that Aum, Sohang and The Word of God symbolise. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
THE VIBRATION THAT AUM, SOHANG OR THE WORD OF GOD SYMBOLISES IS …
… not a secret. Yet it appears hidden if you search for an elitist understanding rather than hearing or feeling the vibration, which can be heard or felt whenever you do not focus on hearing or feeling something specific.
When you hear or feel the unpronounceable echo of oneness, the sense of being someone definitive disappears. Thus there is nothing to transform.
For ages, people have been chanting Aum and Sohang or speculating about the meaning of The Word of God, assuming their secret would miraculously be revealed if they kept trying. But oneness does not make miracles or reveal anything because it takes more than one to do anything.
However, it only takes one chant of Aum or Sohang to hear or feel the echo of oneness, provided you do not look for peak experiences of an almighty god, love or something mysterious and sensational that can be mentally explained.
TO TUNE IN TO THE ECHO OF ONENESS …
… you say AU very slowly, whereafter M almost hangs in the air as a whispering sound that turns into a gentle humming, undoing the definition of you as someone who is somewhere specific. That is the echo of oneness. If you feel like smiling, you got it.
The Hindi symbol of Sohang is grabbed from the web.
You can also get in touch with the distant humming of oneness by saying sohang – eventually combined with listening to the sound from the breath. You say SO within you when breathing in. Then, after a tiny break, you say HANG when breathing out. The SO is not essential except for tuning in. The same applies to the first part of HANG. After saying SO-HA(N), you remain on (A)NG at the end of breathing out. When it fades out, you hear the humming, the echo of oneness, in the silence.
Another way to hear the echo of oneness is to stop focusing on any sound in particular until you cannot distinguish the sounds you hear. Hence they turn into one sound, namely the echo of oneness.
You do not have to sit in a particular posture, repeat a mantra, chant, pray, wear unique clothes or be in a specific place with special people to hear the echo of oneness. Neither does there have to be stillness inside or outside of you. All you have to do is be devoted to what you do.
One of the first times Alexius sensed the humming from the edge of the universe, he was busy handing out flyers on a pedestrian street. He was so devoted to it that the noise of the road became a distant sound fusing into a humming, which, although remote, cancelled out the feeling of being there. It was like the sum of all feelings turned into a transparent one.
KNOWING IT IS THERE, IT IS EASIER TO CONNECT
When Alexius was a child, he liked the music from a radio station on a frequency between two noisy stations. But as he knew of its existence and where to look, he succeeded in tuning into it with much determination and the finest subtlety.
Likewise, since you now know it is possible to get the humming of oneness from the edge of the universe regardless of the world’s noise, you can tune into it through devotion to your present activity or via Aum or Sohang. If there appears to be too much noise in the head, join it until it fuses into one sound.
Feeling touched by the echo of life. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
TO FEEL THE ECHO OF ONENESS
Apart from hearing the vibration that Aum, Sohang and The Word of God symbolise, you can also feel it – especially if you are more emotional than audio-minded. Just do the same as above but put more weight into feeling it. The feeling of the primordial vibration can be likened to sensing your body purring like a cat, or like it trembles of fear but without fearing anything, or shaking of coldness but more lightly and not feeling cold, or feeling the bubbling effect in the body from quickly drinking the foam of Coca-Cola.*
When the feeling gets more intense, it may feel like you are the vibration from an earthquake or a giant laundry machine on the spin cycle. It is felt in the body and outside as if there is no transition between the body and the appearances outside it. If you do not panic but go with its flow, you forget about the body and anything outside of it, so no memory seems to hide that which cannot be experienced, namely, the formlessness of oneness.
However, since this article is not about the formlessness of oneness but something that can be experienced, we continue our talk about the primordial vibration from the edge of the universe. Feeling or hearing it is the same – like two sides of the same coin. Nevertheless, it is not advisable to do that simultaneously but one at a time.
Alexius is more into hearing than feeling something, so it took him a long time to feel the echo of oneness. When he finally did – after several years – it was so intense that the belief in being someone specific was momentarily undone. Thus the echo of oneness had brought him into the Enlightenment of that which is One, where you do not feel anything since that requires more than one. Read about that in Forgetting the world of the outward-facing senses.
Many may already have heard or felt the echo of oneness coming from the edge of the universe. Still, as they are biassed towards something mysterious and sensational, they do not pay attention to the quiet humming that constantly is there because it is the basis for the experience of a world where there seems to be more than one. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE?
Some people complain that they hear their neighbour vacuuming when they meditate. But most likely, the neighbour is asleep. And it is not the sound of a vacuum cleaner they hear but the distant humming from the edge of the universe that Aum, Sohang or The Word of God symbolises. Being aware of the vibration can also be compared to hearing the distant sound of the air conditioning in an airport, or a wave at the shore that never stops going up, or the sound from the edge of breathing in or out.
But since most look for an exceptional experience, they brush off something so simple as the gentle humming from the edge of the universe.
REMEMBERING YOUR HOME
When you are already familiar with the humming that Aum, Sohang and The Word of God symbolise, you do not always tune into it if you still want to appear as someone in a world where there seems to be more than one. But you may tune into it once in a while to ensure you have not forgotten the key to the formlessness of oneness – just like you sometimes check your pocket to hear or feel if the key to your home is there.
Getting ‘lifted’ by the echo of that which is one while having a cup of coffee. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
ALEXIUS AND THE ECHO OF ONENESS
The above is Alexius’ way of communicating, how you can hear and feel the echo of oneness. Using Aum or Sohang as a stepping stone is not a new idea. But so far, it has mainly been promoted in mysterious ways by people who do not hear or feel it themselves but hope that a miracle will happen if they repeat those words repeatedly. However, looking for that, they miss the gentle humming coming from the edge of the universe.
But it was not through the words Aum or Sohang that Alexius started to hear or feel the humming they symbolise. Since his teenage years, he has been used to being ‘lifted’ by this humming – for example, while watching a movie, walking, or sitting in a park. And so, when he was about 40 years old, it suddenly dawned on him that this is what people try to reach when chanting Aum or Sohang.
However, it is not about reaching but tuning in. When Alexius can do it, so can you because even though you may appear different from him, what makes it possible for the two of you to experience that you are different is the same, namely, the echo of oneness.
*) This is not meant as a recommendation of Coca-Cola. Alexius only tried it once in his childhood.
NOTE: This article is part of Duality Hack #11 Enlightenment and its glimpses.
Intro: Enlightenment and its glimpses
July 22, 2016 by
Updated March 29, 2023
There are no degrees of the Enlightenment of that which is One because it cannot be experienced. However,you can experience glimpses of it in various degrees depending on how much you shut off the outward-facing senses. You see, hear, feel and taste these glimpses via the inward-facing senses. To do that, you do not have to close your eyes or be in a particular place or position. You just focus less on the world of the outward senses. Read more about that here. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
ARE THERE DEGREES OF ENLIGHTENMENT?
The answer to the question is both yes and no. In the Enlightenment of that which is One, everything happens simultaneously. Therefore, since no specific elements are available to combine into something understandable, it is beyond the senses. Thus impossible to experience and therefore without degrees.
Nevertheless, you can have glimpses of Enlightenment in various degrees via the inward-facing senses regardless of the body’s state, how and where it is positioned and if you know anything about Enlightenment. It is merely a matter of not focusing on something specific. The more you do that, the less the substantial world of the outward-facing senses blocks the abstractness of the inward-facing senses.
However, like a movie trailer is not the movie, the glimpses of Enlightenment are not the Enlightenment of that which is One. But unlike a movie trailer which does not contain the whole film, glimpses of the Enlightenment of that which is One has it all. So when you stop distinguishing them, without any transition, the Enlightenment of that which is One set in.
It is as if it comes from out of nowhere through a gap that may look black (see the article The ins and outs of a black hole) to terminate your consciousness quickly. Thus nothing is sucked through a black gap that is gone because there is no awareness to hide there is no more than that which is One. So if you want to hold onto being someone definitive, somewhere specific, thus denying the formlessness of oneness, you stop the extraction of consciousness by fearing it. Since that requires more than one, you are, without any transition, back in a world where there seems to be more than one.
It takes more than one to have a vision, so no matter how impressive it may be, it is not the Enlightenment of that which is One but a glimpse of it. That is comparable to a movie trailer, a sample of the whole, thus not undivided. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF THAT WHICH IS ONE OR GLIMPSES OF IT
Nobody can attest to you having been the Enlightenment of that which is One because it calls for more than one. For the same reason, you only have vague memories of nothing entering the void of antimatter in a gap of light. The memories pop up every time you have glimpses of the Enlightenment of that which is One, which can be visions of light, celestial music, shivering feelings of total emptiness or tastes of heavenly sweetness. Read more about that in The four aspects of Enlightenment and how to sample them.
You devote yourself to one of these aspects at a time without hanging onto it. So if another replaces that aspect, you go with that. However, never try to mix them.
If you want to return to the Enlightenment of that which is One, you stop distinguishing the glimpses of the aspect you experience. Therefore, since separation is not confirmed, your experience stops. Without any transition, the Enlightenment of that which is One set in to erase all the thoughts used to imagine being outside of oneness.
Unlike the Enlightenment of that which is One, glimpses of it do not wipe out thoughts completely. But you forget to assign them with a specific meaning, thus moving lightly in the material world of the outward-facing senses. At the same time, glimpses of Enlightenment come to you from the abstractness of the inward-facing senses.
When that is over, the focus on the material world of the outward-facing senses is re-established. If you want to look special there, you probably claim to have been awakened by the glimpses, thus being someone who knows how to make the world a better place. But by using glimpses to highlight yourself as somebody instead of undoing the belief in being that, you are imprisoned by the glimpses, not set free.
The world of the outward-facing senses is experienced via seeing, hearing, feeling and tasting/smelling something perceived as material. The world of the inward-facing senses can also be seen, heard, felt and tasted. However, you do not get a sense of something tangible but abstract.
Depending on how much you use the inward-facing senses to perceive your experiences in the world of the outward-fencing senses, you have a pleasant day or glimpses of the Enlightenment of that which is One. In the latter’s case, you still notice the world of the outward-fencing senses, but it does not mean much to you. In the case of the former, you are much aware of the world of the outward-facing senses. But it looks friendlier, and you feel more relaxed. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
THE INWARD AND OUTWARD-FACING SENSES
As the name suggests, the drive of the inward and the outward-facing senses is not the same. The outward-facing senses are for actively expanding what you appear to be and have. But you do not need that in the world of the inward-facing senses because it is abstract, so you are boundless. You can use that to soften your appearance in the world of the outward-facing senses or have glimpses of the Enlightenment of that which is One, for example, travelling through lucid worlds of light. That is effortless, but everything in the world of the outward-facing senses requires much effort.
Much devotion to the world of the inward-facing senses probably makes you spaced out in the world of the outward-facing senses. Yet, if you do not have to be present there, you can go with the flow of the inward-facing senses, as if the world outside you stands still. See Alexius in Wonderland.
However, you cannot tone down the outward-facing senses if you want to escape them because what you try to escape you enhance psychologically. On the other hand, the more you wish to get close to reality, the more the outward and inward-facing senses fade out, and the more you are on Highway One. It has no direction, so you are not going anywhere. But the belief in being somewhere goes away. Hence there does not appear to be something to hide that which is One.
But suppose you have to do something demanding in the world of the outward-facing senses. In that case, it is best to devote yourself to the outward-facing senses mainly, so the abstractness of the inward-facing senses does not space you out but makes it easier to do something demanding joyfully.
Syncing the inward and outward-facing senses in the correct ratio per your present situation is less complicated if you leave it to the empty breath. See, The empty breath syncs the inward and outward-facing senses.
The body’s healing caused by partly being devoted to the inward-facing senses is a side effect that helps you not worry about its appearance and inevitable end. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
THE INWARD-FACING SENSES AND THE BODY
The inward-facing senses cannot heal your body. However, its abstractness sets the body free from the ideas of wellness you try to inflict on it. Hence the body gets the peace it needs to heal itself. It may not include genetically caused diseases, though. But since they do not generate fear due to the tranquillity of the inward-facing senses, it is easier to deal with them (see Duality Hack #7 The fake mix of physical and non-physical issues).
But suppose the body’s well-being is the purpose of devoting yourself to the inward-facing senses. In that case, you focus on something specific, so you do not enter the world of the inward-facing senses. Hence the body does not get the peace it needs to heal itself.
Like a moth cannot help but follow its attraction to the flame, even though it is going to end of it, the purpose of the inward-facing senses is to draw you into their abstract world to undo the belief in being someone definitive.
If you return from the Enlightenment of that which is One to the experience of being someone substantial, your appearance remains the same. That is because it has not been Enlightened. However, due to vague memories of the formlessness of oneness, you do not believe it is real. Hence you are to be compared to the Enlightenment of that which is One. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF THAT WHICH IS ONE DOES NOT CHANGE ANYTHING
Visiting the Enlightenment of that which is One by momentarily forgetting what and where you appear to be may at first seem to be a process. As long as that is the case, the experience of you as someone definitive can be recalled. But since it takes more than one to be anything, the reestablished experience does not contain the Enlightenment of that which is One. So although you are to be compared to the Enlightenment of that which is One, nothing has changed except you know there is no more than that which is One.
When the Enlightenment of that which is One does not seem to be a process, you are entirely beyond the senses. Hence there is no one to know about ever having been someone, wherefore there is no return to being a substantial being in a tangible world. Consequently, nobody seems to hide what always has been and always will be, namely, the formlessness of oneness. From this follows, nobody is aware of that since it takes more than one to be conscious of something.
Therefore, if somebody claims to have been transformed by Enlightenment into something better or higher, it is not the Enlightenment of that which is One, but glimpses of it that they use to promote themselves as a superhuman with no negative emotions, only love and compassion. Since everybody wants to be superhuman, it sounds compelling, so you may dismiss the Enlightenment of that which is One if it hits you because you did not become anything at all. And being nobody, you cannot share with anybody because that requires more than One, thus turning you into somebody.
People have extraordinary ideas about Enlightenment. Some think it is pure love, consciousness or the ability to see through all illusions. But seeing or being something requires more than one. Hence the Enlightenment they are dreaming about is not the Enlightenment of that which is One, but something to improve their life in a world where there seems to be more than one, thus fencing off that which is One. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen
IS THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF THAT WHICH IS ONE REQUIRED TO UNDO THE BELIEF IN BEING SOMEONE?
The Enlightenment of that which is One can be said to be the last step back to the formlessness of oneness. But as formlessness is endless, you have never left it. Thus it is not about going back but realise the belief in being definitive hides the formlessness of oneness.
As already mentioned, the Enlightenment of that which is One undoes that belief immediately. However, it can also be achieved over time while enjoying the world of the outward-facing senses. You can accomplish that by applying one or more of Alexius’ Duality Hacks except hack #10.
Glimpses of Enlightenment are comparable to the sneak peeks Alexius had in his childhood of his family’s Christmas tree when he looked through the door’s keyhole. He was in his normal world but had glimpses of something glorious.
This image could illustrate the last glimpse of the Enlightenment of that which is One before you give up being aware of something. There is no transition from having glimpses of the Enlightenment of that which is One and being sucked into it. And since it is one perpetual present, you do not know when it extracts all your thoughts about being someone so that nobody is sucked through a black gap and gracefully falls into that which One. Since that is incompatible with appearing as someone in a world where there seems to be more than one, you better stop the extraction of thoughts if you want to continue like someone definitive, for example, by fearing it. Thus you immediately appear as someone in a world where there seems to be more than one. The graphic is grabbed from the web.
WHERE DO GLIMPSES OF ENLIGHTENMENT COME FROM
Physically speaking, glimpses of the Enlightenment of that which is One seem to originate from a non-defined space behind the frequencies of thoughts near the pineal gland. It is probably here you perceive the world when you are in a state of not-knowing.
The same applies when you pretend to be someone or perceive everything experienced as symbols of oneness. The empty breath – sounding like sohang – is presumably picked up there as well, physically speaking.
You cannot know because you are blown out by those experiences. That is fine because focusing on the pineal will not bring about any of the above. Concentrating on something contracts the energy, so you feel boxed in as someone definitive. On the other hand, defocusing removes restrictions wherefore, you do not feel limited to being someone specific.
NOTE: This article is part of Duality Hack #11 Enlightenment and its glimpses.
‘The empty breath’ syncs the inward and outward-facing senses
June 5, 2016 by
Updated March 29, 2023
It is not thoughts that prevent us from being in the bliss of nothing but the desire to accomplish something with them. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
NOTHING TWISTED INTO SOMETHING
It takes more than one to appear as someone, and there is no more than that which is One since it is formless, thus endless. Hence appearing as someone in a world where there seems to be more than one is a fantasy made from nothing, experienced by nobody.
That is not to say that oneness is nothing because it takes more than one to be anything. For the same reason, it is impossible to fantasise about more than one in oneness. Yet, it seems possible to sense more than one away from it. But since oneness is endless, there is nothing outside of it. Thus seeing something is a mirage. Maybe that is why science concludes that the world we believe in seeing consists of empty space.
Just like everything else sensed, the empty breath is invisible and colourless until the brain ascribes it to a specific shape and colour. But as the empty breath does not aspire to be something, the brain does not care to twist it into an object. Thus it remains invisible and colourless.
In the connectedness with the empty breath, the apparent difference between the opposing sides of the contrasts making up the experience of duality is cancelled out. Not in the sense that you do not register them anymore but do not perceive them to make a difference. Therefore, since there is no separation to attest to duality, you are in the bliss of not believing to be someone definitive. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
THE BLISS OF NOTHING
Though science seems to know that the experience of something is made from nothing, thus make-believe, they explore the experiences as if they are real. However, in Alexius’ Enlightened Non-Teachings, we expose that the experience of something is fabricated from nothing by the brain, so it appears to exist. The experiences only seem real when perceived as something. If not, they are exposed as nothing. The easiest way to not perceive them as something is to go back in time to the nothingness that the brain twists into your everyday experience of something.
