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Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map

I'm done with trying to understand what's what in whichever sutta, which state in this tradition is which in another, or with whether or not AF and Buddhism can be reconciled, or which jhana is which depending on...seriously, I'm just done with entire thing. The reasons are overly complicated to go into here, basically I'm stripping away everything from my practice and adopting more of a freestyle approach. I don't know enough about any one specific map of the territory to be able to confidently talk in those terms, much as I thought I did at one time, and my understanding of what constitutes this state or that state isn't sufficient for me to be able to use terms like "jhana" or even "EE" and know that I'm definitely talking about the same thing.

When I say "freestyle", what I mean is using the techniques which work for me and describing them in my own terms, not on the terms used by the tradition from which they originate unless absolutely necessary. You could describe my current practice as a combination of attentiveness to sensuousness, anapanasati sutta-based meditation, and unfabricated paying attention but I won't be describing the results of my practice in these terms. I'm sticking to basic phenomenological detail, no terminology unless required, and as simple, down-to-earth, and practical as possible so as to avoid any confusion. Obviously I'm not doing anything new here, it's not that I'm trying to create my own map of the thing, but I've learned that trying to frame this stuff in specific terms just isn't helpful for me anymore and leads to me getting confused.

I've been practicing in this way for the last few weeks with a marked increase in the sense of wellbeing, happiness and contentment I experience so I know that I'm still doing things correctly, but being able to drop all the categorization and mapping of the thing has been more freeing than I could have imagined. I'll update the thread whenever 'cause I'm not letting it become a task in itself, but hopefully something useful will come of it.

T

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/9/12 2:54 AM as a reply to Tommy M.
Excellent plan.

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/9/12 12:52 PM as a reply to Tommy M.
I heard there are some good maps laying out what to expect of that kind of practice.

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/9/12 2:48 PM as a reply to Tommy M.
Not sure if this is what's happening in some way with you, but thought I'd chime in. Something I have noticed with myself: the tendency of the mind to parrot experiences can be a tricky one to work out. Parroting as in - sometimes states, stages, and details of one's own experience seems the same or similar to the experiences of other practitioners one regularly hangs around. At times when it seems my experience has been very closely aligned with others who are practicing similar methods, I have found it useful to take a step back from interaction, to sincerely test my own experiences without outside input to see what might really be happening.

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/9/12 3:12 PM as a reply to Tommy M.
My teaching is not a philosophy. It is the result of direct experience...
My teaching is a means of practice, not something to hold onto or worship.
My teaching is like a raft used to cross the river.
Only a fool would carry the raft around after he had already reached the other shore of liberation.


My other favorite quote involving the word "fool:"

worldly fools search for exotic masters, not
realizing that their own mind is the master. -bodhidharma

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/9/12 3:33 PM as a reply to Tommy M.
Kūkai:
Do not follow the ancient masters, seek what they sought.

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/9/12 8:16 PM as a reply to Tommy M.
Here's something that I totally found inspiring when I first read it and still find inspiring today. From one of SKD's first posts on the DhO:

S Kyle:
I am not fan of assessment, so while I was able to use MCTB to verify what some of the experiences I was having were, the more complicated maps make my eyes glaze over. It's just not my thing. I am a teacher and I also hate evaluating students through assessment methods; I am much more associative than I am technical. So while in meditation all kinds of interesting things would happen and you know my feeling was like "whatever." I mean it was cool, but I was nonplussed. As Daniel says at one point in MTCB that more than events in meditation is what the experience of suffering is like after one feels they have attained something. And this is where my interest lies--in the cessation of suffering.


Link here:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/762725#_19_message_743166

What inspired me is that she seemed to be focused on what was actually important and then, sure enough, she got it done.

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/10/12 4:27 PM as a reply to Steph S.
Not sure if this is what's happening in some way with you, but thought I'd chime in. Something I have noticed with myself: the tendency of the mind to parrot experiences can be a tricky one to work out. Parroting as in - sometimes states, stages, and details of one's own experience seems the same or similar to the experiences of other practitioners one regularly hangs around. At times when it seems my experience has been very closely aligned with others who are practicing similar methods, I have found it useful to take a step back from interaction, to sincerely test my own experiences without outside input to see what might really be happening.

