<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" version="2.0"> <channel> <title>Dharma Diagnostic Clinic, aka "What was that?"</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_category?p_l_id=&amp;mbCategoryId=103268</link> <description>If you had some experience and you want others to weigh in on what it might have been or what to do with it, post here.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 19 Oct 2014 00:25:42 GMT</pubDate> <dc:date>2014-10-19T00:25:42Z</dc:date> <item> <title>RE: Conceptual Proliferation</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606849</link> <description>Thank you Howard!</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 20:54:30 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606849</guid> <dc:creator>Drew Miller</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T20:54:30Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: meditation making me feel spaced out</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606753</link> <description>Hello Jeff,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jeffrey Thomas Nieves:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;About two weeks ago, I did an hour sit of concentration, and when I finished I felt really spaced out. Now I usually feel a little bit &amp;#034;high&amp;#034; after meditation, but it only lasts a half hour or so. This was a different. I felt out of it. Almost like the place from which I observe the world was pushed to the side or just not in the right place. ... It&amp;#039;s tough to put the experience to words. &lt;strong&gt;It was somewhat akin to feeling slightly drunk.&lt;/strong&gt; My functioning was pretty normal, but it somehow felt like more work.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I like the response given by Richard Zen. Especially his emphasis on &amp;#034;knowing&amp;#034; the state you are in when it is occurring. Your reference to &amp;#034;feeling slightly drunk&amp;#034; suggests a dull mind state (which may be akin to a trance-like state). You want to endeavor to avoid going into any kind of trance-like state, so that the mind remains sharp, resilient, focused, maleable, workable, and established on its object with clear comprehension of the object at all times. This prepares the mind for the practice of &lt;em&gt;vipassana&lt;/em&gt; or insight contemplation. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Check out Thanissaro Bhikkhu&amp;#039;s descriptions of dull mind states in his brief essay &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;accesstoinsight&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;lib&amp;#x2f;authors&amp;#x2f;thanissaro&amp;#x2f;jhananumbers&amp;#x2e;html"&gt;Jhana Not by the Numbers&lt;/a&gt; and see if it is similar to what you have experienced. If so, the application of &lt;em&gt;sati&lt;/em&gt; (mindfulness) can help to alleviate the experience. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Take note of references such as the following in his essay: &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Strong concentration is absolutely necessary for liberating insight. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To gain insight into a state of concentration, you have to stick with it for a long time. ...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The first was the state that comes when the breath gets so comfortable &lt;strong&gt;that your focus drifts from the breath &lt;u&gt;to the sense of comfort itself&lt;/u&gt;, your mindfulness begins to blur, and your sense of the body and your surroundings gets lost in a pleasant haze. When you emerge, you find it hard to identify where exactly you were focused.&lt;/strong&gt; Ajaan Fuang called this moha-samadhi, or delusion-concentration. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In both these states of wrong concentration, the limited range of awareness was what made them wrong. If whole areas of your awareness are blocked off, how can you gain all-around insight?...This is why Ajaan Fuang, following Ajaan Lee, taught a form of breath meditation that aimed at an all-around awareness of the breath energy throughout the body, playing with it to gain a sense of ease, and &lt;strong&gt;then calming it so that it wouldn&amp;#039;t interfere with a &lt;u&gt;clear vision of the subtle movements of the mind&lt;/u&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; This all-around awareness &lt;strong&gt;helped to eliminate the blind spots where ignorance likes to lurk.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Richard Zen:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expanding my equanimity to more objects&lt;/strong&gt;, than only infront of me, helped to reduce brain fog, but that&amp;#039;s because some forms of thinking are allowed in vipassana. You want thoughts to be not considered separate from other experiences. It&amp;#039;s all interdependent Consciousness-objects. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would look into more descriptions of proper concentration practice &lt;u&gt;to make sure you really are paying attention&lt;/u&gt; and &lt;u&gt;not just drifting&lt;/u&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; There should be strong knowing of the experiences up until the 4th jhana. After that then it should start getting more strange &lt;strong&gt;but a sense of knowing is still there&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;By suggesting the expansion of &amp;#034;equanimity to more objects,&amp;#034; he is also implying an increase in mindfulness (&lt;em&gt;sati&lt;/em&gt;). Mindfulness in this sense equates with &amp;#034;knowing awareness&amp;#034; of the moment as it is happening. Not just awareness, but actually knowing (with wisdom and insight) where you are and what you are doing in that moment &lt;u&gt;with mental clarity&lt;/u&gt;. You don&amp;#039;t want the mind to begin to become dull or trance-like during these moments. If you feel that dullness coming on, you need to increase mindfulness to combat it in order to avoid that &amp;#034;feeling slightly drunk&amp;#034; feeling. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As long as the headachy experience is not intense and throbbing, you are likely just experiencing what all meditators experience when their concentration becomes increased: a sense of pressure in the center of the cranium as though a balloon is expanding there, creating the sensation of pressure. The experience of such pressure can be used as a nimitta hearlding increased concentration when one is attempting to enter into &lt;em&gt;dhyana&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;samadhi&lt;/em&gt;. It all depends on how one responds to such phenomena whether or not it can be used to deepen one&amp;#039;s practice. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In peace,&lt;br /&gt;Ian</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 17:39:24 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606753</guid> <dc:creator>Ian And</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T17:39:24Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606710</link> <description>As long as you do a little every day, it will come.  Actually, if you are consistent meditation has a way of being consistent as well.  Once I had felt what piti was like, it seemed a lot easier to call it up, so it only took a minute or two to feel it and each jhana seemed to last 3-4 minutes like clockwork.  Toward the end of that period I was rising up to the seventh jhana every day.  (Bounced off the 8th a few times, haha.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Several 15 minute sessions sounds like a good practice.  If you lose your drive, or you don&amp;#039;t have as much time in the future, just try to log even 10 minutes a day.  You can also practice concentration just while doing menial tasks.  Focus on the visual field.  This can help build up a concentration backlog and you&amp;#039;ll notice a difference when you sit.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for body awareness - what I actually would do is start by placing attention on different body parts and &amp;#034;breathe into&amp;#034; them.  Like, breathe into the feet, then inhale from the feet and breathe into the lower legs, then inhale from the lower legs, etc and so on.  Once I&amp;#039;d done that for the whole body, I would breathe with the whole body for a few breaths.  If there was some part that seemed out of attention, or if my mind wanted to wander, I would do the whole thing again.  Also, if I felt like the mind had started to wander while focusing on a specific part, I would repeat that part one or two times until I felt the attention was stable the whole way through.  I think this worked well for me because it was very active, so it was harder to get bored or lose track of what was happening.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Eventually I started to feel a buzzy tingling in different body parts as I&amp;#039;d do this, and once it started happening consistantly, it would only take one time through (or even just through the legs) to feel the buzzing and the whole body wold start to melt into the rapture.  It would flare up during the day if I was in a good mood, too.  So it&amp;#039;s definately accumulative.  I stopped practicing jhana specifically a while back, and now it&amp;#039;s a bit more spotty if I try for it.  Still possible, but more effort initially - so I think routine is a big part of it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I should also note that &amp;#034;letting go&amp;#034; was a big part of my practice.  I was dealing with a lot of physical discomfort, so I had to practice a lot of acceptance while sitting.  This can be a pretty big part of the process, so don&amp;#039;t try to force anything - let the awareness move away from the pain by becoming interested in the pleasure rather than trying to take it off the pain, if that makes sense.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:26:56 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606710</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T16:26:56Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Hacked the Path with drugs -- now not sure where I am</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606704</link> <description>Maybe this will be helpful:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The way things seem to be unfolding for me is that effort is being dropped slowly over time.  I think this is anatta insight, but as my SN might suggest, I&amp;#039;m a lot more influenced by taoism than buddhism, so I prefer the term wu wei - actionless action or, more understandably, effortless action.  When I first started meditating, I would move attention around different parts of the body - experiemented with different methods and ideas - but fairly quickly I settled on just &amp;#034;letting go.&amp;#034;  Maybe this is a bit vague, but it&amp;#039;s actually fairly simple.  Whatever you think you have control over in your experience, just stop trying to control it.  Just let go of it and see what happens.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In terms of noting practice as described by Daniel, I was also unclear about it before, but I think it&amp;#039;s just a way to assist in letting go of control.  Because the goal is simply to put a label on things, it releases the need to try to make anything happen or change anything.  You just notice whatever is happening and let it happen.  The act of labeling turns you into an honest reporter - like announcing at a golf match.  The announcer is just watching the game and saying what happens.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Think of it this way - what is the ultimate goal of the practice?  Forget about imperminance or anatta or methods or factors of enlightenment for a moment and just contemplate the goal itself.  We just want to be free from suffering, right?  There have probably been points in your life where you were at least relatively free from suffering.  What allowed you to be that way?  I&amp;#039;m betting you weren&amp;#039;t specifically trying to do anything to make yourself happy, and you weren&amp;#039;t focused on things like, &amp;#034;how do I feel,&amp;#034; or, &amp;#034;what is happening?&amp;#034;  It was because you forgot yourself for a little while and you were free from the burden of maintaining a sense of who you are in relation to what&amp;#039;s happening.  This flowing state of freedom comes from a lack of inhibition, a lack of self-referencing.  It&amp;#039;s about forgetting yourself and how you feel - just being in the world as it is.  You can train yourself to find that place, and I think that&amp;#039;s what insight is really all about.  Insight to me is discovering how I am fighting against the world, and letting myself drop the effort.  As more and more effort is dropped, you begin to see it arising in suprising places, like the effort to make the attention work a certain way, or the effort to hold on to an experience.  It&amp;#039;s suprising because things like anger or fear, as real as they are, will often change shape completely and dissolve when you just let them happen.  This leads, of course, to a lot of contradictory thoughts like, &amp;#034;if letting go is what causes the state, and I want the state itself, how do I let go of wanting it so I can have it?&amp;#034;  And I think this is why a lot of mystical things tend to be full of non-sensical wisdom.  But the truth is pretty simple - we feel best when we don&amp;#039;t pay attention to ourselves.  We are kindest and calmest when we have nothing to defend and feel no comparison between ourselves and others.  We are most at ease and most content when we feel there is nothing we need.  If we want to be like that, we have to forget about directing ourselves.  You can&amp;#039;t steer yourself towards forgetting yourself, you just have to do it - let go of control.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You can use common sense to direct your practice if you agree with these ideas.  Forgetting yourself is easy - how do you forget anything?  You just ignore it, you let whatever you&amp;#039;re feeling happen as it is and put your attention on other things.  You can just let go of any need to change yourself or your experience in any way and stop giving those old troublesome beliefs and comparisons and needs and desires the credibility/seriousness/importance you used to feel they deserved.  Sever ties with anything you feel you are and live nakedly in the world.  If you&amp;#039;re angry, just forget that you&amp;#039;re angry and you won&amp;#039;t have to deal with the nasty feeling anymore.  If you&amp;#039;re worried, just give yourself permission to fail or lose or let people down.  You can do this happily because fear and anger don&amp;#039;t really help you in any way.  They don&amp;#039;t feel good and they prevent you from doing what you need or want to do because your attention is all tied up in self-referencing rather than free to deal with what is making you worried or angry or sad or whatever.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, really, all you need to do is stop feeding that thing inside you that wants your attention.  Watch it, it&amp;#039;s tricky.  It&amp;#039;ll lie to you and manipulate you and make you feel bad.  It&amp;#039;ll try to convince you that painful things like anger and desire feel good.  It&amp;#039;ll try to drive you away from experiences with fear, and it&amp;#039;ll try to convince you that change is terrible with sadness.  But, just like anyone who is trying to manipulate you, if you don&amp;#039;t react, they eventually lose interest and go away.  You can just let go, there&amp;#039;s nothing you need to do!  It&amp;#039;s such a relief. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/closed_eyes.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyway, I&amp;#039;m waxing poetic here so I&amp;#039;ll stop before I put you to sleep.  Hopefully this is helpful.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 15:50:25 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606704</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T15:50:25Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606695</link> <description>Thank you for the great explanation. &lt;br /&gt;So you, like Thanissaro Bhikkhu, interprets the instructions like you should be aware of the whole body at once sooner or later? But you think any point in the body works too?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;By the way, how much time do you need to get piti? I usually sit for several 15 min sessions a day. </description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 15:02:48 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606695</guid> <dc:creator>Pål</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T15:02:48Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Hacked the Path with drugs -- now not sure where I am</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606678</link> <description>Thanks both for your replies.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Another possibility - maybe you&amp;#039;ll only be enlightened while on your special combination of drugs, haha.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I believe I was enlightened for those couple of hours (the night out). During that time I saw through the three illusions of permanence, satisfactoriness and self on an ongoing, uninterrupted basis. I was on a low dose of MXP during that night out, and was also still &amp;#034;glowing&amp;#034; from the events during the trip the night before. So, the drugs cocktail was still in effect.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The cocktail has now stopped working! This has, without exception, been the result after &amp;#034;enlightenment moments&amp;#034; from ANY drug. I have been &amp;#034;cycling&amp;#034; through drugs in this way for years, now.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think you are right about drugs temporarily letting me lose my &amp;#034;self&amp;#034; so I can see the destinations.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I now KNOW I have to do it without drugs. So I&amp;#039;m literally starting again. I&amp;#039;m letting everything go, any knowledge I believed I had attained through drugs and any meditation practice that went before, and just starting from zero with a simple breath meditation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am no longer &amp;#034;actively searching for individual sensations&amp;#034; either. I&amp;#039;m just watching the breath and not trying to get involved too much at all. This is having the effect of &amp;#034;resetting&amp;#034; me and I&amp;#039;m getting insight more organically of its own accord now, I feel. I am also way, way less stressed about it and am feeling clearer about things in life generally. Do you think I&amp;#039;m on the right track?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The truth is, since reading the book (MCTB ), I started &amp;#034;actively searching for individual sensations&amp;#034; in everything, and I&amp;#039;m not actually sure I know how to do it. I think I was getting in my own way by searching for and seeing something that maybe wasn&amp;#039;t there (and thus &amp;#034;creating&amp;#034; a &amp;#034;flickering&amp;#034;?)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Having re-read the book, I&amp;#039;m STILL not sure how to actually &amp;#034;see&amp;#034; individual sensations. What do you recommend? Or is my just staying with the breath and letting it figure itself out the right way to go, for me, do you think? I&amp;#039;m feeling inclined towards that.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 13:54:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606678</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T13:54:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606640</link> <description>In the instructions, the buddha says to reach the fourth jhana before changing the object of concentration.  By the time you&amp;#039;re in that state, the mind is so completely in control that it&amp;#039;s very easy to direct it towards anything.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Up until step 12, he&amp;#039;s describing what happens naturally as concentration builds and the mind steadies itself.  1 - 2: Pay attention to the breath first then 3 - 4: move that same attention into the body.  A full body awareness is what brings attention to the tensions in the muscles and helps become aware of the hinderances - emotions are felt in the body.  5 - 8 describes the progression of the first four jhanas to equanimity. 9 - 12 seem to be describing the process that happens in the fourth jhana.  Equanimity is a special state that you need to rest in for a while so it solidifies.  The first three jhanas are a smooth arc towards equanimity, and then equanimity is a kind of landing point.  While you rest in equanimity, the residual background noise in the mind is fully released - thoughts kind of change form in jhana into an almost physical disruption in the back of the mind, so equanimity stretches out a bit and becomes a refinement process.  From there, once everything has stilled completely, the buddha says to direct the mind towards insight.  This is also the jumping off point for the formless jhanas.  Because the mind is so still, the attention becomes more self-absorbed and the feeling of being in a body sort of expands and dissolves until the mind is like space.  From there it gets pretty weird, haha.  I actually can&amp;#039;t say much for the last four instructions the buddha gives.  Equanimity is so still and thoughtless it&amp;#039;s difficult to imagine doing anything at all in that state.  However, once you&amp;#039;re done meditating, the mind stays very receptive for a time, so I could see directing the mind towards specific things at that point.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I would say that, right now, your best bet is to work with the first section.  Once you reach a stable awareness and feel the piti rise, things make more sense, I think.  In the sutta I see the Buddha describing what I&amp;#039;ve experienced as a mostly passive process.  Notice how he says to be &amp;#034;sensitive to&amp;#034; things.  There isn&amp;#039;t much you do actively.  Mindfulness of breathing and a focus on physical comfort are both very relaxing and satisfying, which is why it makes a good meditation object - it&amp;#039;s easy to pay attention to.  Paying attention is the main theme of the instructions.  What you pay attention to changes over the arc of the jhanas, but it&amp;#039;s very natural and happens mostly on it&amp;#039;s own - like a state of flow.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Edit: To your question, I think method both is and isn&amp;#039;t important, haha.  I think the sutta instructions are a bit vague, personally (they are 2500 years old, come from an oral tradition, and are translated from a dead language, after all).  The Buddha may have had very detailed instructions, and this short string of phrases is all that&amp;#039;s left of it.  There is a lot of disagreement over what jhana actually is, as well.  Really, though, once you get into it and explore the teritory for yourself, there really is such a wide array of things that happen, you&amp;#039;re going to be forced to give up on the idea of maps.  I can vouch for the fact that the jhanas exist as they&amp;#039;re described, but I can&amp;#039;t say they always follow the exact order laid out in the suttas or that they always manifest the same way time after time.  Think of yourself as an explorer in your own mind.  The suttas provide hints, and the traditions provide support, and other people provide methods and personal experience.  All of that combined is what&amp;#039;s going to help the most.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Just speaking personally, I do think sustained attention is the main cause of jhana.  Abandoning the hinderances makes sustained attention very easy - as does watching the breath and paying attention to the body in particular.  I got to jhana by paying attention to different parts of the body in succession and letting go of everything.  In many ways, it&amp;#039;s actually pretty simple, so there isn&amp;#039;t much need for concern over method so much as persistence.  The jhanas are a natural part of the mind, after all - like feeling happy or feeling the sense of touch.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 12:05:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606640</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T12:05:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606632</link> <description>Nice to hear I&amp;#039;m probably om the right path &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;yes I&amp;#039;m worried about method a lot, because of reading the suttas. I have a lot of respect for them. I have thought, if method is not that important, why did the Buddha describe his methods in such great detail? &lt;br /&gt;The instructions in the anapanasati sutta are pretty long. If it would have been enough to focus on an object and drop everything else, then wouldn&amp;#039;t the Buddha have thaught only that when teaching meditation.&lt;br /&gt;There is one sutta where a monk tells the Buddha how he practices anapanasati: he just focuses his attention on the breath. The Buddha answers with something like &amp;#034;that&amp;#039;s ok, but the practise is brought to it&amp;#039;s culmination like this:...&amp;#034; And then follows the classical long anapanasati instruction.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn54/sn54.006.than.html#fnt-1&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Doesn&amp;#039;t this sutta say that practicing a method correctly is actually pretty important? Or is the way the monk Arittha practises, which also seems to be the way most teachers nowadays teaches anapana, enough? </description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 07:59:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606632</guid> <dc:creator>Pål</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T07:59:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: meditation making me feel spaced out</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606549</link> <description>Hey Mike,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks for the response. I will try every suggestion you made. I really appreciate that advice. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Seeing the experience as insight into not self is an interesting way to view things. I can definitely see what you mean. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It did cross my mind that it could be disolution or some aspect of three characteristics. I looked at the descrpitions in MCTB and two passages connected to what I felt. The first is from the section on dissolution. It reads:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Helvetica"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 12px"&gt;“For instance, you might be going to lift your hand to turn off your alarm clock, but your hand just doesn’t move. You could move your hand, but somehow things just tend to stop with the intention and get nowhere. Eventually you move your hand, but it might have been just a bit tiring to do so.”&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I definitely experienced that. Just moving felt odd and took real work. Especially in terms of mental operations, like when trying to make a plan. It was real effort to get my brain straight enough to consider the future and then go back to the present. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I also related to this passage describing Three Characteristics:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Helvetica"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 12px"&gt;Occasionally, the early part of this stage can cause people to feel vulnerable, raw, and irritable to a small or large degree in the ways that a migraine headache or a bad case of PMS can. I have occasionally been laid out on a couch for hours by this aspect holding my head and just...&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I was literally laid out on the couch after I stopped mediating for about a week and had an intense headache.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;More detailed practice history:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I had a pretty classic A&amp;amp;P(waves of energy, brain vibrating, seeing objects arise and pass in what feels like real time, pressure on the forehead and the top of the head, body moving own its own, my body feeling weightless, etc...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Since then I did generally lighter sits(mostly 10 to 30 minutues) of vipassana. During those sits I experienced crazy breathing, weird movements, some pretty uncomfortable &amp;#034;energy&amp;#034; welling up in diff parts of the body.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;About a year ago, I just started experiencing mostly Piti arise combined with sudden stomach movements. I would just get crazy happy while I sat to the point where it was hard to focus on anything else.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Recently I switched to a sutta influeced anapasati practice of observing the breath, but not at any particular location. This induced more piti. I did a 3 day retreat of this and it almost felt like my head would pop off from piti.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I was doing commentary influenced anapasati(using the nostrils as focus) when the spacness arose. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Again, thanks so much for your advice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Best,&lt;br /&gt;Jeff</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 00:08:56 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606549</guid> <dc:creator>Jeffrey Thomas Nieves</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T00:08:56Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Rude &amp; Terrifying WTF experience upon waking</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606532</link> <description>Was it a weird indescribable and highly unpleasant sense of doom and dysphoria?  What you&amp;#039;re describing sounds like akathisia caused by the MDMA.  It&amp;#039;s usually caused by antipsychotics and then less frequently in antidepressant medications.  It&amp;#039;s a temporary state caused by the drug.  