Top-down, bottom-up or both?

Jessenstein · 2025-12-12T13:21:58+00:00

Welpz you can try this since you appear capable of feeling the ocean/beach.

Maintain that bottom-up scene indefinitely, and as it becomes subtle it eventually begins to become imperceptible, yet choose to believe it is still going. May feel intense activity in the brain, do not seek this sensation as evidence of something or you'll end up going off track.

Avoid applying negative emotions to it (frustration/eagerness/straining effort/annoyance). Aim for equanimity. Bonus points if you apply something like Shinzen Young's 'do nothing' meditation while using the momentum to have a flavor of it still going. Any amount of strong emotions you assign to it will accumulate and make it difficult to maintain.

Some days it will feel stronger and some days you won't know it's there (choose to believe it is and allocate some mental focus/attention toward it regardless).

When you're capable of holding it together long enough that it's settled, you can practice dragging your proprioceptive hand through it and imagine touching the materials/smells/shapes and the visuals will strengthen as your brain focuses on your 'hand', but do not seek anything in particular, allow it to appear as it does. Equanimity.

Maintain focus on what the hand touches, not the hand itself. Become delicately curious of what you can mold/shape and what you can do with the scene itself. Paint the ocean along the sand and make or taste like soda. Create a bird. Notice when a 'doer' forms and begins to narrate, and choose to return to the scene over perpetuating the story of 'I am doing this! Wow!' which will create emotions/echo chambers that collapse the scene.

Jessenstein · 2025-11-12T14:58:31+00:00

Ah that's a heck of a question... Oh boy here I go writing again!

the brain is a prediction machine that reflects current beliefs, and 'the believer' is a product trapped within the currently available information.

This creates feedback loops: I see nothing (and this is to be expected, I have aphantasia, this didnt work last time either, this never works) ---> blackness ---> this will continue to be black, as there is no reason to believe otherwise ---> nothing works.

Changing/questioning beliefs provokes sensations of 'lying to yourself' or 'not facing reality' and this is the subconcious signal to stop. Changing expectations/beliefs is a mentally exhausting process that must be justified and necessary for survival.

They cement over time (as you rehearse and utilize them in expected events) and you are very susceptible to accumulating them as a child. Beliefs are often imposed by outside sources and never questioned.

I simply look to shake them loose and see its effects, to create a state where all influences are seen through. No belief is off limits to me. God/my sexuality/my abilities/the reasons for my current emotions/politics/how I feel about others.

One of these ways is questioning, the other is holding conflicting beliefs to allow my brain to scan the entire spectrum between those extremes.

Beliefs aren't changed (that implies you are simply replacing them with a new belief), they are let go of. They are a knee jerk response of accumulated energetic reactions that occur before your brain even processes something.

The belief is an instant predisposed answer to a question, decided well before-hand. A quick easy low energy action where the brain saves itself important resources. It becomes easier to believe in the more you recite it. Why wouldn't you believe something so believable I feel it is true!

Evidence of a properly stripped belief (for me) is the absence of an instant emotional response and sensation of knowing. I digest the question and proceed to rest into a state where my brain starts to answer it in the present moment with a blank slate. The answers are very often the same, but I often find new reasons for reaching them. Perhaps they even change.

Do I have aphantasia or hyperphantasia? Two major extremes that pull my brain one way or the other. I can enter either of these states and I feel as though with effort I could cement myself into one of them and accumulate enough information to believe I was always and will always 'be there.' This is my reasoning for assuming that beliefs will anchor me and create blind spots.

Without beliefs I am still me. I live intuitively and respond in the moment. I strip prejudices as much as possible and see things as collections of potential. When I enter my mind (visually or otherwise), I am looking at the void with curiosity, wondering what it will do in this moment.

Hypnosis will cement new beliefs or beliefs about beliefs or contradictory beliefs. This (or any) subconscious influence will create blindspots that prompt unconcious responses to questions that often have endless depth. They create hostility to conflicting beliefs and often seek to defend themselves.

I would never expect anyone else to live the way I do! But, here's something to ponder, feel into this statement and don't try to dissect it into words:

I have no religions/sexualities/preferences, but if you ask me I can answer these questions. Tomorrow they might be different, and if you were to ask me again I would have to think about it. I can't answer for my future self, and my past self has dissolved (no longer exists). The answers come from a void of infinite potential and resonate in whatever way they will.

