r/mysticism

Firstly, a definition of inner peace: a state of being wherein one's emotions remain, at the very least, "satisfactory" (better than apathy), without any negative emotion persisting from moment to moment.

I would guess that the average human has days like that, and also days wherein the overall experience of living is more negative than positive. Then, Inner peace - a consistently calm and positive emotional state lasting many years without deviation from.

Some would consider "many years" unrealistic, because shit happens. Of course, eventually, shit happens. However, instead of making my definition less strict, I want to make it moreso, to reflect what I suspect the majority of people expect from inner peace: an extreme state of mental clarity and emotional elevation that lasts for many years without deviation from.

The most well publicized method of achieving this state of mind, or a good approximation to it, is to just meditate on nothing for years of your life, consistently, for a good percentage of every single day. To be without reflection, at one with the present moment, is blissful, and without negative emotion - because there are no negative reflections.

Conceivably, even to one whom meditates, "shit happens". A favorite uncle or brother or parent dies, a pickup truck runs over your foot. It could be anything. Meaning this first method of achieving inner peace, for it to last, relies somewhat on the second method:

*arranging one's life situation so that as little negative bullshit happens as possible. Tending to the health and wellbeing of your relatives, cautiously navigating open road pavement, that kind of thing. As long as it doesn't stress you out to help yourself and others, as long as you don't have to worry to be careful and nurturing, this method could be extremely effective even by itself apart from any others. Don't forget to arrange one's life situation so that as much positive stuff happens as possible, or you will just be basically at peace yet not elated.

As to the third method of achieving inner peace, the utilization of meditation, disciplined practice as an actor, and self-hypnosis to come to control one's own emotions and sensations. What you start with plays a determining factor as to what you want to keep. If you love certain people, you may want to grieve when they suffer or die. However, a time may come when you decide, "It does not help them that I suffer - what would they want me to feel?" and dwelling on an intense emotion of love for the deceased, you do what they would most want you to do (helpful only if they were not assholes).

Emotional control means the ability to enlarge intoxicating emotions as much as you want - and to shrink them back down to a manageable size if this practice leads to mental instability.

To be capable of controlling your sensations at will means the ability to kill the pain before it manifests, and to enlarge your heart so that it dwarfs your humble ego. Technically you may obtain the ability to maintain a peaceful, loving attitude even when tragedy strikes, that nothing can touch your resolve to do the best by your personal attachments - and nothing, not even death, can take those attachments away from you.

Emotional control can also be utilized to obtain a state of inner peace wherein one's natural emotional state makes one not only most useful to one's friends and family members, but also to all sentient life - and in such a manner that one's state of inner peace becomes acausal, evading all emotional triggers completely and utterly. Having shaped one's emotional core like clay, there is just intent to do what is most selfless... and a profoundly expanding emotional reward from being.

The only situation the last method of obtaining inner peace does not work on, is the infliction of unblockable torture.

I discuss this last method further here: https://www.reddit.com/r/mysticism/comments/1qrwxsp/contemplation_upon_the_sun_as_a_symbol_for_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

and here: https://www.reddit.com/r/mysticism/comments/1s5cieg/golden_apples_low_hanging_from_the_tree/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

English is not my native language. I write simple, but I try to share important thing. Please be patient with my grammar.

This is from shamanic session I did with subject I call Omar. He is adult man from Houston area. During healing soul journey, he dropped into theta brainwave trance. Past childhood. Past trauma. All way to before he was born.

What he found there was not what anyone expect.

Before incarnation, Omar and his mother were together. No bodies. No space between them. Just consciousness. He describe it like this: "Like there's no separation and there's no space. I feel more like a blob than anything else." She was close, another node of awareness next to him.

Then he saw something like checklist. Experiences this life would bring. Weakness. Helplessness. Hard things. And he did not want to go.

He said: "I don't think I want to go." It will be difficult.

But then he undrestood that this is how light expands into darkness and help others. "It feels like it's a required experience." His Higher Self showed him why. The point was not to fix anything. The point was to understand. "It's not for changing. It's for understanding." You can study suffering from outside. But you only know it by living it.

His mother agreed on soul level to play the harsh role. Her mission was to make him tough enough for this world. She did it. But there was cost. Some beings volunteer for dark roles. Not because they are evil. Because the plan requires it.

When we finished, Higher Self had simple message. "Love everyone. Let go. Learn to forgive."

The Lesson

You chose this life. Even the painful parts. Not because you deserve suffering, but because before incarnating you wanted to understand something that can only be learned through direct experience. The people who hurt you may have been volunteers too. This does not excuse what happened. But it can change how you carry it.