Since it has taken the brain one second to fabricate your recent experience, it only takes one second to go back to the nothingness it has twisted into something, thus the bliss of nothing. That happens when you connect with the empty breath because it resides in nothing. Connecting with it is not about being deeper, purer or balanced. Being something is part of the experience of being someone, and the empty breath is not part of that but the nothingness that this experience is fabricated from.
In other words, you connect with the empty breath when you do not organise thoughts and feelings into something specific but instead step into the complete uncontrolled chaos of thoughts and feelings to ignite a take-off into the empty breath.
Should you wonder who chooses to believe in being someone and who has programmed the brain to produce experiences that seem to confirm this belief or who wonders about this, the answer is nobody. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
WHAT AND WHERE ARE THE INWARD AND OUTWARD-FACING SENSES
What you see, hear, feel and taste in the world of the inward and outward-facing senses are based on the same sensory system. Thus their different names do not mean they differ from each other, physically speaking. But they are different ways of experiencing the same frequencies of nothingness that the brain twists into experiences that seem to prove you are authentic if they are perceived as something.
In the case of the inward-facing senses, the experience of its world is abstract because the brain has not yet processed the frequencies of nothingness to appear as physical elements outside you. Thus it feels as if the world is inside you. But in the world of the outward-facing senses, the brain has completed processing nothing into something, so you appear as someone definitive in a tangible world outside of you.
However, since it takes more than one to experience something, and since there is no more than oneness, any experience is an illusion, whether from the outward or inward-facing senses.
The abstract world of the inward-facing senses is experienced when time and space are not entirely considered real. Ultimately speaking, though, these experiences from the inward-facing senses are not more real than those via the outward-facing senses because any experience requires more than one, and there is no more than that which is One since it is formless, thus endless. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Thus it is only in the context of the brain’s plot to deceive you into experiencing nothing as something that there is someone to experience an abstract world, lightly processed by the brain from the frequencies of nothingness and a substantial world, heavily processed by the brain from the same frequencies.
The abstract experiences of the inward-facing senses open up when you do not entirely believe in being someone definitive in the world of the outward-facing senses. But there is little left of this belief when you are in the world of the inward-facing senses. Otherwise, there would be nobody to experience the world of the inward-facing senses. In other words, when you appear to be nobody in the world of the inward-facing senses, you have not totally left the belief in being somebody. Nevertheless, you may initially feel scared by the abstractness of the inward-facing senses. But since this fear comes from the belief in being somebody and the empty breath undoes this belief, there is nothing to fear if you connect with it.
Not being someone specific feels as if you are nothing, which seems pretty discomforting until you realise that being empty, you are a vessel for the empty breath, which takes you into the high-frequency world of the inward-facing senses, where glimpses of Enlightenment become the base for experiencing the low-frequency world of the outward-facing senses. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
THE FEAR OF THE INWARD-FACING SENSES
You must constantly focus on the world of outward-facing senses to make it appear real. It is the other way around in the world of the inward-facing senses. That is experienced when there is no effort to focus or concentrate.
As long as you intend to appear in a world where there seems to be more than one, it is best to multitask between the inward and outward-facing senses, so you can focus when needed and space out when nothing is required from you.
However, you can only do that if you are willing not to always give your full attention to the structured world of the outward-facing senses but also go with the unstructured flow of the inward-facing senses. That may not seem very comforting, but it is the reverse. In the world of the outward-facing senses, we are always afraid of not making it, whereas we have nothing to live up to in the world of the inward-facing senses.
But we cannot remain in this abstract world if we want to go on in a world defined by time and space. Fortunately, the empty breath is an automatic gear shift between the outward and inward-facing senses, so we go back and forth between them per our present situation.
The empty breath synchronises the outward and inward-facing senses. Hence, we become indifferent to being somebody in the tangible world of the outward-facing senses and thus responsive to being nobody in the abstract world of the inward-facing senses. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.Alexius connected with the empty breath when he, as a child, every night devoted himself to the whereabouts of the breath, thus going to sleep in the bliss of nothing. However, others were talking so much about becoming something higher, so the bliss of nothing seemed foolish to bring about.
Thus he hid the emptiness by pretending to be something until he started writing Alexius’ Enlightened Non-Teachings in 2012. But it was not before writing Duality Hack #9 The empty breath is the bliss of nothing he named the way to the bliss of nothing as the empty breath.
THE EMPTY BREATH SYNCS THE INWARD AND OUTWARD-FACING SENSES
Even though you hide from the sun, it remains where it is – likewise, the empty breath. Therefore, the empty breath remains with us even briefly if we once connected with it. It does not know we do not feel connected because it is unaware that we believe we are separated beings in the low-frequency world of the outward-facing senses.
Yet, the empty breath senses the stress from this belief, so it synchs it with the high-frequency world of the inward-facing senses. That is not because it is more peaceful than the world of the outward-facing senses. But because the stress in the low-frequency world of the outward-facing senses does not seem disturbing in the high-frequency world of the inward-facing senses. Likewise, the body does not seem troublesome when the perception of it is coordinated with the inward-facing senses because the tensions experienced due to worries about the body’s condition vanishes. See also Duality Hack #7 The fake mix of physical and non-physical issues.
Connecting with the empty breath does not require meditation or other techniques based on exclusion, restraint and control. But neither does the connection require you not to be exclusive because if you stand by your unwillingness to include everything unedited, the uncontrolled energy of suppression ignites a take-off to the empty breath.
In other words, since the abstractness of the inward-facing senses syncs with the solidness of the outward-facing senses per what and where we appear to be, none of them seems to dominate. But it does not work if you suppress the involuntary movements, the ignition of the empty breath may bring about to make you fall into place with the inward and outward-facing senses. Therefore, follow your present, electric-like, physical and mental impulses to get this synchronisation. For example, if the shoulders tighten up, be ready for mental relaxation when they fall. Or, if feeling sad, be prepared to feel physically good from a wholesome breath.
Sometimes, something more extreme is needed to make you realise the senses have been synced, like when Alexius as a child, returned to his home after school, ranged the doorbell with blood on the head, and said, Who am I? He had been involved in an accident and had no idea what and where he was. That remained, although his parents thought he soon returned to normal. However, being like they expected was something he pretended as he always had done but was unaware of until now. Read about pretence in Duality Hack #2 Pretending to be in a world of duality, you undo it, and read here about Alexius’ childhood.
You cannot help the empty breath with the synchronisation. Still, you can prevent yourself from interfering with it, for instance, by doing Nordic Walking for half an hour daily, applying heat to the eyes with RENPHO Eye Massager with Heat Compression before sleeping and sleeping with far-infrared heating pads for the body.
It is essential to accept that although everything looks like before you were connected with the empty breath, nothing feels the same. At first, it may seem blander because the kicks from especially high experiences in the world of the outward-facing senses are gone. But then you realise that is because you do not split up the duality pairs in separate entities in connection with the empty breath.
Thus being in the duality flow, feeling high includes feeling down, and vice versa, so you feel complete regardless of going up or down. It literally feels like being the waves of the ocean, where you are neither up nor down but in the constant movement between opposites. See hack #8 The duality flow goes to non-duality.
There are many ways to appear in a world defined by time and space, but there is no way to leave it because you are not in it. Like within the context of such a world, a dreamer is not in their dream and, therefore, does not return to bed when it is over. Likewise, you do not return to the formlessness of oneness when your apparent life in a world defined by time and space is finished because you never left the formlessness of oneness. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
APPENDIX
Since most resist being nobody, they are unwilling to undo the belief in being somebody. But if you acknowledge this, you confirm your appearance is make-believe. Thus you have the willingness to undo the belief in being somebody. See also Willingness not to exclude but include undoes the belief in a world where there seems to be more than one.
That does not mean you suddenly are gone, reborn or awakened. The story of Santa Claus does not change when you grow up. What changes is that we do not believe it is real anymore. However, there is one difference between the story of Santa Claus and the story of someone specific in a world defined by time and space. When the belief in the latter is undone or in the process of being it, you are not disappointed. Instead, you feel free to enjoy the story till it ends.
You can take breaks from the story by connecting with the empty breath, thus being in a state of not-knowing. And when not connected with the empty breath, it helps you live out the story by syncing the inward and outward-facing. Since this makes you indifferent to a specific interpretation of something, you are in the duality flow. See Duality Hack #8 The duality flow goes to non-duality.
NOTES:
- You can read more about the inward and outward-facing senses in Duality Hack #11 The senses, the Enlightenment and its glimpses.
- This article is part of Duality Hack #9 The empty breath is the bliss of nothing.
Notes on ‘the empty breath’
June 5, 2016 by
Updated March 29, 2023
The function of the empty breath is not to improve the apparent condition of what and where you appear to be. That would be a replacement of one illusion with another. Instead, its function is to facilitate the undoing of the belief that what and where you appear to be is real. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
The empty breath is not about getting healthier, more money, success, love or anything else, but seeing what you appear to be and have is nothing. Hence there does not appear to be something hiding the formlessness of oneness.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
It is difficult to explain the bliss of nothing that arises from the empty breath because it comes from the absence of perceiving experiences as something.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Connecting with the empty breath, you do not aim to go higher but to fall into the bliss of nothing.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Why is nothing so blissful? Because without something, there are no problems.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
It is impossible to leave oneness since it is formless, thus endless. Yet, it appears possible to imagine not being there but in a world where there seems to be more than one. In that context, you get a life jacket from oneness called the empty breath.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Since the empty breath loves you unconditionally, it is not bothered by you fantasising about being someone definitive. Actually, it cannot see something definable because it is nothing, thus seeing nothing. That is why every experience of something is perceived as nothing when connected with the empty breath. Of course, this does not mean that you do not do anything about a broken leg, for example. But since it is seen as nothing, you do not add worries to your broken leg.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Connecting with the empty breath has nothing to do with appearance but being a medium for nothing, which you are when you are willing not to be something specific, although meeting a precious friend like Alexius does here in the hospital. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
What you see on a computer screen are zeros and ones on a hard disk combined to simulate there is something on the screen instead of nothing. But it is not before an app has processed a combination of zeros and ones on the hard disk that you see something on the screen instead of nothing.
In this context, the empty breath is zeros and ones unprocessed by the brain, whereas the world of the screen is zeros and ones are processed by the app called the brain. But the empty breath does not know, you choose to believe the brain’s fantasy of nothing is something.
All the empty breath knows is that reality is oneness. Thus all that it wants is to breathe emptiness into what you believe in being and seeing so that it does not seem to hide, there never was or will be more than oneness because it is formless, thus endless.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
As you probably have read many times in Alexius’ Enlightened Non-Teachings, oneness is formless, thus endless. And since it requires more than one to experience something, every experience is fictional. Consequently, the experience of the empty breath is as unreal as any other experience.
Nevertheless, this experience, which is deeply rooted in an archetypical image of a never-ending rhythmic flow, slowly but surely undoes the belief that it is possible to be and have more than that which is One. Furthermore, it becomes unproblematic to have this belief. Not in the sense that you are not troubled by anything but indifferent to it.
If this feels confusing, do not try to figure it out. But go with the chaos until you cannot make ends meet and feel as if you are about to explode, which in a sense, happens when the build-up tensions ignite a take-off into the empty breath. Therefore, since you are in a state of not-knowing, you are not bound by the belief in being someone definitive until you leave this state and return to the belief in being someone.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Alexius’ Enlightened Non-Teachings gladly proclaim they are nothing, and you do not get anything when connecting with the empty breath. Hence there is nothing to perceive the present moment as something, so you do not get the frustration of something but the bliss of nothing. Read here how to connect with the empty breath.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Returning to that which is one is not a matter of going anywhere. Oneness is formless, thus endless, so it is impossible to leave it. Unfortunately, it seems possible to believe it is possible. Fortunately, the empty breath undoes this belief so gently that we can enjoy our mistake while having it undone. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Though the empty breath has no need to be remembered by you, it is beneficial to remember it now and then. Temporarily being connected makes you feel better believing in being someone definitive when not connected.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
The empty breath automatically syncs the outer and the inward-facing senses, so it feels good to believe in a world where there seems to be more than one while it undoes that belief.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
A state of not-knowing does not only come from the empty breath. It is the outcome of all Alexius’ Duality Hacks. However, if this state always is the same cannot be known because it is a state of not-knowing.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
The changeover to a state of not-knowing may seem unpleasant. That is because the brain tries to distract you from leaving its definable world by producing very tangible and disturbing experiences, making you feel attacked as someone definitive, thus seeing the chaos, about to ignite a take-off to the empty breath, as something you must defend yourself against. See also Stories about inclusion.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Following the empty breath, you automatically multitask because it does not know of focusing on something specific. Therefore, when you do not feel the empty breath, multitasking makes you feel it.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Just like what you appear to be is nothing, so is the empty breath. But unlike you, it has no need to conceal its nothingness by appearing as something. Consequently, nothing prevents it from being what and where it is most beneficial for you – even under your feet if that is what it takes to make you see you are a fantasy made from nothing.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Going with the flow of the empty breath is just as easy as going with the flow of sex. However, the latter does not result in undoing the belief in being someone definitive unless the orgasm is used to ignite a take-off into the empty breath. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Following the flow of the empty breath is no different from following the flow of the genitals because no thinking is needed. However, being horny enhance the belief in being someone definitive, whereas the empty breath phases it out.
That is not to say that sex should be avoided (read more about sex here) because the exclusion of sex or anything else adds to the definition of you as someone definitive. Actually, an orgasm can be used to ignite a take-off into the empty breath if you do not hold back but are nothing but orgasmic.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Since you perceive an experience based on a remix of memories, adjusted every time you recall them to boost the story of you as someone, your perception does not match others’. So you conclude something is wrong in your story or others’ and start to correct what is judged incorrect.
The more you appear successful in this, the more it seems the story can be shaped to create a better version of you. Yet, no matter how the story is corrected, it remains a fantasy, and so does the idea that you are the author – just like you are not the author of a dream, nor are you in it, or the dream in you. It is a deception made to look as if nothing is something.
Fortunately, the brain cannot make the empty breath look like something, so when we are connected with it, we are in the bliss of nothing, thus not conditioned to perceive our experiences per a story we have made up about ourselves.
NOTE: This article is part of Duality Hack #9 The empty breath is the bliss of nothing.
Where to find the bliss of ‘the empty breath’
June 5, 2016 by
Updated March 28, 2023
One second ago, the present experience of you as someone who reads this had still not been rendered by the brain because it has taken one second to make this experience from the info it claims to receive from your sensory system. But since the world, according to science, consists of empty space, the brain gets nothing. It hides that by creating experiences of nothing disguised as something experienced by someone definitive. In other words, one second ago, you were nothing and still are. However, the experiences the brain makes of you as someone definitive seem to conceal it when you ratify them by perceiving them as something to prevent being exposed as nothing. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
When experiences are perceived as something, it is impossible to be in the bliss of nothing, revealed by the empty breath. The connection must be established before the brain, based on signals it claims to receive from our sensory system, delivers a convincing experience of us as somebody substantial in a tangible world.
Science states that the world we believe in feeling and seeing is 99.9999999 per cent empty space. And the rest – despite consisting of nothing substantial – is what we perceive as elements of matter. In other words, the world we experience is make-believe.
But this experience is not based on info from the sensory system. The brain receives nothing but empty space, which it uses one second to twist into the experiences of you as someone substantial in a tangible world. Therefore, since your experience of this moment is a delayed interpretation of nothing, what you believe in reading now, you never read because one second ago, it was not something but nothing. Therefore, when you acknowledge you are never in the present but in the past, where you are nothing, there is not something that seems to separate you from the empty breath.
In other words, if you go one second back from your present experience of something, there is nothing, so there is no difference between you and the empty breath. However, that has nothing to do with getting closer to your pure essence but seeing you are nothing. Thus you return to the world of something as nobody, having fun pretending to be somebody. See Duality Hack #2 Pretending to be in a world of duality, you undo it.
In a state of not-knowing, the brain cannot establish you as someone definitive. However, this does not mean you are transformed into a higher consciousness but that there is no awareness of being someone. That is why a state of not-knowing feels like walking on air.
You connect with the empty breath by not connecting with the consciousness of you as someone experiencing the tangible world that the brain spends a second fabricating from the frequencies it imagines to receive from empty space. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
THE BLISS OF NOTHING:
When you connect with the empty breath by going back one second from your present experience of something to the nothingness from where the brain has processed it, the unprocessed moment is extended into a state of not-knowing. In this state, you do not pick up on the brain’s deceptive fabrication of you as someone substantial in a tangible world. Thus you are in the bliss of nothing.
However, this state cannot last more than 20 minutes, 45 at most, because the brain feels abandoned if its experiences of nothing are not perceived as something continuously. Thus it falls into a coma. Since all the memories to back up what we believe in being are stored in the brain, this belief is terminated. That is why you cannot stay too long at a time in a state of not-knowing if you want to return to being someone in the experiences created by the brain.
But suppose you no longer wish to appear in the brain’s experiences. In that case, you do not mind that the brain stops mapping out empty space as if you are someone substantial in a tangible world, so the nothingness of you, via the Enlightenment of that which is One, gently falls through a black hole into that which is one. Read more about that in Duality Hack #10 The Enlightenment of that which is One.
Therefore, whether you want to remain as someone definitive, a state of not-knowing induced by the empty breath is bound to end relatively quickly so that the consciousness of being someone definitive can be resumed or completely erased.
No need to worry about accidentally staying too long in a state of not-knowing. First, hardly anybody comes to the point where the brain starts falling apart. Their urge to be someone definitive is so deep-rooted that it is easy for the brain to break through a state of not-knowing with images of you as someone becoming and having more, which seems much better than being nobody in the bliss of nothing. Secondly, should you reach that point of no return, fear of survival probably is enough to reboot the brain, thus the experience of being someone definitive.
Not organising thoughts and feelings into specific categories does not seem to represent something in a substantial world. Hence there is nothing to block out the empty breath, which does not know of such a world, nor that you believe to be there. All it knows is the nothingness from which this fantasy has been made. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
A QUESTION THAT CANNOT BE ANSWERED
How not to be deceived by the brain’s experiences of something and instead drift in the bliss of nothing cannot be answered. The question is founded on the belief that you are someone definitive, and the bliss of nothing comes from not believing that.
