Arising_uk wrote:That's probably because you've spent a long while learning to ignore the body.
Blessings,
While i have spent many years meditating, the truth of the matter is, we have these experiences all the time. We can be completely absorbed in thought to the point where all our senses are forgotten, the pains of the body disappear, etc... Be this thought spiritual, scientific, or just plain ole' obsession. In the same way, we can be so enraptured with the sense experiences that thought disappears. Be this some visual experiences, the sounds of beautiful music, or an orgasm. In both cases the flashlight beam of awareness brings us so closely to our chosen focus, that everything else is left out: even out of the periphery.
As for Samadhi, in my experience, when we continue to rest our attention on some one thing/experience/etc... we start to meld/fall/morph/or whatever appropriate word we can use to describe the experience of the subject (meditator) and object (focus) disappearing. There is just this experience of being without reference point. It lasts only a moment in my experience, but it seems to be something that we can familiarize ourselves with and practice to lengthen in duration.
One thing is for certain, upon coming back to my body/mind, i am unbound-fully-joyful and want nothing else but to somehow abide in that state, if state is what we call it?
Bringing this all back to Gee's original thought, i wonder if consciousness could be tainted/impure? Is it like water, where it can be clouded like a muddled mind, agitated like a frazzled one, and so on. The Eastern Tradition has a nice bucket analogy that goes along with this line of thought. Or is it more like energy, which, while not taintable, at least, as far as i understand energy, it is merely channeled, used, and experienced via the system/packet/particle from which it is connected/associated/partook/etc. in/with? (i have a really hard time finding the right words because each word used often shines light upon the subject in a different way, that while one word cannot encompass the whole of the subject matter, it does participate in helping us understand the subject. In saying, please forgive me if i slash words together in the hopes of capturing more of what i am thinking:)
In a nutshell, my personal belief/thought/opinion and feeling/intuition is that consciousness cannot, in anyway, be impure - it just is whatever the heck it is. For instance, the crystal analogy seems to draw this out. Lets for fun sake say that a crystal is analogous to consciousness, and no matter how many colored pieces of fabric or lights are placed under it or shown through it, the crystal never changes even though it appears to take on the color as itself. To complicate things a little bit, i believe consciousness is experienced in degrees, not because consciousness is gradient-ed, but because of the capacity and complexity of the object/organism/or whatever you want to call it. This belief of course does not include the different facets/aspects/domains/dimensions/etc. of consciousness, that's a completely different subject to discuss. To continue the crystal analogy, the capacity and complexity of the whatever (for no better word), is more like a smearing/dusting of the crystal faces. While it does not directly change consciousness, it does impact the whatever's ability to experience the fullness/pureness of consciousness. In other words, depending on the capacity/complexity of whatever will determine not only its level/depth/breath of experience, but also its degrees of consciousness. So while an elemental particle will not have any sense of self, it does have preference, in that, it is attracted to some things, repulsed from others, and indifferent to one or the other given different circumstances and environmental factors. Moving on up the evolutionary chain we get distinct feelings and experiences, degrees of environmental awareness, variety of personality traits, self-consciousness, mystical experiences of consciousness colored by a person's beliefs, and, what some believe to be the pinnacle of conscious experience, the pure experience of consciousness uncolored by sensory experiences or thought/memory/etc.
Blessings Be...