Steph S:
Then it's simple! All you have to do is remember how to incline the mind in the fruitful way. Here are a few of my thoughts on the matter which I wrote to Tommy earlier... let me know if any of them are helpful. (Comments by others are also welcome... especially if I am saying something inaccurate.)
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Notice how sometimes you come across a phrase, and it strikes you the right way, and suddenly you can be attentive/sensuous as a result of the phrase? Then that works for a bit, but then it slips, so you recall the phrase again, and it works... but then it diminishes in effectiveness until a day or two later, you remember the phrase and nothing happens - it stopped working. Or you're in a good state of mind and you want to remember it for later, so you make up a phrase of your own, but that, too, stops working before long.
I think the issue here is one of remembering at the wrong level. If you remember the phrase, you are basically remembering a concept and associating a 'feeling' with it... the type of conceptual construct that is not present in a PCE. I think the proper mental inclination conducive to attentiveness/sensuousness - aka when things are going well - is at a level 'under' concepts / coming before them. So, if you try to remember it with a concept, you will 'step out of it', form the concept, form an affective memory of it, then perhaps remember the inclination (since you only stopped a few seconds ago) and 'step back into it'. But when you try to recall it, you try to do so affectively, and thus you only get the affective stuff that was on top of the inclination... the inclination itself is forgotten. Two days later you'll wonder how it ever worked. This might also happen when you read a post that strikes you really well, and you can be really clear/sensuous for a bit as a result, but when you re-read it later it doesn't happen anymore. You're forming a memory at the wrong level.
So, what is the right way to do it? In a word: mindfulness. Mindfulness is strongly related to remembrance, in my experience. It's the ability to remember even that way to incline the mind that comes before concepts. In actualist terms, it is attentiveness/sensuousness. Or perhaps more accurately, the remembrance of attentiveness/sensuousness. Mindfulness is present still in a PCE, in a sense ("
Apperceptiveness is its own attentiveness moment by moment") - it is what allows a PCE to occur ("in attentiveness, there is an observance of the ‘reality’ within, and such attention is the end of its embrace ... finish."). Thus mindfulness is more elemental than concepts, and more powerful as well. A 'self' cannot end a 'self', but mindfulness can.
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You need to get a taste for mindfulness... it's kind of like remembering a looooooooong train of thought (one that started when you first started looking for freedom, or perhaps at first PCE, or perhaps when getting close to EE for the first time.. or actually prob one that existed before 'you' formed in the infant brain, as it is the default state of the brain). Except, it isn't a concept-based, 'me'-based, train of thought - it isn't narrative thinking. It's just that touching of consciousness to itself (apperception).
Try asking yourself: will I remember this moment tomorrow? And see whatever is activated. I don't mean describing everything in your visual field, I mean just remembering the moment. I don't mean the particular feeling you are having, but remembering the moment. The same thing might be activated when you ask HAIETMOBA and nothing gross comes up (so just the experience itself comes up as the answer). Try to find the 'remembrance' aspect of it. After all, what better way to remember the present moment than to observe it in as attentive a way as possible?
Another pointer might be the state of mind in a good Equanimity nyana, when you are paying attention to everything yet not spacing out yet, especially High Equanimity as it gets further + further refined, right before a fruition/path-moment... which is similar to the feeling in the 8th jhana, that lets you stay in it and know it (to what extent it can be known at that point), before you come out of it due to some thought arising about the jhana itself.
When I first activate mindfulness in this way after not having done it, it feels like forgetting, because the conceptual-level processes have to stop (which feels like they are being forgotten), and because one of the first things I remember when starting to be mindful is for how long a period i hadn't been mindful prior to that. It kind of feels like going between two worlds - not mindful and mindful. When mindfulness kicks in I remember the previous times I was mindful and how great they were, and potentially feel ashamed that I had been lacking it so much before. I sometimes stop at the shame. Go through the shame - the other side is wonderful.
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For anything conducive to more mindfulness/attentiveness to settle in, to the point where it affects your practice effectively (i.e. moment-to-moment experience), it needs to sink in to the level of mind that comes before the 'self'. You have to remember it. It has to go from short-term to long-term to ingrained- memory. You can spin concepts about it all you want, but what will stick is the concepts (affective memory) and not the inclination (non-affective memory). The image I get is sort of like something filtering through a sieve - through 'me' - down to a deeper level of mind.
When you want to remember how you are experiencing the moment of being alive, if it is a productive way: Keep the intention or whatever you want to remember in mind. Do it now, if you are getting something out of reading these words. Really - don't keep reading until you've sincerely resolved it.
Then, activate mindfulness, as described earlier - that flavor of attending which is o-so-sweet and counter-intuitively simple. Don't attend specifically to the intention - directing your mind at it like that will turn on the conceptual brain. Yet it's not something to fight, either. Just be mindful. And when you find that conceptual mind has kicked in - that in itself is being mindful again, so just keep being mindful as before whenever that happens. It can feel kind of frustrating, cause it is (and
maybe this is a good pointer) like remembering something without being allowed to think about it. In fact you can think about it - pure thoughts - but unless you're in a PCE it'll likely be narrative thinking ('me'-based). Keep it in your mind, but don't spin thoughts about it.
Nothing else will work. Trying to remember inclination to mindfulness by writing reminders to yourself about it will not work, cause by the time you look at the reminder, you will have likely forgotten the inclination, and the words are unlikely to bring back that aspect of experience. Or they might, at first, but if you don't realize that it's the deep-level mindfulness that is the remembrance and think it's the words, it will grow less+less effective until you look at those words you wrote to yourself when you were so happy and harmless and wonder how they ever were of use to you.
And this can be really frustrating... cause nothing will work, except this moment-to-moment being mindful. But maybe that can also help, since you know not to put energy into anything else.
When I do this sometimes, what seems to happen is that there is a downward trend of actually forgetting what it was I am trying to remember. I will feel like it's forgotten and there will be an emotional reaction to it. But here, if I start going into thoughts again, it will definitely be gone, since I'll be distracted. On the other hand, if I keep the mindfulness going, it will pop back into my head relatively soon.
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Another take on it is that, the fact that you are suffering, indicates there is an attachment. The cause of it might not be in conscious memory... but it is accessible; if it were totally forgotten, then it wouldn't come up since 'I' wouldn't know how to react to 'it'. You can think of mindfulness as slowly and subtly and carefully digging down and remembering why you were suffering in the first place.
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In conclusion: If you just came across a great realization, or when you are being particularly mindful/(attentive/sensuous)... don't slack. Activate that mindfulness(attentiveness/sensuousness) even more. And understand that what helps keep it going is not thinking about it on a conceptual level, but just that very mindfulness... It is your best bet at remembering it.
And next time you notice you are trapped in a horrendous loop and things are painful, remember: spinning in thought about it or chasing it this way and that will not work. What will work is just this mindfulness. Activate it by remembering the activation of it in the past, and once it starts coming on-line, remember it even more, again at that subtle level of the mind that comes before conceptual thinking, and keep going, and going, and going, and do nothing else until there is nothing else to do.
What is the
path if not remembering how not to suffer?
Richard:
This exquisite surprise brings with it ecstatic relief at the moment of mutation … life is perfect after all. But, then again, has one not known this to be so all along? At the moment of freedom there is a clear sense of ‘I have always known this’.