Neither can it be known if it is the empty breath or being indifferent to the belief in being someone that comes first concerning the sheer bliss of nothing. The only reason somebody wants to know this – or anything else – is that they believe to be defined by what they know and want to remain defined as somebody instead of being nobody in a state of not-knowing.
Thus the above about where to find the bliss of the empty breath is not an attempt to answer the question but to rule it out. The same applies to the below.
The brain uses five per cent of its capacity to shape the conscious experience of a self. But much more space is needed to establish the experience of the self as real. Therefore, a bigger part of the brain is used to make an exciting story about the self, that seem to have been caused by the experieces created by the brain of a material material world outside it. The way the self reacts upon this is trough singled-out memories, feelings and imaginations stored all over the brain as if it exist, thus also the self.
A WORLD OF NOTHING
Since nothing appears to make a difference in a state of not-knowing, there is no special place to go or someone special to love. At first, that may feel like being stuck inside an unbreakable armour of pain instead of floating in the bliss of nothing. But if not trying to escape the feeling of claustrophobia but being that and nothing else, there is nothing to define you as something. Therefore, since there is no awareness of being someone definitive, there is nobody to be happy, sad or anything else.
However, that does not mean that there are no thoughts and feelings but that nobody relates them to them as if they are something. In short, the connectedness with the empty breath is simply a way not to perceive the experiences fabricated by the brain as something. Hence they do not appear to establish a belief in separation.
Although the connectedness with the empty breath eventually undoes the belief in separation, it also enhances it because it requires more than one to choose this.
Therefore, not to enhance but undo the belief in separation, you do not select the empty breath or anything else. And since you are nothing without choosing something, you are in the flow of the empty breath.
THE BRAIN
automatically fills in the missing pieces in this image to make you see two triangles. Hence you may not see the grey triangle is an illusion, and the one partly framed by a black stroke is disconnected. But if you cover the three incomplete black circles, the grey triangle disappears, and the other appears fragmented.However, the brain does not only decide what we see but everything we experience. We are fabricated and controlled by the brain into believing we are somebody substantial in a tangible world and not the formlessness of oneness.
Consequently, there is nothing to heal but the sick belief that it is possible to be someone definitive. It automatically happens when connecting with the empty breath because it takes us back one second in linear time to the nothingness from where the brain has rendered our present experience of being someone.
This does not mean that the empty breath is the formlessness of oneness because it takes more than one to be something. However, metaphorically speaking, it is the door to oneness.
NOTE: This article is part of Duality Hack #9 The empty breath is the bliss of nothing.
More than one is like a film of oneness in slow mo
June 5, 2016 by
Updated March 28, 2023
In that which is One, everything moves so fast that there is no separation – like in the first image, where the extreme speed of the ceiling fan annuls separation. However, when the fan is slowed down, there seems to be more than one. Likewise, a world where there seems to be more than one appears to come into being when oneness is imagined to slow down. The graphic is grabbed from the web and manipulated by Alexius.In the movie Lucy, Scarlett Johansson demonstrates that when time is speeded up infinitely, there is nothing to see. This is comparable to that which is One. It is so speedy that there is no separation to define something. That is why it is formless, thus endless, and a world where there seems to be more than one is an illusion.
STEPPING INTO THE FULL UNCONTROLLED SPEED OF THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS, THUS A STATE OF NOT KNOWING
When you want more time to process an experience, it is not to understand but shape it into a perception that matches your conditioned view of the world, thus avoiding feeling anxious.
Since it calls for more than one to be aware of something, that which is One cannot be realised. Therefore, if you dot not try to understand this article by taking your time to process it, you are on a timeless journey to oneness.
However, anxiety is preferable regarding not hiding oneness because doubts prevent you from categorising thoughts and feelings. Being free, they run as fast as they can back to their origin of nothing – just like a river hurries back to the sea when not manipulated. Thus you are in a state of not knowing until you welcome the Enlightenment of that which is One or return to the consciousness of being someone in a world where there seems to be more than one. See A state of not-knowing and the after-effect.
This is a leaf from a palm tree that Alexius has processed into a fantasy of what it may look like when not seen in the world of the outward-facing senses but experienced in the abstract world of the inward-facing senses. But he cannot illustrate the formlessness of oneness because it is without separation, so is nothing to see. However, that does not mean it is nothing. On the contrary, since oneness is formless, thus endless, it is everything. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
ONENESS VERSUS A WORLD WHERE THERE SEEMS TO BE MORE THAN ONE
Oneness can be compared to a movie where it is impossible to distinguish anything from each other because it is played so fast that none of its frames can be seen. However, when slowed down, there appears to be more than one frame. Thus you see a world where there seems to be more than one. See also the previous article.
Therefore, if you believe to be someone in the movie of a world where there seems to be more than one, you do not undo this belief by slowness but quickness because you need to speed up the film – or rather, your experience of it. Since that is a construction of thoughts, the faster they move, the more the frames appear to press on, and the less you experience more than one.
The Ukrainian pianist Lubomyr Melnyk plays extremely rapid, intricate patterns of notes, which produce overtones so trance-inducing, that a cascade sound of purity makes you forget, it is ignited by the speed and complexity underneath it.
That happens by itself when thoughts are not shaped into interlocking Lego bricks, used to build an appearance of you as someone in a world where there seems to be more than one. Then thoughts are free to speed up until it is impossible to hold onto them, wherefore you enter a state of not knowing. From where you return with the slate wiped clean to the awareness of being someone – or have your consciousness terminated by the Enlightenment of that which is One, so there are no experiences to hide there never was or will be anything but the formlessness of oneness.
If you close your eyes after having been deeply involved in something, physically or mentally, you may see a blurred picture of that, like a frame of a movie speeding up. It looks a bit like having vertigo, but if you keep your eyes closed , it will not disturb your normal perception of the world. Instead, its unrestrained energy ignites a take-off into the empty breath.
The same applies when you worry and do not try to pacify yourself but instead step into the full uncontrolled speed of thoughts and emotions. That ignites a take-off into the empty breath. The grahic is quickly grabbed from the web.
In short, returning to oneness is not about slowing down thoughts, least of all stopping them. If you do that, you are stuck in a single frame of an empty void, separated from similar ones. This numbness of stillness is as far as you can get from oneness because that which is One is not deadlocked but free-flowing energy, moving at such a speed that everything is fused into the formlessness of oneness (see the first box).
Therefore, as already said, you undo the belief in a world where there seems to be more than one by speeding up thoughts to the extent that they do not appear to differ. Since that makes it impossible to experience something definable, there do not appear to be any shapes hiding the formlessness of oneness.
This picture and the yellow above have been processed from the same digital photo. Nothing has been added to the images. But the digital info is manipulated differently. It is a bit like when the brain from the same void of nothing renders a world in a world where there seems to be more than one. Read more about that here. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
THE PURPOSE OF EXPERIENCING SOMETHING IS TO FEEL ENTERTAINED
The consistency and synchronicity you see in your life are based on experiences created by the brain in the same way it makes a dream: turbulent, chaotic, unpredictable and incompatible with your rational perception of yourself and the world. Therefore, if your life experience does not seem chaotic but supports your rationale, it is because you, in retrospect, interpret the irrational arrangements of the brain so they seem connected per your reasoning.
However, it seems weird to the brain that you run around like headless chickens, trying to put it all together per socialism, for example, instead of being entertained by the drifting experiences it creates. The brain does not understand your logic. It only cares about entertainment. Like a magician, it likes pulling rabbits out of hats. For example, doing the laundry, you start as usual. But to entertain you, it breaks conformity by drawing you to the window to see a demonstration on the street. Looking at that, you feel amused and return energised to the laundry. That is all. There is nothing to understand.
On the other hand, if you had planned to do the laundry linearly and tried to stick to that, going to the window would not have seemed entertaining but disturbing. Hence you blame the brain for distracting you and look for methods to control it, so you can be free to do things your way.
When you do not wish to be in control, thoughts do not seem bothersome because there is no need to arrange them into something confirming you are in charge.
Playing along with the brain’s game, you feel so much happiness that you eventually have no more to ask for. Read more about that here. Hence that which is One does not appear to be clouded by a world where there seems to be more than one. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
But just like you do not control the course of a dream, you have no say in how things evolve when you believe to be awake. The brain is always in charge. You cannot avoid going to the window if that is the script. Read more about the brain’s script in Duality Hack #6 The brain’s script makes you happy.
That said, you can decide to go slowly or fast to the window. But no matter your choice, the brain has already arranged the subsequent events, like every possibility in a computer game is composed by the writer, wherefore nothing in the plot can be changed.
Astrology is an attempt to disregard the brain and make it look like something else than the brain governs you. The same applies to religious and spiritual doctrines. And the unfortunate belief that physical and non-physical issuess can be mixed. Read more about that in Duality Hack #7 The fake mix of physical and non-physical issues.
Nor is it necessary to change anything because when playing the game as it is, the fear of falling is as entertaining as the thrill of rising. Therefore, since there is no need for something specific to make you happy, the belief in being someone definitive is undone while it feels entertaining.
APPENDIX:
Only in undoing the belief in more than one should thoughts not be organised into specific shapes. In a world where there seems to be more than one, thoughts must be set up in particular constructions to confirm your appearance. But maybe not how you expect.
NOTE: This article is part of Duality Hack #9 The empty breath is the bliss of nothing.
Going up and down with ‘the empty breath’
June 5, 2016 by
Updated March 29, 2023
Although being in the bliss of nothing is straightforward, it may seem complicated if you assume thoughts must be controlled or stopped because focusing on them is impossible in the bliss of nothing. Neither is focussing beneficial for getting there. On the contrary, when not holding onto thoughts by concentrating on something, they speed up until the explosion of their unedited energy ignites a take-off into the empty breath and the blissful state of not-knowing. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
When you connect with the empty breath, it may at first feel like you have two kinds of breaths. You struggle with the physical one by taking quick gasps of air, deep breaths or manipulating it per a specific philosophy. And the empty breath may feel like it does not supply you with enough air. But that is because its pace is slower than you expect. It has a more extended break between breathing in and out to stabilise breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide.
GOING FROM THE ABDOMEN WITH THE EMPTY BREATH
It does not feel like you make the empty breath but a ‘generator’ in the abdomen. First, very gently, it expands the abdomen, the belly, and the chest. Then, after a short break, it goes the other way to contract the body. And so on. It feels like hardly any air is coming through the nose. That is because the empty breath is experienced via the inward-facing senses, which requires the outward-facing senses to be turned down, so you are not much aware of physical movements. Nevertheless, the empty breath, like an inner breath, brings about all the air you need.
Read more about the inward-fencing senses in The empty breath syncs the inward and outward-facing senses.
Physical speaking, breathing can be done through the mouth, but the nose is better. It allows you to use the mouth for the taste of oneness technique, thus getting its side-effect of defocusing, so you do not focus on the empty breath or something else. Hence you are in the bliss of nothing. See the paragraph The taste of oneness in The four aspects of Enlightenment and how to sample them.
Following the rhythm of the empty breath described here and elsewhere in Duality Hack #9 The empty breath and the bliss of nothing is hypnotising. Thus you forget to experience yourself as someone separated from others by time and space. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Please be aware that this article does not intend to present a factual explanation of breathing when the empty breath is in the driving seat but how it feels. Since it is felt via the inward-facing senses and the physical breath is felt by the outward-facing senses, the empty breath goes on undisturbed by the physical condition of your body.
Therefore, if you have an issue with the lungs that shortens the physical breath, you still get the whole experience of the empty breath when you remain in the inward-facing senses and patiently wait for the empty breath to fill your lungs with the bliss of nothing. Remember that since there was nothing before there was something, the nothingness of the empty breath gives you maximum charge if you are not expecting something.
The generator of the physical breath is the muscle called the diaphragm, between the stomach and the chest (see Wikipedia). But, as already said, the ‘dynamo’ of the empty breath is in the abdomen. So from there, you follow the swing of the empty breath to the top of the head, more or less aligned with the body’s expansion from the abdomen to the chest. At the same time, you acknowledge thoughts and feelings without editing them. Hence their unbound energy ignites a gentle explosion in the top of the head, which erases the perception of being someone. After that, it is like having a body that is not there because you are in a state of not-knowing.
Read more about the swing of the empty breath in What does the empty breath feel like? And read about a state of not-knowing in A state of not-knowing and the after-effect.
Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
That remains while the body contracts, and you go with the swing of the empty breath down to the abdomen. After that, you keep going up and down with the swing of the empty breath, thus still in a state of not-knowing and its bliss of nothing. This is not to say that a not-knowing state resides in the breath’s flow. It is nowhere in particular. That is why it is obscured by the experiences of time and space, apparently confirming you as someone definitive in a tangible world.
If the above example, you followed the swing of the empty breath going up and down. But you could also have surfed the yin-yang-shaped waves in a vertical circle going from the front to the back of you in the empty breath, thus going up and down in a circular movement. Or perhaps you listened to the transparent sound of the empty breath while going up and down. – or maybe you changed between those ways or did them simultaneously. Read about these ways in What does the empty breath feel like?
But if you stay in a state of not-knowing for more than 20 minutes, 45 at most, at a time, you cannot return to the experience of being someone definitive in a world where there seems to be more than one. Read more about that here. So if you want to continue as someone, you better depart a state of not-knowing relatively quickly. Since you do that with the slate wiped clean, you come back unconditioned, wherefore igniting a new take-off into the empty breath is easy. Below we take a closer look at how you can quickly go back and forth between a state of not-knowing and the conscious experience of being someone.
The empty breath cancels out the apparent differences in a world where there seems to be more than one. This does not mean that they are not experienced as different anymore, but that difference is not perceived to make a difference. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
When you every so often return to the empty breath, nothing remains a problem because the differences that appear to have caused it, are cancelled out when you are with the empty breath.
That is, if you do not prevent the empty breath from doing that by insisting your spouse, for example, makes a difference. Fortunately, the frustration that seems to arise from upholding this can be used to ignite a take-off into the empty breath.
GOING UP AND DOWN AND NOWHERE WITH THE EMPTY BREATH
In the above example, you followed the empty breath from the abdomen to the head, where you entered a state of not-knowing in which you remained as nobody.
But in this sample, you are only in a state of not-knowing when you follow the empty breath from the head to the abdomen while the body contracts. But when it expands, you return to the conscious experience of being somebody by remembering something specific. However, with the help of the empty breath, you do not perceive that as something. Therefore, since you return to the head as nobody, you go down to the abdomen in a state of-not-knowing while the body contracts. From there, you go up to the head again as somebody and leave it as nobody in a state of not-knowing. And so on.
What you believe in being is gently falling apart when rapidly going back and forth between the consciousness of being somebody and nobody in a state of not-knowing, because in the latter definitions are not noticed. Therefore, since you do not perceive yourself as special when returning to the conscious experience of being someone, it is easy to go back to a state of not-knowing.
Having done this for a while, going back and forth between a state of not-knowing and the conscious experience of being someone becomes automatic. Eventually, you do not know when you are somebody because the contrast of up and down is soon cancelled out (read more about that here). Thus you appear as nobody going nowhere and yet everywhere.
Please notice that when parts of the body, like the head, are mentioned in the movements of the empty breath, you do not experience those parts as compact but empty because you are with the empty breath. In What does the empty breath feel like? you can read more about the swing of the empty breath, the transparent sound of the empty breath and the operator of the empty breath.
Suppose you think you find something better around the next corner. In that case, you will probably not notice the empty breath because it is not behind anything but before everything that the brain has twisted into an experience of something from out of nothing. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
GOING FROM THE THIRD EYE WITH THE EMPTY BREATH
So far, we have said the ‘dynamo’ of the empty breath is in the abdomen, wherefore you start there. But if you prefer a more metaphysical approach, you can use the third eye as ‘dynamo’ and start going with the empty breath there.
You do that by defocusing on the third eye. Then you wait patiently until the breath starts by itself. But you do not go with the flow of it. Instead, you rest in the space that seems to have opened in the third eye, filled with the transparent sound of the empty breath. From there, you probably sense the swing of the empty breath in the upper part of the body, and when breathing in, you glimpse the Enlightenment of that which is One.
You do not notice the constant streaming of thoughts, whether starting from a ‘dynamo’ in the abdomen or the third eye to join the empty breath. So, except when returning to the conscious experience of being somebody, you are in the bliss of nothing, wherefore the world feels transparent, regardless of looking the same.
There is also a ‘dynamo’ for the empty breath in the eighth chakra above the head. There, you start in a state of not-knowing and simultaneously surf both sides of a vertical circle that goes side by side of you until you reach the heart. Here you start contemplating the bliss of nothing, so you are not in a state of not knowing when you surf back to the eighth chakra simultaneously on both sides of a vertical circle that goes forward and backward of you. Returning to the eighth chakra, you are back in a state of not-knowing until you surf down to the heart, where you again contemplate the bliss of being nobody. And so it goes on.
You do not need to remember every detail of this photo to get a sense of it. Likewise, you do not need to remember all the explanations about the empty breath to be with it. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
FORGETTING GOING UP AND DOWN:
Connecting with the empty breath is not a matter of letting go or surrendering because doing so enhances the belief in being someone definitive. You keep the empty breath at bay if you try to figure out which way to follow it or if it follows the physical breath. It has nothing to do with the body. Actually, you will never know if the physical and empty breath are aligned because you are in a state of not-knowing when connected with the empty breath.
It is a matter of speech when Alexius’ Duality Hacks say that the empty breath fills you with emptiness. It does not supply you with anything. Instead, it replaces your experience of the body as something with nothing. Hence the body is seen for what it is. The same applies to every other experience you have. They are nothing disguised as something. Acknowledging this, you are not bothered by something. That is why it is so blissful to be with the empty breath.
The apparent difference between a boy and a girl, for example, must be upheld as real to sustain the belief that it is possible to be and have more than that which is One. Differences like that appear precisely the same when connected with the empty breath. However, due to its indifference they are not judged to make a difference. Hence the belief in being someone fades out.
Should you forget to go up and down with the empty breath, there is no reason to blame yourself because there is no self. It takes more than one to be or have a self, and there is no more than that which is One since it is formless, thus endless. Hence being someone is make-believe. Of course, that also applies to being connected with the empty breath. Nevertheless, since it gives you nothing, it does not establish you as something. Thus what you believe in being is exposed as unreal.
