How to train this: When every fiber of your being tells you to do something a certain way, you just do the opposite. For fun.

I’m going to try to explain consciousness.

You have a body.

You have thoughts.

They have a rhythm together. Your body explains to you, in a playful, natural way, that you are not your thoughts, while also showing you that your thoughts are important. This process is called consciousness.

Most people forget this in one way or another. Everyone has gone through phases of compulsiveness (when your thoughts and body are not yet properly separated) or OCD (when the rhythm between your thoughts and body is still too rigid).

My weak point has always been getting too stuck in a certain belief. My world can suddenly become very dark, sometimes for a significant part of the day. Why? Because I’m naturally not very good at switching. I do everything too much in the same gear. In those moments, I have to consciously believe that I actually find the world to be a beautiful place—that’s how I shift out of that gear. This is how your body teaches you to switch gears.

Another difficult level is learning to properly feel the inside of your own body. This teaches you, step by step, to ‘steer’ more and more.

These processes are beautiful to go through. In the end, you understand your relationship with your thoughts, and you understand that you are your entire body at the same time.

Pull all cords on the inside of your body first, everywhere

Consciousness is your body moving you from a ‘brain view’ to a ‘whole-body view’. So it’s going to explain to you a certain rhythm and differentiate you from your thoughts as you grow up.

When there is something wrong with your brain, always start in the lower body. For instance: pull on the inside of your stomach. Feel your nervous system on the inside. Pull your leg on the inside. Most ‘conditions’ are levels you can overcome physically. And then your view becomes oriented from your whole body.

For instance: OCD. You need to touch everything left and right. This is one of the first rhythms people learn, so that you can slowly separate yourself from your thoughts. Most people go through similar phases like this.

What happens a lot is that you, for example, push down feelings, which is something you do within your body, and then it becomes a psychiatric disease, a brain thing. But that’s not the original problem. Chances are you do this mechanically in your body.

Another detrimental thing you can do is hold in what you want to say too many times, which gives you tension in the neck.

The inside of your body is like the most sophisticated mechanical clock ever made.

Whoever you are.

When you think, you put a lot of emotion and energy into every thought.

Reflection works like this:

1. You do all kinds of things.
2. You sit down.
3. Your body reflects everything that has happened back to you.
4. You decide what you think about it — and this is important — you actually say: this is what I want, and this is what I don't want.

Remember: everyone has a brain like a solar system. The only difference is self-confidence and what someone has been taught.

There is no such thing as being smart or stupid. You can learn to become smart. Really. If you don't know that this is possible, you won't believe it, and you won't move on to the next level.

The same goes for things like ADHD, autism, and all those other diagnoses. Be careful not to let them affect your sense of self-worth. You have qualities that are important in different ways.

The mechanical clock inside you is just as sophisticated as anyone else's.

The grail means refining the way you look at the world until you reach a point that feels right to you. And that journey, of course, never really stops.

It feels like you work in reverse: you go from a very narrow view of reality, with rigid beliefs, to a broad, open view, and then you arrive at a point that you actually want.

Dangerous points:

• Getting too deeply attached to one particular belief. This is how you learn, but it can be very difficult to get out of it.
• You can also look at reality too ‘loosely,’ and then everything becomes spiritual and energy—so that nothing means anything anymore.

The art is to have seen everything and then form your own judgment.

How do you do that? By looking at reality through as many different lenses as possible (religion, science, Buddhism) and making sure you experience many different things yourself. In an ideal scenario, you have lived like a junkie, and you have also been rich. A brain is very elastic, so you can also go through phases where you are out of shape (and therefore less sharp), and then train yourself again and become smarter.

Your body can explain all of this to you very efficiently, but it often takes a lot of time and reflection. Keep that in mind. Be very clear about what you do and do not want, and be vocal about it to yourself. For example: “I want to spend the whole day at home by myself today and not be disturbed.” Not always fun for everyone else, but very clear.

“Saw that it was good.”

First, you write down your internal conversation in a slate, in beats.
Let's say for 2 minutes.

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light

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weird feeling in knee

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something outside happened — got pulled out of thought

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I was too deep in

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is that dangerous?

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too much medicine

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brain feels elastic

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doubt

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thinking is beautiful

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monkey jumps

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piano

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Now, you can see all the interesting relationships between everything that happens in your brain, and therefore in your body.

I feel that the doubt comes from my right knee. There is a relationship between my brain and my right knee, because there is an emotion there somewhere.

There is also a disconnect with my body.

Maybe you are like me and you are a bit on the sensitive side. Then it’s extra important to say: “this is what I want.”

This may feel selfish, but it’s the opposite. Strong people always stand up for themselves first. They say, “This is what I want and this is what I’m going to do.” Then the rest follows, or it doesn’t. This doesn’t mean that you bulldoze over people. But you stand up for yourself.

