| | I'd like to propose that for people who have done insight meditation for quite a while, a re-examination of their "stuff" might be what is needed in order to make further progress or get the most out of the progress that has already been made. I'm going to describe what I mean by that and report my own experience with this (and it’s going to be a long post, so be warned ;) ).
One of the great revelations that the MCTB brought to my practice was the instruction to focus attention away from the content and apparent meaning of experience and instead have a close look at the raw data out of which various experiences, events and their meaning etc. are made up. I use the term "stuff" (as it is used by many on this forum) for the layers of content of experience, the philosophcal, psychological, cultural, moral, personality-related etc. issues and problems that play a major roll in shaping people's everyday experience. Looking away from that, or rather, beyond and through that, at the raw sense data that imply those things, is for me the essence of vipassana.
I have done vipassana in this sense quite diligently for about three years now. A few months ago I realized that nothing much was happening or changing anymore through my practice, although I had experienced quite dramatic shifts and changes before, especially in the first twelve to eighteen months after reading the MCTB. I had the feeling that I was stuck and not making any progress, and I became very dissatisfied with my practice. For a while I even thought about giving it up completely, but that wouldn't work because of a nagging desire to get it done and over with. So I tried different things, especially more pure concentration practice, with kasina and yantras etc. Around that time I stumbled upon Jed McKenna and his method of “spiritual autolysis”, and although I had mixed feelings about McKenna himself, I decided to give autolysis a try.
Spiritual autolysis has already been mentioned on the DhO, but for those who haven't heard about it, is a writing or journaling technique where you either try to "write something true" (by first writing down something that appears to be true and then unraveling it) or answer the question "why shouldn't I kill myself right now". The second assignment seemed pretty intense, so I decided to go with the first.
I started a journal and wrote every day for about six weeks, and I must say that it's just amazing what kind of effects this had. The autolysis method brought a breakthrough that I found very surprising, because I firmly believed that any further progress would have to be achieved by doing more and getting better at vipassana.
For me, the main result of practicing autolysis is the realization that my investment in questions of philosophy, morals, ideals, politics, psychological and personality-related stuff etc. had vanished almost completely during the last years. I see now that in the past I have always hoped to find the one right way of viewing, explaining and justifying my life and the choices I made, the one idea or framework that would enable me to feel secure and stable in the face of everyday issues etc. I'm astonished as to how deeply my attitude towards these things has changed. Autolysis forced me to seriously look at these things, and in that process it has become obvious how absurd and ridiculous this kind of “serious” engagement actually is. I have found that I feel no drive or urge to find or provide answers to philosophical and moral problems anymore, or at least, the tendency to pursue such matters and expect satisfying results has almost completely vanished.
To be clear, I don't think that philosophical and moral theorizing or inquiry into one's personality or history etc. is pointless, but I have found that I do no longer believe that dealing with this stuff by thinking or talking about it will eventually solve anything. It's something I sometimes do, a habit like any other, like whistling while climbing down a staircase - which can be great fun, but won't ultimately save me.
I find that the emotional attachment concerning my stuff has diminished, and autolysis has helped me to realize how deeply this affects my life. This is the reason why I think that autolysis could be a useful method for some people here: It helps to integrate the experiences from meditation into daily life, and it shows where exactly attachments have been loosened or destroyed.
In order to fully benefit from the experiences gained in meditation, it may be worthwhile to re-try sorting out the world by thinking about it. (You may find that you no longer feel the urge to succeed at this.)
A few more words about the method:
In retrospect, the value of the autolysis method seems to lie in the fact that it forced me to deal with my stuff in a very intense way. If you really try to write something that is true, you quickly arrive at the taken-for-granted beliefs and ideas that structure your world view, the concepts and ideas you're not prepared to let go of, and the method forces you to make them explicit, to examine them and doubt them and try to find ways to falsify them etc. As you apply the method, you are forced to acknowledge that you can't coherently explain or justify the way you see the world and yourself, but that instead, these views are ultimately random and are held in place only by emotional charges, which in turn have no other support than the amount of identification that is invested in them.
I think that engaging in such an exercise would have led me nowhere a few years ago, and I suppose that, contrary to Jed McKenna's claims, a fair amount of experience in insight meditation is necessary in order to make progress through this kind of inquiry (I guess one would have to be at least beyond second path). If I had started autolysis earlyer, I would probably have gotten all excited about the (seemingly) profound philosophical notions I was dealing with and would have been quite proud at myself for daring to ask all these questions and coming up with all these oh-so-clever answers etc.
It seems to me that the ability to have a good hard look at my stuff was for a long time hindered by the fact that I tended to leave the emotional charges that go with that stuff unexamined, as if they were some unrelated and unimportant byproduct. Through autolysis I have found that the habitual disembedding from feelings that comes with insight meditation reduces this tendency. I can see my stuff more clearly now, because I see the emotional investments and the identification that stabilize the ideas. Being convinced by or attracted to a concept or ideal, or feeling that the world or myself should be so and so is ultimately nothing more than another feeling in the gut. And the less I identify with that feeling, and the more I see it as arising on its own accord, without essence and with nothing much to offer, the easier it is to see the absurdity of “serious” conceptual, philosophical, moral etc. pursuits and debates.
This understanding has carried over into my practice and made me realize that taking meditation very seriously and doing it order to “get it done” is in a way just as absurd as trying to think or theorize your way out of suffering. Although the technical / pragmatic approach is of great value for me, I think that there is a point at which it can be hard to make further progress in this way. I find that insight disease is gone (for now). I still sit, in fact I sit more often than I did before I took up autolysis, but I do it with a more playful attitude, not in order to get something (done), but out of curiosity, for the sake of exploration, and for fun. I also find that I have more interest in things not directly related to insight, like lucid dreaming or even magick as presented by Alan Chapman and Duncan Bradford, which I wouldn’t have permitted myself to look at a year ago ;)
If you think about it in scientific terms, the instruction to turn away from your stuff and look at the data seems straightforward: We only learn new things by getting new experiences. But in every scientific study, there is the point where you take the (new) data and try to fit it into the theory and paradigm you started out with. In science, this may result in confirming or doubting and expanding or refining the paradigm etc. In the context of insight, I guess the effect will largely be a realization about the actual absurdity and misguided-ness of the questions and motivations one started out with, and maybe a new attitude towards and/or freedom from these motives and perspectives.
Others have reported insights concerning the absurdity of one’s ideas about enlightenment and the motives and perspectives one practices with as crucial parts of their development, and I suppose this may even be a part of “getting it done” eventually (see links below).
I hope this will be of interest for anyone.
Christian
Alan Chapman reporting about his fourth path experience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cziYLJwTGy8
One of Florian’s threads, also mentioning autolysis: http://bit.ly/SatPu7
[edited for clarity] |