However, I haven&amp;#039;t heard of this happening with MDMA before, but I suppose it&amp;#039;s possible </description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 22:25:22 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606532</guid> <dc:creator>Tom Tom</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T22:25:22Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606504</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If it makes you feel better, I haven&amp;#039;t been able to map any of my meditative experiences using the progress of insight.  I think the maps only make sense in retrospect.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Well said. &lt;br /&gt;+1</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 20:29:05 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606504</guid> <dc:creator>Small Steps</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T20:29:05Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: meditation making me feel spaced out</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606500</link> <description>Jeff - i&amp;#039;ve had a fair amount of experience with meditation making me feel &amp;#039;spaced out&amp;#039;, so I was compelled to post a response here.  Take it with a grain of salt, of course.  I am just trying to be helpful.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You might be dealing with the stage of &amp;#039;dissolution&amp;#039;.  See the descriptions of this stage in MCTB.  I&amp;#039;m not saying that for sure though, and you can never be 100% certain where you are anyways.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Otherwise, you might be in another stage of insight, but you are starting to see some significant aspects of not-self in your mind and body.  Or you could just be getting more mindful and seeing the arisings of intentions, thoughts, and actions in real time.  This can be hard to integrate in my experience.  You start feeling out of whack and dissociated.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think that this is a complex issue so there isn&amp;#039;t any easy advice.  Personally, I am a materialist so I stray away from anything &amp;#039;energetic&amp;#039; or any explanations like that.  I probably wouldn&amp;#039;t see a headache as related, unless it was some sort of tension in the head from concentrating.   I just try to see it as &amp;#039;&amp;#039;my insight is progressing and this is just a bit weird and hard to adjust to at the moment.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  So long as it isn&amp;#039;t causing you a lot of distress, I&amp;#039;d just try to ride it out.  After all, if you want to realize that there is no permanent, separate self, it is going to be a bit of a head-trip to get there!  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You could modify your practice a bit and see if that decreases the feelings of spaciness.  You could try a more whole-body field of attention and focus on calming the body and breath (as Than. Bhikkhhu would advise).  That might help.  You could narrow the focus to just the breath, just the body, or try a different focus point for your concentration (the belly, the nose, whatever).   You could experiment and see if you can change something to bring yourself some relief.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you could give some extra detail about your practice and your symptoms, that could help with the discussion.  Otherwise, best of luck with your practice.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 20:26:32 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606500</guid> <dc:creator>Mike H.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T20:26:32Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606495</link> <description>Hi Pal&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When I first started meditating I had no idea what jhana was.  I was going consistently for about 10 minutes a day just placing attention on various parts of the body and accepting various physcial discomforts (I hate sitting still in general).  It took about 6 months, and I got hit by piti like a bolt out of the blue.  Focusing on the body works very well, IMHO, becaus piti arises in the body as a physical sensation.  By watching body sensations, you are paying attention to where the piti will first start.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It sounds like you&amp;#039;re trying to deal with some doubts or uncertainty about method.  The truth is, the method or the object of concentration is not as important as the sustained awareness.  I&amp;#039;d suggest picking a method where it seems easiest to pay attention to some object (sight, sound, sensation, anything will do).  If you are feeling troubled and uncomfortable, one of the great things about meditation is that you don&amp;#039;t have to fight anything.  Simply allow yourself to be troubled and uncomfortable and go back to the object.  A good hint for finding concentration: it&amp;#039;s more about removing distractions from your awareness than it is about placing awareness intentionally.  The best way to ignore something is to accept it, and go back to what you&amp;#039;re doing (i.e. paying exclusive attention to a single thing).  Don&amp;#039;t feel like you need to play any mental games with yourself, pretending you don&amp;#039;t want to attain a jhana when you really do.  That will only hold you back if you feel like you need to work it out somehow or indulge it.  Just, the moment you notice you&amp;#039;re striving or trying to suppress thoughts, or being distracted in any way, immediately go back to the object of concentration.  Accept everything as it is, even your own negative reactions to outside stimuli and go back to the object.  Maybe you notice you have back pain, oop, go back to the object.  There&amp;#039;s a loud noise and it makes you feel a little stab of anger, oh, that&amp;#039;s ok, you can be angry, just go back to the object.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Haha, that&amp;#039;s all you need to do.  Think of it like an acumulation.  Every moment you are paying attention to the object, you&amp;#039;re adding a few grains of sand to a scale.  When the attention wanders away on its own, the sand doesn&amp;#039;t go away even half as fast, it&amp;#039;s still there when your attention comes back.  So don&amp;#039;t try to reason anything out, just add more sand.  Eventually the scale tips, and you won&amp;#039;t even feel like you did it yourself - you just finally acumulated enough concentration points, haha.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If it makes you feel better, I haven&amp;#039;t been able to map any of my meditative experiences using the progress of insight.  I think the maps only make sense in retrospect.  Something to keep in mind - the progress of insight was developed for monks who were teaching to help diagnose their students.  Without our own hindsight to compare it too, it&amp;#039;s just a shot in the dark.  The advice is not to worry about where you are, but that can feel patronizing - what if you&amp;#039;re off track or practicing wrong?  While it&amp;#039;s almost impossible to meditate &amp;#034;wrong,&amp;#034; the jhanas have a way of giving you what you&amp;#039;re looking for.  The raptures and bliss are very impressive and kind of give what you do a personal legitimacy.  To get there the fastest, you just have to pay attention to something - you don&amp;#039;t even have to try very hard or wear yourself out, you just need to be consistent and methodical about it.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 20:24:12 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606495</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T20:24:12Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Rude &amp; Terrifying WTF experience upon waking</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606456</link> <description>I slept in late this Friday and woke up with this experience to greet me. It was seemingly impossible and I can&amp;#039;t wrap my head around it and am having a hard time believing this just happened. It&amp;#039;s hard to put into words as the experience fades, even though it happened within hours of now.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I woke up with something incredibely off. Something about reality, no-self and insane levels of existential turmoil and confusion. I could still do everything I normally could like walk around and talk but something that&amp;#039;s supposed to happen to keep reality from fucking up didn&amp;#039;t seemingly. This happened several times and I woke up shaken in what seems like rapid fire. Like one frame of experience per waking. And I was freaking out. Breathing fast like I&amp;#039;m having a panic attack, with cognition severley limited for the breif time somehow. I was so scarred. I remember trying to get dressed fast thinking I would just jog it away. I had to get a re-grip on reality several times before it would settle in that I&amp;#039;m safe. Then it took a while while I lay there in almost shock for my mind to come back. I was wishing that things were ok and not so existentially hellish.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I sat there somehow making sense of what just happened mathematically. The number three and the shape triangle kept seeming relevant. This experience implicated time and space somehow. As if one one dimension could be experienced at a time and no more, thus attributing to its stuckness trapped-quality. Weird thinking like this and more and more returning to regular safe waking conscioussness continued to happen until the experience fadded and seemed way more benign. I was terrified so deeply that something like this can just happen but more and more this faded into being Ok with what happened. Being Ok with being alive.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This was really confusing and a deeply spiritual experience. It took me by surprise how it came out of no where. I stayed up all night, taking a breif nap before this happened, and was actually working with MDMA the previous night. Something I have only done recently once before in an attempt to help with psychological stuff. It seemed fine and nothing particularyly off happened when I was using it last night. Maybe my body was super taxed from the experience and staying up all night. Perhaps they were some physical facors contributing to the occurance, still, it does not explainin the why or what of the experience.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It did seem to have some interesting insightful quality into the fundamental nature of reality and it may have even been like cessation. I was thinking that what it was was a series of repeat fruitions in a stressfull confused state. I don&amp;#039;t feel any different though from yesterday. The three characteristics are just as noticable as usual. Maybe this experience doesn&amp;#039;t need to be understood or won&amp;#039;t be. It was just such a strong experience that I feel owes inspection. It is hellish yet I miss it already, like it&amp;#039;s a good memory! It is interesting to think about what happened now but during the experience it was some of the worst torture I&amp;#039;ve ever endured.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 18:40:49 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606456</guid> <dc:creator>Alex E</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T18:40:49Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606449</link> <description>Just keep practicing, don&amp;#039;t worry so much about where you are at this point. If you begin each sit by developing your concentration, then set your mind to noticing the three characteristics of each sensation, that&amp;#039;s probably good enough. Don&amp;#039;t concern yourself with whether you should be feeling the particulars of each stage as described by, e.g. Mahasi Sayadaw or Daniel. Their descriptions are generalizations and good markers, but it&amp;#039;s wise to take them just as such. That is, not everyone will experience what they write about in that particular way. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Just keep practicing :-)</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 18:26:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606449</guid> <dc:creator>Small Steps</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T18:26:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Had a great/terrible experience. Where do I go from here?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606416</link> <description>Thank you for the incredibly helpful mindset your portraying.  It helps to feel some solid encouragement that is both uplifting but leaving me aware of challenges ahead.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I guess I always knew/know its going to be my call through this, but I agree that it helps to have someone to talk to.  This forum does a great job at providing people with that benefit.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:23:32 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606416</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel C</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T14:23:32Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Had a great/terrible experience. Where do I go from here?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606413</link> <description>It was exactly like sleep paralysis, until I realized I could move.  Needless to say I was creeped out.  All in all i view these past situations to have lead to something noteworthy and definitel positive.  I have had this way of thinking for a few years now and as I read through the eightfold path and threefold division I was realizing I had been practicing these things for a while just as a means to try to better myself and my reactions towards people.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thank you for the reply</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:19:58 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606413</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel C</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T14:19:58Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Had a great/terrible experience. Where do I go from here?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606410</link> <description>Thank you for the kind words.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:00:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606410</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel C</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T14:00:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Had a great/terrible experience. Where do I go from here?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606400</link> <description>For what it&amp;#039;s worth, pretty much every meditative opening is followed by a contraction/restabilizing. It doesn&amp;#039;t have to be A&amp;amp;P and dark night, so don&amp;#039;t worry yourself into a self-created dark night! &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That said, I do think you are keying into the kind of energies that go along with AP and sleep/dream experiences are kind of classic AP stuff. That doesn&amp;#039;t mean that you have fully hit that stage or that the fearfulness that followed was dark night, just that you are touching it a bit. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So what you are getting is a taste of the meditative path. A heartfelt curiousity, a relaxation, an opening, a reactive contraction, and a stabilization. The heartfelt curiousity and the openings and the stabilizations are all the great stuff of meditation. Over time, there is more baseline openness and clear perception and our baseline body feeling is one of more relaxation and ease.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But then there is the contraction, the fear. Unfortunately that kinda goes with it, like a sore body and need for recovery goes with weightlifting. The mind is being rewired and that takes time. And the rewiring happens by this opening and going beyond the comfort zone and then establishing a new baseline. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A teacher can help you moderate your practice so that you have a nice balance of progress and integration. And a teacher is great to talk to when things get wierd. (But the dirty secret is most of the time they say, &amp;#034;can you hang in there? good.&amp;#034;, and let the natural process continue. Or they advice reducing meditation practice intensity and encouraging walks outside, etc. to give time for the rewiring process to continue. Still it&amp;#039;s good to have someone to talk to.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You can also go gently and do your own exploring and maintain whatever pacing feels appropriate.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I will say, you did two great things. You are adjusting your posture, trying to cultivate a good position -- rather than ignoring your body and forcing something. That&amp;#039;s fine! don&amp;#039;t be one of us that wrecks our body by trying to make it do something it isn&amp;#039;t ready for. You also drew upon your support when things were hard/wierd -- rather that walling yourself off and thinking you&amp;#039;re damaged goods or need to be isolated from others. That&amp;#039;s great! Don&amp;#039;t become one of us that wallows in being a spiritual disaster and wears it as a badge of honor. Just get some help during the rough spots and remember that being a good human with good relationships is a great thing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, it&amp;#039;s really your call on how to proceed. Continue being curious with practice or put everything on hold while building a support system for your practice or do a little of both.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Seems like you&amp;#039;ve been thinking about this kind of stuff for a while. It&amp;#039;s really a natural human interest and something that can be great for our lives... if we don&amp;#039;t get sucked into being too heroic or idealistic about the whole thing. Best wishes!</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 11:26:03 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606400</guid> <dc:creator>x x</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T11:26:03Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606383</link> <description>bump&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Does anybody know what should come next? Three Characteristics with pain and stuff, right? Nothing like that has occured yet, and my concentration skills are only slowly improving...&lt;br /&gt;Maybe I´m too curious and worried for my own good haha</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 10:28:14 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606383</guid> <dc:creator>Pål</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T10:28:14Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: meditation making me feel spaced out</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606341</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jeffrey Thomas Nieves:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Brief practice history: Crossed the A&amp;amp;P about two years ago on retreat. Been keeping my practice light since then. Over the last year I&amp;#039;ve been gradually increasing my practice and focusing more on concentration than insight.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Experience:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;About two weeks ago, I did an hour sit of concentration, and when I finished I felt really spaced out. Now I usually feel a little bit &amp;#034;high&amp;#034; after meditation it only lasts a half hour or so. This was a different. I felt out of it. Almost like the place from which I observe the world was pushed to the side or just not in the right place. I know that sounds odd. It&amp;#039;s tough to put the experience to words. It was somewhat akin to feeling slightly drunk. My functioning was pretty normal, but it somehow felt like more work.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For the next week I laid off mediation, and I had off and on headaches and spaciness with a little pressure on top of my head sometimes(not too much). Eventually it subsided. A few days after it ended, I tried a 5 minute sit and the spaciness returned, only to last about a day. Tried it again today and there it was for a few hours, albeit not quite as intense.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Has anyone else ever come across this? I wasn&amp;#039;t even really straining during my sit. I generally try to have a light touch.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks,&lt;br /&gt;Jeff&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Hi Jeff,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sure, this is not anything new under the Sun &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; What you describe sounds rather common to me. Many people I know, including myself, have had these. Your situation seems not serious. The spaceyness/ungroundedness unto ones phys body can be a lot worse to the extent that ordinary daily activities become a problem.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There must have been an energetic opening in your energetic body (which in other words is your mental and emotional body) which now is not perfectly in alignment with your physical body and the surrounding phys world. As you have felt sensations in the crown it is probable that this condition has most to do with the crown center. This can even out with time but there is also some things that can help you to become aligned again sooner. These are simple tools, there are also tools for much worse conditions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ol style="list-style: decimal outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;Keep your eyes open and feel your body, whether still or in action. Really go &lt;em&gt;in-to&lt;/em&gt; your body. Be not just aware of your body but &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; your body like a martial artists are. You don&amp;#039;t have start swinging kicks and punches for this &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Exercise to break a sweat and to warm up your phys body.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Go outdoors, preferably in nature. Feel the Earth and it&amp;#039;s connection with your body.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Eat root vegetables like potatoes and carrots that are well cooked. If you are not vegetarian also fish and eggs are good.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;I think your condition will normalise with these guidelines in a week or few weeks time. During this time as you try out your concentration practice you probably will notice the spaceyness evening out to normal. Hope this helps.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Baba</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 08:04:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606341</guid> <dc:creator>Kim Katami</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T08:04:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: meditation making me feel spaced out</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606226</link> <description>I tended to feel spaced out in the fact that concentration blocks thinking. Trying to think after continued and conditioned concentration practices can create a conflict with thinking. Insight up to equanimity (vipassana jhana) could also leave you spaced out with memory problems that are temporary. Expanding my equanimity to more objects, than only infront of me, helped to reduce brain fog, but that&amp;#039;s because some forms of thinking are allowed in vipassana. You want thoughts to be not considered separate from other experiences. It&amp;#039;s all interdependent Consciousness-objects.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I would look into more descriptions of proper concentration practice to make sure you really are paying attention and not just drifting. There should be strong knowing of the experiences up until the 4th jhana. After that then it should start getting more strange but a sense of knowing is still there.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;leighb&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;jhanas&amp;#x2e;htm"&gt;http://www.leighb.com/jhanas.htm&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I would read about Csikszentmihalyi and Flow to develop the type of concentration that most people get when absorbed in work. It&amp;#039;s healthy and you can do plenty of thinking. It involves doing tasks that aren&amp;#039;t too easy (bored) or too hard (stress).</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 03:17:46 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606226</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T03:17:46Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>meditation making me feel spaced out</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606194</link> <description>Brief practice history: Crossed the A&amp;amp;P about two years ago on retreat. Been keeping my practice light since then. Over the last year I&amp;#039;ve been gradually increasing my practice and focusing more on concentration than insight.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Experience:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;About two weeks ago, I did an hour sit of concentration, and when I finished I felt really spaced out. Now I usually feel a little bit &amp;#034;high&amp;#034; after meditation, but it only lasts a half hour or so. This was a different. I felt out of it. Almost like the place from which I observe the world was pushed to the side or just not in the right place. I know that sounds odd. It&amp;#039;s tough to put the experience to words. It was somewhat akin to feeling slightly drunk. My functioning was pretty normal, but it somehow felt like more work.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For the next week I laid off mediation, and I had off and on headaches and spaciness with a little pressure on top of my head sometimes(not too much). Eventually it subsided. A few days after it ended, I tried a 5 minute sit and the spaciness returned, only to last about a day. Tried it again today and there it was for a few hours, albeit not quite as intense.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Has anyone else ever come across this? I wasn&amp;#039;t even really straining during my sit. I generally try to have a light touch.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks,&lt;br /&gt;Jeff</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 01:12:21 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606194</guid> <dc:creator>Jeffrey Thomas Nieves</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T01:12:21Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Conceptual Proliferation</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606103</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Drew Miller:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Hello,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have a question about thinking/conceptual proliferation and the process of insight cycling.  I noticed this morning that there was far more thinking that usual during my morning meditation, which as been the case for the last few days. Its as if the mind is attempting to dissociate from the body into concepts. A seemingly aversive relationship. Attending to the body and breath were difficult.  I&amp;#039;m wondering if this is a Dark Nightish phenomena?  The mind&amp;#039;s potential attempts to escape from fear in the body?  Feels like a powerful polarization.  Not very peaceful, not very vibratory, but also not alot of pain.  The body does feel more solid though.  Any thoughts, advice, validation through your own experience would be helpful. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Metta,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Drew&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I&amp;#039;m sorry to have to say that thought processes come and go in intensity and quantity thoughout ones practice career. It has certainly been the case for me. Sometimes there is a specific cause for any particularly persistant activity. For me its usually an unaddressed emotional issue. I can usually access this by &amp;#034;firmly noticing&amp;#034; physical sensations. Sometimes its some kind of aversion like you suggest, there are probably other specifics that we could both find if we thought long enough about it. But usually its just how it is, like the weather. All the other sense doors also behave differently over time too. Sometimes I wake up and the sun is just too damn bright. Or my sense of smell is a bit more sensitive, I think its the same with the thought stream, it comes and goes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 19:13:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606103</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T19:13:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Conceptual Proliferation</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606072</link> <description>Hello,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have a question about thinking/conceptual proliferation and the process of insight cycling.  I noticed this morning that there was far more thinking that usual during my morning meditation, which as been the case for the last few days. Its has if the mind is attempting to dissociate from the body into concepts. A seemingly aversive relationship. Attending to the body and breath were difficult.  I&amp;#039;m wondering if this is a Dark Nightish phenomena?  The mind&amp;#039;s potential attempts to escape from fear in the body?  Feels like a powerful polarization.  Not very peaceful, not very vibratory, but also not alot of pain.  The body does feel more solid though.  Any thoughts, advice, validation through your own experience would be helpful. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Metta,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Drew</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 17:17:45 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606072</guid> <dc:creator>Drew Miller</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T17:17:45Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Had a great/terrible experience. Where do I go from here?