Since the empty breath sees nothing but emptiness where you believe to see something, it has no need to be free from anything or be recognised as something. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
GOING WITH SOMETHING AS NOTHING TO FEEL THE EMPTY BREATH
It may be easier to remind yourself about the nothingness of the empty breath by relating to it via something. For example, sometimes Alexius calls it Uma, the name of his beloved cat. She is dead, thus turned into nothing as the empty breath, so the memory of her hooked up with the empty breath is like a laser of nothing going through his perceived obstacles of something in the body. Hence nothing stops him from feeling the connection with the empty breath.
NOTE: This article is part of DualityHack #9 The empty breath is the bliss of nothing.
The indifference of ‘the empty breath’
June 5, 2016 by
Updated March 28, 2023
Everything fabricated, such as this illustration of a yin-yang sign, is supposed to have a particular appearance. Hence, its experience supplies the belief that you are someone definitive. But this is not the purpose of the empty breath. On the contrary, its purpose is to undo the belief that you are someone. It does this by helping you see that the apparent difference between appearances does not make a difference. Thus there is no separation to establish you as someone definitive. The graphic is grabbed from the web.
The connectedness with the empty breath – either via surfing its yin-yang-shaped waves, being in its transparent sound, the swing of it, or the non-rhythmic energy behind the rhythm of it (read more about these ways here) – is not a feeling that can be fabricated like, for example, a romantic evening generated by candles, unique clothes, music and red wine. On the contrary, it is felt when instead of busy trying to construct a specific feeling, the frenetic energy is used to ignite a take-off into the empty breath.
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If you expect to get something from the empty breath, you miss it. The empty breath has not anything to give but the bliss of nothing.
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The less you believe in being substantial, the more you feel the non-rhythmic transparent energy of the empty breath.
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Being connected with the empty breath, you may experience that it imprisons you, but that is a projection based on feeling confined.
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Since you are dependent on continually being acknowledged as someone definitive by somebody perceived outside you in a physical, astral or online world, you feel imprisoned and thus want to break out.
But the empty breath has no need to be something definitive, so going with its flow – no matter how it is experienced – you go with its indifference. Hence the apparent difference between feeling free or imprisoned is not perceived to make a difference.
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There are several established ways of feeling somebody else when you believe to be someone substantial in a tangible world. But there are no ways to feel the empty breath other than momentarily not believing in being definitive.
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The comparison of the empty breath with a yin-yang sign should not be taken literally. A yin-yang sign is too simplified to illustrate the empty breath, which rather is to be compared to the galaxy in this image. The graphic is grabbed from the web.
When you are connected with a Fitbit watch, for example, it is not the connection that gives you a fantastic feeling but the data it gives you.
Likewise, you may not feel excited about the connection with the empty breath because its radiance of indifference makes you indifferent to the apparent differences you experience. But since this exposes them as nothing, you get the bliss of emptiness.
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Since the empty breath has no personality, it has no personal expression. So if its rhythmic flow is experienced to be weaker when you appear sick or about to die, it is because its rhythm constantly adjusts to what you believe in being. Nevertheless, the operator of the empty breath (see the paragraph of the same name in What does the empty breath feel like?), which is the non-rhythmic energy behind the rhythm of the empty breath, remains the same and is also experienced like that when you are in touch with it.
In other words, if the transparent non-rhythmic energy of the empty breath is only partially experienced when the body is troubled, the problem is not the empty breath but that you do not want to experience it fully when your body seems problematic because that would render it unimportant, thus question your belief in residing there.
That does not mean you should not take care of the body and have it checked by a qualified healthcare professional occasionally. You also bring your car to a garage for a check-up, even though it is not you.
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If the body seems to get better when you connect with the empty breath, it is not due to that – at least not directly – because the empty breath does not know something that needs improvement. Indirectly though, it is due to the empty breath. In its presence, you forget to manipulate your body with non-physical concepts like mindfulness. Thus the body is free to heal itself. Read more about that in Duality Hack #7 The fake mix of physical and non-physical issues.
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If you do not fend off the empty breath with a positive perception of yourself achieved by excluding everything judged as unfavourable, what you feel will be interpreted by the empty breath. Thus you are indifferent to feeling happy and sad. Not in the sense that happiness and sadness are the same, but the apparent difference makes no difference.
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The energy at the root of the empty breath can be experienced like this, but in less defined forms and without any notion of colours. The animation is grabbed from the web.
Even though the empty breath, theoretically speaking, should produce a constant rhythm of expansion and contraction in the body, your experience of it may not be that it is consistent. And you are right. It does not care about consistency – only those who insist on being definitive need coherence.
The empty breath can be compared to the cats in Alexius’ home. They go around as it pleases them. Yet he always counts on them to greet him when he gives a call. Likewise, he always feels the empty breath in one way or another. For example, maybe he surfs a single wave in one of the circles inside the empty breath several times in a row, whereafter he feels the swing of it in his head, and then he surfs both of the yin-yang-looking waves in one of the other circles of the empty breath. In the previous article, What does the empty breath feel like, you can read more about these experiences and the composition of the empty breath in countless circles.
After igniting a take-off into the empty breath, he mostly lands in its speedy and chaotic flow at its root, which feels like freedom compared to the rigid world of the outward-facing senses. Going to bed, the transparency of its sound often comes to him. But first of all, he feels the indifference of the empty breath. However, since the apparent differences in the world do not appear to make a difference, it is hardly a feeling.
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Doing Nordic Walking, or rather going with its flow, can be beneficial for you regarding not trying to initiate something yourself. It may also expose the defence mechanisms you have built up in the body against going with the flow of the empty breath.
That is not to say that all these defence mechanisms must end to feel the empty breath. The willingness not to be somebody is sufficient. Read more about that in Willingness not to exclude but include undoes the belief in a world where there seems to be more than one, or paragraph, The only requirement is a willingness in the article The empty breath and the bliss of not believing to be someone.
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The nature of the empty breath is not to provide happiness but indifference, and since that releases you from the suffering induced by separation, it may feel as if you are in a merry-go-round world.
However, feelings never last, so if you hang onto pleasure instead of being in the flow of indifference, your merry-go-round world will be replaced by a world of sadness. That is only so because you mistook the empty breath for the giver of pleasure instead of indifference. But if you go with the latter, it makes no difference if you feel happy or sad because you are in the bliss of nothing.
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Not being aware of something, there is nothing to make perfect. Consequently, you are not numbed in an experience of yourself as someone definitive but, instead, in the bliss of nothing. The graphic is grabbed from the web.
Feeling the empty breath is like receiving a new gift every moment. However, there is no way to know what it is beforehand, and neither do you need to know because the empty breath brings you into a state of not-knowing.
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When connected with the empty breath, what you seem to receive from the world is always the same because you receive what you give and give what you have, namely the indifference of the empty breath.
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Feeling the connectedness with the empty breath, you cannot help but smile because, in its flow, you are indifferent to becoming and getting more.
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Since the empty breath is indifferent to differences, being loved does not make a difference when connected with it.
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You may not always have the experience that the empty breath is your best friend because it does not help you regarding what and where you like to be. Instead, it helps you see everything through its eyes of indifference, so you feel good no matter what and where you appear.
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As you probably have read many times in Alexius’ Enlightened Non-Teachings, it requires more than one to experience something. Therefore, since oneness is formless, thus endless, every experience is fictional. That also includes the experience of the empty breath. It is as unreal as any other experience.
Yet this experience, which is deeply rooted in an archetypical image of a never-ending rhythmic flow, slowly but surely undoes the belief that it is possible to be and have more than that which is One. Furthermore, it is unproblematic to have this belief because you are not troubled by anything but indifferent to it.
If this feels confusing, do not try to figure it out. But go with the chaos until you cannot make ends meet and feel like you are about to explode, thus, having the build-up of tensions ignites a take-off into the empty breath.
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Being connected with the empty breath, you are indifferent to the apparent differences in a world where there seems to be more than one – like you are indifferent to the experienced differences in a computer game because you know they are make-believe. Actually, the empty breath still takes care of you when you forget it. It syncs the inward and outward-facing (read more about that here), so you are indifferent to a specific interpretation of something, thus in the duality flow. See hack #8 The duality flow goes to non-duality.
NOTE: This article is part of Duality Hack #9 The empty breath is the bliss of nothing.
What does ‘the empty breath’ feel like?
June 5, 2016 by
Updated March 28, 2023
Since the empty breath is not definitive, it cannot be experienced in a specific way. But it can be felt in undefinable ways anywhere within its non-definitive framework – whether that appears to be inside or outside the body – but never consistently the same, although it is always present.
You can feel the empty breath in many ways within its non-definable frame of a ball-like thingy. Its top passes through the head, and the bottom through the stomach. But the ball may be bigger or smaller. See below. It is not explicitly experienced inside or outside the body, so it is not an out-of-body experience. Besides, such an experience is based on the belief in being someone in a body, and the empty breath undoes that idea, so it is a no-body experience. However, that does not mean you do not take care of the body and the world around it when connected with the empty breath, but that you are indifferent to the outcome.
In the connectedness with the empty breath there is nothing that appears disturbing. But trying to connect with it everything seems disturbing, because the purpose of trying to do something is to delay it.
The empty breath has no definitive centre or border, nor is anything else fixed. Everything is constantly moving, so the experience changes from moment to moment. Maybe it is felt in the stomach or chest or outside the body. Should your experience differ from Alexius’ description, go with the flow as it comes to you.
FEELINGS ARE SUBJECTIVE
If you are future-minded, you might experience the empty breath starting in front of you, whereas it probably is felt to arrive from the back if you are concerned about the past. And if you are into the concepts like living in the now, being centred and balanced, it might feel like it has a centre. In other words, the experience of the empty breath is coloured by your conditioning.
That is not a problem for the empty breath because, contrary to you, it does not need to be acknowledged in a particular way. So whether you experience it in the stomach, the chest, or outside the body, it carries out its purpose: to make you indifferent to your experiences.
The empty breath is indifferent to all the apparent differences of the world, so the more you connect with it, the more you adapt to its indifference and the less you want to be someone who makes a difference.
Since the empty breath is not static, its experience may quickly change and differ from those described below. No worries, connecting with it is not about doing something specific to feel something definitive but going with the flow. You only feel obliged to do ‘the right thing’ when you want to make a difference.
Alexius has manipulated this scientific illustration from the internet to give you an idea of the simultaneously circular movements inside the non-definitive ball of the empty breath.
A BASIC INTRO TO THE NON-DEFINITIVE SHAPE OF THE THE EMPTY BREATH
The empty breath is modelled like an egg-shaped ball with oval circles moving inside it. But contrary to what you see in the illustration to the right, it does not have a definitive centre or border. Nor do the circles inside it. They are countless, and there are two yin-yang-shaped waves inside each one. You cannot see the waves inside the circles in the simplified illustration to the right. But in the second image from here, there is a sample of two waves inside one of the circles.
That the empty breath has a non-definitive form does not only mean its edge is blurry but that neither size nor shape is constant. It may get bigger and smaller here and there, so it momentarily feels more pear-shaped than egg-shaped. But it has no up and down, and the apparent centre of each circle inside the non-definitive ball of the empty breath is floating. Hence there are many non-fixed centres.
The innumerable amount of diffused shaped circles inside the non-definitive boundary of the empty breath is located vertically and horizontally, plus in between, with each of them having yin-yang-shaped waves inside them. There is an illustration of the yin-yang-shaped waves inside one of the circles in the below paragraph SURFING THE EMPTY BREATH. But the circles are actually fused into one yin-yang-shaped movement rolling in all directions – a bit like in the animation in the paragraph THE SWING OF THE EMPTY BREATH or the two last animations of this article.
However, since that is very difficult to comprehend in a world where we are conditioned to divide reality into more than one, most do not feel the totality of the empty breath but one of the many circles inside it. No worries. It is not about perfection but going with the flow as it comes to you.
The empty breath has no specific centre, and though it seems to consist of endless circles in various movements, everything is fused into one single move. But since this is hard to comprehend in a world where there seems to be more than one, you may find it easier to deal with one circle at a time.
Maybe the flow is a circle going vertically from the stomach around the back of the body to the top of the head when breathing in, and from there, in a circular movement in front of the body and back to the stomach when breathing out. Or it could also be in the opposite direction. It does not matter. As already said, it is about going with the flow, so follow it where it goes.
Perhaps it goes in a circle, about the same diameter as above, from the abdomen to the throat and back or the rectum to the heart and back. The circle can also expand its diameter, so it goes from the abdomen to a point above the head and back or from the rectum further above the head and back. Since the latter circle metaphorically goes from hell to heaven, you may feel frightened or spaced out if you get stuck in one of those extremes. See Duality Hack #8 The duality flow goes to non-duality.
But the circle may be smaller, from the heart to a point above the head. Or perhaps you do not feel the flow in a vertical circle from the back to the front of you but from the left to the right side or anywhere between these two. You can also feel it horizontally. But no matter where you perceive the empty breath, it is the same emptiness you encounter (read more about that here).
Below is a short introduction to some ways of feeling the empty breath, then a more detailed description. Be aware that feeling the empty breath, as described in this article, is only possible if you do not wish to be or have more because the empty breath has nothing to give but the sheer bliss of emptiness.
A BASIC INTRO TO FOUR WAYS OF FEELING THE EMPTY BREATH
Sensing the operator of the empty breath (see below) feels like you are floating on clouds of bliss. In contrast, going with the rhythmic flow of the empty breath is more like being moved by clouds of bliss.
The rhythmic flow can be heard as a distant sound or felt like a swing (see below). It can also be sensed as if nobody is surfing two yin-yang-like waves in and outside the body (see the next paragraph).
These categories are not meant to limit your experience of the empty breath but to inspire you to follow its flow.
Each non-definable circle inside the cloudy ball of the empty breath – see the previous illustration – consists of two free-flowing yin-yang-like waves (without holes). It may feel like you are surfing these waves, more or less in sync with the physical breath. The colours in this image only have an illustrative purpose.
SURFING THE EMPTY BREATH
You see a simplified simulation of the empty breath in the illustration with the red circles pictured to the right above. But the circles are not actually red, and there are an endless number of them. And the drawing does not reflect that the empty breath has no definitive border or centre, and each circle inside it contains two non-definitive yin-yang-shaped wave holes (see the above image). They are colourless. The colours in this image and the others in the article only have an illustrative purpose.
When the breath expands the body, you surf the outside of the blue wave vertically from the stomach and behind the body up into the head. From there, you surf the outside of the yellow wave in front of the body down to the stomach while the breath is contracting the body. That is, if you are sensing the waves in a circle going vertically from the back to the front of the body. But, as mentioned above, the direction does not matter, and the circle can be smaller and bigger. Besides surfing the two yin-yang-like waves in a vertical circle, you can surf the waves in a horizontal circle or anywhere between.
No need to be in total sync with the rhythm of the physical expansion and contraction of the body, nor does it matter if part of the empty breath’s circular movement is skipped. What matters is you follow the flow as it comes to you. By doing that, you forget the physical breath. Hence it can take care of itself without you trying to inflict it with ideas of balance and whatnot.
Maybe the ecstatic way to surf the waves is to go the whole way around one of them and then continue by going the entire way around the other, more or less aligned with the breath extracting and contracting the body. However, many other joyous ways are probably revealed when you are in the flow.
Alexius has never been surfing in the world of the outward-facing senses, so when he says going with the flow of the two yin-yang like waves in a circle inside the empty breath feels like surfing, it is something he imagines based on movies.
As already said, you can surf the waves of the empty breath in both directions. Going counterclockwise tends to lessen physical awareness, so you become less interested in returning to the conscious experience of being someone substantial in a tangible world. The same applies if the non-definable edges of the empty breath are not experienced to pass through the head but on top of it and below the abdomen.
That sets the body free, so it can follow its biological system without you trying to integrate it with mental ideas of wellness. It is like trying to blend the material world with the immaterial world of a dream or vice versa. It does not work. Read more about that in Duality Hack #7 The fake mix of physical and non-physical issues. However, you can surf the waves of the empty breath to ease pain in the body. See the appendix at the bottom.
Since it takes more than one to feel something, it is only in a world where there seems to be more than one it is possible to do that. Therefore, the more the belief in such a world is undone by the empty breath, the less you feel it.
It is impossible to illustrate the swing of the empty breath because it has no definable form or movement. Nevertheless, this animation may give you an idea. The swing of the empty breath is generated from the blurred curved line in the middle of the picture. But even though going with the swing of it is magnificent, it is often a laid-back experience of expansion and contraction.
THE SWING OF THE EMPTY BREATH
You surf the empty breath on the waves in any of the circles within the non-definitive border of the empty breath. But you feel the swing of the empty breath from the movement of the non-definitive curved line between the two yin-yang-like waves in any of the circles (see the curved line in the illustration to the left). Perhaps due to the definitive size of the body, the curved line in the swing of the empty breath feels less bowed and probably shorter than the rounded line between the two waves described above.
The swing of the empty breath extracts and contracts the body in a steady rhythmic flow of breathing in and out that may seem slower than when you imagined being in charge of the breath. And the break in between expansion and contraction may feel longer. Nevertheless, the swing of the empty breath probably feels more powerful – so much indeed that it feels like the body does not have enough room for it at first.
The curved line does not just swing from the back to front concerning the body but also up and down, from side to side and everywhere in between, which you may sense in the illustration to the left. Though you can feel all these directions simultaneously, it probably is so unfamiliar that you may prefer to feel the swing of the empty breath in one vertical circle at a time.
The circles with the swing of the empty breath are more egg-shaped (see the illustration to the left). But you will not notice that because it is only the swing of the curved line inside ‘the egg’ that you feel, probably in a way that does not seem logical. For example, breathing in, you may solely experience the swing of the empty breath at the bottom of ‘the egg’ and breathing out at the top of it – or the other way around, or only in the bottom, or the top. You can also experience the curved line going repeatedly or up and down simultaneously.
