Here are some reflections I decided to post because they might be useful to someone.
1. What is the experience of 'self'? For awhile my operating theory was that the experience of 'self' originates in the reaction to sense-experience: seeing things, hearing things, remembering things, etc. gives rise to an experience based on desire or aversion in some form or other, and, to oversimplify, that experience of desire or aversion is a kind of self-experience. (Thus, there are numerous kinds of self-experiences). However, I recently found that there is also an additional kind of self-experience, which might be described as a thought whose content is "I".
It isn't the normal sense of "I" that a person may have when walking around, or when trying to chase down who the "I" is that is observing different experiences during Equanimity nana, or anything like that. In fact, I found that it was only clearly visible during concentration that was strong enough to suppress almost all of the hindrances, as the hindrances (the miscellaneous collection of desires and etc.) block the view of it. And unlike with the hindrances, it wasn't nearly so clear to me how this "I"-thought is dukkha. Although I was able to see that it was fabricated, the drawbacks of experiencing it were muddily-comprehended at best.
In the thread "Jhanic like "lock-in" experience" I mentioned a previous experience I had, which I believe concerned the same thing, and related it to something Richard wrote:
Richard:
In that crystal-clear fully-lucid hypnopompic state ‘I’ was able to penetrate deeply into ‘myself’ at the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself) – or, rather, the penetration took place via ‘my’ full acquiescence – and there, in the centre of all the feelings swirling around, the essence of who ‘I’ am lay gorgeously exposed ... not all that unlike a beautiful rosy pearl, nestled coyly amidst the delicate fleshy tissue of its host, in its shimmering nacreous shell.
...what lay exposed (as in completely unprotected) was the essence of ‘me’ in all ‘my’ glory ... beautiful, radiant, resplendent and unquestionably worthy of the utmost adoration, worship and veneration.
Notable similarities are the relationship between the "I"-thought and the hindrances swirling around it (the "I"-thought stands separately from the rest, and presumably, is covered by the rest normally), and the sense that the "I"-thought is special, interesting, and valuable. I can't admit to being as enthralled with it as Richard describes, but there was definitely a sense that I was seeing some rare and delicate thing, like a beautiful bird usually hidden away from most would-be watchers, but gracing my vision on this special occasion.
Ramana Maharshi may have been referring to this same "I"-thought when he recommended finding the "I" and tracing it back to its origin.
If I remember correctly, "The Cloud of Unknowing" has a passage where it describes how union with God is achieved only when one has reduced their experience to the simple perception of the individuality of one's soul, and God negates that perception; a thought whose content is "I" seems like a good candidate for that perception.
In the Pali suttas, there are frequent references to "I AM" (linked to the fetter of conceit, which is not one of the hindrances, so not suppressed by concentrating), so that's how it would fit in there.
It's possible that Thusness' "I AM" realization refers to this, but it's just as possible that it doesn't; I don't claim to understand that model.
2. I had a discussion with beoman about meditation and its relationship to the ability to describe one's experience in the thread "Actual Freedom vs. Spiritual Freedom":
beoman:
I currently do think that I had become alexithymic to some degree as a result of the meditation I did. The tension in my head never ever manifested in this manner before I started meditating. It got more prominent leading up to stream entry, and post stream entry even more so. I noted the obvious and unmistakable correlation with feeling something intensely/feeling strongly about something, and the pressure in my head. However, it was - and still is sometimes - very difficult to see what was actually causing me all the trouble. What I could do is sit down and meditate and that would cause the tension to subside as I would observe its impermanent/no-self/dukkha nature, and then that would lead to ASCs/more observation, etc. This I now see as real-time dissociation even though at the time it felt like I was seeing how it was actually happening more clearly. However, the tension would come back when I stopped meditating and I wouldn't really uncover any issues, though I might have brief flashes of emotion that I would rapidly pass through while meditating.
I noticed that as soon as I would wake up after a night of sleep, the tension wouldn't be there, but as I started going about my day, it would come in. I would dread that tension. I would dread it getting stronger, too, which led to more of it...
Anyway, what seems to be the case is that I was indeed feeling very strongly about something, usually anxious or unsettled or perhaps angry to some degree, but it was very difficult for me to notice what the particular emotion was and what it's cause was. All my effort somehow went into that tension. Also maybe interesting to note that meditating on the tension and observing it in a 3Cs manner seemed to lead to progress on the insight paths.