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605957</link> <description>Heya,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, like you said, it&amp;#039;s unlikely you&amp;#039;d be going through the A&amp;amp;P and dark night after just one meditation session - so maybe a good thing to ask yourself is if you&amp;#039;ve been doing any informal meditation just during the day.  For example, do you have a tendancy to observe your experience closely?  Have you developed &amp;#034;letting go&amp;#034; as a defense agaisnt negatve emotions?  Do you tend to focus on yourself, or more outward into the sensory world?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;ll probably be impossible to put a satisfying name to what you experienced.  Meditation states are very messy and blurry, in general.  It sounds positive, though, so why not see if you can repeat it?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The negative event you descibe sounds a lot like the state that happens as we wake up (the hypnagogic state).  There can be strange physical sensations or paralysis where you can&amp;#039;t move, you can hear sounds or see visual hallucinations, and very often people describe a &amp;#034;presence&amp;#034; of some kind.  This isn&amp;#039;t something to worry about - it may just be a simptom of heightened concentration if you&amp;#039;ve been researching meditation and trying out different things for the first time.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 10:32:14 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605957</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T10:32:14Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605941</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jeremy May:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;If you destroy your emotion,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;you destroy your intuition.  If you destroy this,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What are you?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sometimes I&amp;#039;m Mandy, but only in privacy of my own home.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What is driving you?  Do you want release?  There is no release in watching emptiness!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some release watching &amp;#034;Boardwalk Empire&amp;#034; though, I love you Nucky!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Your thirst is Doubt.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probably&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you want to die, you should use a blade or a rope.  If you wanted to die, you would have done so.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There is only one release.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Find it in our conversations.  Be pleased.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Aww, you guys are such fun!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 09:55:49 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605941</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T09:55:49Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605818</link> <description>If you destroy your emotion,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;you destroy your intuition.  If you destroy this,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What are you?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What is driving you?  Do you want release?  There is no release in watching emptiness!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Your thirst is Doubt.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you want to die, you should use a blade or a rope.  If you wanted to die, you would have done so.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There is only one release.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Find it in our conversations.  Be pleased.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 03:42:50 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605818</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T03:42:50Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Had a great/terrible experience. Where do I go from here?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605748</link> <description>You have been brought here.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You are experiencing birth pains.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You don&amp;#039;t need a teacher.  &lt;br /&gt;Also&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You have found your teacher.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;We love you!!!</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 01:39:09 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605748</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T01:39:09Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605720</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Interesting.  So the altered state you&amp;#039;re talking about is directly related to being thoughtless for you?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve spent some time working with the idea, myself, and a number of times the only thing that would happen was that thoughts would stop.  There was no emotional or perceptive effects.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don&amp;#039;t forget that there are lots of types and flavours to mindfulness. It is usually conditioned by the practice you have already trained in. If you&amp;#039;ve done a lot of Jhana some of that will bleed over, ditto with Bramavihara. Also mindfulness is just one of the 7 factors of enlightmenment the more of these you can bring to your practice the fuller and more fullfilling it will be.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;  So if you see it as directly related, then maybe that&amp;#039;s one way you could break it apart.  Why are thoughts, specifically, preventing you from being in this state?  Maybe there&amp;#039;s some hidden aversion there?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I honestly don&amp;#039;t know, but such questions are what make insight practice worth doing. Also there are many states in which thought is surpressed, muted or just not neccessary. The Witness, the Emptiness states like Rigpa, and of course Jhana. Each of these is very different and the reason for the absence of thought might also be different. Some like those accessed via Emptiness practices actually disable the investigative capability of mind, so it is not even possible to do the analysis. this probably isn&amp;#039;t helpful, sorry.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One of the difficulties with Actual Freedom practice is that emotions are often non-verbal, so getting them to reveal their cause requires a bit of &amp;#034;scuba diving&amp;#034; - as they say on the AFT.  I think this is because negative emotions are just suppressed thoughts, and once you know where they come from, it&amp;#039;s often pretty easy just to accept the thought and allow the emotion to fizzle out.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I tend to experience emotion as some kind of compound experience, if you get a firm grip on one component the rest usually comes apart fairly soon after. But that&amp;#039;s a very insight persective. I can&amp;#039;t comment on the AF approach.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 00:28:33 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605720</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T00:28:33Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Had a great/terrible experience. Where do I go from here?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605683</link> <description>Let me start this off by stating that I am new to meditation as well as this forum.  I have now begun within the last couple weeks fairly extensive research into different Buddhist and Hindu meditation techniques, history and online readings.  I have perused this site quite enjoyably, finding great material and external links on what I may have gone or still be going through. I will try to be as prudent as possible as I am not very accustomed to using internet forums.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have been (although sometimes faintly) a very reflective, contemplative and open minded truth seeker for lets say 8 or 9 years now, and have held various beliefes through out my life.  Recently I have had a more spiritual inclination and started doing some various readings on world religions, concepts of reality and the cosmos as well as things like reincarnation, energies and meditation.  During these readings I get some noticeable tingles about my spine and body which I&amp;#039;ve experienced in some situations such as while listening to a certain music that hits me in the right way.  But this was &lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;much more defined and resonant and provoked interesting thoughts in my head.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So I came to the conclusion that I would like to try this meditation thing and to search myself for any insight.  I began this with only a little bit of research or knowledge of techniques (typical noob right?).  My goal at the time was just to relax myself and with subtlety, take a conscious look inward.  I held my first session for roughly 20 minutes just focusing on my breathing and trying to stay relaxed.  I obviously had quite a bit of difficulty maintaining focus and experienced discomfort in my posture, but persisted through for those 20 minutes trying different stretches and postures (I know, the wrong way).  I did not feel nor did I expect to feel amazing afterwards, but I did have an appreciation in accomplishing it and felt a bit more clean and mentally clear.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The following night as I am lying in bed unable to sleep, I experience the most incredible and smooth river of positive thoughts and feelings. That tingling sensation returns but it  resonates and shakes my core in a way I have never felt before.  This lasted, I think maybe 1-2 hours.  I felt it flow totally beyond my control and I was at a few times a little unsettled but though to just enjoy the experience.  It eventually faded off and I was left invigorated and confused.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;After some reasearch I began to think I may have experienced, on some plane or another, a small Kundilini awakening. After reading here, it may have been 4th ñana.  I still don&amp;#039;t feel I should have anything like that happen as I have never practiced meditation in my life. I came across this site and found some people have had similair situations to mine and read people mentioning things that lead me to learn about Vipassana and Theravada Buddhism; and the Dark Night experience which brings me to what happened 2 nights after my &amp;#034;blissful&amp;#034; experience (almost 2 weeks ago).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I do not wish to explain this event in too much detail unless someone deems it important.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I had been sleeping for almost exactly one hour and completely out of 100% nowhere, I comfortably awoke.  I tried to just go back to sleep but started to feel a very negative force either within myself or within the room.  Physical things happened to me out of my (conscious?) control, nothing foreign was visualized or seen and I came out of a &amp;#034;state&amp;#034; completely exhauasted, terrified and completely unwanting to go back to sleep.  For some days after and after some softly distributed research, I felt fearful of meditation and asked my girlfriend to sleep over for like 3 nights (a little wussy, but I was nervous).  I came to the conclusion that, though negative in such a pure form, this was a great learning experience for me and I was in the last few days able to overcome this particular channel of fear within me.  I can safely say this has helped me in grounding something within myself.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t know where to go from here.  Do I need to start pursuing a teacher?  My daily life is a bit interesting,  I work overnight shifts as a machinist which in themselves prove a challenging environment for me now that I am aware of this spirituality or conscious knowledge of the self.  I also have a 2 year old daughter and I don&amp;#039;t want to pursue anything if it will lead me through a more vast Dark Night of the Soul or other sometimes psychotic-like levels of meditation I have been reading about.  I, although am completely drawn to these recent discoveries and feelings and really want to learn what I can do with them for myself and others.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sorry for any crass writing or terminology here, and thank you for any insight.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 22:59:58 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605683</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel C</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T22:59:58Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Tough time in 3 characteristics</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605666</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Daniel M. Ingram:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;.....then there is this thing where there can be an overarching Dark Night problem (as you are above the A&amp;amp;P), but the specific stage in that you are in is Three Characteristics, so you sort of get the best of both, as it were.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;thats really interesting and has changed my understanding of the path hearing that. I didnt realise you could have crossed the A&amp;amp;P and also be still in 3Cs - Maybe we can elaborate more on this - Does it mean that you can fall back through those stages? I read somewhere that you can also pass the A&amp;amp;P again and again - so logically I guess 3cs agian and again also? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Daniel M. Ingram:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; More specifically, resources for a further retreat? &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;yep, planning another 3 dayer soon - maybe another 10 day end of spring&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Daniel M. Ingram:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; Or, that failing, resolve to back out, meaning to have normalcy return and just pull out, back off, settle in, have fun, put things back together, regroup if possible, and that may help for some.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;yeah, this is my default when I cant deal with it anymore! &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Daniel M. Ingram:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Physical pain in general: just carefully investigate anything fluxing, shifting, anything like that about it at all, even if you just note it again and again, not even that fast necessarily, will do something good most of the time.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Have been doing this especially have this in my left thigh - has been a focus point for about 4 years&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;will try those massages! thanks :-)</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 21:54:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605666</guid> <dc:creator>b man</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T21:54:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Tough time in 3 characteristics</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605661</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Is it just the hip pain that makes you think you&amp;#039;re in that nana? &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think it was orginally, but I think now its more the fever like symptoms - I read somewhere that someone called this ascention flu, but Ive no idea if this is related or even a real thing, but it kinda feels like that i.e. Flu / feverish type symptoms but without actually being sick, or sneezing, or any of that side of it, headaches (but not like migranes), this feeling of having quite a sore skull (but its not really your skull its more like a sore brain!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;you don&amp;#039;t have to torture yourself to meditate.  &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yeah it was a big relief realising this one. I absolutely tortured myself in the first 10 day retreat!</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 21:47:21 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605661</guid> <dc:creator>b man</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T21:47:21Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605547</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Haha, I&amp;#039;ve already admitted that I like/relate to the suttas, psi. It&amp;#039;s theravada that says all states are imperminant and we shouldn&amp;#039;t be trying to maintain them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Indeed, everything is impermanent, and if you had a boat, and you were at sea, and the boat had sprung a leak, would you , knowing that the boat was impermanent and would not last forever, would you stop and try to fix the leak, or simply let the boat sink?  </description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 18:44:22 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605547</guid> <dc:creator>Psi Phi</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T18:44:22Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605530</link> <description>Interesting.  So the altered state you&amp;#039;re talking about is directly related to being thoughtless for you?  I&amp;#039;ve spent some time working with the idea, myself, and a number of times the only thing that would happen was that thoughts would stop.  There was no emotional or perceptive effects.  So if you see it as directly related, then maybe that&amp;#039;s one way you could break it apart.  Why are thoughts, specifically, preventing you from being in this state?  Maybe there&amp;#039;s some hidden aversion there?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One of the difficulties with Actual Freedom practice is that emotions are often non-verbal, so getting them to reveal their cause requires a bit of &amp;#034;scuba diving&amp;#034; - as they say on the AFT.  I think this is because negative emotions are just suppressed thoughts, and once you know where they come from, it&amp;#039;s often pretty easy just to accept the thought and allow the emotion to fizzle out.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 18:00:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605530</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T18:00:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605522</link> <description>&lt;span style="font-size: 18px"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hubris alert&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In my last post I stated that Kenneth was going to help me build a steady state experience based on the absence of conscious thought,  rather like what Garry Webber teaches. The purpose of this was to subsequently take it apart and see how it works. I have just discussed this with him and he was pretty clear about the whole idea being a non-starter on the grounds that this kind of steady state experience is a not possible for any meaningful length of time. I have to say that this has been a feature of our discussions for some time and is born out by my own experiences, the Tantric stuff I have described in earlier posts was powerful and compeling and sometimes would last for several hours but I would hesitate to describe them as &amp;#034;steady state.&amp;#034; Unless you call firing yourself out of a cannon to be a steady state experience.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So I appologise for any misrepresentation or confusion that may have been casused by my wishful thinking.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 17:29:08 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605522</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T17:29:08Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605422</link> <description>The short answer is that you are misunderstanding my current practice, but only becuse I haven&amp;#039;t told you what it really is! Sorry. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But to respond to your first question first as it where. Surpressing thoughts through paying exclusive attention to sense data is a fine practice. The problem is that surpressing thoughts in not the point, if you are doing Vippassana for example. The point is generating a conducive environment for liberating insight to arise, which really can fix stuff. Although its rarely the stuff that you think needs fixing. It can be a long game. Or if you look at my previous post; not. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/karate_kid.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Surpressing thoughts is not the smartest approach though as they are not the enemy, just a thing that happens. The trick with thoughts is to spot the gaps. When you first start to look at thought processess, its like nose-to-tail rush hour traffic, no way in or through. But if you are patient they will occur, its like fishing, waiting for the bite. The alertness while waiting for a gap in the thought stream is actually a valuable skilll in itself.  You are cultivating Curiosity, Energy and Concentration along with few others probably. When the gap appears you will probably miss it the first few times but don&amp;#039;t dispair because if you are practicing properly the mind steam may start to ssslllloooowww rrriiiiggghhhtttt dddooowwwnnn which is fun to see in real time. Eventually you will catch a gap and an unforced cessation of narritive thought is often a beautiful experience, not always, but often enough to be worth the effort. This is now excellent soil for insight to arise. In fact it has been for a while, but one often does not notice these things. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/blink.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So what am I doing with this? Well, I have hatched a cunning plan with my current teacher Kenneth Folk. These &amp;#034;gaps in the traffic&amp;#034; come an go for me, but recently I have noticed a pronounced uptick. We have decided to use this and try to build it in to a steady and persistent mind state. Which is why I asked you about whether this was an AF practice because it sounded much like what you guys are about. When I&amp;#039;m good and solid in the state, assuming I manage this as its not a given, Kenneth and I will systematically dismantle it to see how it works. One thing I learned from my days as a Tantra/Vajra dude is that altered states of consciouseness can be very seductive and, I my case, often come to a sticky end. So I am a bit nervous about getting lost in it. But Kenneth loves to burst bubbles, so I&amp;#039;m sure he will take great delight in bringing me down to eath. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Peace</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 12:43:19 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605422</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T12:43:19Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Tough time in 3 characteristics</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605383</link> <description>Is it just the hip pain that makes you think you&amp;#039;re in that nana?  Maybe you just have hip pain from sitting a lot - just saying.  Maybe try some walking meditation instead.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Something I wish someone would have told me before - you don&amp;#039;t have to torture yourself to meditate.  It can be easy to think you have to get worse before you get better and unintentionally hold onto the uncomfortable things that happen in a masochistic kind of way.  The goal of meditation is to let go of control, not to practice physical endurance or torture your mind into submission. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/closed_eyes.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 11:43:13 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605383</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T11:43:13Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605303</link> <description>Haha, I&amp;#039;ve already admitted that I like/relate to the suttas, psi. It&amp;#039;s theravada that says all states are imperminant and we shouldn&amp;#039;t be trying to maintain them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;@Howard: I was working on directly suppressing narrative thought for a while by paying exclusive attention to the senses. While this does work, since thoughts trigger the emotions, I wasn&amp;#039;t sure how it was going to &amp;#034;fix&amp;#034; any problems. I found that removing the emotional content from narrative thought was much easier because it didn&amp;#039;t require effort to maintain once the emotion was gone. I&amp;#039;m lazy, so I&amp;#039;m always looking for the easiest/quickest way to do things.  &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/closed_eyes.gif" &gt; I think I might be misunderstanding what your practice is though. How do you work with narrative thoughts, and what is the purpose for you?</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 11:09:57 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605303</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T11:09:57Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605271</link> <description>Hello Psi Phi, nice to meet you, &lt;br /&gt;I am familiar with this method of working with unwholesome mind states. But I&amp;#039;ve never actually done it, weirdly. That&amp;#039;s why my chat with Not Tao was so interesting, getting an inside view on the details was very welcome.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have always taken a more Vajriana approach to this category of practice. In Vajriana, as I understand it, all actions, no matter how unskillful, are always &amp;#034;true&amp;#034; in some sense. In that all actions carry useful information about our lived experience and more importantly about our constricting neurosis. In Vajriana we observe our own behaviour in the same way as a documentary film maker observes wild animals. In so doing the whole life cycle of the creature, or on our case neurosis, is understood and can be excised in full, roots and all. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, you see your self behaving like a arsehole, make friends with this inner arsehole and see what it does. This gives rise to a fair amount of cognitive dissonance because, usually the arsehole is in charge and you can&amp;#039;t stop it. But by careful observation a critical mass of shame, revulsion and guilt builds up, which you also need to be careful to pay attention too, eventually the whole rotting structure collapses and you are left with a much more elegant and skillful approach to this aspect of life. This is Vajra method one.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sound familiar? Maybe, maybe not. But that&amp;#039;s insight arising Vajra style, on-the-hoof rather than on-the-cushion and this is how I first encountered insight long before I even knew that it had a name. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Another approach to Vajra practice what might be called method two, this is the ability to &amp;#034;turbocharge&amp;#034; this process. This is pretty much what Tibetan tantric practices and several of the Vedic Yoga practices do. In my case it was Kria, Hatha, and Pranayogas, but I spent a while doing a Tibetan Chenrezig which had much the same result. Why, I hear you ask, would anyone want to turbocharge the slowly building, shitty mess off a process that I have described above? That is because you can effectively fast forward the process and jump over the slow build up of revulsion phase and go straight to the end game. That is collapse and rebirth. Cool right?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But there is always a catch. In this case it is that the speed and randomness of this new method is disorientating and sometimes terrifying. The new progression is; practice for a period of time, nothing happens; practice some more, nothing happens; then all of a sudden lights flash, your head explodes, astral voices are heard, you briefly walk with the gods. You feel great, you feel wonderful, you stride about your daily life is as if the ground were carpeted with rose petals. You glide into a familiar situation that has always messed with your head and you deal with it in a completely different way, in the correct way, the skillful way, the way a great novelist would describe it. You are finally cool! &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But it does&amp;#039;nt last. Short version, WTF! WTF! WTF!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You are in shock, stumble away, and find a quiet place to try to figure out who this suddenly new person is, can you trust your mouth to behave itself? Did anybody notice? Can I do that again? Do I want too? And lets not forget the big one. Can I handle success?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But there is worse. The sudden realisation of how shit should go down, suddenly shines I light on how badly you have been screwing up for all those years. Your inner arsehole is laid bare all in one go and this is like being hit on the head with a baseball bat. The good news is that this does not last long as the grief is also turbocharged. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The odd thing is, that after the first couple of cycles you get used to it, it becomes normal very quickly, it becomes &amp;#034;I wonder who I am today?&amp;#034; And it speeds up, sometimes two or three cycles a day, those weird  4th Jhana  type &amp;#034;coincidences&amp;#034; become commonplace. Using this method I got up to what I now know to be Equanimity, within about 6 months from a standing start with no retreat time, sangha or instruction. Just books and Tantric rocket fuel.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Unfortunately I never pushed on to steam entry at this time. EQ felt like I had done it, I was free. I was a classic book yogi and this was before the internet, so I was making a lot of this up as I went along. So I fell off and slid back down to the swamp filled with alligators. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That was 12 years ago.