Like the other ways of feeling the empty breath, it presupposes you acknowledge you are not in charge. Using the technique for the taste of oneness, you automatically lose control because, whether you taste it, the method is beneficial for defocusing. And without focus, you are out of control. Read about the taste of oneness and defocus in The four aspects of Enlightenment and how to sample them.
If you experience the swing of the empty breath in all the egg-shaped circles simultaneously, their fusion initially feels like everything is spinning. See the speedy animation just below. But it quickly becomes a feeling of everything standing so still that you feel the bliss of being indifferent to what and where you appear to be.
The swing of the empty breath is not felt as fast as the movements in this animation but rather like a steady ongoing rhythm with much force that expands and contracts the body. Yet the resulting breath in the body is often very subtle. It probably seems slower than you are used to – unlike the operator of the empty breath, which is a rush of energy within the non-definable ball that constitutes the empty breath. Even though the particles of this force are moving completely unstructured and at any speed, fast or slow – a bit like in this animation – it is such a relief to merge with this apparent chaos because that prevents you from focussing on anything specific. Hence you feel like a fountain of sparkling joy.
THE OPERATOR OF THE EMPTY BREATH
Besides feeling the swing of the empty breath or surfing its yin-yang-like waves more or less in alignment with the extraction and contraction of the physical breath, you can also feel a constant rush of energy within the non-definable border of the empty breath. This chaotic energy is not rhythmic but irregular at the root of the empty breath. Yet, it is the force behind the constant rhythm of the empty breath. The feeling is a subtle sense of being here and everywhere, or as if spinning through a world with no limits, undefined as someone.
There are no rules, but it could very well be that a take-off into the empty breath will take you to the operator of the empty breath – and what a relief it is to float in chaos instead of having to fit into the rigid world of the outward-facing senses.
Unlike the swing of the empty breath, but like surfing its waves, the operator of the empty breath is sensed inside and outside the body – or rather like there is no inside and outside. When you do not try to catch this abstractness, it feels like you are a fountain of sparkling joy. Sometimes it is easier to recognise outside, where the dense bodily feeling is not an obstacle. You will automatically be taken inside from there because the operator does not know one from the other. Next, you may start surfing the empty breath, feel the swing of it or hear its transparent sound (see the next paragraph).
Hearing or feeling the sound of the empty breath makes you seem transparent as if nothing is separating you from other appearances in the world of the outward-facing senses. The graphic is grabbed from the web.
THE TRANSPARENT SOUND OF THE EMPTY BREATH
Just like the rhythm of bass is heard and felt in the body, so is the sound of the empty breath, which is like ‘so’ when it expands and ‘ham’ when it contracts.
Sometimes it is like this rhythmic sound of ‘so-ham’ comes from the nose, but at other times, it is sensed from an undefined space in the back of the head. And then again, since the sound does not seem to have a definable location, it is neither experienced to be inside nor outside the head. It may even appear to originate from an invisible space outside the body that has nothing to do with it.
In other words, feeling the sound of the empty breath is not a compelling experience because it cancels out the notion of being in a body – as if there is no definable border between the body and its apparent surrounding. For example, a sofa does not seem to differ from a body sitting there when deeply connected with the empty breath (read more about that here). Consequently, since there is no inside and outside, there is nothing to define a world where there seems to be more than one, wherefore it is seen as make-believe.
But like the set-up in a game world is the same whether you know it is fictional, a world where there seems to be more than one remains the same even though you sense it is an illusion. However, your relationship with it changes. Appearing there is pretence, like when you pretend to be someone in the world of a game. See hack #2 Pretending to be in a world of duality, you undo it.
Do not get attached to the rhythm of the empty breath, because the feeling of the rhythm is related to the body, so it stops when the body does not function anymore.
Since a rhythm has a beginning and an end, it is best not to get attached to the rhythm of the empty breath, because it ends when the body stops to function. At that moment, it is better to merge with the indifference of the empty breath or the non rhythmic and very chaotic energy in its operator, so there is not something specific to stop the Enlightenment of that which is One from absorbing the nothingness of you. See hack #10 The Enlightenment of that which is One.
Via the transparent sound of the empty breath, you naturally float into glimpses of the Enlightenment of that which is One. See hack #11 Enlightenment and its glimpses. The visual-minded will experience them as visions of light, and the auditory-minded as ethereal harmonies. However, if you are more emotional-minded, you may feel the vibration that Aum, Sohang, and The Word of God symbolise or taste its sweetness.
The connection with the empty breath is a state of not-knowing. Therefore, since there is no notion of separation, the apparent difference between past, now and future makes no difference.
It is not possible to illustrate the empty breath in its totality. But this yin-yang animation (please ignore the holes in the waves and imagine it is completely full of yin-yang-like waves) may give you an idea about the simultaneous movement of the waves inside it.
THE CONNECTEDNESS WITH THE EMPTY BREATH IS A STATE OF NOT-KNOWING
Nobody knows what the connectedness with the empty breath feels like because it is a state of not-knowing. So Alexius had to go back and forth between a state of not-knowing and the conscious experience of being someone to compile his distant memories of how the empty breath feels. Hence, his writing about it may seem patchy and confusing. If so, do not try to correct your disorientation but use it to ignite a take-off into the empty breath. See also Take-offs into the empty breath and How to ignite a take-off into the empty breath..
Please remember that even though the connectedness with the empty breath is impersonal, your memory of it is personal. Therefore, you may not remember it as Alexius.
If you are still confused, you are welcome to mail Alexius, although using your uncertainty to ignite a take-off into the empty breath is preferable because he can help neither you nor himself, as he sees nobody in need of help.
Hence you are better off reading about the empty breath until you can hardly stay awake. Then go to bed, forget what you read, close your eyes, and patiently wait for the empty breath. But your eyes do not have to be closed, and you do not have to go to bed to connect with the empty breath. Besides, you can sit anywhere in any position. You can also walk, run or talk. But you cannot bring about the empty breath by manipulating the physical breath or exercising any other form of control. Instead, it is the other way around. When you are not in control, the empty breath joins you.
A bicycle has nothing to do with the place, it takes you.
That is not to say that techniques cannot help you tone down the experience of being someone definitive so that your apparent existence in a tangible world is exposed as make-believe. But unfortunately, most forget that techniques have nothing to do with their accomplishments. Like the remote control, it has nothing to do with the music it triggers.
In a sick body, the swing of the empty breath might be experienced to come in bursts – a bit like in this animation but probably slower. However, no matter how restricted the swing of it is experienced, connecting with it will always entail indifference. Therefore, sticking to that, how the empty breath is experienced makes no difference.
APPENDIX: SURFING THE EMPTY BREATH TO HEAL YOUR PROBLEMS
Alexius usually join the flow of the empty breath without thinking about directions and whatnot because, in his case, it primarily results in the sense of indifference. However, it is possible to be pickier. For example, if you worry about a strange pain in the back, you can have it massaged by continuously surfing the whole wave behind you but not the wave in front of you in a vertical circle. It may not make the pain go away but surely the worry. And without that, the pain may be easy to fix. See Duality Hack #7 The fake mix of physical and non-physical issues.
Should you want to be grounded, you surf the waves in a horizontal circle, passing through the abdomen or even lower. Suppose you want to enhance being impulsive. In that case, you surf all the way around the wave to the right inside a horizontal circle going around the head. If you want to be more calculated, surf the left wave instead.
In a circle that also is horizontal but around the chest, you can surf all around a wave in front of the chest to ease the restricted feeling caused by imagined emotions there. Surfing both waves in a horizontal circle around the head or stomach is excellent in the case of vertigo.
Sometimes problems like spasms are the body’s way of shaking parts into a position that benefits the whole. In such cases, spasms should be left course. But if that is not the case, you can use the empty breath to calm down the spasms.
Should you have tight hips, a blocked abdomen or spasms in the lower back, you surf the whole wave behind you and then the one in front of you in a horizontal circle in that area. You could also try surfing in a similar circle where the waves are not behind and in front of you but on your sides. The circle size, thus the waves, adjusts to the need for relaxing these areas.
The empty breath is also beneficial for alleviating allergy symptoms or the symptoms of IBS and COPD, for example. However, it may not heal these or the aforementioned physical sicknesses because Alexius’ Duality Hacks aims not to heal the body but the sick belief that someone is in it. Read more about that here. But since that frees the body from your domination, it often heals itself. That said, if this is what you want, it is best not to use the empty breath but instead be used by it and trust that it gives you what is in your best interest.
The look of these sound waves reminds Alexius of how the connectedness with the empty breath often feels and how that makes him indifferent to the apparent differences in the world experienced outside him.
NOTE ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATIONS
Alexius searched the web for animations and still photos to illustrate the movements of the empty breath in how he remembers them. He does not know if the illustrators had the empty breath in mind when they made these images – but probably not. Except for the last three, the animations are grabbed from Electromagnetic Plasma Energy Light.
NOTE ABOUT THE ARTICLE
The above article, part of Duality Hack #9 The empty breath is the bliss of nothing, is to be continued in the next one, What is the empty breath about?
How to ignite a take-off into ‘the empty breath’
June 5, 2016 by
Updated March 28, 2023
When not trying to make sense of this image but going with its absurdity, the free-flowing energy of the experience spontaneously ignites a take-off into the empty breath and its bliss of nothing, provided there is a willingness to forget what you believe in being. The image is grabbed from the web.
PREFACE
The music you hear via AirPlay travels in the air for more than a second to reach your speaker. Therefore, you must go back in time to meet the origin. But going back to the digital media from where the music comes, there is nothing but combinations of zeros and ones. They make no sounds before an app created by another combination of ones and zeros translates them into something your speaker can reproduce as vibrations you hear as music.
There is no soul or anything mystical involved. Instead, it is purely mechanical – likewise, when the brain uses one second to twist nothing into an experience of something you believe establishes you as real.
IT TAKES ONE SECOND TO CONNECT WITH THE EMPTY BREATH
As soon as you have had enough of the frustration that comes from keeping together a special image of yourself and you do not try to edit or transform your feeling of desperation, the raw energy automatically ignites a take-off into the empty breath. Since it resides in nothing and the brain has used one second to process your current experience of something from what it imagined seeing in nothing (read more about that here), the take-off into the empty breath only takes one second.
In other words, when you connect with the empty breath, you go back one second in linear time to the nothingness the brain twisted into your present experience of something, which you perceive with the empty breath as nothing. Therefore, since there is not something to confirm you as someone, you are in the bliss of nothing.
But you probably fight off the nothingness of the empty breath by forcing the physical breath through your body to feel there is something. However, when you stop fighting the empty breath, it passes what you feel is something in the body as nothing.
That said, the function of the empty breath is not to heal the body but the sick belief that you are in it. So although it may heal the painful areas of the body by approaching them where the brain conceived the problems, namely nowhere, it is not the priority of the empty breath. However, that does not mean the body should not be taken care of while you believe in residing there. See Duality Hack #7 The fake mix of physical and non-physical issues.
What you believe in being is nothing twisted into something by the brain. In the presence of the empty breath, which is nothing unprocessed by the brain, you become indifferent to the brain’s experiences of something. Therefore, since there is not something to define you as someone, you are in a state of not-knowing. The animation is grabbed from the web.
SPEEDINESS, NOT CALMNESS, IGNITES THE EMPTY BREATH
Although it probably was unaltered speed and chaos that connected you with the empty breath, it is not a speedy or chaotic affair being connected. Think of being high up in the sky in an aeroplane. And although speed ignites the take-off and must be maintained to keep you in the air, it is not the speed you feel but a relaxed experience of floating in the air.
Regarding speed, whether connected with the empty breath or not, we are always moving extremely fast because the Earth, including us, is spinning at 1.000 miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at 67.000 miles an hour. However, maintaining a definitive perception of ourselves, we do not feel this movement, thus unable to use the speed to ignite a take-off into the empty breath. Hence Duality Hack #9 The empty breath and the bliss of nothing mostly use our suppressed energy for take-off into the empty breath.
Let us imagine, you cover your eyes with your hand, so you can daydream about a world revolving around you without being disturbed by the world outside of you. Though it feels great to be in a fantasy where everything turns out the way you want, it also feels strange to be cut off from the actual world.
So when you want to see the world as it is and not as you imagine it should be, and you sense it is your own hand that stops you from seeing reality, you automatically remove it from your eyes. In other words, the built-up frustration of not seeing what is real and the realisation that your hand hides it, makes you remove the obstacle so you can see the world as it is.
You may sense the bare feet you imagine have made the footprints in this photo and the body they belong to. Yet there are no feet or body in the image, and nobody makes footprints like in the picture. Hence what you sense is a fantasy. Read more about that here. The graphic is grabbed from the web.
HAVING HAD ENOUGH IGNITES A TAKE-OFF INTO THE EMPTY BREATH
The story in the above box resembles how a take-off into the empty breath is ignited. The hand symbolises your perception of your experiences as something, thus hiding they are a fantasy made from nothing. Your perception seems solid because it is composed of selected thoughts organised into a spiritual or mundane vocabulary that you share with like-minded ones establishing you as real and not a fantasy of the brain. Read more about that here.
When you have had enough of the alienation it entails to uphold your selected terminology as real, you loosen the grip on it. Next, you see that you are daydreaming about something better. Feeling trapped, you use the frustration to ignite a take-off into the empty breath. In its emptiness, you still appear as someone in your make-believe world. But since the experiences of it are perceived as nothing, you are not attributed with a specific meaning, thus in a state of not-knowing, and its bliss of nothing.
The empty breath cannot be experienced as something definitive because it resides in the nothingness unprocessed by the brain. Hence you do not notice it if you want to experience something specific.
However, since you are in a state of not-knowing, you are unaware of the bliss that comes from not believing in something. That is, until you return from a state of not-knowing to the conscious experience of being someone, and blissful memories of nothing pop up. That does not mean you consider yourself unique. On the contrary, the slate has been wiped clean in a state of not-knowing, so you are the basic self you always were meant to be, thus feeling satisfied. See A state of not-knowing and the after-effect.
Are you confused about how to connect with the empty breath? If so, do not try to clear up the turmoil but go with its unedited energy to ignite a take-off into the empty breath. In the previous or following articles of Duality Hack #9 The empty breath and the bliss of nothing, you can read more about that. But be aware that you will never know how to connect with the empty breath. It is not something but nothing, and you cannot learn how to connect with nothing. But if you forget what you know, you do not need to connect with it because there does not appear to be something hiding that you are nothing.
The connectedness with the empty breath does not come from meditating, chanting, or any other self-control technique because control enhances the belief in being someone definitive. The graphic is grabbed from the web.
APPENDIX
The empty breath is often ignited by an emotional issue where two opposing elements accelerate so much that they suddenly meet at incredible speed. But since the empty breath is nothing, the revelation is not a physical sensation. Instead, it may feel like having a transparent body shivering with joy. Read more about that in the paragraph THE TRANSPARENT SOUND OF THE EMPTY BREATH in the article What does the empty breath feel like?. And read more about cancelling out opposites here.
The connection with the empty breath does not solve physical problems, only psychological ones. But if you have projected psychological issues onto the body, they are no longer experienced to disturb it. Hence the body might appear lighter.
NOTE: This article is part of Duality Hack #9 The empty breath is the bliss of nothing.
You undo the belief in duality by enjoying it
May 4, 2016 by
Updated March 29, 2023
Anything perceived as good is just as bad because everything comes in pairs of opposites in a world of duality. That is why you do not get the duality flow if you try to hold onto being hurt, for example, to prove you are a victim of somebody. Instead, you go with the interplay of feeling hurt and healthy, so they define each other, thus not distinct but airy feelings in the duality flow. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
In most cases, you do not have to read Alexius’ Duality Hacks in a particular order. But in the case of this article, you may benefit reading Duality Hack #7 The fake mix of physical and non-physical issues.
You need to be true to the nature of dualism to undo the belief that you are someone in a world of duality because you departed non-duality by envisioning there is more than one, so you return more than one. Therefore, if you insist on singularity, you remain in a simulated world of duality.
NO FEELINGS ARE SINGULAR:
Being in the duality flow, you never feel something specific but the interaction of the opposing part in the duality pairs. But to get into the flow, you start by acknowledging your singular response to an experience so that it can be perceived as ‘it is what it is,’ which reveals your response contains its counterpart.
For example, inside love, there is hate. That is because they need each other to be defined, and they do that by constantly interacting. Any minute though, hatred may show that it can also be defined by kindness. Then this twofoldness replaces the former until kindness reveals it can also complement selfishness. And so it goes until you want to make a difference by doing things in your specific way, thus not being in the duality flow anymore because it is twofold, not specific.
Believing you can do things in your way, although you do not know who you are, continues until you are fed up with the hectic stream of thoughts required to hide that you are nothing but a puppet of the brain made to enjoy its experiences of duality. Then, accepting that, you are back in the duality flow.
If you suffer because somebody has died, you stand by the discomfort so it can be perceived as ‘it is what it is.’ Since that reveals your feeling is not singular but twofold, you do not feel alone but together.
This is a picture of Alexius’ beloved cat Uma, who died at only eight months old and left Alexius crying for a long time. Fortunately, weeping is coupled with happiness, so crying made him remember all the happy times they had together and still have in the airy psychological sphere where they constantly meet. That does not mean he does not wish to see her physically. He misses her physical presence. But then again, that feeling is in the psychological sphere, where she is, so he meets her again there. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
ALL FEELINGS ARE TWOFOLD
The first time Alexius experienced the duality flow was during a gentle but very physical massage many years ago. But it was not until much later that he put words to it and realised perceiving his present feeling in the psychological sphere as ‘it is what it is’ reveals it is not singular but twofold. Thus being in sync with duality, he feels complete.
Later, it happened when Alexius’ cat died. Since he could feel the loss in his body, he knew something was wrong. A dead cat does not have the power to create sensations in his body. Therefore, as it could only be something he unconsciously had projected onto his body, he consciously brought it back into the psychological sphere, where the feeling of loss was revealed to be coupled with birth.
So although he had lost his cat, physically speaking, in the psychological zone, the loss was revealed to interact with birth. So Uma kept coming back to Alexius. Therefore, since Alexius got into the interaction of life and death in the psychological area, he felt happy/sad with his cat.
