Imitation

I can only agree with you, really, there is something magical in activating consciousness.
Letting go all, just being where you are, not only physically, but also psychologically.

From being dead in some sense...efforts and EFFORTS to wake up...and then, somehow, becoming alive. Is it not magical?

I'll go to practice it now.

Gracias for inspiration, Mauricio!

Thanks for highlighting this Mauricio!

Something I catch myself doing which is related to this I think is basing my reactions to things on other people. For instance if someone makes a joke I might laugh and then look at other people I respect to see if they are laughing too and that can sometimes change how I feel or act in certain situations.

I wonder if it's pride or just emulating the qualities I see in the people I look up too. Either way it will be good to look into, and I think it does take me away from reality.

Thanks!
David

Hello David and Vadim, thanks for commenting.
I think imitation can be a way of learning in some cases, in sports, language, etc. But yeah, it's different when it comes to daily, spontaneous behavior and attitude. It's very complex stuff, because it depends on the situation I guess.
I hope that practice went well Vadim. :-)

*forum added the message twice.

Thanks Mauricio, it went well!

Yes, I think it depends how imitation is done.

I remember when I was in early teens, I was a great fan of Jean Claude Van Damme.

I watched all his movies and coudn't wait for the new ones to appear, covered the walls in my room with his posters, tried to imitate him in the way I talk, dress, with my haircut, practicing diligently jump spinning kicks and flying side kicks, trying to behave like him in the situations I had to face, etc. I had a few friends who were also his fans, so we used to hang out together and usually discuss movies of Jean Claude Van Damme and confront those who prefered Dolph Lundgren or some other actors.
At that time, that imitation seemed to be the centre of gravity of my life, my biggest interest and priority.
"JC Vadim"...being a stupid boy, you know.

Later, I oftenly imitated some famous actors, when it was appropriate to situations and with my capacities. Sometimes, it was again in the way I used to dress up, joke, talk, walk, gestures, etc.

In the last years, sometimes, I picked up trying to imitate spiritual people.
I remember, when I used to spend a lot of time with Samael Aun Weor's books, I started to use in the public forums his manner of expression, which obviously was not appropriate from me in that context and possibly irritated some people.

Looking to be like someone else, always looking outside, so much easier...typical game of egos, instead of looking within.
Who am I? How can I just be myself?
Takes time and efforts to learn.

Take care, Mauricio, thanks for sharing again,

good luck with everything, amigo! :))

thanks for sharing your experience Vadim. You mentioned 'centre of gravity' and it seems to be a very important concept because there is always something specific that we look for or care about the most. So if my centre of gravity for instance is soccer, I will try to be the 'best soccer player', and copy behavior and way of playing soccer from the idea that I have about this 'best soccer player'; if it is having a thousand friends, I might try to be the 'cool friend' and copy or act through the idea that I have about the 'cool friend'; if it is to be a spiritual person I might copy behavior from people that I consider 'spiritual' and try to behave like the idea that I have of a 'spiritual person', say spiritual things sometimes not even knowing what those things mean,etc. It is very difficult to get rid of this images that my mind think are true, and just be, and learn from being oneself. I've tried to be the 'spiritual person' many times for example, but it lead no where because if I were truely 'spiritual' I wouldn't have to copy spiritual way of being. For that I have to change a lot, and it's so much that I can only start right now. If spiritual inner change is a goal, I guess the centre I should be looking for to stand on is within, to change right now and every right now that I find myself in.

It looks like everyone is pretty aware that there's no room for imitation in spirituality - that negates the entire point of learning about ourselves.

I've always been an "odd-one-out" kind of person.
I wanted to share my experience that is kind of on the other end of the spectrum, but illustrate that:
EVEN ON ANY END THERE EXISTS LESSONS TO LEARN AND HARDSHIP TO OVERCOME.
Suffering is necessary to learn and one will suffer hardship no matter who they think they are.

I've always just been myself. I was always told it was a good thing when I was younger by adults, but found it really annoying that all the other kids in school, or wherever else, would imitate things I came up with or things I did. It didn't make me want to be like anyone else, it made me not want to be around anyone.
So I let something like my own individuality become a bad thing, I am not happy of that. It's selfish.

Later in life, as I grew older, I found that the same adults that were preaching individuality were, at the same time, trying to force conformity and homogenize everyone to be the same and to fit the mold that society is trying to create.