So always start with what you want. How you want to feel, what you want to do. How you want to look at the world. The others can worry about themselves.

The world is a fantastic place.

There is nothing that tests your beliefs as much as the beliefs you already hold. Beliefs that are constantly reinforced by everything you see on the internet and on TV.

I have had periods when I thought the world was a terrible place. And now I think it is a fantastic place.

From now on, I’m going to take a more positive approach with what I write, because I’m done with my own negativity.

If you start every thought from a very small understanding of what the Earth is, everything becomes scary.

The idea that you have to let go of when you are too performance-based is that you always have to do something to get better.

0 state

I think 99% of problems come from people being scared of their own feelings. I used to run away all day, trying not to feel.

1

You sit down and let all feelings in. This takes courage. You sit down and gently let the feelings, the tension, in.

2

Have you permanently solved your feelings? Probably not. But the result is twofold.

One: you did something very courageous. You sat down and faced it.

Two: it helps, or you learn from it. I learned indirectly that all I did was control my feelings all day long. It’s like forcefully making the mechanics of your inner body visible.

3

Consciousness always starts with the dark sides within yourself, because that is where the biggest problems are. It’s always going to point to the anxiety, the depression. Because that is where the instability is.

What happens after 3, and you reverse back to the 0 state, is that you understand that new relation. You understand consciousness. It is like something you learned, an idea you shot at.

I like to think of religion as being conscious, and that our universe, in a way, started as an idea, a null state, that learns itself over longer periods of time. We stress-test it by looking at it differently. It is so unbelievable that we all look so completely different at the same thing.

Everybody’s opinion is what matters most. A lot of different ideas about what it is are actually a sign of strength, not weakness.

Be extremely vocal about how you feel about things within yourself. Also when you are only talking within yourself, you can address thoughts and feelings proactively. It’s your body. Nobody else’s. If you don’t like how it feels on the inside, you address it and start the conversation within yourself.

My personal journey with consciousness started by not liking certain thoughts and ideas, and I literally attacked them within myself.

Don’t be ashamed that you like thinking.

What do I do when I want to remove a thought from my head?

You listen. That doesn’t mean you have to act on it. But since a thought is sound between two vibrating snares, you listen first. This also gives you a lot of indirect information. Why, actually, do you want to remove a thought from your head?

Start by looking at your feelings without an opinion. You are not hungry; there is a change in the energy state around your stomach.

Make long thoughts.

Start with your board of your internal conversation.

Write down a few minutes.

Line of text

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Line of text

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Silence?

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Short thought

The most dangerous way to look at something is this one:

 

‘’ Buddhism asks you to look closely at that sense of "me."

What is it actually made of?

• memories
• thoughts
• emotions
• sensations
• desires
• fears
• habits
• your body
• your relationships
• your story about yourself

All of these things are constantly changing.

So Buddhism makes a distinction between having a functioning personality and believing there is a permanent, independent entity underneath it all called "me."

‘’’

 

This is true, but the key is how fast these things are changing. The trick is time.

Hunger and sensation? Fast. Relationships? More complex. Your body? Slow.

So Buddhism undervalues things that happened in the past, and doesn’t see the nuance in how things change. If everything changes all the time, nothing is relevant. It’s pointless.

You are undervaluing thoughts because they exist only for a short time, but a feeling of hunger also exists only for a short time.

People who are good with consciousness recognize that thoughts come in waves.

So: you do, and then at an asymmetrical time, waves hit you from the outside.

When you pick up this rhythm, an unbelievable journey starts.

A lot of things your body does in an elegant, mechanical way are explaining to you that you don’t have to work at the same pace as your thoughts. You sometimes do, sometimes don’t.

Religious people have cracked this code a long time ago, hence the references about water and the ocean.

But be wary: this idea is not a hundred percent true. If fully true is black, then this is dark grey.

Religious people are way better at looking at the ‘whole body’ instead of operating from the brain. They don’t underestimate the value of body parts that are not the brain. It’s metaphorically beautiful too.

Clutch

Too long in a dark belief.

When you don’t believe in yourself, you don’t believe in yourself every step of the way.

For some kids, this is normal.

This has an unbelievable effect on how you experience life and what you do.

In a way, it prevents you from taking the journey that is called consciousness.

To see whether you are good with consciousness or not, I have one question:

Have you found the rhythm of your thoughts?

Consciousness explains to you that you are in full control over your whole body. Not your brain or faith.

You fall backwards, into a belief, an idea.

And then you say: ‘The world is a wonderful place. I want to see that. I want to go there.’

That’s how you learn to switch between your thoughts and the rest of your body.