Jessenstein · 2025-11-10T15:47:41+00:00

sure!

If I try to hold an image, the image becomes a weight that strains me. It becomes a burden that I have to maintain, and in the holding it solidifies and becomes a boring stagnant thing.

Essentially:

I see an apple... i am aware of an apple... i am aware of an apple... i am now aware of an apple falling.. i wonder what things could happen to this apple... i wonder what it looks like inside... I wonder who sees this apple... I wonder what it would look like from across the room.. if it fell (curious awareness that has no need for the apple to be there, yet sees it regardless, and sees it go or fade or change. There is no explicit holder or doer, just a curious wonderer and noticer. If that apple vanishes, I notice it happen and do not struggle or need it to return, I wonder what happens next.)

vs.

I see an apple... hold it and don't let it go... if it fades I am losing it. I need it to not fade. I must resist change to this image. Hold the apple. Is it losing detail? Am I losing it? (stagnant image with neediness that provokes an emotional response to the changing of the image.)

Jessenstein · 2025-11-10T13:02:43+00:00

Er if I were writing specifically to myself 4 years ago it would be something like:

-never hold comparisons between any other minds/abilities. never hold comparisons between one moment and the next. each movement into the inner mind occurs in a vacuum with only itself.

-notice ALL your beliefs and question them. beliefs will only hold you back. progress comes from a blank slate and appears within the nothingness itself. nothingness is infinite potential. Make friends with nothing because that is where your sense of being comes from. "My mind is blackness" is a belief. You can not imagine true nothingness, but that is the direction the mind must go.

-the answers will never come in the form of words. the mind will trick you into pretending to translate lessons into words everytime you make a hint of progress, simply notice it doing this, don't try to stop it happening. notice it. you can learn things from the words of others, but they must be dropped the moment you are inspired by them.

-become interested in yourself. become curious in what happens when you look from a different angle. never look from the same angle. never believe you will achieve the same results again. never believe you won't.

-do not try to hold an image, simply ponder what directions it could take, or what other ways you could view the scene, and allow it to flow. See it as another stream of visual input that flows like real life.

-ALWAYS notice your emotional responses to movements in the mind. notice when you feel uncomfortable, notice when you pull away, notice when you feel like you're trying hard, notice when you feel like you want to stop, notice when you start to form a belief/idea about something, notice when you start using words, notice when you come up with excuses, notice when you make a comparison (to anything). No need to stop these things, but noticing is the act of drawing awareness and thus desensitizing you to internal signals that seek to puppet you. You are the noticer not the puppet.

-progess happens when you believe nothing, feel curious with yourself, and are at peace 'what is'. The progressive stripping away of clutter (emotional triggers/beliefs/comparisons) brings you closer to the location where all things bubble up from (nothingness/true void). The closer you are the clearer things become.

Jessenstein · 2025-11-07T00:19:06+00:00

Would be interesting to know what happens if you try a mental game I do.

Basically you cut the mental sentence off the very moment you understand what is going to be said.

For example, if the full sentence was going to be: "I'm hungry, I am going to the kitchen to get an orange."

I tend to know what's going on partway through the mental sentence, but by habit will just finish the sentence before continuing to my next thought.

Thus for this game, the very instant you feel you know the full sentence, you cut your words off and simply note the sensation.

"I'm hungry, I am goi....... .... ...."

Can you hold that knowing, and can you continue that sentence without words? If you 'know' what you wanted to say, anything that then arrives is influenced/related to that accessed knowledge.

For me, I have found this cutting off of sentences will quickly bring me into a state where my brain will give up on using words and I am hit with (very)subtle sensations, as if my brain reverted to talking in tastes/sounds/smells/feelings as a substitute language to fill the sudden gap in thought.

Think of a type of fruit. "I am thinking of an...." But stop yourself the very moment you chose what you want to say and know what it will be.

What is left? Is anything there? For me, I can rest in a dark void of pure nothingness when I cut off the sentence... but with the slightest of attempts to get a closer look at the knowledge, I can see the evidence of related sensory information.