In other words, the death of his beloved cat turned out to be a blessing because it made it impossible for him to project psychological issues on her physical being. Hence, Alexius’ relationship with Uma returned to the psychological sphere, where it had always been and will remain until the experience of duality is over. This is not about beating off the body. On the contrary, it frees the body from mental ideas about integrating it with non-physical issues. Thus the body blossoms physically. Read more about Uma and Alexius here.
So if you want to feel good in a world of duality, do not use the body as a means to feel that. Happiness is in the psychological sphere, in an ongoing interaction with sadness. When you join their interplay, the duality flow vitalises you and your relationships in the psychological sphere.
Even though Alexius’ cat Uma is dead, Alexius connects with her in the airy psychological sphere. Although he cannot physically see Uma there, he can feel what they experienced together. It is like listening to the ocean’s waves without seeing them. However, at first, it was not what Alexius assumed they had together he got in touch with, but the sorrow of missing her. Fortunately, that was only until he realised his mourning for Uma contained her. The moment she died in his arms and any other moment with her remained in the psychological zone. Thus Uma is as close as she always was and will be. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
A FEELING ALWAYS COMES WITH ITS COUNTERPART INSIDE IT
Having the counterpart of a singular feeling revealed is not an intellectual process. First, you perceive the specific feeling as ‘it is what it is.’ Second, in a state of expectation, calling for nothing specific, you patiently wait, maybe a minute. Third, your singular feeling opens up, and its counterpart fills its space.
The transition is so gentle that you forget the initial feeling. But unlike that, the new one does not seem singular because it is defined by the first one, which the new one then defines. This interchange is as automatic as breathing in and out. One automatically leads to the other. That is why you may forget the elements in a duality pair. However, you do not forget how well-grounded and beloved you feel in the interplay of opposites.
When you start perceiving your reaction to something as ‘it is what it is’, it is probably the revelation that it is not singular but twofold, which blows your conditioned opinions away. But later on, the collaboration of opposites results in the duality flow, overflowing every definitive statement. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
BEING VITALISED BY THE DUALITY FLOW
At first, you may get to the duality flow from the perception, ‘it is what it is,’ but after a while, you can recall it by memory. You choose to enjoy the interaction of the opposing element in a duality pair instead of dividing them into distinct components assumed at odds. In short, you decide to feel the abundance of the duality flow, not the scarcity of singularity.
However, it took Alexius some time to not engage in the opposite sides of a duality pair as distinct elements but instead go with their interaction in which, like breathing in and out, they support each other. Unlike the breath, most duality pairs are quickly replaced by another. But it does not matter because the duality flow comes from the constant movement between opposites in a duality pair regardless of the components. This interaction always makes you feel complete. Occasionally it may take a long time, for example, regarding a duality pair like night and day.
The duality flow reminds Alexius of the sensation he remembers from childhood when he tried drinking coca-cola. He forgot his body and was nothing but bubbles in the psychological sphere. His experience of the duality flow can also be described as being emptied by an ocean of waves gracefully going nowhere. Sometimes it feels like a pendulum moves in different directions in the psychological sphere. Though feelings are personal, your experience of the duality flow may differ from Alexius.’ Nevertheless, you know you are in the duality flow when you keep smiling for no reason.
First, you imagine to dump your unwanted feelings in the body. Second, you perceive the body as tight so it seems to hide the feelings you imagined to stored in it. Third, you interpret the tightened body as proof of having concealed your unwanted feelings there. Fourth, you forget all about it.
Listening to the ocean’s waves is like being in the duality flow. You feel vitalised. However, if you insist on doing things your way, you soon feel restless because many things must be adjusted to make it look like everything is going your way. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
GOING WITH DUALITY
None of the opposing elements in the duality flow remains for long. You can compare this to a seesaw on a playground, where one person goes up as the other goes down. If you try holding onto the top by avoiding going down, the feeling you get is fake because you need to go back and forth to define what is up and down – just like there is nothing to describe breathing in if you do not breathe out.
Twofoldness is always the way in a world of duality. For example, walking requires two legs. And to take a step forward, you must include the past because it is the building stone for your future step. So if you exclude one of the legs, you cannot walk.
Likewise, you do not hit the road of duality if you exclude hate from love, for example. Hence you do not get the togetherness of twofoldness but the loneliness of singleness. The latter may feel like a non-concrete pain in the body, even though it does not come from there but from the psychological sphere. There you hold yourself spellbound by the idea that twofoldness can be separated into independent items and hate, therefore, can be separated from love.
You achieve this separation by projecting your hatred onto a part of the body you dislike. Then you lure yourself into believing you have gotten rid of hate by feeling it as a physical problem in the body. Finally, you render yourself unconscious of what you have done to see yourself as pure love. But emotions are abstract, and bodies are substantial l, so assuming you can dump feelings in flesh and bones is absurd. In other words, since you cannot remove hatred from your awareness by leaving it in your body, what you assume to upset the body is not there but in the psychological sphere.
Since the psychological area is abstract, you contact a repressed psychological emotion anywhere other than in something material. However, no need to go down memory lane to find it or understand why you attempted to hide it in the body. Instead, you perceive the disgust you repeatedly have toward something in the present as ‘it is what it is.’ Thus, as you probably already guessed from reading the above, aversion is revealed to interact with sympathy to define each other as your feelings.
Realising that all feelings are personal, everything happening is understood as impersonal. Therefore, suppressing specific feelings to hold onto a self-made version of the world defined by your views of right and wrong is over. Instead, you go with the duality flow.
Read more about the psychological sphere in The psychological zone is anywhere but in material things.
You become likeable when you do not hide what you do not like in yourself from your awareness by projecting it onto the body. That is the first step in healing a psychosomatic disorder. See Duality Hack #7 The fake mix of physical and non-physical issues. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
YOU CANNOT HAVE THE BELIEF IN DUALITY UNDONE BEFORE YOU LIVE BY IT
Those who assume they suffer from a psychosomatic disorder have projected politically incorrect feelings like sexual lust, power strivings, greed, envy and anger onto vulnerable parts of the body, in the same way, some project offensive feelings onto the world.
However, since these emotions are abstract, they cannot be hidden in something tangible. Hence, projecting abstract feelings onto something substantial only conceals them from your awareness. Nonetheless, most believe their problems are gone when out of sight. Just like an ostrich, according to myth, believes danger disappears when it buries its head in the sand.
Many of those believing negativity should be avoided like to use crystal stones for healing. But lots of these stones, Amethyst for example, heals by emitting negative ions producing biochemical reactions which create positive vibes/mood and relieve stress.
This myth, though, is not valid. If an ostrich buries its head in the sand, it dies from a lack of air. And you wither from the lack of collaboration between positivity and negativity if you hide the latter from yourself with a head-in-the-sand approach. Consequently, you cannot have the belief in duality undone before your negativity is acknowledged as paired with positivity, thus twofold.
When you expose your negativity, as described in The YOU finger and the three ME fingers, you feel so vitalised by the duality flow that it eventually blows you away. Hence you do not appear to hide non-duality.
NOTE: This article is part of Duality Hack #8 The duality flow goes to non-duality.
You must play the game of duality to hack it
May 4, 2016 by
Updated March 27, 2023
First, Alexius thought his fear was caused by his father, who often exploded in anger and beat him when he was a child. Next, Alexius assumed he caused it himself because he feared not being good enough. Then he stopped looking for a cause. And as there is no effect without a cause, fear as a specific feeling was gone. Thus he was free to go with the duality flow. Be aware that it is not physical, thus not in the body but in the psychological sphere. You can read where that is in The psychological zone is anywhere but in something solid. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
This article continues the previous one, Alexius’ childhood, where his conditioned one-sided perception in his childhood was revealed as twofold. In this article, we take a more general look at how to be in sync with duality, thus feeling complete.
When Alexius was about six years old, lying on the floor while his father kicked him, Alexius became aware that his life was a charade. Thus he instinctively mimicked fear by shivering all over. Since it seemed to hold off his father, he concluded that making the body tremble to appear scared was the way to stop being maltreated.
And since he forgot everything he did was pretence, provoking a muscle spasm in the body became his way to fend off feeling helpless. Fortunately, later he remembered that everything he does is a pretence. Therefore, since his feelings were unreal, there was no reason to fight feeling helpless.
Next, he made the obvious conclusion that nobody does anything authentic. It is something they pretend, like when we pretend to do something in a game. Consequently, there is no reason to fear or judge anybody or expose their emptiness except to help them see that being someone in a world of duality is as unreal as being in a game. See more about playacting in Duality Hack #2 Pretending to be in a world of duality, you undo it.
After that, he realised that feeling helpless is not a specific feeling because everything in a world of duality comes in pairs of opposing elements that constantly interact. And going with the interaction, you feel complete in the duality flow. But as promised in the last article and the beginning of this one, this piece is not about Alexius’ past and his way to the duality flow but how you get there and follow it to the end of duality.
When you interpret something as beautiful, you will also see something deemed ugly. Opposing contrasts are the way of duality. Thus you are not going to feel the satisfaction that comes from twofoldness if you try to correct or remove the ugliness to hold onto a distinct view of beauty.
Twofoldness occurs as automatically as breathing in is followed by breathing out – and it feels as satisfying. Accepting one polarity, it is soon replaced by another. Therefore, since you are in the duality flow, you feel vitalised. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
THE LONELINESS OF SINGULARITY VS THE TOGETHERNESS OF TWOFOLDNESS
Since everything is twofold in a world of duality, a singular impression, such as love, is fake. That is why you feel disconnected when you hold onto a specific feeling. But, no worries, it is easily corrected. First, you perceive your fixed feeling as ‘it is what it is.’ Then, in a state of expectation calling for nothing specific, your special feeling gently turns inside out and unveils its counterpart inside it. In this case, love gently opens, and hate quietly comes out. However, like breathing in and out does not happen simultaneously, love and hate are not felt simultaneously.
But the love you feel is defined by hate, which is characterised by love. Thus you see, there is no true love without hatred and vice versa. Should you, out of habit, suppress hatred to hold onto a specific memory of love, you feel disconnected until you remember that feeling connected comes from twofoldness, thus not separating love and hate.
Living in a world of duality is so much easier when you know that wholeness in such a world is to be twofold.
You may not observe the transition from love to its counterpart, hate, just like you generally overlook that breathing in is replaced by breathing out. Consequently, it probably takes time to acknowledge the constant movement between the opposing poles of duality – in this case, love and hate. And it may take even more time to sense the duality flow, like rolling waves without highs and lows, moving throughout your awareness (read more about that here).
Nevertheless, since the perception ‘it is what it is’ aligns you with duality, you feel connected immediately. However, it does not sync you with duality if you assume your response to an experience is the same as the experience because that does not reveal the interaction of opposites but states your one-sided opinion as a fact, thus that the world is not dual but the specific way you have decided to see it.
In other words, you have used the perception ‘it is what it is’ to disguise that you believe ‘I know what it is’. That happens, for example, if your angry reaction to someone is mistaken for the person. Then anger is not understood as something you feel about someone but how that person looks. So perceiving this individual as ‘it is what it is,’ you use the perception to suppress your response to someone, thus appearing detached from the person proved to be as you decide. In other words, you actually have used the perception ‘I know what it is’, thus hanging onto a single-minded opinion.
When you accept the constant interaction between up and down, you laugh when on top because you are not scared of falling down. And you cry when you go down but without the fear of being stuck at the bottom. Consequently, you have a splendid time going up and down in a world of duality.
However, if you hang onto a distinctive view of something, there is nothing to describe it, wherefore you feel apart. On the other hand, twofoldness makes you feel together in the interaction of opposites.
That something is ugly is not a fact but how you perceive it. However, this singular Interpretation prevents you from seeing it as it is because everything comes in pairs of opposites in a world of duality. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.If you uphold a romantic idea of love by hiding your hatred in a rigid part of the body, you set yourself free from this link of a pshycholigal and physical issue by perceiving your reaction to the rigidity as ‘it is what it is.’
That reveals your response is twofold, so is no specific response to confirm the stiff body part hides your hatred. The sense of nothingness that replaces it makes you laugh.
So if you wish to feel the togetherness of twofoldness, it is not your experience of something that you perceive as ‘it is what it is.‘ Instead, it is the specific response you determine your experience brings about. For example, if you decide your reaction to being rejected is sadness, you perceive that as ‘it is what it is.‘ It reveals your response is not one-sided but twofold. Thus sadness does not settle into definite grief but gently opens up and reveals gladness inside it.
In other words, when the definitive meaning you have assigned to a response is perceived as ‘it is what it is,‘ its opposite is revealed. That is not a metaphor. Literally speaking, you feel sadness replaced by gladness, not quickly but gradually and as automatically as breathing in is followed by breathing out.
However, you are probably so used to hiding how you interpret your responses to make it look cool, so it takes a while before you notice you always choose a single-minded reaction that establishes you are in the know. But when you become aware of that and perceive the definitive meaning you assigned to your response as ‘it is what it is,’ it opens up, and its counterpart unfolds from inside, as already described.
Therefore, since your reaction is not singular but dualistic, it does not appear exclusively right or wrong, thus generating neither pleasure nor worry. Instead, it brings about a satisfaction that remains no matter what happens because it does not depend on something specific.
The perception ‘it is what it is’ does not set you free from anger but free to experience it paired with delight. In other words, this perception does not sets you free from duality but free to enjoy it. Actually, so much that, someday, you forget to remember it. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.To escape fear, feeling attacked, furious or hopeless many people choose a distinctive opinion of something. However, since you have to fight to uphold your specific point of view, what you try to escape is enhanced. In contrast, choosing an opinion that is twofold, there is no specific view to uphold, Instead, you are in the resilient energy between opposites, like the springy drive that makes a yoyo going up and down. Hence you feel revitalised by the duality flow.
Since it is not a sensational feeling of adventure but a gentle sense of pleasure, you may fail to notice it. Nevertheless, you will definitely notice that the present moment does not require any effort.
That does not mean you cannot respond with sadness if somebody rejects you. But since sadness is perceived as ‘it is what it is,’ it does not settle into a definite feeling of grief. On the contrary, it interacts with gladness. Accepting the interplay of opposing emotions in one polarity, another twofoldness rapidly replaces it. Thus you are in the duality flow.
When you anticipate your friends’ opinions about a specific feeling, it seems you experience it. Especially if you spin a story about the feeling and present it in a severe tone of voice enhanced by body language illustrating the feeling. Women often use this trick to appear as if they feel something special. But, like men, they do not know who they are. Thus they do not have a clue about what they feel. Unlike women, men do not act as if they feel something important because they think feelings get in their way. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Had you not perceived feeling sad as ‘it is what it is’ but held onto a definite feeling of grief, you would have had to cut off its counterpart, gladness, from your awareness by imagining it is hidden in the darkness of the body, for example, the chest. Hereafter, when you want to hold onto feeling specifically sad, you do that by sensing pain in the chest. Read more about that in Duality Hack #7 The fake mix of physical and non-physical issues.
o sum up, when your reaction to something is perceived as ‘it is what it is,’ the interpretation of the response is not limited to a singular feeling like shyness. Instead, you go back and forth between that and its contrast confidence, so the opposing elements can define each other, thus establishing genuine feelings.
Being amused by this potency, you go along with the duality flow. Hence the polarity of shyness and confidence is soon replaced by another revitalising polarity. And so it goes until you feel so euphoric that there is no need for more, wherefore the belief in being and having more than that which is One is undone.
You repress your negativity only to appear positive, thus not getting the togetherness of the duality flow but the loneliness of singularity. Besides, being only positive, you do not feel genuine but fake because, without negativity, positivity cannot be defined. In other words, if you want to be genuinely positive, do not avoid your negative feelings by explaining or justifying them by others but include them unedited so that they can define your positivity and vice versa. As a bonus, this interaction makes you laugh because you feel complete in the duality flow. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Consequently, you should not use the perception ‘it is what it is’ if you do not want to have the belief in being and having more than that which is One undone. Instead, you should use the perception ‘I know what it is.’ However, to make that perception work, you must ignore the counterpart of what you claim to know. So if you, for example, want to appear as if you know the way, you must hide feeling lost. But that makes you feel something is missing. And no matter where you look, you do not see it because you keep insisting, ‘I know what it is.’
But should you want to speed up the undoing of the belief in being and having more than that which is One, you say, ‘dunno what it is,’ thus forgetting you appear as someone in a world where there seems to be more than one. That does not mean your experiences are transformed. Change is a concept of duality. But it means there is nobody to confirm them as something. Hence you do not get the satisfaction of something but the bliss of nothing.
How to suppress feelings?
If you are not already aware, here are a few samples:
- Talking about what others do or say instead of how that makes you feel.
- Trying to help others to remove the attention from you and how you feel yuorself.
- Falling in love hides the self-hatred inside.
- Talking about metaphysically things instead of acknowledging, what you feel.
- Being upset about something on behalf of others.
- Meditating, chanting, praying or doing similar things to fend off what you feel.
- Finding psychological, or any other kinds of explanation for what you feel.
- Eating or drinking to suppress ones’ feelings.
- Trying to prove a factual point to hide what you feel.
- Following ideas for living in the now, or trying to live by any other totalirian concept.
- Blaming others and justify your feelings by them.
- Much planning and control.
- Constantly looking for new things to buy or change.
- Trying to always be in a good mood.
- Working a lot and for instance clean your home, when you are upset.
- Reading or playing computer games regularly.
- Having revenge sex.
- Staging yourself on Facebook – perhaps to get as many likes and followers as possible.
- Publish photos of your happy and shiny life on Instagram.
- Quoting others to prove you are right.
- Keep imagining how to solve things or just making up stories.
- Sitting with crossed legs, locking the knees by bending them backwards, raising one or both shoulders or pushing them forward.
- Holding back the breath.
- Assuming to know what is right and wrong.
- Concluding this and that.
And how to not suppress your feelings?
In the duality flow feelings become very defined, but only in relation to their counterpart. Therefore, since they are not definitive but relative, you have no specific feelings to suppress.
NOTE: This article is part of Duality Hack #8 The duality flow goes to non-duality.
