Hi there, again, Neem.
Because at this stage you can't try harder, hard effort isn't harder, is just more unbroken and continuous! That's real hard effort at the later stages of practice. This made it soft yet still deep, in other words I kept the openness and looked deeply, yet still softly.
The following is an excerpt from here: http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201409/the-last-true-hermit
I am not going to put the subject's name here, just the link, because I don't want to shoehorn this man's experience into a religious buddhist framework, but to me it relates well to the fetter of conceit, the "I am" root (not conceit in terms of personal arrogance):
" [Anon.] became surprisingly introspective. 'I did examine myself," he said. "Solitude did increase my perception. But here's the tricky thing—when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. With no audience, no one to perform for, I was just there. There was no need to define myself; I became irrelevant. The moon was the minute hand, the seasons the hour hand. I didn't even have a name. I never felt lonely. To put it romantically: I was completely free.'"
So, to me, much of the focus on body and tension, this is still about mind attached to mental objects
(e.g., making/needing a personal relevance of any scrap, deep rooting in "I am" despite knowledge of no permanent self, no permanent anything --- only arising and passing and causality streams). That's natural and normal. One thinks they can, as you write, go "deeper". Really, there is just personal possessive awareness attached to mental objects. Those little bubble makers that we have as children: it's like the bubble wand is watching all these bubbles blow out of it and thinking, "I am detecting more and more subtle bubbles and one will be 'It', the great release." The great release is just knowing what one is and seeing what is as it is. So I agree with you: you cannot try harder, and I would say, too, there is no deeper going. Just figuring out the release
of from seeing things clearly: sentience and its variable perception.
So, yeah, there's tension in the body; one works it out, but not to look into those bubbles for anything special or deeper or unlocking; that is the self-mind specializing events for itself, like needing a small book or a birth certificate to exist and encoutner in outer space. To me, what you're writing is about keeping a self-secure place of self-relevance; detection work about tension which is really just a behavior happening to maintain sense of self-awareness. What are your thoughts on that?This is why "motionlessnes" is the perception of the awareness without a self-view filter. There is no volition, no gratification seeking, the body itself actually goes about apt works-- say, driving home-- and awareness, when not experiencing volition/gratification seeking-- these personal manipulations of all objects-- awareness in this selfless state is not moving. On the other hand, awareness when personal is always moving because it is a hunter of sensate gratifications,
taking hold of and directing awareness into sensate gratifications. That personalization of awareness, a hunter of gratifications (including the gratification of avoiding things), is surely a good survival enhancement/feature to the body's mechanical methods. But awareness that is just awareness has no sense of movement-action or detection; the sense of movement arises from an attracted awareness, like an insect moving to light. When there's apersonal awareness, the body (including brain function) then carries out very basic, adequate survial duties; the brain stem is not turning off its alertness to threats or problems. This is not my ongoing reality, but I can see now why others have reported it sometimes as "motionless" or "still".
Anyway, as a relative newbie, I just wanted to share with you that I think there is no "deeper" bubble. One just for a while feels that more and more subtle bubbles are arising and passing, and that may be true. But I think the key is to know that this is the nature of mind and to be okay with letting go of possessing them in anyway. One challenge
in of nibbana is that while ""This is peaceful, this is excellent, namely the stilling of all preparations, the relinquishment of all assets, the destruction of craving, detachment, cessation, extinction" (M I 436, MahàMàlunkyasutta), there is no agency to experience "peaceful" or "excellent". But in hindsite, I am refreshed by having been in that mental state, albeit briefly, like seeing just the quarter moon, not the full moon, as a sutta goes. Still it is not my ongoing state, but I have conviction that I would not be a heartless, lazy person if mind went there completely. It also seems a bit selfish and useless when viewed in a Western lens or Mahayan lens of prosocial aims, though I know the argument against that view, too.
Your thoughts?