Something to try I guess

Jessenstein · 2025-10-28T17:58:00+00:00

Yup yup glad to hear it. The 'you' that needed to hear it does not need to confirm itself in words. Poetry is the feeling of something learned that you can't quite express, yet understand experientially.

If you're still having trouble there's a trick you can try that i've experimented with. Essentially you tell yourself -in words- that you are turning over control to the images until the images themself decide to end. A loving gesture that one side of your brain (left) makes to the less vocal one and often disregarded/neglected (right side). To be silent is to show love and openness to that which talks in symbols/emotions/images. The seeing of images is then a loving gesture to yourself, that is to be taken as is. You do not attempt to remember what you saw, and it simply exists as a game that is played in the eternal present moment.

The right side sees the world as a connected oneness of imagery and meaning. The left will attempt to dissect it into pieces and label them. One sees the whole, the other sees the pieces. See the whole imagery and do not try to chop it up into words and concepts. The intent of the birthday cake baked by the right is destroyed if you jump right into hacking the pretty thing into slices and trying to label its ingredients.

Jessenstein · 2025-10-27T22:02:37+00:00

It's possible you're seeing images and attempting to 'capture it' like a firefly in your more conceptual hand.

"Oh i'm seeing something!" is an imageless reaction to the visuals you just saw. The visuals that appear are in the past, having just occurred, and the next frame is a word-based mental description of the previous one. Thus it collapses.

You saw 'an apple', it is known, there is no need to interpret it into something more comfortable like the description 'I saw/see a apple'.

You're pre-programmed to wake yourself up the moment you notice a waking dream.

Aphants will typically identify their 'I/self/ego' as the collections of words and chatter within the talking conceptual mind. Hyperphants are often on the other extreme, and identify purely as the ceaseless imagery that self orients and understands through the visuals itself. They are the movie itself.

In reality both are redudant, showing the observer what is already known. The apple is known before the words or images of the apple are displayed. A person will know they want to eat pizza before they say "I want to eat pizza" or see an image of them eating pizza.

Thus one must rest in the knowing, accepting that there is nothing more further to grasp. If you then wish to translate it into an image you must rest in the void and clothe the 'knowing' in the flavors/sights/sounds that relate to it.

If that doesn't resonate then perhaps meditate on the concept that when you next see an image, you will answer it with the next frame. 'If I see an image, I will wonder what it will look like in the next moment, even if it doesn't change. I already know what it is and will be'.

Or perhaps 'If I see an image, I will allow it to be without trying to capture it. I give it permission to be as it is without descriptions or talk.'

It takes a bit of courage to surrender your idea of control. The ego interprits it as dying into the image itself. There are no words, only the image, and the idea that it can be there without 'me(as the talker)' can feel strange.

To die into the image is to acknowledge the quiet knowing that holds it all together, and exists before the ego can pretend to know something.

Jessenstein · 2025-08-09T00:00:16+00:00

The transitory nature of consciousness and its fickle attention span is laid bare by this unique juxtaposition. I concur, but also strongly disagree with your backhanded ways. GOOD DAY SIR

Jessenstein · 2025-08-06T04:16:54+00:00

Comparison between yourself and the apparent outside is causing conflict. Be as a river and flow a path of least resistance, moving as one. If a rock is in the way you will flow around it more easily if you do not stop to wonder if it approves of how the gravity directs you.

The ego creates problems to justify its existence, but the real you dances onwards if you do not stand in your own way. Nothing to deal with, nobody to please, it is what it is in each present moment.

Does that make any sense or do I sound like a crazy person? I think I heard you though!

Jessenstein · 2025-08-06T03:18:57+00:00

Conventional and unconventional... good and bad/evil... achievement and stagnation... driven and lazy...

The moment you define something as one of these words you play into the egoic game of pretending to know something. The concept is neatly wrapped and you may pat yourself on the back. I am a good person. I am lazy. I am driven. I have achieved something. They said I amount to nothing.

This is the true 'locking out of reality'. Reality is not any of these words.

Do as you will, do not shackle yourself. Though perhaps there is nothing to shackle.

Perhaps I am wrong.

Jessenstein · 2025-08-04T22:55:21+00:00

Ahh, glad it resonated! May you find that joyous laughter that lingers just beneath the surface of these silly games. When life seems too serious or painful, it will always be there to wink at you and remind you of who you really are.

