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Claims to Attainments

I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!

I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/26/13 11:09 PM
Not only does it seem that I have I been here in the Dark Night for most of my life, it manifests in the most insidious ways imaginable. Strangely, it manifests as fooling me into thinking that I am transforming it into equanimity and even cycling through attainments. Unfortunately, it always reveals itself for what it actually is, the Dark Night over and over again. It's like the universe is saying, "Ha ha! Fooled you again!

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/26/13 11:38 PM as a reply to J E B.
J E B:
It's like the universe is saying, "Ha ha! Fooled you again!


The universe often calls me a Fool but I've learned to take it as a compliment. The Child-Fool is our naiveté and sense of wonder, our exploration into the less traveled paths, and excitement from what we discover along the way. He is our symbolic vision and sees not with the eyes but through them. He dissolves the complex with his laughter and does not fear the catabolic forces of nature, the cycles and laws which he is obedient to. Inter-personally, the Fool represents the peculiar innocence and even ignorance from which we each seek to rise through leaps of faith. That faith is really in ourselves. It is the inner awareness that we are born to experience all that is, and the eventual realization that our inner being and the external world are not two separate things, but operate according to the same principles and ordinances.

The Fool is one who has resolved the metaphysical and epistemological conundrums which confound the philosophers and men of science. His spirit is not "trapped" in matter, for he understands that matter is spirit; so how can spirit be trapped by spirit? Maya (or illusion) is not Matter, but the absurd, omni-directional, and reflexive template imposed by men's minds upon matter, or nature. It is by this artificial mental matrix that men are contained and confounded, and not by nature. The Fool smiles at the absurdity of those who cannot see passed their own phrenic fallacies as they peer, with scientific hubris, into the voids.


Can nature possibly be as absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments? - Werner Heisenberg


To avoid the truth that we are captured by our own projections, humanity has fashioned the pernicious and unsustainable lie that "base matter" is the prison of "spirit." Locked behind this folly men everlastingly batter the door to salvation forgetting, all the while, that the true key to freedom is held in their own clenched hands. The absurdity persists in their equally convoluted "Eureka" theorems, which lead nowhere but back on themselves, back to the original quandary which echoes perpetually through the sterile laboratories and seminaries - "What the hell is going on!?"

It is said that the Buddha himself was asked about this very question of liberation. He replied to the inquirers that, in regards the mystery of human liberation, there is both bad news and good news:


The bad news is that there is no key to the door of freedom. The good news is that the door was never locked
- Buddhist Legend


The Fool's litany is the Song of Innocence, a vision preserved by the world’s eternal children. Theirs is the circle of the bubble, effervescent and intensely fragile. Theirs is the ecstasy of the intangible. The Universe meets the Fool's simple needs because he refuses to live in excess. He is content to survive on the feast of his daily bread and asks for nothing more. He never thinks of, or begs for, the bread of tomorrow, of the week, the year or the lifetime. In this way he never knows want and his bowl is always full. With this reverent attitude he can keep his mind and heart alert, innocent, and receptive to the strange symphony of life, the beauty and perfection all around him and of which he is a part, rather than a spectator. He knows that only by living simply can many others be allowed to simply live. For the Fool, there is only the beginning, only the thrill of the first step, the first discovery. Yesterdays and tomorrows mean nothing. For him only the present exists because he is present. Each morning when he awakes, like a student at his first class, he prepares a blank mind for the day to write upon.


RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/27/13 10:24 AM as a reply to Hermetically Sealed.
So when the world of silly men forces me to look at their hyper-reality and threaten to exile me from their so-called-all-encompassing world-view, I should just say, "Tra luh lah luh lah!" And go on my merry little way? Hoping that some super-food-fruit falls from the trees each and every day while I skip my merry little way through their hyper-delusional yet highly imposed, hierarchical systematic little drama play? Well, I think a rubber room awaits for all the meditation-time I could ever hope to contemplate!

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/27/13 3:27 PM as a reply to J E B.
J E B:
So when the world of silly men forces me to look at their hyper-reality and threaten to exile me from their so-called-all-encompassing world-view, I should just say, "Tra luh lah luh lah!" And go on my merry little way? Hoping that some super-food-fruit falls from the trees each and every day while I skip my merry little way through their hyper-delusional yet highly imposed, hierarchical systematic little drama play? Well, I think a rubber room awaits for all the meditation-time I could ever hope to contemplate!



