Summarizing everything I'm learning and feeling so far.
The three illusions of ego, pain body, and time can't be broken by willpower, technique, or simple awareness.
Perhaps, writing a Least Timed Checklist before indulging in illusions would work? Not indulging in illusions is the most ideal thing in the first place.
Next time, before indulging in any illusions, or after waking up in the morning, I'll maintain a resolve to hold Being for the entire day, grounded in the Least Timed Checklist for the day.
I must practice holding Being while reading webtoons.
Being is composed of three parts, Presence, Stillness, and Ease.
Presence is composed of Awareness and living in the present moment, with full alertness to the Now.
Stillness is composed of Surrender and being fully aware of the inner body (emotions).
Ease is composed of graceful Acceptance that wholly accepts the is-ness of life.
All three of them are distinct and overlapping, yet they are all one.
Dealing with ego, pain body, and time one by one will not suffice, as even the survival of one of them will allow to regenerate the other ones.
Complete Being in the Now is the bare minimum for Present Freedom. Anything lower brings impatience and suffering.
The three physical actions to initiate Being is Rhythmic Breathing, Self-Observation, and Work Surrender.
Rhythmic Breathing is to naturally breathe the universe around you from the nose, through the Diaphragm. The breathing must be deep and natural, not forced.
Self-Observation is observing your own mind and the emotions in your body deeply, to recognize them for what they are without identifying with them.
Work Surrender is to surrender oneself to the work you are assigned to do at this moment.
When walking, focus on walking along with seeing the nature around you. When doing house chores, completely concentrate in the chores without any room for thinking. When interacting with humans, see the human being within, not the ego and appearances, not bothering to think what they think.
The second stage comes after one is practicing Being at least 6 hours a day. They'll gain Natural Compassion for seeing people's reactions as mere egoic reflexes and not as their real selves.
They'll be able feel the past and future fading away, illuminating the sacredness of the Present moment. It would be as if they existed only for this present moment, without any regards to time.
As the Egoic Force within their mind subsides, all kinds of cravings, attachments, and judgements fade away like thick fog being blown by the wind.
They will not start to live life, nor feel the need to do anything. Rather, Life will live through them. All kinds of good things will slowly and naturally come to them.
However, when they reach the point where the universe is living through them, where everything they need seems to rain upon them, they wouldn't mind nor place great importance in any of these things at all.
Being one with the universe, one with nature, their lives will know no artificial order and the highest level of order will automatically come to them — chaos ensues.
A roller coaster life with plenty of ups and downs, they can only enjoy and laugh at such a spectacle with their immovable inner peace. Knowing that everything comes to an end, all pleasure and pain are trivial.
We chase pleasure not because we want to be happy, but we merely want the pain to stop. By drowning ourselves in pleasure, we temporarily escape the painful responsibility of having to accept our unfortunate life situation.
We try to avoid the pain and emptiness we perceive in the present by dwelling to the past and future. Unfortunately, the perceived pain we receive in the present actually comes from dwelling in the past and future, while resisting the present.
If we look around us, there's most likely nothing that's harming us right now. No monster about to swallow us, no gun pointed at our head, and no severed limbs on our body.
Perhaps you may feel uncomfortable that you life is still the same or that you're not getting what you want, but isn't that just a "thought"? A troublesome thought, but nonetheless a thought that's supposed to fade faster than the wind.
Why then, does it look like it's rampaging on our mind? It's because we're holding into that thought, giving it greater importance. Perhaps we're thinking "No, I must not think this! Unacceptable!", or maybe "Yes, that's right! I must do it to satisfy this feeling!", or something else.
Remember, once you ride the train of thought, it's going to be difficult to escape. The emotions coming from your body will react to your thoughts and pretend that it's reality, making you even more stuck with your thought.
Fear not, it's still a mere train of thought, but with some emotions riding on it. Take a few deep breaths while staring at your mind or the outside world, without avoiding, resisting, or hating the thought, then it will disappear.
Let the thoughts simply pass through you like the wind, without bothering them or getting bothered by them.