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve never told that story to anyone, please don&amp;#039;t tell my mum as she would have kittens if she ever heard it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Peace&lt;br /&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;Rereading this, it sounds an awful lot like the progress of insight, but in the wrong order and post 2nd path. Any ideas?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 12px"&gt;PS I appologise to any Vajra or tantra experts out there for my, probably incorrect, use of terms. But as I have said before, I am no scholar and I was making it up as I went along.&lt;br /&gt;PPS Does this platform have a spell checker? My spelling is hopeless.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 09:33:45 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605271</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T09:33:45Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605128</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Howard Maxwell Clegg:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Yes indeed, calm down lads, it was not my intention to re-ignite old arguments. What people choose to do with there own consciousness is pretty much their own business.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But I do have an answer to my original question. To whit; is my practice leading to PCE? The answer is a resounding no. It appears that what I am doing is, in fact, the exact opposite of what Not Tao is doing. He (I&amp;#039;m assuming he, correct me if I&amp;#039;m wrong) is working with emotion where as I am working with narritive thought. He is actively deconstructing a cognitive mechanism, I am observing, noting, and abiding in the gaps. The freedom he gains is the point of the practice, for me it is a by-product. He is looking for an end state, I am just farting about. Actualy that&amp;#039;s not true, but my goal is more speculative.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So thank you Not Tao for being such a good sport, I now know a lot more about AF than I did before, which was virtually nothing. I have to say I am not tempted though. I&amp;#039;m too far along the Buddhist path now to jump ship, but then again you never know where practice leads. Except that you AF guys do. And that is another problem for me, I&amp;#039;ve had to field too many practice related curve balls over the years to believe in &amp;#034;sure things&amp;#034; any more. I feel much safer with a practice that actively embraces instability and uncertainty. Call me old fashioned.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Peace&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Hey Howard, &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please take what is written below as disscussion only, friend to friend, (you too, Not Tao) not trying to teach or anything, just discuss Buddhism and various methods.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yes, the developed skill of being able to switch off the narrative thoughts is quite useful, peaceful, contentment, and done not just in meditation but also in daily living, so I agree completely with you here, I call this Right Mindfulness or also Bare Attention (as explained by Nyanaponika Thera)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;accesstoinsight&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;lib&amp;#x2f;authors&amp;#x2f;nyanaponika&amp;#x2f;wheel121&amp;#x2e;html"&gt;http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel121.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;  There is also another part to the Buddha&amp;#039;s path, that is the Four Supreme Efforts, (4 of the 37 factors of Enllightenment)  which is similar to what Not Tao is practicing , though he isn&amp;#039;t ready to admit it yet.  The Four Supreme Efforts Formula Below, which you are probably already aware of, just posting for posterity&amp;#039;s sake, and if not, here it is, very valuable:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;First , to abandon an unwholesome state that has already arisen.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;Second, to not let unwholesome state arise that has not yet arisen.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;Third, to arouse a wholesome state that has not yet arisen.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;Fourth, to maintain a wholesome state that has already arisen.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;And what is a wholesome state?  The Brahma Viharas, what the Buddha taught as the only emotions/states worth having or developing, and of course they have sub-categories, and within these, Equanimity is the highest emotion/state and contains within it, the others below also simultaneously, which is why Equanimity is the only one listed in the 37 factors, (it encompasses the other Brahma Viharas).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dhammawiki&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;index&amp;#x2e;php&amp;#x3f;title&amp;#x3d;Metta"&gt;Metta&lt;/a&gt; (Loving-kindness)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dhammawiki&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;index&amp;#x2e;php&amp;#x3f;title&amp;#x3d;Karuna"&gt;Karuna&lt;/a&gt; (Compassion)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dhammawiki&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;index&amp;#x2e;php&amp;#x3f;title&amp;#x3d;Mudita"&gt;Mudita&lt;/a&gt; (Joy with others)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dhammawiki&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;index&amp;#x2e;php&amp;#x3f;title&amp;#x3d;Upekkha"&gt;Upekkha&lt;/a&gt; (Equanimity)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which should bring us back to what you describe as practicing, working with the narrative thought, and so working with that will also lead one to Equanimity.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyway, Nice &amp;#034;meeting&amp;#034; you!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Psi Phi&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;P.S.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;@Not Tao,  Your practice seems to be on the right path, just wanted to say good job!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 02:03:15 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605128</guid> <dc:creator>Psi Phi</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T02:03:15Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605098</link> <description>Yes indeed, calm down lads, it was not my intention to re-ignite old arguments. What people choose to do with there own consciousness is pretty much their own business.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But I do have an answer to my original question. To whit; is my practice leading to PCE? The answer is a resounding no. It appears that what I am doing is, in fact, the exact opposite of what Not Tao is doing. He (I&amp;#039;m assuming he, correct me if I&amp;#039;m wrong) is working with emotion where as I am working with narritive thought. He is actively deconstructing a cognitive mechanism, I am observing, noting, and abiding in the gaps. The freedom he gains is the point of the practice, for me it is a by-product. He is looking for an end state, I am just farting about. Actualy that&amp;#039;s not true, but my goal is more speculative.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So thank you Not Tao for being such a good sport, I now know a lot more about AF than I did before, which was virtually nothing. I have to say I am not tempted though. I&amp;#039;m too far along the Buddhist path now to jump ship, but then again you never know where practice leads. Except that you AF guys do. And that is another problem for me, I&amp;#039;ve had to field too many practice related curve balls over the years to believe in &amp;#034;sure things&amp;#034; any more. I feel much safer with a practice that actively embraces instability and uncertainty. Call me old fashioned.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Peace</description> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2014 00:28:46 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605098</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-15T00:28:46Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605046</link> <description>You just defined the term &amp;#034;mysticism&amp;#034; psi.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;From here: &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;merriam-webster&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;dictionary&amp;#x2f;mysticism"&gt;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mysticism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mysticism&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1&lt;br /&gt;the experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality reported by mystics&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2&lt;br /&gt;the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience (as intuition or insight)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;3&lt;br /&gt;a : &amp;lt;snip&amp;gt;&lt;br /&gt;b : a theory postulating the possibility of direct and intuitive acquisition of ineffable knowledge or power &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Actual Freedom is not mystical - the knowledge gained through examination of the emotions is logical rather than intuitive or ineffable. For example: By watching my emotions, I noticed that I was angry when my roommate made noise in the morning. I decided that this was not worth an interruption in my happiness, so I stopped being angry each time I noticed.  Now, I no longer get angry in that situation. Actual Freedom practice doesn&amp;#039;t go beyond this. There are no truths to seek and no insights to have about the nature of self, awareness, or reality - just the simple examination of emotions and their causes with the intent to get rid of everything that keeps you from being happy and harmless.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;P.s. I feel like we&amp;#039;ve been pretty far down this road, haha.  I&amp;#039;ll be happy to answer more questions about the PCE, but if this turns into AF vs. Buddhism again I&amp;#039;ll probably disappear.  (Haha, not to sounds ominous or anything.  I just wanted to explain beforehand.)</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 22:12:23 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605046</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T22:12:23Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Tough time in 3 characteristics</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605042</link> <description>Past the A&amp;amp;P, which that event 4 years ago almost certainly was, stuff can get murky, and the Dark Night can have all sorts of pain associated with it physically, and then there is this thing where there can be an overarching Dark Night problem (as you are above the A&amp;amp;P), but the specific stage in that you are in is Three Characteristics, so you sort of get the best of both, as it were.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;More specifically, resources for a further retreat? Or, that failing, resolve to back out, meaning to have normalcy return and just pull out, back off, settle in, have fun, put things back together, regroup if possible, and that may help for some.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Physical pain in general: just carefully investigate anything fluxing, shifting, anything like that about it at all, even if you just note it again and again, not even that fast necessarily, will do something good most of the time.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am also a massage fan, deep tissue particularly, if you have that around.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;D</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 22:11:19 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605042</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T22:11:19Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605028</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Actual Freedom practice is mainly concerned with emotional triggers.  It isn&amp;#039;t a mystical practice like Buddhism or Hinduism where reality is seen as an illusion, &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Buddhism is not a mystical practice, but has within it the path leading to insight into &amp;#034;seeing&amp;#034; reality as it is, no obstructions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hinduism is not where reality is seen as an illusion, But that &amp;#034;Maya&amp;#034;, the illusion is what obscures reality, once that has been cut through , one sees reality as it really is, no obstructions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Make sense now?  All starting to sound familiar yet?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Psi Phi</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 21:49:21 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5605028</guid> <dc:creator>Psi Phi</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T21:49:21Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604847</link> <description>Actual Freedom practice is mainly concerned with emotional triggers.  It isn&amp;#039;t a mystical practice like Buddhism or Hinduism where reality is seen as an illusion, or the self is not really there, etc.  It&amp;#039;s mainly about the direct link between emotions and what causes them.  So, to arrive at the PCE, and eventually AF, you intentionally minimize both good and bad emotions and simply try to be happy and harmless for as much time as possible.  To do this, you get rid of the beliefs that support the identity.  For example, if you&amp;#039;re unhappy, first you figure out why (say, I have a lot of work to do), then you decide that this reason is not worth being unhappy (because there is NO good reason not be enjoying life) and you go back to being happy again.  As you practice this way, it becomes easier to see when these emotions are starting, and you can nip them in the bud by intentionally deciding not to bother feeling that way - as it&amp;#039;s useless.  With happiness and harmlessness comes a kind of care-free felicity where you&amp;#039;re allowed to let go of control and simply enjoy the senses.  This ends up triggering apperception - which is the direct processing of the senses without the distraction of the emotions - i.e. the PCE.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, the process isn&amp;#039;t really like a jhana meditation because it takes no concentration or maintenance to get there.  What it takes is the simple examination of anything that is making you unable to enjoy yourself right now.  As time goes by, these things become less and less - it&amp;#039;s a process of elimination.  Eventually, the ego identity and the emotional center are both so minimized that they vanish entirely (according to Richard - the guy who started the Actual Freedom Trust).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;It sounds like the self just &amp;#034;goes away&amp;#034; in a PCE, is that an accurate observation?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yes, but it goes away because the identity is temporarily forgotten/at bay. The idea is to systematically remove it completely so the PCE can become permanent.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Also your not saying much about narritive thought processes in PCE. I&amp;#039;m assuming that you don&amp;#039;t think they are part of the self and are persistent in PCE?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;AF is only really concerned with feelings. One of the characteristics of the PCE I&amp;#039;ve always found compelling is that thoughts that would normally bother you just don&amp;#039;t. It&amp;#039;s a good time to examine old habits of negativity for comparison. I discovered a number of solutions to emotional problems in the PCE. It&amp;#039;s a bit like looking at yourself from an outside perspective.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Yes, the teeter and totter thing. Some would argue that that all experience is fundamentally unstable. Much better to be cool with that through liberating insight, rather than fix it via a transient mind state.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Haha, well that&amp;#039;s the main difference between the two. However, the PCE doesn&amp;#039;t really fix anything - in AF, the goal is to fix yourself so the PCE is always there. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Like I said, no thought is happening during these experiences. This particular mind state appears to be a product of its absence. No memories either or self referential intentions for that matter.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Maybe this is something more like Rigpa, then, or bare awareness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Sounds cool and like I said, congratulations. But how persistent is this? And also, something I&amp;#039;ve not touched on yet how does it mesh with daily life. One problem with altered states of consciousness, if that is what a PCE is, is that they take you mind off the ball as it were. I little bit of pain keeps us focused on paying the bills and generally not forgeting the important stuff. Any observations?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m not Actually Free, but the AF process is about a steady movement towards happiness and harmlessness, and I&amp;#039;m certainly making progress on that front. PCEs happen once in a while, but they are just teachers. They aren&amp;#039;t going to change you. Also, it&amp;#039;s not quite like an altered state in my experience. I used to go through the jhanas every morning, so I have a point of comparison there. To me, the PCE is more simple and free. I was working a lot more when I was spending a lot of time in them a while back - it was the practical thing to do, and I had no negative feelings about working because of the PCE. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/closed_eyes.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;We just had a big discussion on AF here: &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaohttp&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;5580083verground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;5580083"&gt;http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5580083&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And this is a good introduction to the whole thing &amp;#034;from the horse&amp;#039;s mouth&amp;#034; as it were: &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;actualfreedom&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2e;au&amp;#x2f;richard&amp;#x2f;articles&amp;#x2f;aprecisofactualfreedom&amp;#x2e;htm"&gt;http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/articles/aprecisofactualfreedom.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As well as this: &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;actualfreedom&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2e;au&amp;#x2f;actualism&amp;#x2f;path2&amp;#x2e;htm"&gt;http://actualfreedom.com.au/actualism/path2.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Just a warning, the Actual Freedom Trust website is pretty anti-spirituality.  That&amp;#039;s caused it to be a point of contention on the forum here.  I think the methods and the advice are valuable, though, so take it all with a grain of salt if you can. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/pac_man.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 19:54:49 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604847</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T19:54:49Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Tough time in 3 characteristics</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604813</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jo Jo:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;b man:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Anyone been through such a tough time in 3C stage? If so, any thoughts on speeding up progress other than just meditating more?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Yes, I have been, and still am.&lt;br /&gt;And no, apart from meditating more, I have not thoughts how to speed progress up.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Thanks for sharing your experiences Jo Jo - it helps to know that others are finding this stage tough. Hope its getting better for you. &lt;br /&gt;Thanks for the advice also to meditate more. This seems to be the answer from all angles. I will embrace it as much as I can! &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think I have naturally started to lay off abit when I get to this stage in the past and feel the effects strongly as it can make me feel very depressed, as well as phyically bad, and a bit of anger surfaces also. I have just put this down to blocked energy and stuff processing. But who knows. Maybe its just suffering coming out! I think though I will heed the advice and where I can push on and meditate more without it making me suffer so much that I just cant do my job! &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Its making me wonder if I have been fighting the bad feeling a little - I will also heed the advice to really delve deep into the suffering and unpleasantness and see what that brings...</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 18:40:54 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604813</guid> <dc:creator>b man</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T18:40:54Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604743</link> <description>[quote=&lt;strong&gt;Gonna drop the red ink, it looks a bit imperious on the page, not my intention.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Not Tao]For me, it&amp;#039;s that the whole emotional package disappears, so if I were to think about things that would normally bother me, there would be no emotional response.  It&amp;#039;s not just that the physical sensation is gone, but any habitual reactions as well.  There is nothing driving the mind toward any sensation, idea, phenomena, etc.  This is what I meant by the emotional center.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;So if I understand you correctly, narritive thought does not stop in PCE but the sensations that it normally leads too, or progress from, do? You experience a short circuit of the circuit of suffering? Am I correct in assuming that we agree that suffering is the problem? If these all this is the case what is the bit of the circuit that is removed so that suffering stops?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Identity refers to personality, like who you feel that you are.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yeasss well, that&amp;#039;s not really answering my question. You will have to forgive me, I come from a more insight orientated tradition and investigating the fine grain of the experience of self is a central practice. It may be that this question is not important in AF, is this the case? Is there a no-self v true-self debate in AF? It sounds like the self just &amp;#034;goes away&amp;#034; in a PCE, is that an accurate observation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;  It&amp;#039;s what causes emotional reactions.  For example, if you believe you are good at math, and then someone tells you you&amp;#039;re no good, or they display a level of skill above your own, this might generate one feeling or another (resentment, desire to work harder, respect, anger, dislike, attraction, etc).  In the PCE, everything just &amp;#034;is&amp;#034; - there is no defining characteristic that elevates one thing/experience/feeling/idea over another.  So you have no defined relationship with anything to get in the way of direct experience.  Without the identity, anything can happen and there is nothing there to react - the ghost in the shell has been exorcised and the body is freed. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/closed_eyes.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;This sounds an awfull lot like 4 Jhana, aka equanimity, not that that is a problem. If this is that case then congrats are in order, nice space to inhabit ect. But in the buddhist tradition such mind states are usually thought to be impermanent, along with everything else. They eventually burn them self out leaving you with happy memories but no abiding insight as to  what actually happened. How persistent is a PCE or AF itself for that matter? Does AF recognise insight as a liberating experience, even?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The physical sense of existing doesn&amp;#039;t go away in the PCE, though.  When Richard talks about the &amp;#034;actual,&amp;#034; he&amp;#039;s talking about the physical world that exists in the senses, and he contrasts that with the ego and the soul (the identity and the emotions respectively) which are mental constructs.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;So &amp;#034;meat space&amp;#034; still exists for the actually free then? Sorry I love that expression and I had to work it in to the converstion somehow. So ego and soul are transient? Is AF/PCE a state in which ego and soul are gone for good?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the PCE, the feeling of being anything in particular other than a physical body goes away.  The reason the experience is so positive is that the psychic components (identity and emotions) express themselves in the body.  When the body is freed from these drivers, it relaxes completely and can take in all the sensory phenomena without the need to judge them or parse through them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Still sounds like equanimity; just saying. Also your not saying much about narritive thought processes in PCE. I&amp;#039;m assuming that you don&amp;#039;t think they are part of the self and are persistent in PCE? You talk about psychic components being expressed in the body, does this include narritive thought?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Both actually, although I tend to feel stuff all over rather than just in the heart or stomach. Absence of feeling unpleasantness does tend to lead to pleasant feelings of refief and relaxation, but this is not a vacuum or a steady state, more a replacement of pleasant with unpleasant.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s difficult to diagnose other people&amp;#039;s mental states, so I&amp;#039;ll leave that up to you. However, IME, the PCE can best be defined as an absence of emotion - both pleasant and unpleasant. As you say here, when unpleasant feelings go away, pleasant feelings replace them - it&amp;#039;s like a teeter totter between good and bad. In the PCE, the whole thing that generates both of those feelings is just gone completely.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Yes, the teeter and totter thing. Some would argue that that all experience is fundimentally unstable. Much better to be cool with that through liberating insight, rather than fix it via a transient mind state.  Yes, I am being mildly playful now, I invite you to have a pop back at me. Go on, in the stomach, as hard as you like!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;The mild joyfullness I described earlier has no real center it tends to be a field awareness thing. It appears to already be &amp;#034;out there,&amp;#034; as if it were a natural component of sensation and just needs to be &amp;#034;allowed.&amp;#034; I am very familiar with the more localised sense of well being that you describe. In these instances, dwelling on or in the sensation tends to cause it to migrate out. I tend not to try to move it around, it just naturally seems to grow of its own accord.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When it migrates out, are you still thinking of yourself (as in, &amp;#034;I feel so joyful!&amp;#034;) or have you forgotten yourself (as in, &amp;#034;everything is perfect.&amp;#034;)? If you think about yourself suffering in the past, do you feel compassion, or are you baffled that you&amp;#039;ve ever had problems?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Like I said, no thought is happening during these experiences. This particular mind state appears to be a product of its absence. No memories either or self referential intentions for that matter.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For me, it almost feels like I&amp;#039;ve become a completely different person who&amp;#039;s never had a problem in their life and never learned how to feel discontent. Everything is seen without any feeling-based judgement for or against. Wherever you look, whatever happens, everything is completely and perfectly itself.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sounds cool and like I said, congratulations. But how persistent is this? And also, something I&amp;#039;ve not touched on yet how does it mesh with daily life. One problem with altered states of consciousness, if that is what a PCE is, is that they take you mind off the ball as it were. I little bit of pain keeps us focused on paying the bills and generally not forgeting the important stuff. Any observations?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oh yes, who is Richard, I&amp;#039;m assuming a significant teacher?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 17:26:46 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604743</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T17:26:46Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Hacked the Path with drugs -- now not sure where I am</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604717</link> <description>If you got stream entry and a fruition, you should be able to replicate it when you&amp;#039;re sober.  I think this is discussed in MCTB, but basically you just walk yourself through the insight cycle up to equanimity and then let a fruition happen.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Honestly I would recomend not trying to acheive meditation progress through drugs.  While drugs can perhaps give you a glimpse of a higher state, I don&amp;#039;t trust that attainments people supposedly get on drugs have any true spiritual bearing.  If you want stream entry, then buckling down and practicing sober is probably your best bet.  It may be less exciting but it is a much more reliable way to practice and get results.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Also, take care of yourself!  If you are frequently burning yourself out on drug trips you will have much less power of mind to bring to spiritual practice.  