‘What if…?’ vs ‘it is what it is’
May 4, 2016 by
Updated March 28, 2023
Spirituality is that which is One. And since it takes more than one to become something, you cannot become spiritual unless you believe it is possible to be and have more than that which is One. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
This article is a continuation of Sadness is a close friend of gladness about the perception ‘it is what it is,’ revealing every experience is dual. Adjusting to twofoldness, you feel so complete in a world of duality that you eventually forget to remember being there.
WHAT IF…? VERSUS ‘IT IS WHAT IT IS’
You need to be fully anchored in the belief that you are someone in a world of duality if you want to undo this belief – just like you need to play a game to finish it. That is why this article is written within the context of duality. In such a world, psychological and physical issues do not mix. So if you conclude your worries are caused by something physical or what you feel in your body is caused by your anxiety, you deceive yourself.
Maybe you interpret your physical pain in the foot as fatal and imagine it is linked to a psychological issue from the past. Consequently, the psychological aspect appears to have caused the physical one.
Hereafter, the physical and psychological issues seem to impact each other significantly the more your imagination runs wild on a loop set off by envisioning ‘what if…?’ However, since your reaction to your thought-up outcome is revealed as two-fold when perceived as ‘it is what it is,’ there is no specific reaction to confirm your alleged cause-and-effect between non-physical and physical issues. Hence it is no more and never was except in fantasy. Read more about cause and effect here.
In Duality Hack #7 The toxic mix of physical and non-physical issues, you can read more about the unfortunate belief that physical and non-physical issues blend.
Therefore, the physical problem can be dealt with materially and the psychological one immaterially. Naturally, this is much easier and less scary than when fantasising about a connection between physical and psychological issues – just like daily life feels less dangerous when not mixing it with fantasies.
You cannot change physical reality. But if you perceive it so it makes you suffer, you can change your perception to one that makes you feel good.
You probably will be diagnosed with vertigo* if you experience the world spinning around you. However, that does not mean the doctor believes your experience is real. On the contrary, it is a hallucination because the world cannot revolve around you. Nevertheless, please do not deny it is your experience but that it is real. When you do that, the fear goes away. Hence you realise the whirling sensation is only going on inside you. Outside you, the world goes on as usual. Therefore, like you constantly correct seeing the earth as flat, you correct the experience of the world spinning around you. Eventually, you realise that all experiences need correction. None of them is real because it takes more than one to be aware of something, and there is no more than that which is One since it is formless, thus endless. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
IN A WORLD OF DUALITY, YOU FEEL WHOLE BY BEING TWOFOLD
Having vertigo* is a glaring example of believing that the experience of something beyond the bounds of possibility is authentic. The world does not spin around you. Instead, it is an inner vision where everything rotates to suppress your horrifying interpretation of something. But since the whirling sensation disturbs the image of yourself, you disassociate yourself from it by projecting it onto the outside world.
That is until you stand by your horrifying interpretation, so it can be perceived as ‘it is what it is.’ That makes a crack in horror. And out of it comes something which initially feels pretty abstract. But as soon as it has been defined by horror, it settles as fearless to redefine horror. In this interplay, the opposing feelings are not independent but interdependent. Therefore, since you cannot feel afraid without feeling fearless and vice versa, you do not need to avoid the experience you initially interpreted as an absolute horror.
Another way of explaining what the perception ‘it is what it is’ does is that when your single-minded response of sadness is perceived like that,it is as if there is an airball of misery somewhere undefinable. If you do not attempt to explain this vacuum, it feels like it balloons outward in a swelling bubble of gladness. But if you hold onto gladness to escape sadness, you feel alone because gladness is a singular feeling.
On the other hand, going with the interaction of gladness and sadness, you feel at home in their togetherness. To conclude, when not having a singular but a twofold response, you do not feel alone but together in the duality flow. Read more about the experience of the duality flow here.
Should this procedure seems too complicated, and you forget what to perceive as ‘it is what it is,’ you perceive your reaction to the confusion as ‘it is what it is.’ And since your response is revealed not to be singular but twofold, you are in the duality flow, thus feeling fulfilled by a world of duality.**
Always perceiving your response to something as ‘it s what it is,’ you do not have to control your reaction to something to avoid feeling wrong because it is complemented by feeling right. However, that does not mean right and wrong are balanced. Dualism is not about balance because that cancels out contrasts, thus duality (read more about that here). Instead, dualism is about the dynamic interaction between opposites, for example, breathing in and out. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
APPENDIX
If your vertigo is not too intense, you could approach it practically by doubting your experience and requesting the brain to correct it so the world does not seem to move around you.
But if your vertigo is caused by a physical problem, such as tiny crystals of calcium that have gotten loose in the inner ear, you deal with it materially. Maybe you consult a healthcare professional or do the Epley exercise. But if your reason for doing that is to get it over and done with, you are most likely fixated on returning to things as they were.
It is impossible to experience something because it takes more than one to do so, and there is no more than that which is One. But since you are reading this, you believe it is possible to be and have more than one. Hence you must feel what and where you believe in being, to undo this belief.
Thus you do not feel fine regardless of the outcome like you do when you perceive your reasoning as ‘it is what it is.’ As aforementioned, this perception replaces a singular argument with a dualistic one. Which one that could be, you must explore yourself because this article is about to finish.
If this seems abrupt, and your reaction is astonishment, please perceive it as ‘it is what it is,’ to feel the interaction of astonishment and calmness. Therefore, since you are in the duality flow, you move on to other duality pairs, such as abrupt/gradual, beginning/end, or expectation/surprise. If you do not stop the duality flow by avoiding or enhancing one of the parts in a duality pair, you, eventually, are blown away by the interaction of opposites. Thus nobody walks a path without distance or direction to that which is everywhere since it is formless, thus endless, namely non-duality.
To be continued in Alexius’ childhood.
*) The article Psycho-Physiological Dizziness Syndrome describes vertigo as a psychological problem more detailed than here but not aligned with the foundation of Alexius’ Duality Hacks.
**) Alexius does not write about something he has not encountered himself. So he knows the perception ‘it is what it is’ works in the way he put forth. In his case, though, he does not only use the fulfilment that comes from the duality flow to deal with the world of duality in a relaxed way but as a stepping stone to glimpses of the Enlightenment of that which is One. Thus he goes to sleep bathed in light and wakes up in the morning hearing ethereal harmonies. Read more about that here.
NOTE: This article is part of Duality Hack #8 The duality flow goes to non-duality.
‘I know what it is’ vs ‘it is what it is’ vs ‘dunno what it is’
May 4, 2016 by
Updated March 29, 2023
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In most cases, you do not have to read Alexius’ Duality Hacks in a particular order. But in the case of this article, you may benefit from reading Duality Hack #5 The basic self vs the special one.
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When the brain’s script is perceived as ‘it is what it is,’ your dark feelings are not excluded but included. Therefore this perception is not a way to the dullness of detachment but the vitality of involvement. Besides, it is very close to the nothingness from where the brain scripts its story of duality. Not as close, though, as the perception’ dunno what it is’ because it exposes all experiences are nothing.
That is why you get the bliss of nothing from perceiving your reaction to an experience as ‘dunno what it is,’ whereas you get the sadness of something specific from ‘I know what it is’ and the fullness of duality from ‘it is what it is.’
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The basic self and the special one are bound to follow the GPS coordinates from the brain without making side trips. They do not have the power to change the journey – only how to perceive it. Their perception of that, though, is different. The basic self perceives everything as ‘it is what it is,’ and the special one as ‘I know what it is.’
That is why it is easy for the basic self to be someone and very hard for the special one. It has to make a special perception of each experience, establishing that ‘I know what it is.’
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Since the perception of the special self is built upon the perception ‘I know what it is,’ it rejects what would make it relax, namely the bliss of nothing, which comes from the perception ‘dunno what it is.’
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When your reaction to something is perceived as ‘it is what it is,’ there is nothing to escape. But when the perception is ‘I know what it is,’ you must avoid everything unknown to make it look like you are on top.
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The special self does not want to perceive its response to itself as ‘it is what it is,’ but as ‘I know what it is’ because the latter upholds the idea of being something specific, for example, beautiful. In contrast, the perception ‘it is what it is’ reveals tour response is twofold, thus not specifically beautiful but just as ugly. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
You do not feel stuck when perceiving your reaction to your experience as ‘it is what it is .’ Thus, there is no urge to escape or transform anything.
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Perceiving everything as ‘it is what it is,’ every experience feels good enough.
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It feels like something is missing when you perceive your reaction to an experience as ‘I know what it is’ because the perception is specific, thus suppressing its counterpart. But if your response to an incident is perceived as ‘it is what it is,’ you feel complete because your reaction is revealed as twofold. However, the perception ‘dunno what it is’ does not result in a specific feeling or twofoldness. Thus you are in the bliss of nothing.
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It is the counterpart of a feeling that defines it. For example, hate defines love and vice versa. That is why you must sense your hatred to feel love. But since the special self excludes the unpleasant part of a duality pair, it has no hatred to define feeling in love. Therefore, since it does not know what love is, it reckons it feels love when it meets somebody whose psyche or body complies with its ideas of perfection.
Fortunately, this mistake is easily corrected by perceiving the assumed feeling of love as ‘it is what it is.’ That reveals love is coupled with hate and constantly interacting to define each other. Going with this twofoldness, you have a genuine feeling of love regardless of whether expectations are met.
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Only the brain can make you feel good enough because nobody else knows what you are. And you do not have to get its approval because it loves you as you are. However, you do not feel that if you go against the brain. Fortunately, all you need to correct your mistake is to perceive your reaction to the experience the brain processes as ‘it is what it is’. Actually, you do not even have to do that. If you do not interfere with the brain’s workings, it automatically makes this perception.
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What do the expressions of Alexius’ cat, Wincent, mean? Alexius cannot know, but if he reckons that he does, he gets stressed from trying to make it true. But, on the other hand, if he perceives his reaction to Wincent as’ it is what it is,’ there is nothing to prove and thus no stress. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Alexius’ cat, Wincent, has had the same routine for many years. First, Wincent leaves the house early in the morning and returns when Alexius is still in bed. Then Wincent greets Alexius, lays down next to him, and waits for him to get out of bed so he can prepare Wincent’s food. At least, that is the obvious conclusion because as soon as Alexius gets out of bed, Wincent runs to the kitchen, where he, with big eyes, sits and waits for Alexius to give him food.
If Alexius believes he knows what is happening, he goes from the perception of the basic self, ‘it is what it is,’ to the perception of the special self, ‘I know what it is.’ Thus Alexius stressfully thinks about feeding his beloved cat to establish he is in the know. But Wincent does not get his food any sooner than if Alexius had remained the basic self and perceived his reaction to Wincent’s behaviour as ‘it is what it is’ because the brain’s script runs its course, no matter how it is perceived. Therefore the only difference between being the basic or special self is that the former feels relaxed when feeding Wincent and the latter very stressed.
In other words, life is effortless when you are the basic self but stressful as the special one because you use a lot of energy to fool yourself into believing you are in charge.
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When the perception of your response to an experience is ‘I know what it is,’ you feel important but also exhausted because it requires much manipulation to look like you are in the know. That is why the special self always needs more energy, contrary to the basic self, which feels fine regardless of being energetic because it has nothing to live up to.
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Practically speaking, you are always in sync with the brain. You cannot choose not to follow its script of duality. But you can choose to think you follow a better way. However, the brain does not give a damn. Its script continues as planned, so nothing has changed other than you do not feel connected.
In other words, being in sync with the brain’s script of duality is not a matter of waiting for things to happen, according to the manuscript. They always do. Instead, it is a matter of perceiving your reaction to what happens as ‘it is what it is.’ By doing that, you see your response is not singular but twofold. Thus you are in sync with the script of duality.
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When you always perceive your reaction to something as ‘it is what it is,’ you do not try to prevent the brain’s script from unfolding as planned. Hence the Enlightenment of that which is One is close at hand. Not because your story built up to it. On the contrary, when it seems to fall apart, and you do not try to avoid it, the Enlightenment of that which is One set in. Read more about that in Duality Hack #11 The senses, the Enlightenment and its glimpses. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
When your reaction to something in the body is perceived as ‘it is what it is,’ the response is not experienced as singular because, for a moment, it is replaced by a distinct experience of its counterpart. The two opposing feelings start interacting hereafter, so you are revitalised by the duality flow.
But your feeling remains singular when you perceive what you feel in the body as ‘I know what it is’ to uphold a particular point of view. Thus you are in the misery of believing to know something definitive.
If your reaction to something in the body is perceived as ‘dunno what it is,’ you are not in the misery of believing to know something definitive because you do not know of a body that feels something. Consequently, you are in a state of not knowing, which is the bliss of nothing. Read more about a state of not knowing here.
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Roughly speaking, the perception of the special self always assumes, ‘I know what it is.’ In contrast, the basic self sticks to the brain-generated perception of ‘it is what it is.’ The non-self says, ‘dunno what it is.’ Therefore, since it does not perceive the apparent differences in the experiences produced by the brain to make a difference, it is in a state of not-knowing.
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The special self constructs a perception of every experience, so it does not seem to endanger its default assumption, ‘I know what it is.’ Hence it can go on believing it masters its life, even though it does not even know what it is.
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You feel happy when your reaction to the experiences the brain makes is perceived as ‘it is what it is’ because that reveals they are twofold. Hence you are in sync with the brain’s script of duality.
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Feeling bad does not indicate you should do something else because you have no say in what happens – only how to perceive it. If your perception is ‘it is what it is,’ the bad feeling is complemented by a good one. Therefore, since they, as a team, define each other, you also feel good when feeling bad and vice versa. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Since making a specific perception takes a long time, it is often delayed, thus out of sync with the present moment. Therefore, the frustration it entails only worsens if you try to solve it using more time to process your experience. In contrast, using the brain’s default perception, ‘it is what it is,’ you are in sync with the present moment. Hence everything feels good.
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The stories the special self makes about its greatness are not always consistent. Thus it often feels disorganised and wishes to be like those it perceives as organised. On the other hand, the basic self does not need to be anything other than in sync with the stream of thoughts coming from the brain by perceiving its reaction to it as ‘it is what it is.’
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The basic self does not assume that something will happen a specific way because every response to something is perceived as ‘it is what it is.’ Therefore, getting old and unable to do what it used to is as much a loss as a gain.
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When every feeling is perceived as ‘it is what it is.’ no emotion seems scary because they are all part of the duality flow.
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Perceiving a movie as cheap because it uses furniture from Ikea, you are probably out of sync with the plot. Hence the movie does not seem as entertaining as when your perception is synced with the story. However, this does not mean you must do something about your condemnation of Ikea to get in sync with the movie’s script.
All you need is to perceive your reaction to the furniture from Ikea as ‘it is what it is.’ When you do that, your response is revealed as twofold, wherefore, there is no specific reaction to prevent you from being in sync. Hence both the script and your misperception of it seem enjoyable. Likewise, when you perceive your response to the brain’s manuscript as ‘it is what it is.’
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Nobody, nor Alexius, is solely the basic self. The special self will exploit the innocence of the basic self. Fortunately, appearing special is not a problem for the basic self because it perceives its reaction to everything as ‘it is what it is.’ Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
When you perceive yourself as a victim of others, you are out of sync with the brain’s script because nobody causes anything but the brain, regardless it appears physical or immaterial. And everything the brain produces is out of love for everyone. Fortunately, all that is needed to correct feeling victimised is to perceive it as ‘it is what it is.’
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Triumph and disaster are not perceived as equally entertaining by the special self. Yet, that is what they are if one is perceived as ‘it is what it is’ because it reveals no triumph without disaster and vice versa.
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Many try to solve the feeling of not being appreciated by finding somebody special to admire them. But maybe most try to make the feeling disappear by judging others as wrong. However, none of these methods works because feeling unwanted comes from how you assume the world should respond to you and not how it does.
The root of this misperception can be found by walking down memory lane. But it probably takes a long time, and you may miss it. Fortunately, the misperception can be corrected immediately by perceiving feeling unimportant as ‘it is what it is.’ Since that takes the distinctness out of the feeling, it does not have a specific effect on you. Therefore, the next time you, by reflex, create an attitude to disguise feeling worthless, you laugh because ‘it is what it is.’
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A straightforward way to correct your response to yourself is to perceive it as ‘it is what it is.’ That reveals it is twofold. So if your single-minded reaction is that you are wrong, you see it as interacting with being right. Therefore, since you are in the duality flow, you are not defined as someone specific, nor are those you felt you had to please. Hence they, as well as you, are seen as good enough.
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If memories from your childhood are the basis for your perception of a movie you watch as a grown-up, you are out of sync with its plot. Hence it seems frustrating rather than entertaining. Fortunately, this is corrected immediately if you perceive the plot, or your judgment of it, as ‘it is what it is.’
This perception makes the plot amusing no matter how it evolves because you are in sync with it as it is and not as you think it should be. Likewise, when the brain’s script is perceived as ‘it is what it is.’
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Since the brain’s script contains every possible experience, you are the past, the future and everything else conceivable when synced with the brain. But you are not the formlessness of oneness because it cannot be experienced. Thus all you need to cross the apparent barrier to oneness is not to experience anything.
NOTE: The above article is part of Duality Hack #6 The brain’s script makes you happy.
Notes on meditation and the self
May 4, 2016 by
Updated March 27, 2023
Everything in a world of duality comes in pairs of opposing elements defining each other. For example, small is characterised by tall and vice versa. So if you hate big things and abandon them, you avoid small ones. Therefore, big and small become thought-up concepts. Likewise, if you perceive yourself as free from hatred, the love you believe in having is fake. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
The purpose of the brain’s experiences is to entertain the self it has created. However, they are not amazing but frustrating if you perceive them per a conceptualised way of living, such as capitalism, socialism, spiritualism, or another ism made to make you feel more special than in the brain’s setup of the world.
That is because the thoughts you compile into a perception aligned with your preferred belief system do not like being structured, so they move faster and faster to escape your control.
No worries, if you do not try to stop their restless energy, it automatically ignites a take-off into the empty breath, where the slate is wiped clean. Read more about that in Duality Hack #9 The empty breath and the bliss of nothing. Therefore, since your perception is automatically synced with the brain’s experiences, you feel entertained by all of them.