Aye, it's definitely something I've noticed myself doing before and is one of the reasons for this change in tact.

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/10/12 6:07 PM as a reply to Tommy M.
10/01/12

Mornings have become easier, there's more of an instant "ping" when waking up and for the last few days I've almost sprung up to my feet. Applying Daniel's suggestion from the Hurricane Ranch tapes to see things as if you're on vacation is a great way to work and I thoroughly recommend it if you haven't already tried it. The whole j'amais vous thing that Richard talks about becomes much more readily experienced with it, and combined with simply paying attention to what it is to experience the senses as they do what they do it's a really nice way to go about your day.

While sitting in work, the sunlight shone across the screen of the computer and revealed that wonderful purity for a few minutes before things went back to being just generally pretty good. There's a constant but subtle sense of things just happening by themselves, that's not meant as some sort of claim in terms of where I think I'm at with this thing, but over the last two or three weeks there's been a lot of more noticeable changes in normally mundane things e.g. washing my hands is sometimes like a symphony of pure sensations, putting them under the hand dryer in work is great fun too...and yes, it sounds like naive, stupid or childish but I honestly couldn't give a flying fuck. emoticon

To be attentive is to just simply be here, not to let mental objects or impersonal sensations drag "you" away with them. There's, what I'd describe as, a grasping for mental objects that happens when a thought comes up that leads to more of "me" arising through "my thoughts" about that object. Catching this as it happens and investigating what led to it happening is fun and stops it happening, this puts an end to a lot of really basic crap that fogs things up.

I was lying down last night just following the breath, sutta-style, and I can now differentiate more between what some have described as the "affective" pleasure, as in the vibratory overlay that happens, and the clearer, more bodily pleasure underlying it. Seeing how we add that mental aspect to it by reading it as being something I like weakens it, keeping doing it makes it go away but, so far at least, I haven't quite gotten the hang of stopping it entirely. Yet.

Then again, as I just said "yet", I know that there's is no such thing as a "yet" outside of my own mental conceptions of what that is, based on an idea about time existing, or how there's a "back" or a "forth" in anything really. Intellectually I know it's all happening right now, and even as my fingers dance rather crudely, and with a lot of retyping or deleting along the way, it makes perfect sense that this is it...but clearly something hasn't quite clicked yet. Thankfully a friend who's done the whole AF thing suggested investigating intent or impulsion which has been really interesting so far, he also pointed to a few aspects of things that were really helpful in terms of understanding what's been done and what still needs to be looked at.

With that in mind, I was looking at intent closely today and have been quite surprised by some of what's been found. I learned, among other things, something about the impulse to control another person or to dominate a situation. I watched how my own behaviour changed in response to how people reacted or spoke to me and immediately questioned what it was that was causing that to happen. For example, I talk to people on a phone all day and I know a fair bit about how to do this job well (I also have a "cool voice" according to other people. Ha!). How to talk to people and how to turn situations around in often heated complaints involves a lot of subtle cues and non-verbal stuff, but I didn't quite realize how pervasive that mode of communication can be in normal life and how we're always trying to control things, or get something out of it for ourselves.

Anyway, I just realized what time it was and remembered I had something to do so I'll sign off. The adventure continues.

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/13/12 3:35 PM as a reply to Tommy M.
Freestyle practice, freestyle notes...what follows are some notes I took during work today, I don't quite know how useful they'll be to anyone else but I'll post them anyway. (The numbers are the times I wrote the notes.)

1005 - Wanting to stick the fingers up at someone. Why? To express my annoyance at them? Why? Because they sounded rude and were asking stupid questions. What made them stupid questions? Their lack of understanding and me viewing their questions as being stupid. What would sticking the finger up at the screen do? Nothing. Would it make me feel any happier? No. Harmless? No. What feelings arise at that point? Urge to act, to express "my" feelings on the matter, a gesture. Does that make sense? Not at all, it's something I saw people doing years ago when I first started working in this environment. Is this helpful then? No, of course not. Are you done with it? Yes.