In my experience drugs dull and fragment the mind, so while they can be ok once in a while, frequent use will lead to a backlog of &amp;#039;catch-up&amp;#039; in order to get back to a place of normal healthy functioning.  When I smoked weed regularly, I thought I was just fine and normal, but once I stopped for a while and allowed my head to balance out, I felt better and more healthy; more radient and true.  The goal afterall is a truely healthy and balanced state of mind, free from delusion (which frankly drugs perpetrate).  On a spectrum, frequent drug use takes you farther from spirituality than normal living.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Drug use ------------------Normal state --------------------------------------------------------Enlightenment&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyways don&amp;#039;t mean to preach but just saying..</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 17:06:22 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604717</guid> <dc:creator>T DC</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T17:06:22Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Hacked the Path with drugs -- now not sure where I am</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604643</link> <description>Now, I&amp;#039;m not an expert by any means, but don&amp;#039;t psychedelics make you very open to suggestion? I know set and setting are very important to have a good experience, and it seems like you set yourself up to experience something specific. I could see using that as a way to practice, but I think the best test to see if you&amp;#039;re making progress is to judge your normal waking state and what is available to you then. Consider this, if you had dreamed these events, and then when you woke up you couldn&amp;#039;t repeat them, would you feel like you had made progress? It might be more useful to treat the psychedelic states as similar to dream states rather than meditative states like jhana. They are generated from dream chemicals, after all.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I always seem to have the best progress when I can let go of &lt;em&gt;changing&lt;/em&gt; phenomena, specifically. The things that are happening to you now, the itchiness, feeling blah, feeling like meditation is hard work - this is generally what trains the best. Instead of trying to do anything with it, or make it feel a certain way, or see it as not self, or making it vibrate, or make it stop vibrating, what happens when you just leave it all alone? That practice was what led me to jhanas and fireworks - which is always a bit surprising. It&amp;#039;s when you can let go of &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt; or effort that things seem to happen in the normal mind states. Maybe the psychedelics are forcing you to let go, and you&amp;#039;re seeing the destinations.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you&amp;#039;re interested in working with drugs, maybe it would be better to try using them to have a chat with your subconscious and figure out those things that are keeping you from being content. It isn&amp;#039;t the special effects so much as the insights you get from them that are important. Maybe do a few shamanic rituals and see if they can&amp;#039;t give you something more useful.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Or, while on your special cocktail, just note whatever happens without any expectations. Even if something really amazing happens, just keep noting it. Then analyze it the next day and see how everyday life is. If the drugs give you increased concentration, this could be a useful exercise.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Another possibility - maybe you&amp;#039;ll only be enlightened while on your special combination of drugs, haha. Kind of like how on Family Guy Peter can play the piano when he&amp;#039;s drunk. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/closed_eyes.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 14:57:49 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604643</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T14:57:49Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604608</link> <description>For me, it&amp;#039;s that the whole emotional package disappears, so if I were to think about things that would normally bother me, there would be no emotional response.  It&amp;#039;s not just that the physical sensation is gone, but any habitual reactions as well.  There is nothing driving the mind toward any sensation, idea, phenomena, etc.  This is what I meant by the emotional center.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Identity refers to personality, like who you feel that you are.  It&amp;#039;s what causes emotional reactions.  For example, if you believe you are good at math, and then someone tells you you&amp;#039;re no good, or they display a level of skill above your own, this might generate one feeling or another (resentment, desire to work harder, respect, anger, dislike, attraction, etc).  In the PCE, everything just &amp;#034;is&amp;#034; - there is no defining characteristic that elevates one thing/experience/feeling/idea over another.  So you have no defined relationship with anything to get in the way of direct experience.  Without the identity, anything can happen and there is nothing there to react - the ghost in the shell has been exorcised and the body is freed. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/closed_eyes.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The physical sense of existing doesn&amp;#039;t go away in the PCE, though.  When Richard talks about the &amp;#034;actual,&amp;#034; he&amp;#039;s talking about the physical world that exists in the senses, and he contrasts that with the ego and the soul (the identity and the emotions respectively) which are mental constructs.  In the PCE, the feeling of being anything in particular other than a physical body goes away.  The reason the experience is so positive is that the psychic components (identity and emotions) express themselves in the body.  When the body is freed from these drivers, it relaxes completely and can take in all the sensory phenomena without the need to judge them or parse through them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Both actually, although I tend to feel stuff all over rather than just in the heart or stomach. Absence of feeling unpleasantness does tend to lead to pleasant feelings of refief and relaxation, but this is not a vacuum or a steady state, more a replacement of pleasant with unpleasant.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s difficult to diagnose other people&amp;#039;s mental states, so I&amp;#039;ll leave that up to you. However, IME, the PCE can best be defined as an absence of emotion - both pleasant and unpleasant. As you say here, when unpleasant feelings go away, pleasant feelings replace them - it&amp;#039;s like a teeter totter between good and bad. In the PCE, the whole thing that generates both of those feelings is just gone completely.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;The mild joyfullness I described earlier has no real center it tends to be a field awareness thing. It appears to already be &amp;#034;out there,&amp;#034; as if it were a natural component of sensation and just needs to be &amp;#034;allowed.&amp;#034; I am very familiar with the more localised sense of well being that you describe. In these instances, dwelling on or in the sensation tends to cause it to migrate out. I tend not to try to move it around, it just naturally seems to grow of its own accord.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When it migrates out, are you still thinking of yourself (as in, &amp;#034;I feel so joyful!&amp;#034;) or have you forgotten yourself (as in, &amp;#034;everything is perfect.&amp;#034;)? If you think about yourself suffering in the past, do you feel compassion, or are you baffled that you&amp;#039;ve ever had problems?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For me, it almost feels like I&amp;#039;ve become a completely different person who&amp;#039;s never had a problem in their life and never learned how to feel discontent. Everything is seen without any feeling-based judgement for or against. Wherever you look, whatever happens, everything is completely and perfectly itself.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 14:14:06 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604608</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T14:14:06Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604596</link> <description>Not that I can help with your diagnosis, but what practice are you doing? Sounds cool.&lt;br /&gt;Sorry if it&amp;#039;s OT</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 13:59:50 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604596</guid> <dc:creator>Pål</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T13:59:50Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Hacked the Path with drugs -- now not sure where I am</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604566</link> <description>I wanted to add one more thing, though I&amp;#039;m not sure how much difference it makes.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;While on the night out I described, where everything was so simple and I thought I got Stream Entry, I had the feeling that, &amp;#034;If I just keep doing exactly what I&amp;#039;m doing right now [letting things come and go and not letting them coalesce into a sense of self], I will definitely get enlightened at some point in the future.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So what I was doing, on that night out, was still conscious -- I still had to MAKE thoughts/feeling flicker to see them as sensations and not part of a &amp;#034;self&amp;#034;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It was around half the time effortless, half the time effortful.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The main reason I felt it was Stream Entry is that I had the feeling of knowing exactly what to do from now on in order to get enlightened.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;By the way I find it much easier to let reality break apart while walking around on a night out with lots of incoming sensations to work with. Sat at home, I tend to find it harder and in fact boring and rather unrewarding. Itchiness and light pain are the easiest for me to see individual sensations with when sat at home.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I also have very few verbal thoughts while out the house; this has been the case for a few years now as I used to do &amp;#034;presence walks&amp;#034; as my preferred method of meditation (and even wrote a short e-book about it).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The result of all this drug use, AND the fact I muddled through meditation creating my own methods without any guidance for 6 years, has left me very much wondering where on the Path I actually &amp;#034;am&amp;#034; now.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 13:35:29 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604566</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T13:35:29Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Hacked the Path with drugs -- now not sure where I am</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604528</link> <description>I&amp;#039;m not sure where to begin so I&amp;#039;ll just get into it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve been obsessed with using drugs as a means to enlightenment for about 6 years now, ever since my first MDMA trip (which could be said to be my first A&amp;amp;P event, but I really don&amp;#039;t know).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I got MCTB a few months ago. I had never been exposed to this idea of actually observing individual sensations before. I had certainly never intentionally practised looking for them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve had a few intense experiences with a drug combination I came up with over the last couple of weeks. I was going to write it up in full on the new Substances board but wanted to wait to see what happened for a while after the experience, first.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The drug combination is as follows:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;psychonautwiki&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Methoxphenidine"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MXP &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;-- Dissociative, like ketamine but more stimulating and &amp;#034;visual&amp;#034;. Low dose required for &amp;#034;holing&amp;#034; (completely &amp;#034;losing&amp;#034; your body, as you would in deep jhana).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Ergine"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LSA &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;-- Psychedelic/entheogen. Precursor to LSD. Naturally occurring in various plants. Consider it &amp;#034;LSD lite&amp;#034; perhaps. LSA, for me, gives the most intense concentration powers imaginable. Effortless access to high jhanas.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I feel the combination has given me access to high jhanas I did not otherwise &amp;#034;earn&amp;#034;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m not interested in drugs lectures at this stage, just a diagnosis of what&amp;#039;s going on in terms of the Path.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I will talk simply about the two experiences where these drugs were taken together.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The first time was the Friday before last. On this trip I found myself in the &amp;#034;Formless Realm&amp;#034;. Everything was vibrations. I was moving forward on a sea of vibrations. I have never had anything like this before.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;How I got here was to ONLY look for a &amp;#034;sense of self&amp;#034;. So I felt my sense of self. Then noticing those sensations, I would move to the sense of self which appeared to be watching those initial sensations. Then move to THAT sense of self. Sooner or later I was moving between sensations of &amp;#034;sense of self&amp;#034; at a rate of literally DOZENS per second. At this point, everything exploded into a sea of just vibrations. I saw formations, just as described in the book. I kept with it. Suddenly, I saw a figure looking back at me. Then that doughnut thing described in the book. Then a moment of nothingness (a gap) and reality came back in.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I remembered reading about all of this in the book. I was still in the formless realm. I tested my sense of agency by invoking the sense of self, saying &amp;#034;I&amp;#034;. It went &amp;#034;I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I&amp;#034; and spread out into infinity as waves, as did any body sensation attempting to coalesce into a &amp;#034;self&amp;#034;. I continued testing it several times to see if it had &amp;#034;stuck&amp;#034; and got the same result.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;After all of this, I was still evidently tripping balls but felt fine, got up, went to the toilet, then just went to sleep as I was pretty exhausted. I had a great sleep.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I was in two minds about whether this was a Fruition or not. I felt what I saw -- the face looking back at me, and the doughnut, and the &amp;#034;gap&amp;#034; -- may have been &amp;#034;scripted&amp;#034; from having read about it in the book.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I had some &amp;#034;cycling&amp;#034; in the week, with a pretty clear Disgust phase (during which I made some rather disparaging remarks in the DhO logo thread to Megan and John -- sorry about that!).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Because of my doubt about whether this was a real Fruition, I endeavoured to repeat it the following Friday (i.e. the Friday just gone). I took the combo again and just tried to repeat what I did exactly -- ONLY going after the sense of self.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I did not get Formless Realms this time. However, I did not let that deter me, and just kept going after the sense of self. Suddenly, without warning, at the end of one of the out breaths, there was another &amp;#034;gap&amp;#034;. It was like the out breath went on forever with a gap at the end. When I came back, the entire inside of my body felt &amp;#034;empty&amp;#034;. Completely empty, like something had just been hosed out of it. The feeling was one of being &amp;#034;clean&amp;#034;. Yet not entirely clean -- not perfectly clean. But like 90% of dirt had been washed off me. I felt very, very transparent.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I got up, and my posture tightness in my arms and back (which I&amp;#039;ve been working on for about 3 years) suddenly popped open and felt fine. It was like the Knot of Perception and the Knot of Posture were directly linked: untying one untied the other. This posture freedom has remained since then.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I went out the following night and was able to detect a sense of self forming in response to any input, and saw thoughts coming together from sensations, and could watch them and have them break up by consciously making them &amp;#034;flicker&amp;#034;. It was also like whatever I thought would come true &amp;#034;out there&amp;#034; in &amp;#034;reality&amp;#034;. Synchronicities started picking up pace massively -- people I had thought about earlier in the night would just appear, I would think a word and see it written on a sign the next second, I &amp;#034;felt&amp;#034; what people were about to say and do just as they did it, and a whole load of other stuff that just went on and on and on like this. It&amp;#039;s like there was no &amp;#034;time&amp;#034; at any point, just NOW, and I was completely connected to and within NOW with seemingly little border around me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I did something very nice for an owner of a charity I spontaneously met while at her bar, which I did not even know existed until then, and which was entirely staffed by volunteers. Her bar was amusingly called Ego -- I shit you not! I showed her how to get it onto Google Maps, which I&amp;#039;d done for another business the day before, and offered any web help to her for free. She gave me a warm hug at the end. This was all on autopilot. I remember thinking at the time, &amp;#034;I will use this new way of being for good.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I also gave a taxi driver some life-changing advice regarding career path which he excitedly wrote down. I remembered thinking at the time that these acts were entirely causal and I could not take credit for them in any way, and feelings of even wanting to take credit just arose and passed and I did not latch onto them -- they just appeared as part of the flow of this whole thing. Previously when I have had such nights as a result of practice or whatever I have become very egoic and thinking I was Jesus or something; this time it was just innately &amp;#034;normal&amp;#034;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Everything was flickering. I barely had any verbal thoughts all night. The sensations that would ordinarily become verbal thoughts would just come and go without forming a &amp;#034;self&amp;#034;. This continued the next day to an extent but it was becoming exhausting to be frank -- I still had to consciously make things flicker in order not to infer a sense of self from sensations.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So I then slept for like 2 days (half of Sunday, almost all of Monday). And felt like crap thenceforth. Things are still flickering, and I&amp;#039;ve just had enough of it now. When I close my eyes, they are in REM with lights flickering the whole time.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When things &amp;#034;flicker&amp;#034;, are the eyes supposed to move?? My eyes have been moving by themselves in this flickering pattern practically the whole of the last 4 days. It&amp;#039;s given me headaches and I&amp;#039;m sick of it now.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I was sure on the Saturday night (when I was out) I had had a Fruition and got First Path, and texted two of my buddies who are aware of the Path. It was not bragging, either, but felt very much matter of fact. Nothing felt egoic.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now all the drugs are filtering out of my system, I feel pretty blah, consciously making things flicker to dissolve the sense of self is just feeling like massive hard work, and I have doubts cast on whether I got First Path or whatever at all.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am completely sick of practising, and I&amp;#039;ve fallen behind with my work a LOT over the last week, and missed my first deadline in history. I just want things to be back to &amp;#034;normal&amp;#034; now and stop flickering, and stop thinking about this whole fucking thing for a while.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, what the hell happened, and what do I do now?</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 12:37:47 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604528</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T12:37:47Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604507</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao&amp;#034;:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;The way I would describe the PCE is that awareness is completely outward facing, and the places in the body where emotions are usually felt - like the heart area or the stomach - are gone.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ff0000"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Okay, interesting, are you saying that emotions are gone or just the physical components of emotions are gone; what some have called the &amp;#034;affect&amp;#034; or the Buddhists might call &amp;#034;feeling tone?&amp;#034;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You describe a mild joyfulness, is that a physical feeling like a pleasant quality in the heart, or is it an absence of feeling in the heart which brings relief?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ff0000"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Both actually, although I tend to feel stuff all over rather than just in the heart or stomach. Absence of feeling unpleasantness does tend to lead to pleasant feelings of refief and relaxation, but this is not a vacuum or a steady state, more a replacement of pleasant with unpleasant.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you are still experiencing pleasant emotional feelings, but they are very mild, you can get to the PCE by simply removing attention from the emotional center and allowing yourself to lose track of the identity, or that &amp;#034;how do I feel&amp;#034; reference point.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ff0000"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not sure what you mean by this. I&amp;#039;ve always found emotions to be compound experiences and if its deconstructed to the extent that its now just a physical sensation then its probably just a physical sensation. i.e just the &amp;#034;affect&amp;#034; with no connecting tissue of narritive, memory, or reflexive judgement.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ff0000"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When you say &amp;#034;emotional center&amp;#034; do you mean the heart and stomach you referred to earlier? When you say &amp;#034;identity&amp;#034; what do you mean by this? Are you referring to an internal narritive? The physical sense of being in the body?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Enjoy the sensual nature if being a physical thing that can experience the world without judging it through a feeling filter.  This isn&amp;#039;t something to force - rather, since the emotions are mild, it allows you to let down the normal defences and expectations about how the interal feelings should be and simply bask in the &amp;#034;nowness&amp;#034; of physical reality.  For example, if you feel a sweetness in your chest, or a fullness and comfort in your belly, what happens if you take the attention that is settled there and move it outward into the space around you?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ff0000"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The mild joyfullness I described earlier has no real center it tends to be a field awareness thing. It appears to already be &amp;#034;out there,&amp;#034; as if it were a natural component of sensation and just needs to be &amp;#034;allowed.&amp;#034; I am very familiar with the more localised sense of well being that you describe. In these instances, dwelling on or in the sensation tends to cause it to migrate out. I tend not to try to move it around, it just naturally seems to grow of its own accord.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ff0000"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Peace&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 11:09:39 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604507</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T11:09:39Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604492</link> <description>The way I would describe the PCE is that awareness is completely outward facing, and the places in the body where emotions are usually felt - like the heart area or the stomach - are gone.  You describe a mild joyfulness, is that a physical feeling like a pleasant quality in the heart, or is it an absence of feeling in the heart which brings relief?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you are still experiencing pleasant emotional feelings, but they are very mild, you can get to the PCE by simply removing attention from the emotional center and allowing yourself to lose track of the identity, or that &amp;#034;how do I feel&amp;#034; reference point.  Enjoy the sensual nature if being a physical thing that can experience the world without judging it through a feeling filter.  This isn&amp;#039;t something to force - rather, since the emotions are mild, it allows you to let down the normal defences and expectations about how the interal feelings should be and simply bask in the &amp;#034;nowness&amp;#034; of physical reality.  For example, if you feel a sweetness in your chest, or a fullness and comfort in your belly, what happens if you take the attention that is settled there and move it outward into the space around you?</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 10:18:33 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604492</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T10:18:33Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>PCE?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604467</link> <description>Hi guys&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is a question for any AF dudes. I&amp;#039;m doing a practice at the moment that drops me into a mind space where concious thought dries-up, spaciousness is prevalent and all sensations appear to have a veneer of mild joyfullness/peacefullness. The reason why I direct this question to this question to the AF boys is that it also appears to mellow out any emotional content, strong feelings just get cut off at the knees. Its quite an exhilerating experience. But it&amp;#039;s not EQ or &amp;#034;The witness,&amp;#034; does this sound like a PCE? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cheers</description> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 07:48:23 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604467</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-14T07:48:23Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604213</link> <description>Ok, well then maybe I&amp;#039;ve been there too then &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One thing that puzzels me is this anapanaspot and wether it was actually taught by Gotama or not. Maybe caring about the ancient texts fits better at a forum like dhamma wheel but here are my thoughts about that subject:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanissaro Bhikkhu is the only buddhist teacher I know of who says the Buddha taught full body awareness of tje breath rather than noticing sensations on a tiny spot. I read the instructions for anapanasati in the suttas amd they said that you should breath in and out focused on the entire body so I thought, hey Thanissaro is right and all other teachers are spreading methods not thaught by the Buddha! That is why I started practicing his method. However, rereading the anapanasati sutta I found a line where Gotama says that the breath &amp;#034;is classed as a body among bodies&amp;#034;. Maybe that would mean that focusing on the entire body means focusing on the entire breath although I find it a little far fetched.  I also found that the passage where the buddha instructs the monks to set their mindfullness&amp;#034; to the front&amp;#034; also can be.translates as &amp;#034;at the entrance&amp;#034; which also speaks for the nostrills interpretation. But this interpretation also seems a little far fetched since the recommendation to set ones mindfullness to the front/at the entrance/parimukham also is found in the anapana instructions in the kayagatasati sutta where later the buddha clearly promotes full body awareness (filling ones body with jhana factors of which one is pure bright awareness. Here there is no doubt the body means the real body and not the breath). &lt;br /&gt;Sometimes I really consider changing my practice to traditional tiny-spot samatha because so many people recommend it but then I remember what the suttas say and I end up unable to decide so I stock with Thanissaro&amp;#039;s method.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;thank you guys so much for your answers! It&amp;#039;s really great to get advice from experienced people &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Mon, 13 Oct 2014 19:32:21 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604213</guid> <dc:creator>Pål</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-13T19:32:21Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604177</link> <description>&lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Pål:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Ok, thank you!