Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
This is a continuation of my previous thread 'Contribution to the Discussion about Emotion', and is also a reply to Tarin at the end of that thread.
So, an update. Well, as the title suggests, I seem to have moved into Equanimity.
ah, good to hear.
Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
It has become clear over this last few days that the pursuit in any sense of any particular state is, well, not exactly an avoidance of this basic sense of dukkha, more a reflex of it - it is as it were what you do if you are not able to look back at it.
have you seen how being, its avoidance, and its reflex all seem to be the same thing? and if so.... isn't it just so funny?
Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
At times I have a clear awareness that this core sense of being is the source of all bifurcation, all objects of experience in terms of the aspects of cognition and perception - though that might seem to be going a bit too far. The various objects of interest are all thrown up to distract attention from the self-building going on. The last thing that the sense of self wants is to be looked at, and not moved from. It loves the tension between itself and some object. And so after quite a few years I seem to have begun a period of directed practice, which is to look back at the source and see if it will be still - the wish to be more peaceful has surfaced more the last year or so, and I can see that this will lead to that. The sense of self flares from time to time, and kind of edges me back into re-observation, but I don't mind. At times there is a level of stillness and integration which is new and simple, though I am aware that the core self is just quiescent rather than gone.
are you immediately - then and there - aware of its quiescence? if so, how are you aware of it; in what form does the quiescence appear/present?
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Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
I have the experience of what is now clear to me was a PCE to look back to for that (ie the being gone) - see original post.
what is your take now on the feeling-tones as you described them? were they there in the (experience of what you are now calling a) pce? or were you fabricating, after-the-fact, their then-existence?
Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
I wouldn't say that my feelings were 'me' during practice particularly, but these sensations and the 'intentions' to move from them - yes, these are 'me', and I think substantially we mean the same thing Tarin.
what i meant by "'i' am 'my feelings', and 'my feelings' are 'me'" is that being is both 'me' and 'my feelings'... thus, you could say, in a way, that the phenomenon of being simultaneously is and produces both 'me' and 'my feelings' (as well as my desire to move away from those feelings).
is that what you meant, too?
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Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
I often found in years past that this core sense of self / dukkha was that which seemed to 'hold me back', resisting the flow of practice quite unaccountably, and so believed it was something that needed to be eliminated somehow - the only thing in the end that helped was days of pure patient acceptance. When I am still it is felt mostly in the solar plexus area at the front and somewhat before me if at all. If I am not fully focussed on it, and am in some sense fighting it, it moves to the mid-back, opposite the solar-plexus. It is here that I am most familiar with it in previous experience. Because of this past experience of self-as-resistance, and the immense difficulties it has 'caused', I can see how it is bound up with cycling and the Dark Night in particular. I had a sense of my 'real' self also in the heart and hara, where the more 'spiritual' aspects of my experience seemed to make their home, and they were in tension with the solar plexus, constantly dragged back by it. Now I feel almost friendly to this beastie, and am also more integrated, with the apparent end of the heart and hara. I am not in tension with it, as I see it is 'the source of me', and that there is nowhere else to go - but it is in tension with just about everything!
ok.. why is it in tension? what does it want?
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Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
When Tarin you ask if I have a sense of this other centre - between the hara and sexual centre - well, not particularly at the moment. They look to me though like a list of qualities that would be inevitably cultivated by serious practice - but that may just be my personality!
or perhaps just a playful willingness to have fun with a bit of sensitively directed attention.. a gentle intuiting of sorts.
i say this because several people i've been face-to-face with have reported success at doing this on their very first try.
(besides, who doesn't have a bit of a soft spot somewhere for feeling buoyant, sweet and naive?)
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Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
I really appreciated your posted conversation with Daniel at Hurricane Ranch - thanks to you both. Some short shocking episodes of radio interference on the recording aside!
you're welcome.. and those mysterious recordings were mysterious.
Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
Clearly as I've already intimated in this post that experience of the self being gone referred to in my previous post was a PCE - this makes it clear to me that the sense of self can actually be eliminated altogether, and that it is unproblematic - it went on for a few days, so no problems there.
is it equally unproblematic that all feelings - and feeling-tones can be eliminated altogether? and is it unproblematic because you've seen how genuinely worthwhile what is there, instead, is?
Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
I was slightly disturbed by the recognition that PCEs seem to have occurred early in my life around my mid-teens, and instigated the whole spiritual path thing, as well as leading to the mutha of all Dark Nights.
a pce does seem to have functioned as an arising and passing event (as is mapped in the progress of insight) for some. for others, it doesn't have that effect, and is simply forgotten and buried under all the other, louder, memories (until it is later recalled).
Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
I am not sure what relationship PCEs have to the Cycles, as a sense of self seems to be requisite for cycling - perhaps the sense of self can go into abeyance almost 'accidentally' under certain circumstances, leading to a sense of the future of the path via a PCE way beyond where one might be.
that was probably what happened to me, actually...
Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
This would indeed kick off The Dark Night without Any hope of EVER Getting Out if that were the case!
...and yet, i came out ok! (better than ok, in fact)
Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
Before realising that this recent experience was a PCE, I had thought it was just the natural end of the Path. I still see it as the end, and rather than trying to cultivate PCE directly, I am still practising as if seeing through the sense of self will lead to that. It just has to be done completely I suppose... Isn't trying to 'get to' any experience (or even non-experience, like the PCE) seriously problematic?
no, not if trying to 'get to' it actually takes you there.
it can seem paradoxical.. because its something that 'you do' and something that happens 'on its own'.. at the same time.
Vajracchedika Ian Vajra:
I became much clearer I think about what the Attention Wave is from hearing this conversation. Do I understand correctly that it is that aspect of consciousness which directs and usually limits the 'direction' of attention? Volition is a very crude add-on, but intentions are often involved with it - though if one is unpurposive one could not call it intentional either. The sense of self moving and clinging would be its 'cause'. It manifests as attending selectively. It is very much like the effect on a reflection in a pond wrought by a ripple from a point - the centre is perhaps fairly clear, but everything else is unclear, in that image...in fact is quite like the effect of one of those long-legged insects that walk on the water, zipping about here and there mucking up the reflections.
that it is the ripple sounds about right.
also, consider that it may be the reflection itself.
tarin