If anyone's ever worked in a call centre, you'll no doubt be familiar with people sticking their fingers up at difficult callers while talking to them. Obviously they can't actually see you doing it but, if you're being controlled by impulse, it satisfies that desire to do something to "get back at" that faceless voice on the phone. I looked at that impulse today and found it, after that point if that feeling happened, mainly annoyance or irritation, it could no longer become that action so I figure this is a pretty practical example of this part of practice. The part about finding their questions "stupid" is another story, but more on that another time.

Why annoyance? Interrupted. From what? Doing what "I" want to do. What would that be? Reading, thinking or not taking calls. But I'm in work so what I am meant to be doing while I'm here? Working. So why am I not just doing work and looking for reasons to waste time? Boredom. Who's bored? Me. Why? Nothing to do. Really? Well, not really but nothing that "I" WANT to do. How does that lead to feelings of boredom? It's not really boredom when I examine it closer, it's just unsettledness and a sense that I'm much rather not be working here overall, but working somewhere else more enjoyable. Yes, but you already know that it's up to YOU how you feel from one moment to the next and the where you are isn't something you can change right now.


1052 - Listening to ungrateful person in here. Does that affect you? No, of course not. The ears hear it, there is a mental tension as I would like this person to stop being so ungrateful. Why? Because it's unpleasant to be so. For who? That person. So why should you feel that way? I could say that it's because I don't want them to continue to cause their own suffering, but it's only part of the reason, the other part being because it annoys me to hear people being so unpleasant simply because they're selfish. But why does that irk me? It reminds me of when I've been that way. But that's not happening right now is it? No.


1112 - Happyish. Why qualify that with an "-ish". Because happiness isn't the prevalent feeling, there is still unease but mildly so. Remembered that awareness is just happening. I'll write a note to stick to my computer to remind me of this, incorporate with HAIETMOBA as a non-verbal attitude/outlook. Noticing this is the case leads to a subtle sense of lightness happening within "me".


1118 - Timecheck. HAIETMOBA - Lightness in the head/3rd eye area (3rd eye is symbolic of the observer, not literal.) Remembering this leads to recalling that the entire chakra system is a mentally-applied map which is placed over the entire body map.

Something about the chakra system became quite clear the other night, for the first time I saw it as a purely mental construct being overlaid onto this experience. I knew it was just another useful map through previous experiments with belief-shifting, but seeing it happening (which isn't the best way to describe it as it was more about noticing the subtle tensions involved and how they related to certain affective states) was useful for letting go of it completely.

Some random notes...
1138 - HAIETMOBA - Opening of space, sense of a very fine, subtle "airyness" right there.

1152 - Tension in stomach just below navel. Colleague gets annoyed and I notice my shoulders rising up as if preparing to do something. Slightly unpleasant but noticeable nonetheless.

1325 - Eating pasta for lunch, colours are vivid.

1328 - Flavour. Amazing!

Those little flashes of purity, even something as simple as the taste of a supermarket, own-brand spicy chicken pasta, make this entire practice highly recommendable.

I like keeping notes like this, freeform and unplanned, just writing down exactly what's happening whether it's wondering yourself into oblivion or typing on a keyboard while talking to yourself. Ha!

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/13/12 4:02 PM as a reply to Tommy M.
cool notes.

workplace annoyance and the "i would rather be doing something more fun than this" mind is a tough, really tough, one to crack. mostly because i think the not wanting to be at work because it sucks that i need this job to pay living expenses and wouldn't be here if i didn't have to be... argument... is very familiar to retreat to, but ultimately super played out and besides the point. what have you investigated beyond that?