&lt;br /&gt;It seems like the Buddha defined jhana as a state containing piti and sukha. I guess there is sukha in my meditation because it feels kind of nice, but what is the piti part? I thought piti was going to be some kind of ecstasy?&lt;br /&gt;What is vipassana jhanas, and why do the suttas not divide jhana into samatha and vipassana jhanas?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hello Pål. I thought I&amp;#039;d respond to this portion of your thread... Piti, as I&amp;#039;ve experienced it, has a pretty wide range. From the feeling of a short thrill, where your hair stands on end, all the way to a deep ecstasy. There&amp;#039;s a list of the various manifestations on this &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;P&amp;#x25;C4&amp;#x25;ABti"&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; entry.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You seem a little concerned with whether or not you are experiencing manifestations of the jhanic factors, but it may be better to let go of the expectations and simplify: just work on your samatha practice. Drop everything else and &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; put all your attention on your object (like many others, I like the spot below the nostrils and above the lips, the so-called &lt;em&gt;anapana&lt;/em&gt; spot). Over and over again, sitting after sitting. There&amp;#039;s a lot to be said for the classical training in concentration.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When the hindrances diminish, the jhanic factors arise. My first experience of Piti felt like a full body orgasm, that&amp;#039;s how &amp;#034;rapturous&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;ecstatic&amp;#034; it was. Be careful what you wish for, however, since it may well be followed by a lot of inconvenient after effects, e.g. involuntary body twitching and spasming for many days afterwards. Try explaining that to your co-workers &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Also, don&amp;#039;t get attached to trying to get back that feeling once you have a taste of it. Too much grasping side tracked my practice for a short while.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 13 Oct 2014 17:51:57 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604177</guid> <dc:creator>Small Steps</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-13T17:51:57Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604126</link> <description>I know I shouldn&amp;#039;t cling to stuff but it&amp;#039;s really hard not to... And moreover, nothing has replaced the spasms really. I get nothing while my friend who doesn&amp;#039;t even meditate gets kundalini experiences... My ego is hurt because of this, but maybe that&amp;#039;s just good &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/tongue.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Mon, 13 Oct 2014 15:38:47 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604126</guid> <dc:creator>Pål</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-13T15:38:47Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604074</link> <description>Meditation keeps unfolding.  The contractions may go away now, and perhaps reappear later.  It can be a trap to start clinging to some symptom brought up during meditation, because eventually it&amp;#039;ll go away and something else will takes it&amp;#039;s place.  That&amp;#039;s simply Anicca; everything changes.  You wouldn&amp;#039;t want things to stick around anyway, would you?  You want to move forward, which means letting go and continuing to observe and investigate.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Good luck,&lt;br /&gt;Teague</description> <pubDate>Mon, 13 Oct 2014 12:48:03 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5604074</guid> <dc:creator>Teague</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-13T12:48:03Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5603953</link> <description>Those contractions are starting to get less frequent. Am I losing a nana or something? &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/sad.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Mon, 13 Oct 2014 08:31:16 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5603953</guid> <dc:creator>Pål</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-13T08:31:16Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Two awakenings: Two peak experiences of a Vedantist turned Buddhist</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5603892</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Daniel Ingram:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;When you say &amp;#034;awareness&amp;#034;, what do you mean exactly? Something that is the same as phenomena, or something that is different from phenomena. It sounds like a semantic question, but is a good thing to examine, actually a key thing, actually the most fundamental question of all. If awareness is the same as phenomena, is there really awareness, or just phenomena pretending to be it? If this &amp;#034;awareness&amp;#034; is different from sensate phenomena, how can you possibly experience it?&lt;br /&gt;Try this one on for size: the sensations that have the content &amp;#034;I&amp;#034;, the feel of &amp;#034;I&amp;#034;, were always as they are, always of the true nature of things also, even if that was not clearly perceived. Once that true nature of those sensate patterns and qualities is clearly perceived, they are known to just be more textures and colors and flavors of transient, ephemeral, intrinsically luminous space, as they always were.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Nice stuff....I too need this over and over...never know when it&amp;#039;s actually finally sink in.&lt;br /&gt;~D</description> <pubDate>Mon, 13 Oct 2014 06:58:46 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5603892</guid> <dc:creator>Dream Walker</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-13T06:58:46Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Two awakenings: Two peak experiences of a Vedantist turned Buddhist</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5603574</link> <description>Extremely helpful to me, FWIW. Thanks! I need to be reminded of these things again and again.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 12 Oct 2014 18:02:22 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5603574</guid> <dc:creator>Jane Laurel Carrington</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-12T18:02:22Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Two awakenings: Two peak experiences of a Vedantist turned Buddhist</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5603412</link> <description>Here are my responses to Clem&amp;#039;s email to me and this to his post above:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Dear Cem,&lt;br /&gt;Thanks for your email and interest in these things. It is true that this morning I had 539 emails in my inbox to sort out, but luckily much of it can be rapidly deleted. Still, it does take time, but I had a moment, so here is my quick reply.&lt;br /&gt;Responses in text below:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On Oct 11, 2014, at 8:31 AM, Cem Keskin &amp;lt;&lt;a href="mailto&amp;#x3a;cemi&amp;#x2e;rumi&amp;#x40;gmail&amp;#x2e;com"&gt;cemi.rumi@gmail.com&lt;/a&gt;&amp;gt; wrote:&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Dear Dan,&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;My name is Cem. I am a dharma practitioner from Turkey. I have just finished reading your MCTB; it was a great read. Actually, it was exactly the kind of book that I needed at this point in time. Thank you for the effort you put into it, and for your directness and transparency.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;I am writing to you for the following reason:&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;I consider myself a fairly dedicated practitioner of meditation. For the past 20 years or so I have been following a spiritual path. I have failed to find reliable and useful advice in most people who claim to be spiritual teachers &amp;#x2013; much as you suggest in MTCB &amp;#x2013; so I have pursued my goal alone most of the time, trying to find guidance in books and experimenting a whole lot. After reading your book, however, I thought you are the right kind of person to ask for advice on technical matters related to meditation practice. And I wanted to share with you the highlights of the experiences I have had in the past four years or so. I was wondering if you could give me your take on them and also give me some tips about reasonable next steps. You can find my account below; it might be a bit long, I would be happy if you bore with me. I wanted to ask you the following questions on the basis of that account:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;What were those peak experiences I have had?&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;“Blips” of enlightenment or other peak experiences&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;Where am I on the map?&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;The first essential thing about map theory is to realize that thoughts about maps and theory occur now, and it is very easy for them to mess up your practice, so extra vigilance about those sensations when they occur, such that you see them as sensate experiences now in space, as transient phenomena, is essential to have them not catch you in thought patterns that subtly divide your sense of the maps from the actual experience of your life right now. This requires constant dedication to do well.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Not even on the path? First path? Second path?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;What would be the most reasonable thing to do now?&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Seven months ago, I took an 18-month-long unpaid leave from my job in Turkey. Since then I have been to India for six months. Now I am planning to go first to Panditarama-Lumbini and then to MBMC;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;That is an excellent plan. It is so much easier to sort this stuff out in person when you are actually seeing the person and hearing them talk and seeing how their practice goes than by email. Still, some guesses are possible, but realize they are only guesses. I haven&amp;#039;t been there, but it gets high marks.&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I could also do a solitary retreat instead. I have taken this leave in order to pursue my goal of full awakening, and by the end of this period, I want to have had at least one (more) awakening experience. What would be your suggestion?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;What should I expect next?&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Lots more transient sensations to known directly and clearly.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I understand the many constraints you are under and hope that you will have the opportunity to respond.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;Looking forward to hearing from you,&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;Cem Keskin&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;PS. Over a month ago, I posted a version of the account below as a thread entitled “Two awakenings: Two peak experiences of a Vedantist turned Buddhist” on the Dharma Diagnostic Clinic (&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;5574474"&gt;http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5574474&lt;/a&gt;). I haven’t received that much feedback on it unfortunately.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ah, ok, too bad. It might have gotten lost in the recent drama there that, I hope, is calming down now. Might bump the thread and see how it goes.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prologue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;Around 4 years ago, I had an 8 month period of fairly intense meditation practice, starting from the beginning of June 2010 lasting till the end of January 2011. During that time, I meditated for 6-7 hours daily. It was more or less a solitary retreat in a natural setting.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;I was following the Advaita Vedanta tradition at the time. During the year running up to that retreat period, I had studied the teachings of Nisargadatta Maharaj and had had interviews with one of his disciples, the late Douwe Tiemersma.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;I like Nisargadatta&amp;#039;s book I Am That.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;I had also started practicing the meditation technique promoted by Maharaj. The technique consisted of quietly watching the sense of “I am.” The instructions found in his published dialogues were unfortunately rather vague and Douwe did not elaborate on them much. So during the retreat, I started experimenting with the basic technique, sitting mostly in a reclined position, with my eyes open.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Seeing those sensations of &amp;#034;self&amp;#034; as just sensations is a good idea. Investigating that sense is useful.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;I have recently read Anapanasati Sutta and, in retrospect, I think that the progression of at least the initial stages of my practice during the retreat &amp;#x2013; and perhaps even the later stages &amp;#x2013; closely matches the sutta’s progression. It seems that one spontaneously, naturally gravitates towards a universal path.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bliss 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;The practice intensified a few weeks into the retreat. For a few weeks, I sat for hours absorbed in wonderful bliss that got better each night. The boundaries of my body got weaker each day and I felt more and more spacious, expansive, not constrained to the physical body; in a non-dual state, I would say. As I read more about the rupa jhanas both in your book and elsewhere, I now think that I traversed them one by one and reached the fourth jhana.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Could also have been the A&amp;amp;P, as that stage tends to come early and really impress people, and not many get up to true 4th without going through the hard stuff (Dark Night), but then it might be 4th also, can&amp;#039;t easily tell without a lot more descriptors and probably not well without having actually been there to see what you were up to and how you were then.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;As you suggest in MTCB, bliss is nice but it is unsatisfactory indeed. So, after a while, I started playing around with sensate reality, trying to look at my experience of it from different angles and observe it. I wasn’t using any particular technique while doing that, just watching it as intently as possible.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have also spent a lot of time practicing in that sort of direct, unstructured, intuitive way and have enjoyed it and gotten a lot out of it. Trying to figure out how to balance a technique with that sort of approach if one of the great questions in meditation. I suspect that some fail because they can&amp;#039;t get beyond technique to just see how things are, and others fail as a lack of technique failed to provide the skill sets and control that allowed that intuitive approach to be done well.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Terror 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;Then one afternoon, without any warning, I had a panic attack. And during the couple of weeks that followed I had recurring anxiety attacks and otherwise continuous intense suffering. I understand now, thanks to my latest readings, that this was a Dark Night episode. I pushed through and reached a period of peace that again lasted for a week or two.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Very typical. Get used to these episodes, as passing through them is totally normal and gives an opportunity to see those things clearly. Strong concentration and clear focus on the sense-field as it is helps. That peace phase is very likely Equanimity, as the early stages do tend to be extremely linear and predictable. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Awakening 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;Then, one night as I sat in meditation, observing sensate reality, I caught sight of an object in front of me, nothing of any particular significance. And suddenly a psychic lightning struck. I woke up. When I say “woke up” I mean it almost literally. It was just like waking up from a dream and immediately realizing that you have been dreaming and that ordinary reality is the “real” reality. So I woke up: I was not who I thought I was. I was not the “Seer.” His identity had already weakened considerably due to sitting in meditation for extended periods of time. Neither was I the “Seen.” Actually neither of them really existed. I was the “Seeing.” Of course! What else could I be?! I had known this all my life! I had known it all along! The intensity of the initial experience subsided and I was left with a sense of “I” that felt more like a third person singular “it,” rather than a first; “I am” became “be.” That feeling lasted even when I was not meditating, albeit less strongly. You write about the weakening and the eventual loss of the “center point;” I tend to think this is the essence of my experience.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Alright, good insights regardless of map theory. Here&amp;#039;s where it gets tricky. Numerous things can do something like that, but obviously stream entry is what you are thinking about, and it is normal to think that, and it may have even been it, but, at least in the way I trained, the trick then is to see if you can do the things that steam enterers can do, such as cycle naturally, attain to Fruitions, and the like. Many other traditions don&amp;#039;t describe or emphasize those things, but they are good tests regardless, and sorting this out without them is not as easy as with them. I think that one of the worst things you can do to someone is to label something &amp;#034;stream entry&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;first path&amp;#034; or whatever that wasn&amp;#039;t, and so I am very reluctant to do it, particularly at a distance and over email, as it can really mess people up.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;All that said, those are very good, useful, key insights in general terms, and the real test is not what someone calls them, but how they help in your life and with your mind, and the degree to which you can integrate those into all of your waking experience, all they way through, to all sensations without exception.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intermezzo&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;After that experience, I entered a slightly calmer period, when I continued to sit in bliss for hours. This period was marked by a series of interesting blissful experiences, but no peak events.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;From the descriptions of formless realms in your book and elsewhere, I suspect that these later blissful states were the fifth and sixth jhanas. In the first phase of these states, the sky seem to open up taking me into a vast void. I had had the experience of vast space before, in what I now think is the fourth jhana, but this void was infinitely greater and had a very different quality. This was followed by a second phase where this void seemed to come alive and manifest awareness. I think now that my first awakening gave me access to the formless realms. I don’t think I have gone beyond the sixth jhana.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;They very well may have been those, or, if there was still some form, their near cousins: the formless variants of the 4th jhana, what I would call 4.5 and 4.6, meaning Equanimity.Space and Equanimity.Consciousness, which are still very useful and insightful things to have perceived and to be able to perceive, as they help dissolve false boundaries and wake the field up, or, said another way, allow the field to recognize its own intrinsic nature more easily.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;As before, there was something unsatisfactory about the arupa jhanas despite the immense bliss. I was after full awakening not just hours of bliss. So each night, after accessing these states and enjoying them for a while, I would start playing around with my experience of sensate reality, investigating aspects of it, such as attention moving around in the field of perception, depth, distance, space, awareness, etc.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Those are great things to investigate.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;In the background of all this, what was becoming more and more noticeable was an increasing sense of longing; it was making me push forward with ever more effort. This period lasted for a couple of months. Then I entered another period with even less intense psychic activity, but an even stronger sense of longing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So then, is that the end of Review and moving on to new territory? Entirely possible, again, hard to sort out over email.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bliss and Terror 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;The final leg of the 8 month period started sometime in December. My practice intensified again and gradually I entered another phase of fear and anxiety, my second Dark Night episode. This time the experiences were not so rough though. After I had come out of that phase, it felt like I was pushing for the last stretch of the journey; it felt like “something” could happen at any moment. And it did.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Cycling back again through these things again and again and again is very typical. Again, get used to it, as the nature of life is cycles.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Awakening 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;One morning, again as I was in blissful absorption, lightning struck a second time. It brought me out of my absorption back into everyday reality. And again I literally woke up. This time the realization was very different in quality and magnitude: The realness of the physical environment I was in dissociated itself in an instant from the environment itself and stood by itself; it left everything else as unreal. The realness of everyday reality was all that truly was; all else was mere images. My sense of being anything, an “I” an “it” or whatever disappeared completely as well. Only Reality existed. “I knew” somehow that this was the Unborn, Undying, Ever-Existing Absolute Reality; it was the Real. We see it right there in front of us all the time, yet it is hidden in everyday reality at the same time.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Again, regardless of any map theory, those are key insights, as you already know.&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;It was actually right in the middle of my very sense of being; it was my Real Self. (Here&amp;#039;s more fodder for the “no self vs. the real self” debate.) And again there was the same realization as before: Of course! What else could I be?! I had known this all my life! I had known it all along! I also realized that even the blissful non-dual states I sat in was not perfectly non-dual. Even all the unimaginably blissful states I had sat in were suffering compared to the bliss that I now felt. A whole world, a whole cosmos was lifted off my shoulders. I was laughing and crying at the same time.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Key insights, and then there are the layers of integration of those through layers of habit and layers of mind.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epilogue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;This experience lasted for about an hour and faded away, leaving me with a feeling of deep grief for having lost my “beloved.”&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;That feeling of deep heartbreak when it fades, which it often does, is also a kicker. How many times did I go through that? I lost count, but it hurt as badly every time.&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Since that day I have been trying to figure out what happened to me and where I am on the path. My teacher told me I was self-realized. How nice... But self-realized people were supposed to be stabilized in the Real; I definitely wasn&amp;#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;How to stabilize in that? See the same insights for layer upon layer, moment upon moment, with a mix of remembering that wisdom and yet realizing that the remembering is occurring now and is it. It really takes practice and maturation and doing it again and again and again and again, thousands of times for most. &lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;And I still suffered... In any case, there was the almost certain sense that I hadn&amp;#039;t completed my journey.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;That feeling of incompletion is a great one to notice as it happens, one of the key ones to be sure to gently include in the insight, in the wisdom, as a vital experience now, as it points directly to the next thing to see clearly, accept, and understand.&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;So I entered a much calmer phase on the journey that lasted around three years; I went on meditating, reading, investigating, studying various other traditions. I went through shorter and less intense Dark Night episodes a few more times. It felt like each time I would climb up and then slide back down a slope. Then, I found out that Buddhism expounds the concept of “stages of enlightenment.” This made much more sense than the all-or-nothing road map of Advaita I had been given.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Regardless of dogmatic tradition-supremacy wars, practically, the progressive/step-wise maps match closely with many people&amp;#039;s experience and help them normalize their journey and moderate unrealistic expectations, as well as allow them to embrace what is happening and put it into perspective. If you keep to the Simple Model in MCTB rather than the others, this should help.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The last 4 months&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;And around 4 months ago, I took the precepts from a Theravadin monk in Mumbai called Rahula Bodhi. During the small private ceremony, he also initiated me to anapanasati meditation (and then two months later to vipassana). I felt a beautiful powerful energy engulfing me and almost making me tremble. You can call it shaktipat I guess.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;I would call it the A&amp;amp;P yet again. It is very common for it to recur again and again and again in various forms, sometimes quick and subtle, sometimes dramatic, sometimes long-lasting, but again, as you realize, it leads to the next dark stuff like thunder follows lightening.&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;That event kick-started another phase in my development. I immediately entered into another bout with the Dark Night, which was fairly challenging, though nowhere near as tough as the first one that I had a few years ago. At the same time, the bliss that I felt on the cushion increased again, almost back up to the level I had experienced during my solitary retreat.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;It definitely helps to realize that we can do this again and again, to cross into the Dark Night again and again and to come out of it, and just knowing you can do that well and competently is a key part of things and helps people have faith to just stay with it when the hard stuff hits yet again.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;That phase of anxiety ended around three weeks ago and I now have a much more neutral yet pleasant stance towards life. I don’t quite know if I have pushed through to equanimity or slipped back down.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Most likely hit Equanimity, as, as the cycles go on, they tend to be more prone to moving forward with more inevitability.&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;In any case, in my daily life, I am a few breaths away from what is probably the fourth jhana. Almost wherever I am, I can slip into it with great ease.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Nice while it lasts. Fourth jhana: definitely the platform that deep insights come from.&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;What I experience in that state is the undoing of the knot of perception, possibly the center point you mention. In that state, there is no self as such, just awareness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;When you say &amp;#034;awareness&amp;#034;, what do you mean exactly? Something that is the same as phenomena, or something that is different from phenomena. It sounds like a semantic question, but is a good thing to examine, actually a key thing, actually the most fundamental question of all. If awareness is the same as phenomena, is there really awareness, or just phenomena pretending to be it? If this &amp;#034;awareness&amp;#034; is different from sensate phenomena, how can you possibly experience it?&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I tend to think this is anatta. Although, when I go deeper into that state, I also paradoxically experience a sense of “I” arising and subsiding with each sensation within that very sensation, a sense of “I” arising and subsiding wherever a sensation arises and subsides in my field of perception.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Try this one on for size: the sensations that have the content &amp;#034;I&amp;#034;, the feel of &amp;#034;I&amp;#034;, were always as they are, always of the true nature of things also, even if that was not clearly perceived. Once that true nature of those sensate patterns and qualities is clearly perceived, they are known to just be more textures and colors and flavors of transient, ephemeral, intrinsically luminous space, as they always were. Helpful?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Also, related to that, I feel there is an experience of what I would call impermanence, which is different from the way you describe it: When I get to the fourth jhana, I sit in what I could call expansive awareness or the mind not limited body &amp;#x2013; I don’t know how to label it; it is a nothingness that knows.