These teachers, and same adults from before were not aware of there own hypocracy.
I had to suffer through their injustice as well. Somewhere along the line I completely stopped caring about school and social interaction because it seemed like a ridiculous and impposible circle of ignorance that will never be broken.

Now, older, wiser, with more spiritual experience, I care more and I like to try to help other people come out of this confused, retarded behavior and way of thinking. If people like me don't help, then nothing/no one will ever change (but what does anyway?) ...

Basically, I've learned the hard way through my own suffering, that nature produces perpetuality and revolution truly does produce change.

I think it's perfectly okay to listen to a spiritual teacher as long as we realize who we are, and to take what they say and apply it to our own experience. Alot of people have to learn exactly what gnosis is before they even decide they want to use it. Like it's been said, what masters provide is just a map, we have to do the work.

I used to feel overcome by how much change was needed in even me, not that I'm any better, but even being as aware as I thought I was I still realize that it is a constant fight from moment to moment.

Aquiring any amount of true individualsim though, is very liberating and well worth the fight. I sincerely hope I can help, and at least someone else feel this liberation in their own experience. Based on what I've come to know as truth, it is well worth it. Call it reward or whatever, but it is what it is.

"JC Vadim" lol :D

It seems like for me a biggish part of the Work is getting rid of ideas about what it is to be a spiritual person, or to do the spiritual work, and to just do it and find what it really is inside myself.

It's strange to think I could easily spend my whole life working towards an idea if I'm not careful.

Yeah, "JC Vadim!" That made me chuckle too!

I just wanted to add that I saw a PBS experiment between monkeys and human children.

The jist of it was, that people and animals alike both benefit and learn from imitation.

The young always imitate the behavior of the others or if a child or a monkey saw someone doing something and observed a cause and effect because of it, they know that imitating the behavior will bring about the same cause-effect.

But those similarities end there.

The continued experiment proved that human children WANT to learn, there is that drive to evolve by immitating behavior to later learn on their own, afterwards.
The animals, the monkeys, they DID NOT WANT to learn. They only imitate to get something like food or a toy. They simply want. It was an egotistic selfish drive to get something for themselves like food or a toy.

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It was interesting to see science prove something like a spiritual difference in humans and animals.

What is more interesting is that some animals, like dolphins or dogs for instance, that are supposed to be evolving creatures, didn't really reflect such a egotistic drive. They have a desire to learn or to please another somewhere in there.

This is opposite to the creatures like lab rats and monkeys, that are supposed to be beings devolving. They were the ones that reflected no desire to want to evolve, they just simply wanted for their own benefit.

It was just interesting and I thought of this post.

Yeah, it's interesting to see scientific results regarding imitation too. Thanks for sharing apakhana. It reminded me of this experiment done with monkies demonstrating how a paradigm is formed. It's related with imitation in a way, and it makes us question a bit about how much do we do or think just because we were told about it many times or because we grew up around this or that idea, ideology, religion, culture, etc.

Here is the experiment:

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A group of scientists placed 5 monkeys in a cage and in the middle, a ladder with bananas on the top. Every time a monkey went up the ladder, the scientists soaked the rest of the monkeys with cold water.

After a while, every time a monkey went up the ladder, the others beat up the one on the ladder. After some time, no monkey dares to go up the ladder regardless of the temptation.

Scientists then decided to substitute one of the monkeys. The 1st thing this new monkey did was to go up the ladder.Immediately the other monkeys beat him up. After several beatings, the new member learned not to climb the ladder even though never knew why!

After sometime, 2nd monkey was substituted and the same occurred. The 1st monkey participated on the beating for the 2nd monkey. A 3rd monkey was changed and the same was repeated (beating). The 4th was substituted and the beating was repeated and finally the 5th monkey was replaced.

What was left was a group of 5 monkeys that even though never received a cold shower,continued to beat up any monkey who attempted to climb the ladder. If it was possible to ask the monkeys why they would beat up all those who attempted to go up the ladder…..I bet you the answer would be…. I don’t know - that’s how things are done.
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Reference
DA. "How a Paradigm is formed?" Online Posting Chillnite.com, September 20, 2007.

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We could make an analogy from this, with intuition, instead of the temptation mentioned in the monkey experiment. How many times have we ignored intuition because of an idea of the usual way of things and situations that we learned by imitation?