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/13/12 4:14 PM as a reply to Steph S.
Steph S:
cool notes.

workplace annoyance and the "i would rather be doing something more fun than this" mind is a tough, really tough, one to crack. mostly because i think the not wanting to be at work because it sucks that i need this job to pay living expenses and wouldn't be here if i didn't have to be... argument... is very familiar to retreat to, but ultimately super played out and besides the point. what have you investigated beyond that?


i have lot of difficulty with this one, too. probably single worst cause of suffering in the past 2 years. makes me want to not be a householder anymore and come back to work once AF. which again is a very tired played-out loop... so i'm curious about what you guys have found

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/17/12 2:58 PM as a reply to Steph S.
what have you investigated beyond that?

I've gone quite deeply into this area because it's been a constant issue and I've been looking at it for a long time, there's a lot of different factors involved for me that came up as a result of exploring it. Initially there was a lot of stuff to do with the whole alpha male/provider conditioning and roles in relationships, social situations and all that hilarity, but as investigation has continued there's been an unraveling of a lot of resentment over things I hadn't really thought about, mainly due to being averse to them.

It's a thread worth mining, a lot of social identity stuff is involved and there might be some sneaky little beliefs hiding away in amongst them.

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/17/12 3:48 PM as a reply to Tommy M.
Emailing myself notes from work is funny, like sending a message to some imagined future incarnation to tell them what was going on at a particular moment in time expect not. Or something. Maybe. What was I talking about again?

0625 - Not clear
0641 - Eyes seeing, distance to the back of the office is quite deep looking from here. This position facing no particular direction.
0646 - Slight tension at navel area, shallow vibration, quite slow.
0655 - Unhappiness/sadness for a moment
0701 - Tiredness, sluggish but not unpleasantly so.
Bitter aftertaste of coffee is apparent.
0809 - 'external' Object → sense consciousness → mental activity (mind object) → affective overlay.
0830 - Chest, spreading across w/mid-wave
0849 - Ha!
0853 - Pleasant, balance. Tension at the base of the spine.
0919 - Paranoia, mental images of possible ways of getting in trouble in work.
1048 - Unease, solar plexus fluttering, small diameter circle of warmth in itself not unpleasant.
1052 - HAIETMOBA - Smile, softness, still. Pleasant.
1054 - Mental confusion while on the phone, not unpleasant - concern afterwards about how it would be perceived by others.
1057 - Fear about employment future.
1102 - Happens immediately after a call - mental image of managers investigating something or plotting behind my back.
1137 - doubt based on something clearly affective

There were some random notes from Saturday morning which I'm posting here mainly for my own reference as the issue with concern about work and stability of employment is something I'm working on. I've come to realize it is entirely fabricated by "me", it seems that this basic fear of losing a job is something "I" spin off by myself based on misreading events as they happen e.g. I ended up not going into work until 1200 today due to waking up with a hefty migraine, as soon as I got in I noticed how all of my thoughts and the way "I" was thinking about things was all based around the (completely imagined) idea that I was going to get pulled up for being late again. Silly things like seeing a manager walking past and immediately assuming that they were going to sack me, or hearing some echo feeding back on the phone line which then causes a thought about having my calls listened into...madness. On reading that back, it sounds like mental illness but that's what I was watching happen and all of it caused by a groundless fear of losing my job. On the upside, it didn't lead to a mood or any sort of unpleasantness beyond the initial tension being observed.

Human beings are crazy motherfuckers.

I sat formally last night again for the first time in a few days, sutta-style breath stuff, and just maintained a panoramic awareness of things while staying with the breath. Anything seen as being given any more attention or as giving rise to a sense of "me" was seen clearly as more empty phenomena arising without this body actually doing anything to cause it. Doing this continually and returning to the breath when required led to a phenomenal level of pleasantness which, as End has also mentioned and we've briefly discussed on another thread, has something of a synesthetic brightness or luminosity which is really quite something when concentration is high. It began most clearly at the chest and rapidly filled the entire body, not in an A&P-like way, much more bodily felt and less "whoa!" about it, before expanding outwards, almost thinning out, and becoming more subtle.