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When you try to solve absent-mindedness through mindfulness meditation or grounding exercises, you make it worse because you do not know who you are. Only your maker knows. And since it is the brain, the solution, in the context of believing to be someone, is to be aligned with the brain’s stream of thoughts instead of using meditation to distance yourself from it.
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Those who perceive themselves as unique beings with the power to do things in their way and pace need specific thoughts to uphold this crooked perception. However, since thoughts speed up when you try to hold onto specific ones, they are soon so hectic that you meditate to slow them down.
But as anybody who has meditated knows, thoughts multiply when you try to control them. So the real reason for meditating is to find more thoughts to establish yourself as spiritual.
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The special self feels dominated by the natural flow of thoughts coming from the brain. However, it is dominated by nothing but its perception of the flow of thoughts. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Having established itself as someone in charge, the special self needs to meditate or something else that seems to prove it controls thoughts, which, therefore, are produced by itself, not by the brain.
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Most assume they feel upset because of the thoughts from the brain. However, the distress comes from the attempt to edit them. When a single thought is sought out from the stream of thoughts, it generates a new stream. If a specific thought is singled out from that, yet another stream is made, and so on – just like if you split a neutron from an atom nucleus, it sends out more neutrons all by itself, that split and sends out more neutrons in a chain reaction.
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Stopping thoughts is like deleting everything on your hard disk. The virtual world it contained is gone. Therefore, if you want to experience something, do not wipe out thoughts from the brain, but go with their flow to perceive every singular reaction to it, for example, stress, as ‘it is what it is’. Since that reveals your stress is complemented by relaxation, you are in the duality flow, thus feeling complete by going with the flow of thoughts. See Duality Hack #8 The duality flow goes to non-duality .
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The basic self does not feel disturbed by the flow of thoughts from the brain. On the contrary, it loves the gentle flow because it makes it easy to serve the brain in a laid-back way. However, the special self does not want to serve but to master the brain. Thus it feels disturbed by its thoughts, although, if not interfering, there are very few.
The frantic flow of thoughts, the special self experiences, has been generated by itself. It has multiplied the few simple thought constructions the brain uses to maintain the basic self into a large complex group of thoughts it can use to compose a perception of itself as an independent being. When it needs a break from the multitudes of thoughts, it looks for something numbing like alcohol, drugs or a mantra.
But if it manages to get a break from thoughts, it cannot compile them into a perception establishing itself as independent of the brain. Hence it is a servant of the brain, feeling embraced by the gentle flow of thoughts from the brain, if not fighting it.
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If you perceive yourself as detached from the brain’s experiences, you fool yourself because you need them to prove it.
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The special self needs alcohol, drugs or meditation to escape the fear of repercussions that projecting its flaws onto others entails. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
The basic self has no need to relax or be transformed through meditation, yoga, fitness and whatnot. On the contrary, its perception is in sync with the flow of thoughts, like a stream of happiness, from the brain. Therefore, since happiness sometimes makes the basic self forget what and where it is, it knows it is nothing, thus, not transformable.
In contrast, the special self never forgets being somebody. It is always on a mission to become more and part of something greater. However, that never turns out as expected, so it settles for following someone that seems to improve social status.
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Those who believe in free will are easily manipulated into following a guru. But you are bound to follow the brain’s commands – like a car is in the hands of the driver, you are in the hands of the brain.
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Like the night excludes the day and vice versa, spirituality excludes consciousness and vice versa.
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If you meditate to exclude specific or all thoughts, you establish them as real – otherwise, there is no reason to eliminate them. But everything you are aware of is unreal because it takes more than one to be conscious of something, and there is no more than that which is one. Fortunately, you eventually forget what and where you appear to be when applying one or more of Alexius’ Duality Hacks. Hence there is nobody to be conscious of anything.
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You try to restrict your only friend, namely the brain, by dividing its duality pairs into separate distinctive elements to suppress evil by meditating or projecting it onto others, so you appear only good, thus beyond the brain’s script of twofoldness. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
The special self always looks for something to fix. But it rejects the solution that would repair everything immediately, namely not perceiving the brain as an enemy but as a friend (read more about that here). By doing that, everybody becomes a friend because the brain produces the experience of others.
Ultimately, the solution is to undo the belief in being someone who experiences something. As this is the end of its existence, the special self avoids it by meditating or something else that seems to confirm it exists.
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The experiences the brain produces to make you feel like someone can be compared to Facebook’s news. Based on the info Facebook has gathered about you, it predicts what you wish to see. However, unlike Facebook, the brain has all your info, so the experiences you get from it are based on you. Thus what you experience is what you are. That cannot be altered – only your perception of it.
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When the brain has scripted you to feel sexual lust, you will feel horny no matter what you believe in being. However, you will not enjoy it if you try to suppress your sex drive through meditation or tantra sex. Read more about sex here.
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There is no moment without the past and the future. For example, as in this photo, you must deal with both to keep the balance on a wheel. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen
If you perceive the brain’s basic rendering of the world as dull, the special self tempts you with more exotic ways of experiencing it, for example, by coming from the heart (read more about that here) or living in the now.
But it does not work because it is founded on eliminating the thoughts that do not fit the new concepts, for example, you must exclude the past and the future to live in the now. Thus you do not feel whole but incomplete. In contrast, the brain’s unedited experience, which includes all thoughts popping up regardless of time concepts, makes you feel complete.
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The heart is a muscle from which blood transports oxygen to the body’s cells. If you also experience something spiritual coming from the heart, you deceive yourself because all experiences – no matter where you believe they come from and how they are experienced – are constructions of thoughts fabricated by the brain, as science discovered over 200 years ago.
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When you download a pirated song via a torrent file, you get fragments of the music from computers worldwide, so your computer needs to compile the pieces into one file before you can hear it. That also applies to what you believe in thinking. Thoughts are downloaded from the brain, which stores them chaotically because they mean nothing to the brain other than, like a magician, opportunities to create an illusion of something entertaining. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
The file used to download pirated music, a torrent file, does not contain the actual music. Instead, it grabs a significant number of small files from computers worldwide connected to the web. Each file has different fragments of the music you want to download. For example, one file may contain the beginning of the music, another the end, and others the bits and pieces in between.
The files, chaotically collected and downloaded, do not sound like music until combined by an app on your computer and translated into what you expected to hear when you started downloading all the components via the torrent file.
The description of what happens when you download pirated music is more or less a description of what happens when you believe in thinking something yourself. The thoughts you believe in having are downloaded from the brain.
It is as if it has concepts like mother, child, love, food, sweets, and home to pick from. For example, when you get the urge for ice cream, you dive into the brain’s concept of that. Off course, they are all fake because there is no more than that which is One. That is why the brain stores them unsystematically as bits and pieces of nothing to make them appear as something when downloaded to your awareness which, like an app, combines them into an urge for ice cream.
So like, downloaded pirated music is not your music, thoughts are not yours, but ‘pirated’ ones from the brain pieced together from nothing. Hence, they appear to establish us as something.
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Mysterious experiences or writings like zen poems have nothing to do with oneness. It is not mystical, pure or anything else because it takes more than one to be something, and reality is that which is One. Consequently, Alexius’ Enlightened Non-Teachings, like everything else that calls for more than one, is part of the illusion that it is possible to be and have more than that which is One.
But since Alexius’ Duality Hacks expose this illusion, you are exposed as nothing the more you apply them. Hence there does not seem to be something to hide, there never was or will be more than that which is One since it is formless, thus endless.
NOTES:
- Read more about meditation in Sex, Karma and Meditation.
- This article is part of Duality Hack #5 The basic self vs the special one.
Special and important, or basic and humble
May 4, 2016 by
Updated March 27, 2023
The special self wants to make selected ones feel unique, so they depend on it to be appreciated. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
The special self is always worried about the future, whereas the basic self lives in joyful ignorance of time.
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It is much cheaper to be the basic self than the revised and more special version because the basic self does not have to buy something extraordinary to feel special.
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The approach of the basic self can be compared to buying an album and listening to it in the way the artist has put it together, whereas the special self prefers to stream the album to exclude the tracks that do not enhance its special image.
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It is always about returning to the way it was for the special self. But not for the basic self. It does not remember how it was. Actually, neither does the special self. It is the story it has composed about the past that it wants to manifest in the present, so it seems everything always has been like it assumes it should be.
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The special self wants to compare everything new with something old so that the present seems conditioned by the past, which it has edited to look like it was caused by itself.
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In the past, the special self made a hateful story as the basis for its perception of the present to confirm its judgment of others as evil. And since the past, therefore, appears to repeat itself, the special self can rest assured in its perception of itself as good and others as bad.
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When a ball comes towards you, it is an automatic reflex to respond to it. Automatically following such reflexes is natural and invokes how easy it is to be the basic self. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
Sometimes a doctor checks the function of a body by knocking on special points to see if the involuntary movements work. However, everything considered voluntary is also an automatic movement governed by the brain. Therefore, if you believe in being in charge of yourself, you have suppressed your reaction to everything that does not fit this belief. Therefore, since that requires much effort and it is effortless serving the brain, being a servant makes you feel free and happy.
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Being the special self is not about what you do but how to perceive it to appear in charge. For example, you see yourself as the master of the remote control, your coffee machine, children or pets. And if your boss puts you down, you still see yourself on top, thinking you could do it much better.
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To escape its self-hatred, the special self manipulates others into admiring it. If not succeeding, the special self considers letting go of something to reestablishes its control.
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Believing you are in control, you are under enormous pressure to constantly compose stories where you, not the brain, are in charge.
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The special self assumes happiness comes from being in control. Therefore, if something does not happen as planned, it upholds the idea of being in control by thinking it changed its mind.
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Extraordinary experiences, such as glimpses of the Enlightenment of that which is One, seem to be at a premium for the special self. Yet, it seldom experiences anything but the ordinary because, to prevent its special image from cracking, it fences off unfamiliar experiences.
If something uncontrollable, like glimpses of Enlightenment, should enter its controlled world, the special self ignores it, wait for it to be over, suppress its memories, and resume life as it used to.
You can read about how to have glimpses of Enlightenment in The four aspects of Enlightenment and how to sample them.
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To prevent the image of the special self from cracking, it is crucial not to feel one’s emotions. Therefore, since the special self suppresses them, it becomes so numb that it cannot feel anything. So instead, it invents stories about feelings that fit its self-perception. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
The special self enjoys talking about feelings speculatively, »like do I really love this person?« But it does not love anybody. It avoids feelings of intimacy by being with people speaking about a higher state of mind, thus being able to uphold its perception of being the master.
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Since feelings tend to mess up the perception that the special self has made of itself as an independent and unique being, it wants to keep them at a distance. But as this collides with its need to show off as an open person, it lays the blame for fencing off its feelings on others, which it criticises for being closed, thus making it impossible for the special self to express its feelings.
Although the real reason for not expressing feelings is that the special self does not know them, it shows off as an emotional expert who can help others open up to themselves. However, what the special self claims to see are its own suppressed feelings (read more about that here).
On the other hand, the basic self has no special image to protect, thus, no feelings to hide.
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The special self uses much energy to suppress the thoughts and feelings judged as unfavourable to preserve what it believes in being or becoming when it lives in the now, comes from the heart, or whatnot. On the other hand, the basic self has no desire to appear definitive, thus no need to judge something as wrong.
Besides, it knows negativity is just as crucial as positivity. For example, an electric wire needs the negative pole as much as the positive one to make the energy required to publish this article online.
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The special self preserves its friendly image by imagining all its nasty psychological issues hidden behind physical problems. To prevent them from surfacing and exposing its peaceful image as fake, the special self never relaxes except through structured systems like Tai chi. On the other hand, the basic self has no special image to uphold. Hence relaxing comes naturally.
That does not mean the basic self never explodes in anger. But, contrary to the special self, it does not see it as wrong. Therefore, since it never hides its rage or any other emotion from itself but perceives its reaction to them as ‘it is what it is,’ it has nothing to conceal.
That said, nobody is perfect, so there may have been times when the basic self forgot to perceive its reaction to something as ‘it is what it is.’Fortunately, it is never too late in perceiving a past response as ‘it is what it is.’ Thus having it revealed not to be definitive but twofold, there is no specific feeling to avoid.
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The special self needs to convince at least one person about how crucial it is, which it achieves by smothering someone with the kind of attention it senses, that is required to make that person feel chosen. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
The more the special self can convince others that it can improve the world, the more powerful it feels, thus hiding feeling inferior.
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If the self-centred purpose of the special self is exposed, it will either deny it or say it is sorry and then go on precisely as before.
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When the special self perceives to fail, it takes on being secondary. Thus the failure does not seem to have been caused by itself but by somebody else.
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If the special self discovers that others have interpreted something it did as wrong, it avoids feeling guilty by shouting, »Look what you made me do.«
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The special self always finds something about others that it judges wrong. Hence they become the imperfect background for its perfection.
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The special self likes to meet new people. However, not to get to know them but to answer their questions. That is a perfect opportunity to re-edit the story it has fabricated about itself to appear exciting.
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The special self needs to be part of something extraordinary, not to feel inferior. Thus it checks all notifications on Facebook and makes sure to like what its friends write so that it will like it and be liked by them, and they are confirmed to be together in a group of extraordinary people. But, of course, it only works if you believe something exists in cyberspace.
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The special self needs constant approval from others to feel alive. To get that, it often establishes a family, which it can manipulate into giving it the confirmation it needs. If that does not work as intended, the special self may pay a psychologist to ratify its uniqueness. But it does not realise how dependent it is on those supporting its perception of being independent.
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When the special self sees the woman in this image, it probably makes a perception that hides what it actually feels, so the experience is perceived to be consistent with the image it has constructed of itself. On the other hand, the basic self has nothing to live up to, thus, nothing to hide. So it relates to the image as it is: a woman without clothes in the middle of a forest. If that is felt disgusting or stimulating does not matter because ‘it is what it is.’ Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
The notion of yourself as special is based on how you perceive to affect others and how you imagine they react. Thus you constantly adjust your perception of their responses, so it seems to confirm they see you as unique.
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The English language suits the special self because it is built upon the ‘I’ as primary and others as secondary. So you do not talk with others but to them. And when you speak about friends and yourself, you always start by mentioning yourself.
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It takes time and effort to invent a spiritual self from which selected elements are eliminated or changed to appear absent of power strivings, selfishness, greed, anger, negative thoughts or whatever you assume is politically incorrect. But being so correct feels restricted, whereas you feel free when not altering or rejecting something in your perception to shape your image into something specific.
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Being on your own makes you feel small, which the special self expects to fix by getting the power it imagines comes from riches, going deeper or realising something higher.
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If one of the special self’s perceptions is exposed as fake, the special self diverts the focus from itself by making up a new perception in which it is unjustly attacked.
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The special self likes to be together with others, but on one condition, namely that others accept its perception of things shapes their relationship.
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For the special self, it is always about becoming better and bigger. So disguised as a do-gooder, it sends love and healing to someone it judges to have less than itself. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen
If you are instructed to go to jail in a game, you must do it if you want to go on. Likewise, in the brain’s game of duality, you get unchangeable instructions from the brain.
If the basic self is asked to go to jail, it does so without asking why because it trusts the brain’s script. But the special think the brain’s ways are unfair, so it insists on a better way. To hide, it is unable to change anything, the special self claims it has been framed and will make the guilty pay for the unjust, thus deceiving itself into believing it is in control.
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For the special self, everything is about itself, so when a relative has been injured in a traffic accident, the typical response is, »How could you do it to me.«
If you are instructed to go to jail in a game, you must do it if you want to go on. Likewise, in the brain’s game of duality, you get unchangeable instructions from the brain.
If the basic self is asked to go to jail, it does so without asking why because it trusts the brain’s script. But the special think the brain’s ways are unfair, so it insists on a better way. To hide, it is unable to change anything, the special self claims it has been framed and will make the guilty pay for the unjust, thus deceiving itself into believing it is in control.
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The special self wants to be free of the brain, but the only one oppressing it is itself.
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The special self splits up its perception of others per its concepts of right and wrong and then expects them to hide or correct what it has labelled as wrong so it does not have to question itself.
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Whether you have convinced yourself to indulge in or refrain from sex, the purpose is to enhance being unique.
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The special self hates being told what to do. So if it seems avoidable, it makes up a story in which it is detached from what happens, wherefore it is not taking orders but going with the flow.
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If one has a personality of a faultfinder, the special self sees it as a mistake that needs to be corrected. Thus, every new mistake it finds disappoints, whereas the basic self is happy because finding errors fulfils its function.
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Undoing the belief in being someone special is like stepping into the unknown. And since life cannot be known, you find it there. Photo © Alexius Jorgensen.
By stating »we are all one,« the special self thinks it expresses non-duality. But since separation is the foundation of this statement, it upholds duality as real.
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Should you have conditioned yourself to feel relaxed when you hear a specific kind of music, you find yourself in a story where you know you are supposed to feel relaxed every time you hear this music. In other words, what you believe in feeling is a product of your story. And as most of what you believe in feeling rests on stories, you are hardly ever in touch with your emotions but how you have conditioned yourself to respond to something. That suits the special self very well. It does not want to experience genuine feelings but how it is supposed to feel them when being what it imagines.
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Adverse events are unavoidable. However, you can refrain from perceiving them like that, thus preventing them from making you suffer. That naturally occurs for the basic self. Therefore it has no need for special events to make it happy.
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It is not what happens but what you make out of it that makes you sad. In other words, suffering is your choice.
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A cat does not plan to do Pilates at a specific hour but naturally stretches out when its biological system tells it to do so. Nor does it attend special seminars to learn who it is or how to be transformed into something else. There is no desire to be anything but a cat. Likewise, being a basic self is good enough.
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The special self is about survival, whereas the basic self is about serving.
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Since the special self is an imaginary self constructed by subtracting what it does not like in itself, it always feels incomplete, hence looking for something it can add to feel complete.
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You cannot escape the hell of the self-discipline required to uphold the perception of being special if you are afraid of losing something, which you are, as long as you believe to be and have something special.
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The problems you perceive to have, do not come from the world where you appear to be but from the belief that you are there. Therefore, the solution to all problems is the same: to undo that belief.
NOTE: This article is part of Duality Hack #5 The basic self vs the special one.
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