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Are you sure about this? What sensations do you know this &amp;#034;nothingness&amp;#034; by? If you know it by sensations, isn&amp;#039;t it just more subtle aspects of the transient phenomenal field of sensations?&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Then a “macro-”sensation may arise, like the noise of a car passing by say, or the twitching of a large muscle. It appears out of that knowing nothingness without warning; it stays there for a while, creating a disturbance in the field of nothingness, like a star creating a curvature in space-time; and then it disappears completely as if it had never existed, leaving no trace whatsoever on that plane. It is impermanent. It does leave a trace on a separate plane, though, a plane that I could call the plane of memory perhaps? It can be clearly seen that the trace is just a “copy” of the sensation, a copy for the daily mind to work with.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Except that those &amp;#034;disturbances&amp;#034; must just be sensations, no? As they are just sensations, qualities and textures and the like, are they truly disturbances, or just more qualities? Is the &amp;#034;copy&amp;#034; actually a &amp;#034;copy&amp;#034; or just more sensations happening now?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; &lt;br /&gt;As for daily practice, since taking the precepts, I have been meditating for around two hours on week days and more than three hours each day at the weekend. In most meditation sessions, I start with anapanasati, get to the fourth jhana, stay there for a while and then start doing vipassana, using the body sweeping technique. After a short while, my body becomes a field of flickering tactile sensations, and the contents of my vision a field of flickering lights.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Excellent things to play with.&lt;br /&gt;Any of the above helpful?&lt;br /&gt;Just curious, how old are you, what do you do, etc.?</description> <pubDate>Sun, 12 Oct 2014 10:47:06 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5603412</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-12T10:47:06Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Did I "get" Stream Entry via Crazy Wisdom?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602794</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Morgan Kauppi:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Confusing in what sense? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the sense that you&amp;#039;re using &amp;#039;kensho&amp;#039; and &amp;#039;satori&amp;#039; in ways that don&amp;#039;t quite hew to the original meaning (as I understand it) in the Zen context. Then you &amp;#039;mic check&amp;#039; the Theravadan idea of &amp;#039;stream entry&amp;#039; and Chogyam Trungpa&amp;#039;s brand of &amp;#039;crazy wisdom.&amp;#039; I wonder if I&amp;#039;m even thinking of these things in the way you&amp;#039;re trying to convey.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The rest sounds like you&amp;#039;re searching for a lot of things and these retreats seem to fulfill that for you. If that&amp;#039;s the case, more power to you.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 11 Oct 2014 06:24:48 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602794</guid> <dc:creator>Small Steps</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-11T06:24:48Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Did I "get" Stream Entry via Crazy Wisdom?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602490</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Morgan Kauppi:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think it&amp;#039;s important to work with the mundane aspects of being human. To face your fear and get new experiences. That will probably make it easier to let go during formal meditation. And what kind of life do you want to wake up to? Your &amp;#034;mundane problems&amp;#034; won&amp;#039;t solve themselves just because you get enlightened...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;You&amp;#039;ve hit the nail on the head in many regards. Just been chatting with a friend about how difficult it is (for us at any rate) to practice mindfully when not on retreat... in the hub bub of the real world. But that&amp;#039;s very important to try and do too. We&amp;#039;re both familiar with the monastics of the Thai Forest Tradition over here (UK) who are often pointing out the value of living in community and how that can be just as great a teacher as going off into the hills. To quote her: &amp;#034;&lt;span style="font-family: verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;helvetica&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;....and also don&amp;#039;t feel that sitting alone does it - things come up in community living that would take longer to come up in sitting&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ajahn Chah said something along the lines that if sitting was all you had to do then there would be a lot of enlightend chickens around!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 12px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 19:21:55 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602490</guid> <dc:creator>Piers M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T19:21:55Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Did I "get" Stream Entry via Crazy Wisdom?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602474</link> <description>Yes, for sure the state gives insight. Lots of not-self insights and non-agency insights --- nothing is in charge and everything seems just fine as it is. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s probably best to think of the benefits as one of purification. There is no way you are going to be as greedy or aggressive or needy after you&amp;#039;ve felt that things are fine and simple. Sometimes people get a blissful experience of non-agency, sometimes people get depersonalization, which can be the evil twin of non-agency.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The sneaky thing is in most flavors of that experience (I don&amp;#039;t want to speak definitively, because ultimately I really can&amp;#039;t know exactly what you&amp;#039;ve experienced) there is still a very subtle sense of &amp;#034;I&amp;#034;-ness. I am in satori, I am equanimous with how things are, everything seems rich and full and juicy and ultimate to &amp;#034;me&amp;#034;. That&amp;#039;s what makes EQ tricky. It too is a conditioned experience. But it&amp;#039;s a damn clean conditioned experience!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;By the way, congratulations. Having that experience is a rare and difficult thing. Obviously you didn&amp;#039;t &amp;#034;make&amp;#034; it happen, but still it&amp;#039;s a credit to your practice. Hope you keep exploring!</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 18:34:23 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602474</guid> <dc:creator>x x</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T18:34:23Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Did I "get" Stream Entry via Crazy Wisdom?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602219</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;x x:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;So.... I would say no, you did not get classical stream entry. If you want to apply one model to the other, probably the closest coorelation of presence/trantric satori is the &amp;#034;Equanimity&amp;#034; nana. Here&amp;#039;s the important thing: you were aware of your satori, right? Then it was a state of awareness, not the stream entry insight. Equanimity/presence is VERY tricky, because it seems like nothing could be higher than it. But you have to ask yourself, can I tell that this is something different?, something unique, something recognizable, something that I can see as existing in someone else&amp;#039;s experience like the girl you locked eyes with?  If so, then it is a state, not an insight.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks, that made things clearer. Yes, probably a state, but it gave insight also. It&amp;#039;s just weird that Theravada says nothing about the state I found myself in. It was a kind of equanimity you couldn&amp;#039;t will yourself out of, because the will was temorarily unavailable. One guy told me that it has happened that people must be led through the airport by other retreatants after the retreat, because they can&amp;#039;t take care of themselves. They were still in satori, and stayed there for days(!). Why haven&amp;#039;t I heard of this state before? Chances are that it is documented in other spiritual traditions, but which and what is it called? What properties does it have? What benefits does it bring? Etc, etc...</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 10:18:53 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602219</guid> <dc:creator>Morgan Kauppi</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T10:18:53Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Did I "get" Stream Entry via Crazy Wisdom?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602211</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Small Steps:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Your post sounds confusing. I looked at that link you provided re newtantra and read as far as, &amp;#034;Learn how to give and receive 20 minute full body orgasms,&amp;#034; before I closed the tab (may be nsfw, so I&amp;#039;d rather not find out).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sounds fishy, but you obviously thought it was useful enough to go through two retreats.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As far as your experiences go, what sort of insights came out of it? Did you experience any lasting, permanent shifts in your experiential reality? Sitting around spaced out for a few hours at a time doesn&amp;#039;t even sound all that appealing to me, even at the risk of never catching the eye of my soul mate...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Confusing in what sense? Sounds fishy, yes, and very &amp;#034;unspiritual&amp;#034;. I have led a few meditation circles, and I&amp;#039;m fed up of people nodding politely to each other, not saying what they really mean, and not really meaning what they are saying, &amp;#034;trying&amp;#034; to be &amp;#034;spiritual&amp;#034;. The retreat was so refreshing! Couples discussing their relationships in front of everyone (about 40 retreatants), asking for feedback, etc. People freaking out. People getting completely new sexual experiences. And when someone said something profound, people&amp;#039;s kundalini was triggered and their bodies were shaking &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;. If someone told me I wouldn&amp;#039;t believe it. I have found a new range of human experience that until now has been completely unknown to me. Very valuable.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s too early to say anything about the permanent changes. I feel very open to other people, but that might be because I haven&amp;#039;t really landed yet. The satori experience was not about &amp;#034;catching the eye of my soul mate&amp;#034;, but more about the realization that you are (seemingly) trapped inside yourself, and that a &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; deep connection with other people is possible. That inspires me to continue on the path!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think it&amp;#039;s important to work with the mundane aspects of being human. To face your fear and get new experiences. That will probably make it easier to let go during formal meditation. And what kind of life do you want to wake up to? Your &amp;#034;mundane problems&amp;#034; won&amp;#039;t solve themselves just because you get enlightened...</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 09:56:22 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602211</guid> <dc:creator>Morgan Kauppi</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-10T09:56:22Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Did I "get" Stream Entry via Crazy Wisdom?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602061</link> <description>Your &amp;#034;tantric satori&amp;#034; probably lines up best with the more general spiritual term &amp;#034;presence&amp;#034;. Presence is both the goal of practice but also the foundation for practice --- it&amp;#039;s a wierd paradox, but you basically start with presence and then increase your ability to maintain it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Presence based practices are actually quite different from noting or concentration based practices, and frankly it&amp;#039;s a big disaster when proponents of both sides get in a room and argue what is best. No one wins and everyone loses.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Eyes open meditation seems to lead to a different &amp;#034;display&amp;#034; of spiritual experiences. They don&amp;#039;t tend to get jhanas or cessations in the same way. Some people argue that this means that open eyed meditators don&amp;#039;t get enlightened, but it could also mean that they just don&amp;#039;t have the same symptoms... even if they wind up waking up just the same. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So.... I would say no, you did not get classical stream entry. If you want to apply one model to the other, probably the closest coorelation of presence/trantric satori is the &amp;#034;Equanimity&amp;#034; nana. Here&amp;#039;s the important thing: you were aware of your satori, right? Then it was a state of awareness, not the stream entry insight. Equanimity/presence is VERY tricky, because it seems like nothing could be higher than it. But you have to ask yourself, can I tell that this is something different?, something unique, something recognizable, something that I can see as existing in someone else&amp;#039;s experience like the girl you locked eyes with?  If so, then it is a state, not an insight.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Very trick stuff! Hope this helps at least a little. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now that seems to diminish presence to just a theravadian nana... but actually cultivating presence is a very fast way to cut through a lot of limitations, to really purify experience... which is as much the heart of spirituality as anything else.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2014 23:26:10 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5602061</guid> <dc:creator>x x</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-09T23:26:10Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Did I "get" Stream Entry via Crazy Wisdom?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601987</link> <description>Your post sounds confusing. I looked at that link you provided re newtantra and read as far as, &amp;#034;Learn how to give and receive 20 minute full body orgasms,&amp;#034; before I closed the tab (may be nsfw, so I&amp;#039;d rather not find out).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sounds fishy, but you obviously thought it was useful enough to go through two retreats.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As far as your experiences go, what sort of insights came out of it? Did you experience any lasting, permanent shifts in your experiential reality? Sitting around spaced out for a few hours at a time doesn&amp;#039;t even sound all that appealing to me, even at the risk of never catching the eye of my soul mate...</description> <pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2014 20:53:34 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601987</guid> <dc:creator>Small Steps</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-09T20:53:34Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Did I "get" Stream Entry via Crazy Wisdom?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601647</link> <description>Interesting post. I will try to address your questions...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;1. Is tantra satori the same as zen kensho?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Alright, first of all, zen also uses the term &amp;#034;satori.&amp;#034; At least, Rinzai does, Soto is more of a &amp;#034;you are already enlightened&amp;#034; school. My admittedly limited understanding of satori and kensho is that kensho is a temporary experience of enlightenment, while satori is permanent. I don&amp;#039;t know how tantra&amp;#039;s satori and zen&amp;#039;s satori line up.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In brief: kensho is a peak experience, satori is a permanent increase in enlightenment, probably similar to the Theravada path moment. Since your experiences of satori did not last, I&amp;#039;d say that they are more appropriately called &amp;#034;kensho&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;2. Is tantra satori the same as Theravada stream entry?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;I think that Zen satori is the same as Theravada path moments, because they are ever-deepening experiences of enlightenment that are permanent. As for tantra satori, I have no idea how they line up. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;3. Did I &amp;#034;get&amp;#034; stream entry, or do I have to delete my post and hide forever? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Well, in Theravada stream entry is marked by a cessation and a permanently reduced sense of self, as well as things like cycling and jhana access. Can you call up a fruition? Do you cycle? Has your sense of self been reduced and stayed that way?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s hard to really diagnose you, because trying to line up wisdom traditions can be difficult, especially western and eastern ones. Furthermore, it seems that this school of tantra is borrowing the zen term &amp;#034;satori,&amp;#034; and zen tries to be purposefully mysterious and vague. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;However, the temporary nature of your satori&amp;#039;s leads me to hesitantly say no, I don&amp;#039;t think you got stream entry. Then again, maybe there is more to the story than what you posted.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;No need to delete your post, it&amp;#039;s always fun an interesting to read about experiences in other traditions! </description> <pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2014 14:24:08 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601647</guid> <dc:creator>Eric M W</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-09T14:24:08Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Did I "get" Stream Entry via Crazy Wisdom?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601602</link> <description>I believe I was close to stream entry &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;3769601"&gt;a couple of years ago&lt;/a&gt;, but lost momentum due to all responsibilities connected to family life. I decided to use parenthood as a vehicle to decrease my ego, and wait for a more suitable time in life to do serious meditation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I found a western tantra school called &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;thenewtantra&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;"&gt;The New Tantra&lt;/a&gt; that is using the methods of &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Crazy_wisdom"&gt;Crazy Wisdom&lt;/a&gt;. I attended a level 1 retreat in May this year and came home from a level 2 retreat six days ago. The idea is that instead of “life denial” use the sexuality as a springboard to the spiritual. In an intimate situation you are vulnerable and more easily open up. Issues like shame, guilt, romantic dreaming, codependency, fear of rejection, emotional or intimate neediness, need for outer approval, etc, are addressed at the retreats.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The second night of the four day retreat begins with an exercise called “non-interference”. Everyone are using outer attributes (I don&amp;#039;t dare to tell you the details &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;) to put yourself in such an odd situation that you don’t take yourself so seriously. You open up. You don’t really know who you are any longer. The ego is confused. Then you get approximately the following instructions:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Close your eyes and listen to the teachers’ voice. Focus in into your head, and then down your throat, and down through the whole body down to the feet. Then focus out to outer sounds. Open your eyes and stay focused on outer stimuli during the whole exercise. Forget yourself. When you feel ready, go to the middle of the room (the floor is covered with mattresses). Lie down and let the body do whatever it wants, without interference from thoughts or emotions - &amp;#034;be&amp;#034; spontaneous, but don&amp;#039;t really do anything actively, follow the least resistance. Almost like Shikantaza. Roll around, crawl, interact with someone, space out, etc. No rules.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;During the exercise I gradually found myself in a very deep state (called &amp;#034;satori&amp;#034; in tantra, and this was confirmed by the teacher the day after; &amp;#034;multiple satoris&amp;#034; he said). I could not speak. I had almost no thoughts. It was hard to keep track of time. I didn&amp;#039;t move much. Sometimes a limb moved, and then suddenly the whole body &amp;#034;froze&amp;#034; in the current position for several minutes, and then moved again, etc. At one point I was lying down on the floor and closed my eyes. I don&amp;#039;t know for how long. When I opened my eyes I was looking straight into the eyes of this beautiful soul. She was in the same state and we looked into each others left eye (another exercise in this tantra school). It was the deepest connection I have ever made with anyone in my life! I saw myself in her. She reflected my ego. I saw my attachment and my aversion. Truly amazing. Weird. We did that for an hour maybe, and then started to interact with other people again.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I felt I had been given a gift, and wanted to pass it on. I &amp;#034;tried&amp;#034; to connect with other retreatants via eyecontact and body language (I could still not speak). Only one got the message, and couldn&amp;#039;t resist my gaze. It lasted for a few minutes maybe. The day after he appoached me and told me essentially what I had experienced myself with that girl - it was the deepest connection he had ever made with anyone in his life!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;At a later point during the exercise I was sitting on a bench and was really spaced out. Another retreatant approached me and asked if I was on drugs. I half-way broke the state and explained that I had not taken any drugs, not even alcohol. She was not convinced &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;. She left and I went deeper again. Suddenly my head moved 90 degrees to the right and I again looked straight into the left eye of that beautiful soul who I interacted with earlier. She was standing at a distance from me. After a few minutes she approached me, and we gazed at each other for I don&amp;#039;t know how long. Tiredness made us finally pop out of satori.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It seems like satori only can be communicated if both are in satori, and it will be a wordless communication. It cannot even be communicated between these two minds when they have popped out of it. I was so deeply disappointed when I realized that, and was too baffled to be able to speak about that insight. I realized that when you pop out of satori you are thrown back into fundamental loneliness again, where any communication with another mind will be tainted in some sense.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That realization made me very sad, and I was holding back during the sharings. I felt like a bottle with tears that tried to empty itself through a too small opening. I feel very grateful for the experience of being so deeply connected to someone.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the level 1 retreat the teacher said that the tantra “satori” is equivalent to the zen “kensho”. In the kensho Wikipedia article there are &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Kensh&amp;#x25;C5&amp;#x25;8D&amp;#x23;Contemporary_accounts"&gt;a couple of contemporary accounts&lt;/a&gt; that are very different from each other, which confuses me. They are quoted below.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This account of kensho sounds like what I experienced at the level 2 retreat. My experience lasted for hours and I was very spaced out:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&amp;#034;[...] One day as I walked by, I looked at the hill and it was truly amazing. I was totally lost as if there was no &amp;#039;me&amp;#039;. I stood gazing at the hill. Some students walked by and one of them said something like &amp;#039;look at that crazy monk&amp;#039;. Finally I came out of it. [...]&amp;#034;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This account sounds more like stream entry as described in MCTB:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&amp;#034;At around midnight on the seventh and final night of my practice, the boom of a bell from a distant temple reached my ears: suddenly, my body and mind dropped completely away. [...]&amp;#034;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1. Is tantra satori the same as zen kensho?&lt;br /&gt;2. Is tantra satori the same as Theravada stream entry?&lt;br /&gt;3. Did I &amp;#034;get&amp;#034; stream entry, or do I have to delete my post and hide forever? &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2014 13:10:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5601602</guid> <dc:creator>Morgan Kauppi</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-09T13:10:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Can you diagnose Edmund from Long Day's Journey Into Night ?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5600134</link> <description>What would Edmund have been experiencing here, in Theravada map terms ?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;youtube&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;watch&amp;#x3f;v&amp;#x3d;0wx6DW8YVz4"&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wx6DW8YVz4&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2014 00:16:24 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5600134</guid> <dc:creator>John</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-07T00:16:24Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Can you diagnose Arthur Koestler ?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599753</link> <description>what i have said here, i take it away. Its probably streamentry.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 13:40:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599753</guid> <dc:creator>Rist Ei</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-06T13:40:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Depression disappeared forever</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599697</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Edd:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I turned these forum posts into a blog post if you&amp;#039;re interested. In the intro I define the distinction between &amp;#034;sadness&amp;#034; and &amp;#034;depression&amp;#034;: http://www.personalpowermeditation.com/how-i-beat-depression-forever/&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thank you. I know someone who says she frequently suffers from depression. Next time she mentions it, I&amp;#039;ll refer her to your blog post.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 11:29:39 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599697</guid> <dc:creator>Derek Cameron</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-06T11:29:39Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Depression disappeared forever</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599646</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Derek Cameron:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;This is an amazingly good post, Edd. I see it was written a couple of months ago. Have you been completely free from depression these last two months?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The longest period of &amp;#034;depression&amp;#034; I have had since discovering the method (including the last two months since writing this post) has been 2 days.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This has happened twice. And another couple of times lasting 1 day each. So that&amp;#039;s a total of 6 days spread out over around 5 months.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;However, all these periods followed &lt;strong&gt;actual life events&lt;/strong&gt;. So I consider them natural, probably required, periods of sadness, reflection and change. Each of those periods was followed by a solution being found (an insight, a change in path, an acceptance or what not) and was extremely valuable to me. So I think that&amp;#039;s normal, and I would not even necessarily WANT to &amp;#034;get rid&amp;#034; of that type of sadness. I know how to go through it now and learn the lesson of what it&amp;#039;s trying to tell me, and that skill really came from when I figured out the method in the original post.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Compare that to &amp;#034;useless depression&amp;#034; which is just cycling with no actual shift occurring. I turned these forum posts into a blog post if you&amp;#039;re interested. In the intro I define the distinction between &amp;#034;sadness&amp;#034; and &amp;#034;depression&amp;#034;: http://www.personalpowermeditation.com/how-i-beat-depression-forever/&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In that sense, I have not been &amp;#034;depressed&amp;#034; since discovering the method.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Edd</description> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 10:04:46 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599646</guid> <dc:creator>Edd</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-06T10:04:46Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I turned into a wolf, and it was great.