Practical Exercise

Find quiet place where nobody will disturb you for twenty minutes. Sit or lie down, whatever is comfortable. Close eyes.

Take five slow breaths. On each exhale, let your body get heavier. Feel the weight of your arms, your legs, your head sinking into whatever supports you.

Now imagine you are standing at the edge of a vast, dark space. Not scary dark. More like the dark before stars were born. Warm. Infinite. This is the space before incarnation. Before body. Before name.

Step into it. Let yourself float. There is no ground, no direction. Just awareness.

Ask silently: "Show me the moment before I came here."

Do not force anything. Let image, feeling, or knowing come on its own. Maybe you see light. Maybe you feel presence of other beings near you. Maybe you sense a decision being made. Maybe you feel reluctance, like something inside you did not want to go. That is okay. Just observe.

If you see or feel something, stay with it. Do not analyze. Do not judge. Just be there, like you are watching a memory that is older than your body.

When you feel ready, take three slow breaths and come back. Open eyes slowly. Write down whatever you got, even if it make no sense. Especially if it make no sense. The logical mind will try to explain it away. Let it be strange.

Do this for seven days in row. First time you may see nothing. That is normal. The door opens when you stop knocking so hard. By day three or four, something usually surface. A feeling, a image, a knowing that was not there before. Trust it.

i saw something during a psychedelic trip and it’s image is still in my head till date, i felt compelled in that trip of mine to state what i really wanted and i actually did and the “contract” was meant to commence when i tattoo that entity on my body.
am i crazy or there’s more cos everyday it calls out to more and this was more than 7 months ago.

the secret key to obtaining inner peace. No disturbing thoughts, no sad thoughts, no angry thoughts, no pompous thoughts, no jealous thoughts, no insecure thoughts when responding spontaneously to the present.

Bliss from focus, a natural lift resulting from a clear perception of the present.

Yet is it necessary to permanently and totally sacrifice logic to achieve this inner peace? Worthwhile as silence is to obtain, and effective as a taboo against logic is at inducing it, is it worth giving up complex thinking skills to abide in a sort of state of natural, spiritual, unaddictive heroin?

There are no arguments against reflecting when not reflecting. & saying, “logic is a fallacy” is full of holes - is not the statement itself a fallacy then? Meaning it can only hope to, at “best”, level off the justification for thinking or not at 50/50 odds. 

Which is what not reflecting does. The odds are 50/50, because unassessed. 

One alternative source of inner peace to not thinking might be emotio-sensory self determinism. If using the eight circuit model (Timothy Leary’s consciousness model) to unlock, I would suspect the 6th circuit (the self programming circuit) to be most useful. 

Practice, 24 - 7, maintaining the desired emotional-sensory state of being. No suffering, mostly love, determination to achieve altruistic ends by all sentient life - and especially by way of what you may do to be of pragmatic assistance to your local environment. 

Learn to release negative emotions like fear by exposing yourself to safe yet frightening situations, and meditating on releasing fear. Watch sad movies, and learn to release the sorrow you feel by re-igniting the love you had for the characters, and motivating yourself to do positive things in memory of the fallen heroes - what they would have wanted.

As a starting meditation, outbreath releases unwanted emotion, inbreath induces an increase in positive motivation and bliss. 

My suggestion: do not forsake silence, learn to focus,
but do not put lack of reflection upon a pedestal, that when an opportunity to solve a problem, large or small problem, occurs, one goes into a “turtleshell formation” of enlightenment - and abides in more immediacy than is called for. 

“Wall gaze” until silence is easier (by a hair) than reflection (clocking at least 2 straight hours of silence),
then solve all the world’s problems. 

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(edit: inserted 5/17 1:56 AM)

While perfect focus is an excellent tool, if it comes at the expense of all logic and philosophy, I don’t see the reason for the sacrifice and I don’t think it’s worth it.

One yogi or guru or man in a mancave meditates so long he achieves inner peace, and if he has loving-kindness, he perhaps senses nonverbal intuitively that others would benefit from inner peace, and so he says to another fellow, “Meditate.” And another fellow achieves inner peace, and shares the secret, “Meditate,” with another fellow. 

All these enlightened people have is perfect focus. If it seems like not thinking is the solution to achieving perfect focus, the world collapses all around them and they’re ok with that - when if they had used the perfect focus to supercharge their ability to think, to solve real problems, they could have prevented the catastrophe. 

Perfect focus seems to me like it should be used to solve problems. 

Hi everyone. :)

I'm working on a mystical fantasy book that's inspired by Jungian psychology, but also Hermeticism, Sufism, Taoism and Advaita Vedanta. I'm particularly fascinated with ideas about duality, consciousness and the nature of reality.