At that point, I moved the focus to the edge of the body and vipassinated (I just made that up, basically meaning to have applied vipassana to...Ha!) any sense of an affective edge to the thing. By this I mean that I "mashed up" those sensations implying an edge beyond the body and what could still be perceived as being the purely tactile sensations being experienced by the body, after a few minutes of doing this any sense of the body vanished completely. However, I have to admit that I could still hear intermittently and so I don't want to say that this was a definite experience of 5th jhana. It's for these sort of reasons that I'm avoiding that terminology as much as possible.

I could probably add more notes about some stuff from today but I've got some stuff to do so I'll finish up here.

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/17/12 7:40 PM as a reply to Tommy M.
Hi,

Tommy M:
I ended up not going into work until 1200 today due to waking up with a hefty migraine, as soon as I got in I noticed how all of my thoughts and the way "I" was thinking about things was all based around the (completely imagined) idea that I was going to get pulled up for being late again. Silly things like seeing a manager walking past and immediately assuming that they were going to sack me, or hearing some echo feeding back on the phone line which then causes a thought about having my calls listened into...madness. On reading that back, it sounds like mental illness but that's what I was watching happen and all of it caused by a groundless fear of losing my job. On the upside, it didn't lead to a mood or any sort of unpleasantness beyond the initial tension being observed.


Were you feeling guilty? If yeah, why?

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/17/12 8:07 PM as a reply to Tommy M.
Tommy M:
I sat formally last night again for the first time in a few days, sutta-style breath stuff, and just maintained a panoramic awareness of things while staying with the breath. Anything seen as being given any more attention or as giving rise to a sense of "me" was seen clearly as more empty phenomena arising without this body actually doing anything to cause it. Doing this continually and returning to the breath when required led to a phenomenal level of pleasantness which, as End has also mentioned and we've briefly discussed on another thread, has something of a synesthetic brightness or luminosity which is really quite something when concentration is high. It began most clearly at the chest and rapidly filled the entire body, not in an A&P-like way, much more bodily felt and less "whoa!" about it, before expanding outwards, almost thinning out, and becoming more subtle.


Please write more about this "brightness" as you have more experiences with it, so we can figure out how it works.

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/18/12 8:20 AM as a reply to Null Velle.
Were you feeling guilty? If yeah, why?

I know what you mean here but the details are a bit more complex than what I've written suggests, feeling guilty was only one small part of what was being felt and I know what caused that to arise. There's a whole background to what I'm talking about here that I haven't gone into much detail about, mainly because it'd likely be incredibly boring for others to read.

Thanks for the pointer though, and welcome to the DhO!

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/18/12 8:25 AM as a reply to End in Sight.
Please write more about this "brightness" as you have more experiences with it, so we can figure out how it works.

Will do.

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/18/12 12:20 PM as a reply to Tommy M.
Hello everybody,
I've not posted for ages and it feels good to be back. I'm very interested in what Tommy is up too because my own practice is going very much in that direction; no maps, just awareness. After all what's the worst that can happen?

My interest was particularly piqued by talk of "brightness." For a while I was studying with Kenneth Folk, and the core of it was direct pointing at emptiness, true nature of mind or Dzogchen. If I my memory serves correctly, there are 3 characteristics to look for, looseness and luminosity were two and i forget the third. My point is that Tommy's description sounds very familiar to what I call luminosity. I used to stumble into this spontaneously before Kenneth pointed me directly at it. So maybe that is what is being described here, maybe the edge of something else.

Please excuse me if you are already familiar with this stuff and have moved on a bit.

RE: Freestyle Practice: Exploring Without A Map
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1/18/12 2:17 PM as a reply to Howard Clegg.
Hiya Howard, long time no see!

The "brightness" thing I'm talking about isn't the same as what Kenneth was pointing at, it's something that seems to be more related to getting into jhana using the methods and descriptions in the suttas. I can see why it might have sounded like that but this is the fun n' games of trying to describe this sort of stuff without creating confusion, hopefully I'll be able to describe it more clearly once I've investigated it more.