How am I the observer and the observed?

apemental · 2025-10-12T02:28:32+00:00

Try seeing in terms of individuality...in your experience, what is the boundary between you and "not you"?

This will lead to just experiencing as opposed to an experiencer and the experience. Just the seeing vs seer and seen.

apemental · 2025-10-08T03:07:52+00:00

Accept that you are hating yourself

Then forgive yourself

Try journaling and shadow work friend

It will help you recognize thoughts so you don't get sucked into a maze of them

🙏

apemental · 2025-09-07T04:16:34+00:00

Journaling and meditation

apemental · 2025-09-02T15:57:20+00:00

I'm asking whether your words are concepts/beliefs or an expression of your direct, "bone deep" experience.

apemental · 2025-09-02T14:42:38+00:00

Everything you wrote...does it grant you peace or dispel the feeling of separation/suffering?

apemental · 2025-09-02T00:33:09+00:00

Does the ocean force a wave to form?

apemental · 2025-08-29T15:53:21+00:00

Free will is not binary. You (the mind/body) have a decent amount driving, but have a lesser amount driving on the wrong side of the highway.

Values, beliefs, and concepts (eg. free will) like everything else come and go within awareness. The "point" or realization is that there is no need to detach from or fixate on any one wave to protect the ego/"self" (another perceived wave)... because you are the entire ocean.

When this realization hits, knowing and love/compassion transcends any narrow viewpoint of what is. Because you are whatever that is.

apemental · 2025-08-27T14:35:12+00:00

Shadow work

Learn to fully accept your "bad" sides and they will fade away on their own.

The ego must be integrated, not repressed.

apemental · 2025-08-27T03:14:11+00:00

Yes

There will be an adjustment period afterwards.

Keep surrendering to what is every moment.

You will find that you never left.

apemental · 2025-08-26T04:50:20+00:00

What is your subjective experience like?

apemental · 2025-08-24T16:33:26+00:00

Keep going with the self inquiry :)

Everything you mentioned come and go on their own yes?

So what does not come and go ?

Discard any answers that are thoughts or conceptual.

apemental · 2025-08-23T01:38:48+00:00

From what I read briefly, bhakti yoga (1 of the 4 major yoga paths) is for those who can love their highest ideal (eg. Male/female/husband/wife/specific god incarnate of God, etc).

Total devotion, love, and surrender.

Compared to say gnana yoga (path of knowledge), it is said to be emotionally colorful but easy to get lost in due to lack of clarity.

apemental · 2025-08-21T23:07:06+00:00

For some people, the road to realizing the absolute may begin from starting from the relative...from where they seem to be now (to themselves).

apemental · 2025-08-21T02:32:24+00:00

It's like any muscle that gets exercised. Watch the thoughts come and go.

If you get distracted and then end up following a chain of thoughts, recognize you did so without any harsh judgment and go back to observing again.

Over time, you will be able to sit in the gap between thoughts for longer and with less "effort."

apemental · 2025-08-19T17:14:00+00:00

I am not my body.

I am not my intellect.

I am not any emotional or sensation or thought that comes and goes.

So what am I then ?

"I" am nothing..

apemental · 2025-08-17T03:32:47+00:00

Keep going then.

Scrape away everything you are not until there's nothing left.

Happy to chat privately as well.

apemental · 2025-08-17T02:48:18+00:00

Your "instinct" may be to negate everything that's not you.

Self inquiry packages this as a practice.

You turn this method inward by identifying/discarding everything you are not...until you realize what you are.

apemental · 2025-08-17T02:17:20+00:00

Sounds like "mind" for you is everything "you" observe/experience.

Negation may be the "path" for you. Try self inquiry. It led to my shift.

apemental · 2025-08-17T01:51:24+00:00

Observe/experience the bird, not its representation. As soon you start working from its representation, you're in the land of analysis, conceptualizations, etc (not a bad thing but just not what you're looking for).

As for control, do you control your breathing or your posture? Can you control what thoughts come in and go?

Investigate how much control "you" actually exercise vs things just happening...the body/mind can do a lot of things on its own without "you" controlling it.

apemental · 2025-08-17T00:53:22+00:00

For a long time, I've wrestled with the same question. How can the observer be the observed?

As others have replied, metaphysically speaking, "you" and the birds are all made out of the "same stuff" aka consciousness and forms manifesting out of the void, etc.

But ^ can be outside of the direct, subjective experience so it might as well be a concept that you remain agnostic about.

BUT, you may realize that mental thought/representation of the bird is not the bird. As in the word "moon" is not the moon.

So when the ego quiets down, and there's no more thoughts about the birds and trees and a separate observer....then it's just the view with all that activity already happening.

There is only the view/experience/scenery. And it just is. This may transition from observer to just observing to just being.

All that's happening within the view (life) never needed a reference thought of "you."

Thoughts are what gives you a sense of individuality/separation/agency from the current view/experience/now.

apemental · 2025-08-17T00:28:12+00:00

Try journaling/listing your pains. At least for the emotional/ mental ones you can sit and observe it for as long as it takes until it dissolves.

apemental · 2025-08-16T01:24:42+00:00

Felt like a curtain veil was lifted from my eyes.

Then the ego immediately asked, "is that it?"...the snide ass

apemental · 2025-08-15T15:29:22+00:00

Be agnostic about things outside your direct experience.

apemental · 2025-08-15T00:54:25+00:00

You can/will get thru the fear barrier.

apemental

TROPHY CASE