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599317</link> <description>Yes power animals. I&amp;#039;ve read a few books on shamanism including by Harner but never really looked into it and aren&amp;#039;t aquainted with anyone who&amp;#039;s a practitioner. There&amp;#039;s the Native American thing about the vision quest, I believe, when adolescents would (or still do) go off into the wilds on their own for a while to get a vision to find their personal animal, if I have that right.&lt;br /&gt;[edit Actually, looking at the Amazon page for Cave and Cosmos there&amp;#039;s a description of several vision quest techniques.]&lt;br /&gt;Partly I never really looked into it much because, at least, when I was much more into meditation the point was that these things don&amp;#039;t matter so much so why chase the experience ?  I suppose that&amp;#039;s an evolution of the sort of buddhist and hindu philosophy from the shamism that preceded it ?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Which prompts me to ask - are there people in tribal societies who eschew shamism for a more ascetic and philosophically pure path - so, say, you have the ordinary tribes folk, the shaman, and some oddballs who don&amp;#039;t go for either but prefer pure contemplative pursuits ? Or do those people get run out of town ?</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 20:32:03 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599317</guid> <dc:creator>John</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T20:32:03Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I turned into a wolf, and it was great.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599311</link> <description>I guess meditation is aimed at changing how you perceive things, not the content of what you perceive so zen teachers aren&amp;#039;t too fussed about what comes and goes, and seeing animals is probably a universal experience for everyone whether in zen monastery or Siberian forest. &lt;br /&gt; And posture is closely related to mood bi-directionally I think, so not only will mood affect your posture but vice versa and it sounds like the emphasis on correct posture is similar in a way to what body language experts teach about how to get salary raises from the boss - it helps set the right frame of mind.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 20:24:10 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599311</guid> <dc:creator>John</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T20:24:10Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I turned into a wolf, and it was great.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599208</link> <description>Wolves are pretty common &amp;#034;Power Animals&amp;#034; encountered in shamanic journeys, I think there is something in the human psyche about wolves. They represent power and intelligence.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m reading a book on shamanism right now, and there&amp;#039;s a section where a woman is explaining how she became one with a wolf in one of her journeys. She also felt extremely hot (A&amp;amp;P?) when it happened.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The book is called &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;amazon&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;Cave-Cosmos-Shamanic-Encounters-Another&amp;#x2f;dp&amp;#x2f;1583945466&amp;#x2f;"&gt;Cave and Cosmos&lt;/a&gt;, by the same author of The Way of the Shaman. I think both are &amp;#034;required reading&amp;#034; for anyone who stumbles into powers territory, which almost everyone does when doing vipassana.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 19:04:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599208</guid> <dc:creator>Eric M W</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T19:04:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Depression disappeared forever</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599017</link> <description>This is an amazingly good post, Edd. I see it was written a couple of months ago. Have you been completely free from depression these last two months?</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 18:41:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5599017</guid> <dc:creator>Derek Cameron</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T18:41:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I turned into a wolf, and it was great.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598720</link> <description>I was thinking the other day - I do animal rescue, and I have this soft spot for the large, black-haired dogs that people don&amp;#039;t want to adopt. Maybe that is where  my black wolf came from? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Still, I am going to read about shamanism. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I would like to explain the way I feel about Zen, to you from an insider&amp;#039;s perspective:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;Just sitting&amp;#034; leaves you open to all kinds of experiences. The key is you just observe what is happening and don&amp;#039;t make too much of it. The main thing teachers will correct is your posture, and then you are left on your own! &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But, there is that collective energy of compassion of love that comes from sitting, and the ceremony (the other place where a lot of direction from the teacher goes on) has the same feeling. I feel like I pick up on everyone&amp;#039;s energy/vibe/whatever, and every session has a different energy depending on who is there. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There is also a lot of subtle humor in Zen that is really fun. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I guess I can&amp;#039;t say it is not organized, monastic, and clinical, but when you hit the sweet spot (of course, I can&amp;#039;t tell you how &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;) it is truly sublime.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyway, not lecturing to you, just letting you know what I&amp;#039;ve experienced.&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;pinterest&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;pin&amp;#x2f;create&amp;#x2f;extension&amp;#x2f;"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 17:57:10 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598720</guid> <dc:creator>Rachel Lane</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T17:57:10Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I turned into a wolf, and it was great.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598715</link> <description>That is an intriguing experience. I wonder what the deal is with wolves?!?!</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 17:46:30 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598715</guid> <dc:creator>Rachel Lane</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T17:46:30Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I turned into a wolf, and it was great.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598712</link> <description>I&amp;#039;ve definitely entered Dark Night territory. It is manageable because 1) I have bipolar disorder, and the Dark Night, as you explained in your book, mimics mental disorder, so I know how to deal with it 2) I&amp;#039;ve decided to sit back and observe it, not borrow trouble. (I would like it to be over though.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am having trouble getting myself to sit and to go to Zazen, and I&amp;#039;m spending too much time playing video games and binging on Star Trek.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I guess you just have to go through it until it&amp;#039;s over?</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 17:41:02 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598712</guid> <dc:creator>Rachel Lane</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T17:41:02Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598708</link> <description>I&amp;#039;ve investigated the contractions and breathing patterns a bit more, read some more in the MCTB and come up with some arguments for why I might not have reached cause &amp;amp; effect or any nana or jhana at all...&lt;br /&gt;1) I do not remember having had any unitive feelings nor do I understand the &amp;#034;dualistic split&amp;#034; from my own experience, so I probably have not even reached mind &amp;amp; body. &lt;br /&gt;2) The contractions/spasms seem to start in the diaphragm. Also, most of them seem to follow upon a pause in the breath after a very short out breath. So I thought that maybe the whole reason of the contractions is that there is too much carbon dioxide left in the lungs after breathing out short, so my diaphragm contracts forcefully in order tp push it out. &lt;br /&gt;What do you think about this theory?&lt;br /&gt;Even if this theory would be true, could there be some hope that the out breaths become too short because of meditation progress? Maybe I could test this through doing something other than meditation, maybe watching a movie, while in meditation posture and seeing if I get any spasms. If I do, then the phenomenon might be causes by the posture rather than the practice it self. That would be sad...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Edit: On second thought, and after a few more sessions, the second theory seems a bit far fetched since far from all twitches start in the diaphragm. That is a relief.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 17:37:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598708</guid> <dc:creator>Pål</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T17:37:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I turned into a wolf, and it was great.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598705</link> <description>My teacher is very open to any experience we have during Zazen. He doesn&amp;#039;t explain them the way people do here. I think Zen is just different that way. I actually don&amp;#039;t consider my Zen. I just live in an area where this is the only sangha, albeit a wonderful one that I love and respect. There are other members that are Tibetan, insight, etc., so it gets eclectic sometimes.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 17:32:34 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598705</guid> <dc:creator>Rachel Lane</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T17:32:34Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I turned into a wolf, and it was great.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598696</link> <description>My teacher smiled, and said &amp;#034;Cool. Wonderful.&amp;#034; ? I guess that is Zen for you. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/smile.gif" &gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;pinterest&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;pin&amp;#x2f;create&amp;#x2f;extension&amp;#x2f;"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 17:23:08 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598696</guid> <dc:creator>Rachel Lane</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T17:23:08Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Mental health problems after stream-entry</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598682</link> <description>Thanks Piers &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 16:42:11 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598682</guid> <dc:creator>Kim Katami</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T16:42:11Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Depression disappeared forever</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598526</link> <description>I feel like I overcomplicated everything but still nice you liked it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In reality its just reality choosing to experience itself effortlessly, just like it feels it should experience itself rather than struggling to construct something that it doesn&amp;#039;t feel like constructing, like eg. constructing some &amp;#039;self&amp;#039; watching reality. Instead of forcing world to be experienced like watching through self keyhole I experience world as it is and keyhole perspective is allowed as long as it doesn&amp;#039;t obstruct natural expression of world. Those two realities &lt;u&gt;CAN&lt;/u&gt; be combined and my suffering existed only because I assumed that they cannot and it seemed more important for survival to have this keyhole perspective and I grasped it not seeing that it not only made background bliss of experience experiencing itself to be obstructed but also made me not see my whole self with it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Oh, and by &amp;#039;whole&amp;#039; I mean not knowing of everything but knowing of everything that there is to know at the moment. If everything is realized that there is now to being realized then it is truly full realization, there is nothing more to realize, even if few moments later other things might be needed to being realized to still live in full realization. Suffering starts when we try to not realize something or change how we experience stuff. It is not changeable and there is only suffering in not realizing what is now. Bliss of this moment will be hell when it is not there anymore in the future but always going for what actually is to be realized is like being always in bliss. Causality aside if one experience his/her suffering openly, fully, then there is no suffering. Only suffering we do not let in to ourselves is the suffering that is suffering.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ps. I might be enlightened in knowledge and suffering-free most of the time but I still from time to time fall for old traps. Does that quality for enlightenment. I do not know... probably yes but definitely not for full-blown 100% om-non-non quality enligthtenment ;)</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 10:42:48 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5598526</guid> <dc:creator>Paweł K</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T10:42:48Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: another spinning</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597998</link> <description>From what I understand you&amp;#039;re looking at theta waves here -- hypno and hypnapompic stuff, which is where you start to get hallucinations. Audible, visual, tactile and proprioceptive hallucination (like your spinning) are the common ones. I think why OOBE is coming up in this conversation is because these are classic OOBE exit precursor sensations -- it&amp;#039;s the territory from which you can initiate an exit. In fact, at that point you&amp;#039;re probably mostly out! Might want to look up some exit techniques if this is a state you can access frequently (nix that suggestion, I see above that you&amp;#039;re familiar with the Monroe stuff).</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 01:06:13 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597998</guid> <dc:creator>John M.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-05T01:06:13Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597931</link> <description>One more thing:&lt;br /&gt;If these &amp;#034;meditation spasms&amp;#034; would disappear even though I continue meditating as much as I do now, would that be a sign of regress? Is there a fenomenon that might  replace the spasms in my next step on the path? </description> <pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2014 22:10:58 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597931</guid> <dc:creator>Pål</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-04T22:10:58Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: another spinning</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597914</link> <description>It&amp;#039;s maybe something that people experience in the course of their day to day life, but it just seems a bit special to me because it came at night. What do people really mean when they say they are giddy with excitement and such ? I haven&amp;#039;t really got the impression that such things mean the same though, so maybe it is just a relaxation phenomena. I&amp;#039;m sure I remember someone else telling me they had the same thing. I could google it now.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2014 21:43:24 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597914</guid> <dc:creator>John</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-04T21:43:24Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I turned into a wolf, and it was great.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597908</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Eric M W:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;One other thing-- merging with the form of an animal is a classic shamanic experience, almost every indigenous culture has some variation on this. I recommend Michael Harner&amp;#039;s &lt;em&gt;The Way of the Shaman&lt;/em&gt;, there is a chapter on Power Animals that you might find interesting.&lt;em&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is isn&amp;#039;t it ? I&amp;#039;ve don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;ve heard about this being something that happens in eastern style meditation before, certainly not in zen type meditation which seems (from an outsider&amp;#039;s perspective) so organised, monastic and almost clinical.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So how likely is it that cave art, or carvings such as those on Gobekli Tepe and other places have such an origin - without getting too woolly about it ?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And is this sort of event also found in other contemplative traditions like christian asceticism and sufism ?</description> <pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2014 21:37:08 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597908</guid> <dc:creator>John</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-04T21:37:08Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597903</link> <description>Ok, so in most meditation methods we are more or less always partly practicing samatha and partly vipassana. That&amp;#039;s relieving, probably means I can continue making progress with the method I&amp;#039;m currently practicing even though it&amp;#039;s mostly samatha, right? &lt;br /&gt;By the way, could you give examples of suttas that divides meditation into concentration and insight? Would be an interesting read.&lt;br /&gt;Thank you so much for your help!</description> <pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2014 21:35:42 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597903</guid> <dc:creator>Pål</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-04T21:35:42Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597553</link> <description>The Samatha/Vipassana thing is complicated.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There are clearly suttas where the Buddha divides the two, others where they are integrated. Without going into some long textual debate, the practical reality is that there is an axis. The more one looks at things as being smooth, pleasant, analog, the more one is doing samatha. The more one looks at things as being discrete, individual, transient sensations and notices that suffering caused by the tention in the illusion of duality, the more one is doing vipassana.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That said, in real practice, nobody can stay totally to one side or the other, and, in real practice, people oscillate from one side to the other to some degree.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, it is nearly impossible to do pure jhana in a samatha sense and not see some of the true nature of phenomena and gain insight, and it is also nearly impossible to be doing strong vipassana practice and not chance into the samatha jhanas at times. What happens more often than not is what is described in sutta MN 111 where we get into something jhanic and then see some of their true nature and then get into the next jhana and see some of their true nature.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In this way, we get into Mind and Body, which is very samatha in general terms, and then get into Cause and Effect and the Three Characteristics, which are very vipassana, then get into the early A&amp;amp;P, which is very samatha in general, then get into the later part, which is very vipassana, then get into Dissiolution, which is very samatha, then get into Fear, Mistery, Disgust, etc. which are very vipassana, then get into early Equanimity, which is very samatha, then get into late Equanimity, which is very vipassana, this all being a generalization.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thus, they are at once different things and also integrated. I talk some about this in a video here: &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;vimeo&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;69475208"&gt;http://vimeo.com/69475208&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, if you are having the experiences you are having, those are clearly stages of insight experiences, regardless of what practice you are doing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The stages of insight are very normal things to just show up, even in non-trained, non-meditating people, as is commonly reported here (as hundreds of people have posted about), and much more so in people doing various meditative practices, including those who are just trying to do samatha or jhanas or whatever they wish to call them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Helpful?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Daniel</description> <pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2014 08:12:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597553</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-04T08:12:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597527</link> <description>I didn&amp;#039;t even think I was doing insight practise. From reading the suttas I&amp;#039;ve drawn the conclusion that the dividing of meditation into concentration and insight practise does not come from the Buddhas teaching. It really seems in the suttas, especially Maha-Saccaka sutta, that his method is simply attaining the first four jhanas and then directing ones attention to the three hogher knowledges (of past lives and of the nature of reality). A division into concentration and insight practise does not seem to be necessary. This is why Thanissaro Bhikkhu&amp;#039;s method felt right to me. I thought that if I am doing one of &amp;#034;samatha&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;vipassana&amp;#034; it must be &amp;#034;samatha&amp;#034; since you have to get to the fourth jhana to get any insight, according to the suttas fron what I&amp;#039;ve read there and in the writings of T.B. So I&amp;#039;m very suprised that you say I&amp;#039;ve made progress in insight.&lt;br /&gt;Can you do that through concentration or have I been doing insight practise all pf the time? The method consists of 1) becoming aware of the breath 2) going through the body with attention on how the breath feels in the different parts 3) changing to full body awareness of breathing.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2014 05:38:39 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597527</guid> <dc:creator>Pål</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-04T05:38:39Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I turned into a wolf, and it was great.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597432</link> <description>Thank you! That does sound interesting.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2014 03:21:01 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597432</guid> <dc:creator>Rachel Lane</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-04T03:21:01Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Weird 'coincidences' arising in high equanimity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597404</link> <description>Wonderful! Thank you.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2014 01:15:49 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597404</guid> <dc:creator>x x</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-04T01:15:49Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Weird 'coincidences' arising in high equanimity</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597387</link> <description>I experienced quite a few s&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;ychronicity in high-equanimity. Here are a few:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On one occasion, I was having lunch with my uncle, who is a Catholic priest, at his retirement home. I was leaving in the following days for a retreat in Thailand and it was clear that my uncle was worried that I was going on the wrong path (Away from Jesus, in his conception of spirituality). It&amp;#039;s worth nothing that beside being in high-equanimity, I had a bit of lsd in my system. Another catholic priest, that I never meet before, show up at our table and start to make interesting comments. He look me in the eye and says:&lt;br /&gt; &amp;#034;You look like a guy of knowledge and wisdom, spiritual wisdom, am I right?&amp;#034; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I look again in his eyes and there is a moment of mutual understanding but I am still somewhat perplexed. He add: &lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;Sometimes, the young have more wisdom than the old&amp;#034;. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I perceive this to be a reference to the spiritual confusion of my uncle, so I wink at him to acknowledge that I get the reference. The priest start laughing at this point, as we are both &amp;#034;on the joke&amp;#034; at that point. The priest keep talking in a way quite aligned with the Dharma, and out-of-the blue make reference to Buddhist monks (not even knowing about my plan to go on a Buddhist retreat), underlining the universal nature of spirituality and we exchange a few &amp;#034;dharma jokes&amp;#034;. Sadly, my uncle never got the point, but the encounter allowed me to be more at ease in the face of my uncle anxiety. I went to meet the priest a few days later to discuss about spirituality. He feel like someone who has completed a part of the path but since he didn&amp;#039;t have much guidance in the Catholic church, didn&amp;#039;t get to the end of it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Later that day, my uncle made the comment that  &amp;#034;Rien n&amp;#039;arrive au hasard&amp;#034; (nothing happens by chance). It really struck me and the thought stayed in my mind and was constantly coming back. A bit later, we are looking at books in my uncle library. My uncle open a book &amp;#034;randomly&amp;#034;, and the title of the chapter at that page is &amp;#034;Rien n&amp;#039;arrive au hasard&amp;#034;! My uncle is all excited and keep telling me &amp;#034;Isn&amp;#039;t that a fantastic coincidence, we talked earlier that nothing happens by chance, and I just open this book by chance and there it says it!&amp;#034; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Earlier, my mind was stuck with doubt about the idea, but at that instant, I totally believed that &amp;#034;nothing happen by chance&amp;#034;. So, I look my uncle in the eye and tell &amp;#034;So, you didn&amp;#039;t open the book by chance, since nothing happens by chance&amp;#034;, feeling that some sort of fundamental confusion was to be resolved, a feeling enhanced by the lsd, but my uncle didn&amp;#039;t notice the contradiction in his statement. It was an opportunity to see that the things that happens to us and the things that we do are one of the same, that our dualistic view of the world lead to contradictions in our language, but I was left alone with that reflexion.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The almost same things happened again a few weeks later. I was harassed by the same confusion, simply worded differently. This time, it was &amp;#034;Everything happens for a reason&amp;#034;. My mind was obsessed with making sense of that statement (I can&amp;#039;t remember how it got into my mind, maybe something my wife said to me). I had a Christian mystic healing book with me that I hadn&amp;#039;t read, and I &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;purposefully opened it &amp;#034;randomly&amp;#034; in hope of some answer. &lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; There was the first sentence: Everything happens for a reason. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A few weeks later, my wife and I stopped by a temple somewhat randomly. We had the choice of driving to the top, or climbing the stairs. I suggest the stairs, feeling that it&amp;#039;s the noble thing to do. It was a very hot day and a tedious stair to climb and the thought that I kept having during the climb where of this kind: there must be a reward for those willing to make an effort. At the top of the stair, a &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;bhikkuni is swiping the floor with a traditional broom. My wife and the bhikkuni barely exchange a few words and the bhikkuni instruct us to go to a temple not far where a group of bhikkuni are living together. My wife knew that bhikkuni by reputation, as she is believed to be an arahant but live a very recluse life. My wife noted later that we would not have meet her if we had use the car to get to the top. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The temple the bhikkuni directed us to ended up being a very nice discovery. They are a group of about twelve bhikkunis, they ordain in Myanmar or Sri Lanka (it&amp;#039;s against the law to ordain as a bhikkuni in Thailand), one was from Tibet and they were all highly educated and speaking very good English (a rare thing in Thailand). I had a lenghly conversation with the bhikkuni that teach the Abhidhamma and Pali, and she really knew her stuff (but she isn&amp;#039;t an arahant by her own admission). My wife go on retreats form time to time at this temple.&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2014 23:27:07 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/pt/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5597387</guid> <dc:creator>Simon T.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-03T23:27:07Z</dc:date> </item> </channel> </rss> 