However, it's an entirely different case if "You" are also riding on that train, thinking that you are your thoughts and they are your emotions.
Thinking "I'm really craving that food" or "I really want this person" instead of "my body seem to crave that food hmm ok" or "my mind drunk on brain chemicals seem to want that person k", will make it almost impossible to ignore.
Don't forget that you're not the train of thought or emotions — you're the entire train station, or more accurately, the entire city itself. The one who's riding the train of thought is your ego, which is pretending to be you.
You can let that child and pretender play as much as they want, but the moment you got yourself seriously involved with it, then you have lost — you have made yourself so small that you get annoyed by the slightest irritation and want to make yourself feel big.
Oh gosh, you have possessed the body of the child at that moment, or more accurately, the child has possessed you. What do you think will happen if you let a child take control of an entire city that is your life?
"Uwaa I want moar food, I want moar money, money, destroy all bad guys yaaar! Uwaa I'm so sad, mommy, daddy, hubby why u don't gimme more time and money uwaaaa! Look at how sad I am, this is all their fault, uwaaa! My life is so bad, I hate everything uwaa! Gimme moar, moar, moar!"
Look at that, isn't that relatable? That's what happens to you if you let that little child pretender take control of your life. Don't fool yourself, that child won't stop at mere candies and ice cream, it is going to eat the entire ice cream truck, no, the entire ice cream factory! Even that won't be enough to satisfy that child.
You may be wondering, why is the universe allowing this to happen? Simple, the universe trusts you because YOU ARE NOT A DUCKIN- I mean you're not a child. Even if you're possessed by the child, you're still somewhat aware of what's happening around you. Of course, you are the entire city after all, you won't be possessed that easily.
In fact, you can regain control of your life anytime you want and stop getting possessed, especially when there's a scary deadline approaching you, so you take control of yourself quickly and do everything it takes to deal with the deadline.
Even if you don't try to regain control of yourself, the stupid child will get into so much accidents until it has no choice but to leave, so you're forcefully awakened only to see the destruction and ruins of your life. If only you have woken up earlier, oh well.
It doesn't really matter since you can rebuild everything again in three days, though that would be a little exhausting for you. Everything's fun and games until the child returns again and you let yourself get seriously involved with it again.
And that's why, you should never ride a train of thought for the sake of escaping the present moment. Be careful in riding trains.
As I was saying, the present moment is clearly the safest and happiest place you can stay. You can't be psychologically harmed there at all nor will be anything painful that will bother you. Since we are fully accepting in the present moment, we'll feel no pain so there's no need for us to chase pleasure or escape at all.
The seemingly natural pattern of Pleasure, Forced Work, and Future Hope will dissolve and transform to a truly natural and real pattern of Being within the One Present.
In this third stage of Being, after practicing Being at least 8 hours per day in a month, attachment to content shall disappear and one shall soon realize that every second, every scene, every detail, is interconnected to form the One Present.
There's no such thing as Past and Future, for it is all part of the One Present we experience. Regardless of how mundane the scenes in front of us or how busy we are with work, they are all part of the same Whole, the Whole that is being slowly revealed to us through the One Present.
Just as how you noticed comic writers and filmmakers include seemingly small non-relevant details and scenes in their story, which somehow becomes an integral part of the production, you'll notice the same mundane details on your life.
Life may seem random, chaotic, and messy, but sooner one would realize that everything somehow, miraculously seamlessly connects with each other, as if there's no chaos in the first place. Indeed, every snowflake falls into their rightful place.
At this point, knowing slowly loses its value as it is being replaced by feeling. One cannot know the fabric of the universe or the energy flowing within your meridians, yet one can feel them. Most mental concepts and sense of logic are discarded in favor of more ambiguous yet "truer" feeling.
After all, what you cannot know or guess, is one you'll have to experience and feel for yourself.
Will you be present and awake enough to experience these things?
No one knows the depth of the deepest rabbit hole. Keep falling until you reach the end of the universe.
They who knows nothing shall be given the privilege to understand everything.
The most clueless one shall inherit the wisdom of the universe.