Though the evidence is all around, and though the "engines" of the Beast throb and shudder everlastingly, the truth goes undetected by the hylic "Everymen" whose rapid arrival to, and departure from, the theatre of time and space prevents clear insight into the workings of the well-oiled machinery which operates behind the "Wheel of Samsara" (existence). Moreover, these erstwhile actors, caught in their mundane roles, perform better when they believe that they think with the mind, not for it. They offer their services in exchange for access to, and receipt of, the many endowments and powers that intoxicate their waking and sleeping dreams. Through its colossal adventure, the collective mind rewards those who serve its purpose, demoting, and conspiring against those who do not, or will not. It has fashioned both heavens and hells for this express purpose. The "Puppet-Master" covets those individual minds who can assist it in its super-secret agenda, its devouring of experience and framing of the world into its own monstrous likeness. The pawns who are recruited to assist in this conquest rarely comprehend what lies behind their personal ardors, their mistakes and discoveries, their rise and fall, or suspect that they are participants in a timeless transaction, mere bubbling test-tubes in a vast unholy laboratory, their personal value lying solely in their designated functions, and not in their selfhood. In the laboratory of the Beast, and in the social hive, we have our assigned duties to carry out, duties which are performed better when we believe ourselves to be operating under our own volition. Our periodic failures, during the vast experiment, are due to our supposed nemesis ignorance, while our periodic successes are, in total, our ticket to supposed salvation and enlightenment. This is the life-act which enslaves ephemerals and eternals, angels and devils all.

The Escher- or Dali-Fools, who have looked behind the god-game, and who presume to speak or teach the truth do so at their own peril. Far from being rewarded or exalted, they are vilified, and branded "Renegade." Every attempt is made to silence their audacious voices, and confound their antinomian philosophy. They are the cracked test-tubes, or corrupted data files, to be trashed and deleted. The Beast attributes little actual value to the problematic individual, only to the species. It may experience the occasional "failure" on the ontological (individual) front, but the plaque of its phylogenetic (collective, historical) success is proudly posed above its penthouse desk, so to speak. Unhindered by the brave resistance and resignation of foolish iconoclasts, the mighty wheels of the demiurge relentlessly grind on. Slowly, through its particular form of osmosis, the worm-like mind ingests the stuff of reality, reducing it to processed dust in its "dark satanic mills." All the long while, during its Sisyphean Labor, the ego-tyrant fails to realize that the phenomena which it imagines as "external" and antithetical to itself is really an apparition, or epiphenomena, of its own convoluted processes and that, in its efforts to dominate matter, it has succeeded only in further enslaving itself. Its window to the world turns out to be a mirror. In Blake's terminology, Urizen's chains are his necklaces.


I am not denying that great gains have resulted from the evolution of civilized society. But these gains have been made at the price of enormous losses, whose extent we have scarcely begun to estimate - Carl Jung (Approaching the Unconscious)


The world, and its apparent content, is an image within our own minds that we condition ourselves to believe is an external reality. The principle incarnate architects and exponents of this lie enjoy titles like "philosopher," or "scientist," but they neither love wisdom, nor see further than their own perplexity, their own "Newtonian Sleep." The Fool is one who awakens to this paradox. He is awakened after hearing the ambient pulse and whirl made by the giant machinery of the omnipresent mind-game, the all-pervading, relentless and terrible rhythm unheard by those intentionally deafened by the clamor of thoughts, words, ideals and deeds. Upon his awakening, the Sage-Fool arrives at the peripheral wall which stands between the real and the unreal. He sits down in its shadow and remains silent, listening to it. There he puts an end to his struggle, his desires to own, command, understand or prize that which is unreal. The unreal, by being unreal, eludes ownership. It cannot be possessed, known, held or even destroyed. Only the mind which conjures the unreal, and desires it, can be silenced. The ego which adamantly and feverishly attempts, incarnation after incarnation, to find the world, and not its own countenance, framed in its ancient mental mirror, must eventually smash the glass, and end its vain quest, in order to really experience the nameless and everlasting Tao.


Who can free himself from achievement, and from fame, descend and be lost, amid the masses of men? He will flow like Tao, unseen, he will go about like Life itself with no name and no home. Simple he is, without distinction. To all appearances he is a fool. His steps leave no trace. He has no power. He achieves nothing, has no reputation. Since he judges no one no one judges him. Such is the perfect man: His boat is empty - Chuang Tzu (399 - 295 B.C.)

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/28/13 10:27 AM as a reply to Hermetically Sealed.
I appreciate the lengthy, in-depth response. And while I agree, the truth of it all leaves me rather indifferent and detached to it all. When I say all, I really mean "All"!

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/28/13 12:06 PM as a reply to Hermetically Sealed.
Hey HS, a suggestion - if you cut and paste replies from stuff you find on the internet it would be better to give the source, as otherwise one might be mistaken for thinking this is your own writing. I presume your name is not Michael Tsarion?

This is the original source for those that are interested:

http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/author/tsarion/thefool.html

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/28/13 3:35 PM as a reply to sawfoot _.
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/4633382

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/28/13 10:24 PM as a reply to Hermetically Sealed.
I have studied kabalistic writings in depth, and I can understand why you would cut and paste it. It is extremely exhausting to actually think about all of that stuff. Like the quote from Mark Twain on HiddenMysteries.org says, "When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." If there is such a thing as a universal mind that is god, it would most definitely have to be insane. I am not saying that any of the categories collected by mystics over the years are meaningless, though. I can see how people would who are interested in such endless mental activity would want to organize such symbols. I, however, have studied it, meditated on it, practiced it, and find it all so tiring and so not helpful. If you ask me the whole universe needs to just burn its tired ass out already.