(...)
wikipedia:
A common misconception about alexithymia is that affected individuals are totally unable to express emotions verbally and that they may even fail to acknowledge that they experience emotions. Even before coining the term, Sifneos (1967) noted patients often mentioned things like anxiety or depression. The distinguishing factor was their inability to elaborate beyond a few limited adjectives such as "happy" or "unhappy" when describing these feelings. The core issue is that alexithymics have poorly differentiated emotions limiting their ability to distinguish and describe them to others.
As I said I did indeed notice I was feeling anxious or some emotion strongly, but it was difficult to let myself figure out exactly what it was or why it happened. The predominant mood was "head tension" and it would not often get much past that.I spent some time thinking about this kind of disconnect between noticing experience and being able to describe experience, and realized that there were times that I experienced something and analyzed it as "dukkha" but could have or should have been able to give a more precise analysis. So I spent some time analyzing hindrances that came up according to their nature (sensual desire / ill will / sloth / restlessness / doubt: part of the fourth satipatthana) and realized that, instead of analyzing in real-time, I suddenly had the ability to examine my life and its events, and analyze my actions with respect to what motivated them, and I saw the ways that I had very crass and unskillful motivations beginning in childhood which continued on until the present day to influence my behavior, continuously building on each other (karmic acts leading to more karmic acts of the same sort), with only a small let-up due to my progress in meditation. What was interesting about this was that I was only partially able to obtain this kind of insight in the past, despite trying, and that apart from being psychotherapeutic, it was also helpful from the perspective of meditative development (thoughts becoming un-repressed led to a reduction in tension and a partial allaying of the old, previously-hidden motivations?).
In the thread "EIS' concentration thread" I wrote:
First, a timely one...this stuff about being mis-analyzed due to incorrect assumptions about how I think vs. how others think used to be a moderate psychological issue for me (...) Currently, revisiting this issue causes some kind of reaction, but the reaction is all "residue"...more interestingly, it isn't residue in the sense of being a lesser or tempered version of the previous type of reaction, but in the sense of producing a seemingly-unrelated daydreamy kind of experience. It causes dullness. Like some kind of anti-concentration. Strange.
On a general, practical level, it seems to me that these kinds of experiences (where something is bothersome, vibrating, flickering, whatever, but it's hard to say what it is) indicate some kind of lack of insight into the particular qualities of what's being experienced, and it could be good to find a way to enquire into what the particular experience is (apart from "dukkha"). These experiences indicate, to me, a kind of alexithymia (maybe "pseudo-alexithymia" is more accurate), which needs to be remedied, as one can't abandon what one doesn't fully understanding.
Although beoman seemed to experience the problem worsening due to his meditative practice, I found that meditation never caused or exacerbated this problem for me [EDIT: though I experienced a strong kind of dissociation while working on MCTB 3rd path, it was not this "alexithymic", unable-to-see-so-as-to-name-the-experience kind], though I suspect it will only be a remedy for it if one is aware of it (or willing to become aware of it, not defensively-oriented against learning about what their hard-to-describe issues may be). I don't really know what makes this a problem for one person and not for another, apart from being sensitive to ways in which one might be trying to dissociate (e.g. the attempt to "observe" or "look" in specific ways is a kind of dissociation, even though it may seem salutary at the time).
3a. The above reflections gave me a strong and healthy respect for the dangerous workings of karma within a lifetime, and the way that a strong moral code extending to one's mental actions can be helpful. One's unrestrained inclinations, whether mental, verbal, or behavioral, can really compound over time and lead to a lot of unhappiness.
3b. Stream entry in the suttas is associated with a kind of moral perfection (that one behaves morally at almost all times, apart perhaps from errors or oversights). In light of the above reflections, it seems perverse to me that I could claim stream entry according to that standard. I analyzed my behavior and motivation in some detail, and found too many unwholesome motivations in the recent past that were previously unseen-by-me to be consistent with that standard. ("Not seeing one's motivations" is not an error or an oversight, as far as I can see.)
I might have had some other reflection in mind, but I can't quite seem to remember what it was, so I'll stop here.