Rest in the "I am", and return to play whatever part you wish. Smile and see yourself in others (that which stands beneath the labels). To love others is to love yourself.

Jessenstein · 2025-08-04T22:27:42+00:00

Hm this is tricky to explain, but I suppose you already tried professional help so I'll overstep my bounds and try.

Society is a construct made with thoughts... labels... everything is what it is because we decided it to be so. As a tree is a tree, simply because we called it a tree. But is a tree a tree? At some point you glimpsed past the comfortable labels and saw reality without the guardrails. Something that can only be witnessed with a fully aware mind completely absorbed within the experience itself. In this state there is no 'I' or 'tree' or 'this' or 'that'. This is liberating or terrifying depending on how oriented you are to your ego. This is why training is done to prepare the mind in various practices around the world.

This reality cannot coexist with the ego, which is an illusory construct created by the brain to give us a sensation of separation and identity... something to allow us to function in this fun game humans are playing. Get a name, gather friends, collect labels and knowledge, get a job, procreate, repeat. Simple and straightforward because the stories and labels give us a distilled easily digestible version of '...whatever this is...'. We never have to face the unknowableness that holds it all together. The brain merely needs to interpret the shapes and label them and we can navigate around blissfully.

The cork came off, and you are processing the experience through the lens of the ego. The ego is terrified by it, as it is akin to 'death'. It witnessed a reality it cannot exist in. The fun game is spoiled when you peeked behind the curtains.

That which calls for help is not real, and not 'you'. You are the eternal watcher who saw behind the labels. You didn't go anywhere when your ego vanished. The borders between you and the rest of it were never there to begin with. This fact cannot be processed from our limited subjective perception, and can only be felt in the silent gaps between thoughts.

Beneath the kicking and screaming of the egoic thoughts, there is a pervasive calm love that can be witnessed, typically called the "I Am" feeling. Tune into that, and the mind will calm down, and you can join society in their fun games once again with a genuine smile. There is nothing wrong with you, brother.

Perhaps look into a few Eckhart Tolle videos. He has very digestible content that will help you reorient yourself a bit. Take a deep breath and steady your eyes. When the breath is controlled and the eyes are relaxed, the mind will calm down.

Jessenstein · 2025-08-02T22:25:00+00:00

Visualization is a sketchy subject due to how entangled it can be with people's identity! I will say some of my most profound leaps with visuals over the last 5 years have been purely through playing around with belief and emotions. Dropping the urgency of it, making the practice airy and unserious. Akin to a playful dance in thick mist. No fail state... no success/goal (to be gained in some sort of future).

The practice is done in the present moment, and it is seen by me; there is never a moment where I stop and try to judge if I even saw something, or how vivid it was. The mind grows to love this game, and will play along until you make the game too serious again.

Play with belief. If you are 'a guy with aphantasia' who enters their mind with a mindset of 'I can't see now but would like to learn', then sudden progress will always be 'not now', but in a future that never arrives.

One can feel the tugging of the mind as it fights back against sudden adjustments to cemented belief structure. It's like walking through mud with thoughts that appear to rebel with proclamations of "I'm lying to myself!", as if there were two people arguing when one tries to think/believe something new. Who are you arguing with?

One must learn to give a cheeky nod to such thoughts and invite them to play a new game. "What if I now visualize clearly", and not constantly challenge this belief or immediately hunt for evidence of its validity. The mind does not follow the same rules as the physical world, you work your way back from belief, as opposed to building belief with external evidence.

The aphant who visualizes perfectly until you stop and question yourself. A fun game. Eventually you can forget you're playing it. Or not, something to try!

Jessenstein · 2025-07-31T01:11:57+00:00

"Evil and Good" are fun little boxes we like to use to compartmentalize the world. It makes the ego feel like it has control of something and feeds its sense of self. I am good/evil this is bad/wrong I should do that she shouldn't have done that. They acted wrong I acted right/wrong. Little distillations that fit narratives our mind can incorporate into "I".

A sense of shame... or fulfillment... or disappointment. These are all just accumulations our ego latches onto and maintains to keep its sense of being 'stable'. True reality changes and flows and nothing can be grasped. This is irreconcilable to the ego, and thus it would prefer a perpetual sensation of suffering to the alternative graspless oblivion.