My book is very ambitious and very difficult to work on, hence the pace of progress has been rather slow. I don't know of any other such books and that makes writing it much harder. I was wondering if anyone knows of any fictional books inspired by mysticism, no matter what religion it is from?

I've also not met people who are working on such projects and I'm looking to change that. Is anyone else here also working on mystical projects? If you'd be interested in connecting, please feel free to DM me.

Thanks and hope you have a great day!

Genesis 1 27 is so powerful. What if you are an infinity like a universe ? What if you have all that in your pocket already and you have eternity ahead of you? Imagine the potential and other worlds!

Hello

I've been searching for the truth about this world for years.

Atheism: I'll admit that the atheist side doesn't suit me much because it’s purely material, even if it’s a truth that wouldn’t bother me in itself.

Spirituality: Currently, I’m more on the spiritual side. Everything regarding frequencies, vibrations, and manifestation, I don’t really believe in. I find it strange to want to link spirituality to "quantum science", the concepts of vibration and frequency mean nothing in this field.

What I’m looking for:

I’m looking for a real spirituality that is concrete. Something that has a real physical, metaphysical, even paranormal and mental impact. I don’t want to waste 10 or 20 years of my life for nothing.

Have you found any knowledge or practices that aren't mocking the world and that offer a real experience?

I have had this kind of feeling for a while when I close my eyes, I see a garden with a rock wall and it feels like peace, I can also see many shades of green and a woman, not a person just a feeling of a woman in a spiritual way, I'm kind of new to spiritualism and witchcraft but I feel like I have awakened some things that were buried deep in me. But I do have a problem which would be the fact that I feel like life in the modern world will never fulfill me and my mind to feel at peace. Every morning I yearn for a quiet life in a small cabin in the middle of absolutely nowhere. What am I supposed to do?

Introduction

I believe that mysticism should lead to altruism, selflessness in deed. 

Technically the meaning of life for the individual is whatever they actually want, even if they are heartless sociopaths. I consider spirituality as I understand it (and only myself; the reader may have an equally legitimate yet contradictory definition) to require an element of love to even count as itself, and could not fathom mystical seriousness without it either. I would have to redefine the practices - which I admit is possible.

One path available to the mystic serious about a discipline of selflessness is that of the warrior or soldier. 

When networking the efforts of many mystics into a hierarchy of soldiers and generals, if such ever resulted from my efforts, I would consider - first and foremost - burden of proof of trust and competency on scales of loyalty and fairness. 

Part I: Becoming a martial artist

I believe that martial arts is best learned, in the majority of cases, through serious study under a wide variety of well-to-do teachers of diverse martial arts styles. Disciplined practice of as many kinds of martial arts teachings as seem relevant to one’s goals as a practitioner.

In beginning one’s research, I recommend the following books (all probably available from amazon.com ):

Vital Point Strikes: the Art and Science of Vital Target Striking For Self-Defense & Combat Sports by Sang H. Kim
 
Complete Krav Maga (second edition) by Darren Levine and John Whitman
​
The Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (available on amazon)
 
Jiu-Jitsu University by Saulo Ribeiro
 
The Sambo Encyclopedia by Steve Scott
 
Muay Thai Basics: Introductory Thai Boxing Techniques by Christoph Delph
 
Muay Thai Mastery by Jerry Laurita
 
Kodokan Judo: the Essential Guide to Judo by its Founder by Jigoro Kano
 
Systema: the Russian Martial System by Giuseppe Filotto. I consider Systema good at explaining the internal aspects of martial arts, but more effective if studied in conjunction with practical “external” martial arts wisdom.

Hapkido: Traditions, Philosophy, Technique by Marc Tedeschi.

One reason martial arts students practice the same move and complex techniques over and over again is to familiarize themselves with the style, so that they identify confidence when they use it. Memorization of the material only goes part way there. Muscle memory may require some experience in an actual dojo.

Spontaneous art permits the generation of diverse varieties of material free of confidence fail without exposure to familiarization. This is because there is no time to reflect, there is only time for raw creative expression. Whatever is inside the artist comes through without flaw. Even with spontaneous art, it may be necessary to become familiar with being spontaneous, but once this is done any art form can be used without identify fail (“insecurity”).

I believe martial arts are called arts because the highest expression of their use involves spontaneous artistic self expression. If the martial artist feels even slightly awkward in attempting such, there will be at least the slightest amount of awkwardness (and imperfection) to his form. 

What I think should be perfected is nonverbal retention of the present moment, retention of pragmatic martial arts insight (perhaps from memory), and the creative expression of this insight enacted with 100% spontaneity. 

