--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Archer" rick@ wrote: > > > > Witnessing is not a dissassociative state in which different > > aspects of the personality are fragmented from one another. > > It's a natural experience that arises when the silent aspect > > of life is open to awareness along with the active aspects. >
Hi Rick, Thanks for the reminder of the virtue of witnessing as a non-dissassociative state. However as I have taken part in these newsgroups it is evident that long time meditators do experience dissassociative sleep. I began TM in part because of trouble getting to sleep at night. This problem ended shortly after starting the practice. However some 20 years later I find myself awakening late at night in my sleep, sometimes in dream state other times in blackness. In general this leads to me becoming fully awake and not getting sleep I need. Its a pain in the ass. I consider this dysfunctional sleep. When I consulted a sleep specialist this sort of late night insomnia is not common in the general population. I am not sure I can fully correlate it with TM but I have noticed TMers report this experience often. > While I'd like to make that same assumption, I find > that if I'm honest with myself, I cannot. It may feel > that way at the time, but the bottom line is that > witnessing is Just Another Subjective Experience. We > have all been carefully taught how to interpret those > subjective experience, in the TMO and/or in other > spiritual traditions. But there is no surety that > their interpretation is the correct one IMO. > (snip for space) > > I'm just finding myself more like Curtis these days, > open to *many* different interpretations of experiences > that I once saw only one interpretation of -- the one > I had been taught to consider the only interpretation. Unfortunately we necessarily are in the realm of many different interpretations. With empirical observations, say for example the earth is round. We can set up experiments, see if they are repeatable, report them to society and weight the evidence. Enough weight and we can promote this crazy observation to an accepted theory. With inner work we are condemned to use the same form of measurement as to what is actual. So, I notice how in a high stress situation time slows down and I can bring my awareness out of the situation to act quickly (I am thinking of traffic situations and crazy work deadlines). To test this experience I may talk to the non-meditators around me and note they are caught up in these experiences and panic. I go to my yoga friends and might find common ground. I might even read Patajali and find he reports a similar sort of experience. This is where the trouble lies. In order to understand exterior experience we rely on language - there is a tendency these days to give math great credibility. Thus, the world is round because the math worked that way, and we could support that with real word experience like not falling off the world in ships. However in the world of the inner search we are only left with myths. We can subscribe cause to unseen supreme consciousness, or silence, or what Kant called noomenology. And we can only test these myths against other's experiences. If a group of people accept a common myth they achieve a "cult" status. If its a larger group they can be deemed a religion. Alas the alternative is solipsism. Which is lonely and has its drawbacks. I guess what I am saying here, is that we have to reach out. Prolly best to respect other's opinions even though their myths sometimes are clearly sick. (Though we do have an obligation to point out the sickness) Because no matter how independent you think you are on this path, others are going to be needed to compare notes. And necessarily that is going to be the source of myth. And our job is going to be deciphering which myths are better than the others. s. Really skeptical but friendly.