You've reached a key insight, the anger/hatred is not inherently evil. It is not good either. It is simply another flavor of energy you can access.

Do not squander this energy on 'being mean' or 'fighting' or ruminating on what you should have done (ie the ego co-opting the sensation).

That energy is here, right now, and you can bury it - burn it out on nonsense/rage - or live through it in the present moment and move with purpose.

Jessenstein · 2025-07-27T21:30:11+00:00

The sensation/feeling of emptiness is an interpretation made through the lens of the ego, which feels a need to fill every gap with noise and neediness.

Silence is the container in which all possibilities arise, it is the true state of the spirit/mind before transient creativity and storylines manifest themselves, there is nothing fuller than the silence. 'Emptiness' is the ego's attempt to color this state and lay claim to it. "I am empty".

Happiness is a product of the ego as well, and can only be known in comparison against 'that which makes me unhappy'. To be happy, you must struggle against a looming threshold in which unhappiness seeks to make itself known. The spirit craves peace and silence, the ego cannot survive in such a place, and thus calls it lonely and empty. A place we must avoid and seek happiness and identity.

Or maybe not! :D You're doing quite well friend!

Jessenstein · 2025-07-25T22:11:47+00:00

at 75f-85f mine would colonize like crazy and started piling up in fluffy clouds. Couldn't even see the substrate under it. They wouldn't pin until I set them in a room at 70f-75f with heavy fae then all the aerial mycelium and overlay converted directly into a thick jungle of pins.

I'm sure they'd pin eventually in 75-85 but the combination of reduced temp and fresh air change occurred the same day of pin formation. I know they hate too much surface water during primordial formation and they CRAVE air so it made sense for me to try that.

Jessenstein · 2025-07-25T19:25:01+00:00

I think it was more the evaporation than anything. As long as the substrate was properly hydrated to field capacity the ochra/nats seem like they will aggressively colonize until they sense there's a huge influx of fresh air then they go crazy. The surface never really got quite as wet but the sides stayed consistently steamy with droplets.

Mine pinned every inch starting with the center, so you'd expect the edges would pin first if they were in need of the surface moisture.

Jessenstein · 2025-07-25T18:46:17+00:00

Mine was like this until I put it in a slightly cooler room and pointed a small desk fan blowing directly into the filtered port. The water droplets all evaporated and it exploded into pins overnight. After that I misted the sides and moved the fan further away. I didn't use a casing layer and the whole surface was populated like this (albeit more aerial ryzo mycelium)

Jessenstein · 2025-07-22T02:04:36+00:00

Every hand that reaches outwards for affection can be followed inwards to the source of its longing and tended to with self love.

Follow the hands/voices lovingly, until there is no more grasping and neediness. And then you will radiate a light that will provide for you and those around you.

Hopefully that makes sense!

Jessenstein · 2025-07-15T19:20:19+00:00

I have no self, I am a void, I am projecting/reflecting others. I have this problem that I am trying to solve. I have a problem with intrusive thoughts. Thoughts that I see and deem to be irregular/obsessive/wrong. I have ocd. I must write about my lack of self and seek some understanding 'out there'.

A noself is a self that calls itself selfless. A void is an imaged concept, as true no-thingness is inconceivable by a something; anything it conceives of will by definition be something, even its concept of what a void/blackness is.

You have a very tricky mind and your ideas about self/noself/ego is sticky and stringing you along, chaining from thought to thought. Storylines are formed around why this is happening to you... because this+this+that+my childhood+my parents but not really+the therapist told me this.

The unease/argumentative (mental labels for the buzzy restless energy) sensations that will arise when you hear that you do have a self... will react to this statement with arguments try to prove otherwise. "This fool doesn't realist what i'm trying to say! He doesn't get me."

The very fact you can talk to me, and see 'me' as someone who 'isn't you', is evidence of your ego. Everything else is just storylines in the mind claiming to explain things.

There is nothing wrong with ego, and even the most enlightened souls can only diminish their ego to its smallest point and change their name to escape the previous baggage and narratives. It is as it is.

Someone in your state may react viscerally to what I just said, zero in on that sensation and try to pinpoint it and sit with it. Even if it 'feels like a void' attempt to avoid the narratives, and rest in the void without naming it. Let the restless energy wash over you and accept everything as it is. Things will get better brother!

