Hey guys. I am relaxing a little into a nice attitude of chilledness about what the state I am currently in is. Still experiencing it with no agency/no watcher which seems nice. Some observations. Take these more as an investigation, my open process, journal, hope it's interesting.
I am using Daniel's description of 4th path simply because it seems like a good accurate marker of something for now.
It's strange, doubting you have got 4th after having seen it thoroughly is like doubting that you are reality. If you doubt you have 4th, you're basically saying "I don't think I'm reality, I think I'm something else". A thought which arose:
It doesn't matter what you think, or what you believe. YOU are Reality, Reality IS LIKE THIS, and REALITY ALWAYS WINS.
=====Thoughts and 'affect', cyclic thoughts can still occur! aka my misconceptions=====* One thing that surprised me and caused doubting thoughts about mctb 4th path, is that thoughts which arose in my experience could still cause emotional (body sensation) response. This is greatly attenuated, but still deffo possible.
* There is still "affect". For example a guy who is meant to buying something off me cancelled for the 2nd time in a row after I had stayed in to meet him. There was a body sensation of annoyance/anger when I read his message.
* And also, emotional states (e.g. body sensations of say annoyance or anger) can still cause annoyed thoughts to appear e.g. "the mental image/voice idea of texting him back with an annoyed message".
* So it is actually still possible to have cyclic negative thoughts. It is also still possible to have thoughts of a judging nature towards oneself, e.g. noting an angry thought, then a thought arise "oh this must mean I haven't really achieved xyz state" which can cause a body sensation of 'nervousness'.
The massive difference though is that as none of the inner thought voices are given "me-status" (whether or not the thinking mind realises/notices this or not).
So what the mind can no longer do is give some of the thoughts "me-status" and thus create a situation where it splits off a part of itself to fight the other part of itself. Basically there's no longer a mechanism which protects or prioritises one stream of thoughts, and it's this process which before made say, indecision, very ADDITIONALLY jarring.
So, say you're having indecision, or thoughts which refer to the self negatively, "shall I do this? no, I should do that. oh why can't I decide? I'm obviously not enlightened!", it is still 'unpleasant' but only unpleasant in the way that, listening to a couple argue next to you in a cafe is. It doesn't have the oddly jarring quality like YOU debating with a SOMEONE.
In way, I guess thoughts are basically given no more reality or sway than other sense-inputs.
This is my current understanding of the Teflon-mind. Basically all my doubting thoughts come from that I guess my expectation of the state was different to how it actually is. It is awesome though. I probably haven't sold it well here, but it is as we say here, WELL GOOD.
=========Agencylessness==========This for me was the most stunning part of it. All my life I have chased 'flow', 'being in the zone' through sports like surfing or
creative process like improvising dance. And yes, there is no agency sense. In this way it's exactly like being in the zone. If you are improvising some dance, and someone asks you, which moves are you "improvising or spontaneous" and which ones are you "intending", the question just doesn't make sense. So this lovely state of flow applies, only now it applies to all thoughts as well. So to say - which thoughts are "you" or "intended" VS which ones arise spontaneously, just doesn't make sense. It's weird and a lot of fun.
Sometimes it seems like there is agency. So for example I have the thought "OK, I'm gonna get up and make scrambled eggs now", and the body moves, then another thought arises a second later "oh wait that seemed like agency", but it's not really. Basically because the thought was formed in the sense "I'm gonna", which in the old pattern would have been given "me-status", it sounded like an old intent-action pattern. But it was just another non-special thought, which arose due to past conditions, and caused more stuff.
It doesn't matter what YOU think, or YOU believe. Reality IS LIKE THIS, and REALITY ALWAYS WINS
===========Centrelessness===========Initially I wasn't sure what this meant, as it was so obvious. Stuff is observed where it is, and it seems pristine and lush.
I think this is because say when you try look at something, stare at it, e.g. a pen, after a couple of seconds you become aware that the attention pattern has done its watcher thing. e.g. flicked from the pen, to sensations on the front of your face and back to the pen. Before this might be interpreted as me watching a pen, or some sense of something else there as well as the pen. But now it's just pen, + maybe facebuzz. This is what I think people can refer to poetically as perceiving emptiness all the time.
Experience, now being empty of a watching agenda which adds desire to every moment, seems brighter and nicer. @AEN - very very beautiful words - thank you!
===========end of seeking?===========That day I felt like the big fire had been put out, the end of seeking, the end of the existential drive. Then I found myself 3 days later, having negative thoughts and wanting to do get more insight, do practice, as I thought "it's obviously not done yet". So I was confused by this. But then I just realised that I was just trying to practice to feel better, take away pain, distract, like eating chocolate. It didn't seem related to the same drive for "TRUTH" as practice previously. It will be interesting to see how this one pans out. It is early days.
congratulations if you made it this far! I really enjoyed putting these words down, feels good to have them out of my mind. thanks to everyone, feeling a lot of gratitude right now.
I have been turning a lot of thoughts back to life - autumn is here in England, the temperature has dropped and the wind has picked up, stirring! My main ambition now is to get the biggest, most colourful kite that I can lay my hands on, fly it high in the blue autumn sky over hampstead heath, (which has an amazing panoramic view over London) and then find a girl with a dufflecoat, a musical giggle and beautiful long brown hair, and jump into a giant pile of red and gold leaves with her.

anthony