If the martial artist is adept at the “8th circuit of consciousness,” it is possible to scry for the exact most effective techniques to use toward achieving the desired result, and to utilize them simultaneously to scrying for them: creative expression becomes the scried best martial arts and/or sidhi combination for the situation - concerning a fight of one or more versus one or more.

In case the technique is not yet understood, I emphasize that the martial artist scries the moves to use simultaneous to using them, so that what is scried is expressed before there is time to reflect on the data. Before there is time for complex conceptual thought to arise.

Love’s instilling of a creative aptitude also permits certain combat advantages, such that an accelerated retention might be created, or the potency of a blow that one intends to express, precision measured against the opponent’s long and short term fortifications. 

Part 3: speculations about “magical” combat

I would like to disregard that “psychic” or “magical” abilities need to exist in order for certain seemingly-fantastic (but explainable by modern science) effects to transpire. 

Placebo effect may have the ability to accelerate healing, and to cancel out an allergic reaction for example to poison ivy. If you are certain you are immune to that particular poison, your nervous system might reject the negative reaction. 

It is not placebo effect to realize that you heal faster if you think so, and choose to think so, nor to realize that you can immunize yourself to certain negative reactions (such as to certain allergens) by believing such, and choosing to believe such. 

As an affirmation, I heal at the fastest possible speed my nervous system can generate. I am immune to every kind of negative reaction belief can immunize me to. Meditated upon internally, to discipline the nervous system to believe it, upon waking and before going to sleep.

This kind of practice should harden the nervous system for combat training. Is it magical? Such seems irrelevant to me, if it works. I suspect if the nervous system identifies it is healing at top speed, it simply does so, and when it identifies it is “normal,” it behaves like how you perceive the average person’s nervous system instead.

So much of how the nervous system behaves is determined by how the individual identifies it ought to or should. 

When practicing punches and kicks upon a heavy bag, there are exercises for encouraging one’s nervous system to identify it is using more than the usual amount of energy. Visualize one’s arms and fists, legs and shins and the balls of one’s feet, as bolts of electricity that explode on impact, and expect this to release a desired amount of energy. This is similar to shouting as a method of summoning adrenaline when delivering blows upon an opponent.

I am aware of two distinct fighting styles that offer an interesting contrast: One is a fighting style that relies on stored aggression to fortify the martial artist’s pride from an ability to experience fear, and to summon adrenaline from the joy inflated pride experiences while feeding on aggression during a fight. The only downside to this style of fighting is that one’s control center is in one’s pride, which fuels instinctiveness, so that the responses one manifests in a fight will be whatever usually worked in a similar situation, statistically, automatically retrieved, with no room for creativity or adaptation to completely unique situations. The other fighting style relies on the fighter’s heart to manifest control and creativity, so that it is possible to release or banish fear manually, as soon as it arises (as with aggression), and to produce original reactions for unencountered situations.

Either fighting style may manifest an immediate reaction, without philosophy. The fighter need merely to transcend impulsive reasoning, so that the present is experienced without reflections.

Similarly to how the electricity visualization increased the energy of a punch or kick, its potency, if one makes the same attempt to fortify an identification that one’s speed peaks out, once familiar enough with reinforcing the identification to believe it, one’s nervous system will produce a higher speed blow. Visualize and hear the energy behind the blow to reinforce the identification that it will and does move at the fastest possible speed. 

It is also possible to learn to create a sensation of painlessness overtop of one’s wounds. Not only are they healing at the fastest possible speed, they also don’t hurt that much if at all in the meantime. The trick is to convince yourself that the pain goes away when you want it to. 

If one were to believe in the existence of telepathy, it would be possible to transmit the pain and fatigue that develops in you during a fight to your opponent: simply attempt to do so without questioning whether or not it works. 

If fatigue does develop, it might be possible to learn to identify that your supply of adrenaline, and your level of nervous system alertness, is peaking by visualizing an intense fire, feeling and hearing it burn, surrounding your person. You may learn to identify that your supply of energy is peaking at the fastest healthy rate. 

If telepathy does exist, it may benefit one’s combat efforts to transmit the signal for your opponent to sit down and surrender, then put the handcuffs on hir. 

If you desire to be flashy, you could transmit the impression of failure into the opponent, or the impression that you are attempting to strike from the right when really you are striking from the left. If you can visualize yourself perfectly, you can transmit to the opponent one or more “clones” of yourself approaching from multiple angles, along with the impression that they are all real. 

If you can read the opponent’s mind, you can edit their identifications so that they feel weak, their energy is suddenly depleted, and they do not desire to win. Or you can transmit these impressions into the opponent’s mind without measuring the reaction they generate.