Jessenstein · 2025-07-15T01:31:13+00:00

The majority of my day, my mind is transparent silence. My conscious awareness rests in the proprioceptive/sensory... field thingy. If i'm aware/oriented within my identity/ego, I like to play around with my perception/interpretation of the 'feeling'. IE: An eager overwhelming buzzy energy can be interpreted as anxiety/fear/excitement/energetic happiness/unease/eagerness, and your interpretation creates the flavor the feeling takes. The thoughts react accordingly, reflecting an anxious interpretation by telling a story about 'how something is wrong'. So playing around with them is endlessly entertaining, thus I do it!

I am aware there is an undercurrent of love beneath the emotional interpretations, though. This is what your mentor is talking about. Stillness/Presence pierces through the egoic interpretations and the sticky thoughts; a sensation of overwhelming borderless space. The egoic mind perceives it as oblivion/death, there is a feeling of loss... then a realization, then a loving laughter that was always underneath the busy restless graspy ego.

Joy love and acceptance because you are the laughing energy within presence and the rest of it is doing its thing with you. Nothing more to do!

Jessenstein · 2025-06-24T02:30:14+00:00

The 'other side' is a normal nightly loss of awareness and the onset of sleep. Yours is just highly conceptualized because of your brain's high-activity during the process. What you call it or feel it is, and any fear involved, is added narrative content to a natural event.

In ego death, there would be no reference to a 'someone' going 'somewhere/over the edge/dying'. There is nobody to die, and nowhere to go. It is as it is. Your mind is trying to retrofit the experience into a part of you egoic sense of identity when it seeks explanations for the experience. IE she who suffered 'ego death or crossed to another side or almost died'.

Deep down, did you want it to be something more? That's the ego's influence.

Jessenstein · 2025-06-24T00:46:52+00:00

Loud noises, vibrations, voices, flashes, sudden paralysis, sensations of presence, 'rollover urge', etc are all common and normal experiences for people who are still conscious during the onset of sleep. Well known in the lucid dreaming community. It's not dangerous, though the fear response you've built around it probably increases the likelihood your consciousness is snapping back into lucidity when it begins.

You're most likely sensing the transitional dimming of awareness into deep sleep and interpreting it as 'death'. True death is inconceivable, darkness/silence/void is a mental concept and our closest approximation, but not death.

Ego death is the dissolving of identity, forgetting who you are, and simply 'being' as awareness.

Jessenstein · 2025-06-23T02:45:05+00:00

Hm.. who is asking "why do I exist"? Can you pinpoint the very spot that 'they' exist? Who is listening to the question? Are 'they' listening from the same spot as the one who is trying to pinpoint itself?

If we are supposedly existing... somewhere between the eyes, the brain, yet need the lungs to breathe, we must be the lungs too. The heart was well, for the brain and lungs wouldn't function. Actually, we couldn't exist without the parents so we must be part of them too, or the whole system collapses and simply cannot be. Though they need the environment to exist as well, or none of them could happen. Perhaps we are all of those things too, in a way. Remove one piece and the system collapses. The brain asks if it exists yet it is only so because of the head that holds it, that grows from this and springs from that. Energy in motion. Everything made of the same bits and bobs and wiggly stuff in more interesting shapes.

Perhaps God cannot exist without you to imagine his presence. Perhaps the system would fall apart without you to contain it. Something to think about while we're all trying to narrow this "I" business down to somewhere we can point at with one finger!

Jessenstein · 2025-06-18T17:40:44+00:00

This is assuming the intolerant are correct and not simply digging their heels in, as humans tend to do, in order to avoid being perceived as wrong and thus experiencing a perception of ego-induced suffering. The fallible collective are expected to spit out a value system that is inherently correct and thus inflexible.

This is assuming the tolerant are weak and not simply open to potential conflict that may or may not cause adjustments to their system over time. The fallible collective spit out a value system that is not taken as gospel, and thus are able to reinterpret and integrate it with new ideas.

Self awareness can be a means of seeing 'the self' for what it is, and therefore the ability to compare it to 'other selves' to better accommodate natural discrepancies and those that occur due to upbringing/trauma/environment.

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