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/29/13 12:59 AM as a reply to J E B.
J E B:
I have studied kabalistic writings in depth, and I can understand why you would cut and paste it. It is extremely exhausting to actually think about all of that stuff. Like the quote from Mark Twain on HiddenMysteries.org says, "When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." If there is such a thing as a universal mind that is god, it would most definitely have to be insane. I am not saying that any of the categories collected by mystics over the years are meaningless, though. I can see how people would who are interested in such endless mental activity would want to organize such symbols. I, however, have studied it, meditated on it, practiced it, and find it all so tiring and so not helpful. If you ask me the whole universe needs to just burn its tired ass out already.


Since you bring up the topic of the universe being manifested by a deranged entelechy I will briefly comment on the assertion. To sum it up in a few words I basically think that the universe isn't fully deranged only half of it is. The trick is to learn to resonate with the sane half, then you'll find out there really is something to be excited about.

I'll quote this one properly since there was a complaint but you can just click here to hear it being read aloud.


TWO SOURCE COSMOGONY: The One was and was-not, combined, and desired to separate the was-not from the was. So it generated a diploid sac which contained, like an eggshell, a pair of twins, each an androgyny, spinning in opposite directions (the Yin and Yang of Taoism, with the One as the Tao). The plan of the One was that both twins would emerge into being (was-ness) simultaneously; however, motivated by a desire to be (which the One implanted in both twins), the counter-clockwise twin broke through the sac and separated prematurely; i.e. before full term. This was the dark or Yin twin. Therefore it was defective. At full term the wiser twin emerged. Each twin formed a unitary entelechy, a single living organism made of psyche and soma, still rotating in opposite directions to each other. The full term twin, called Form I by Parmenides, advanced correctly through its growth stages, but the prematurely born twin, called Form II, languished.

The next step in the One's plan was that the Two would become the Many, through their dialetic interaction. From them as hyperuniverses they projected a hologram-like interface, which is the pluriform universe we creatures inhabit. The two sources were to intermingle equally in maintaining our universe, but Form II continued to languish toward illness, madness and disorder. These aspects she projected into our universe.

It was the One's purpose for our hologramatic universe to serve as a teaching instrument by which a variety of new lives advanced until ultimately they would be isomorphic with the One. However, the decaying condition of hyperuniverse II introduced malfactors which damaged our hologramatic universe. This is the origin of entropy, undeserved suffering, chaos and death, as well as the Empire, the Black Iron Prison; in essence, the aborting of the proper health and growth of the life forms within the hologramatic universe. Also, the teaching function was grossly impaired, since only the signal from the hyperuniverse I was information-rich; that from II had become noise.

The psyche of hyperuniverse I sent a micro-form of itself into hyperuniverse II to attempt to heal it. The micro-form was apparent in our hologramatic universe as Jesus Christ. However, hyperuniverse II, being deranged, at once tormented, humiliated, rejected and finally killed the micro-form of the healing psyche of her healthy twin. After that, hyperuniverse II continued to decay into blind, mechanical, purposeless causal processes. It then became the task of Christ (more properly the Holy Spirit) to either rescue the life forms in the hologramatic universe, or abolish all influences on it emanating from II. Approaching its task with caution, it prepared to kill the deranged twin, since she cannot be healed; i.e. she will not allow herself to be healed because she does not understand that she is sick. This illness and madness pervades us and makes us idiots living in private, unreal worlds. The original plan of the One can only be realized now by the division of hyperuniverse I into two healthy hyperuniverses, which will transform the hologramatic universe into the successfull teaching machine it was designed to be. We will experience this as the "Kingdom of God."

Within time, hyperuniverse II remains alive: "The Empire never ended." But in eternity, where the hyperuniverses exist, she has been killed—of necessity—by the healthy twin of hyperuniverse I, who is our champion. The One grieves for this death, since the One loved both twins; therefore the information of the Mind consists of a tragic tale of the death of a woman, the undertones of which generate anguish into all the creatures of the hologrammatic universe without their knowing why. This grief will depart when the healthy twin undergoes mitosis and the "Kingdom of God" arrives. The machinery for this transformation—the procession within time from the Age of Iron to the Age of Gold—is at work now; in eternity it is already accomplished.

-Exegesis from the novel VALIS by Philip K. Dick 1981



amazon page


RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/29/13 10:42 AM as a reply to Hermetically Sealed.
Yeah, like I said none of that really helps me any.

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/29/13 11:24 AM as a reply to J E B.
You'll have to excuse me. I don't really even have enough energy to cut and paste what exactly it is that I am quoting you about, so I will just say it outright in my sentences: If the insane half does not know that it is insane and in need of help, then what makes you think that it is possible to side with the sane half seeing that both seem to think that they are sane, HS?

Or perhaps the side that thinks it is sane, is really mistaken, also.

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/29/13 5:49 PM as a reply to J E B.
J E B:
Yeah, like I said none of that really helps me any.


hey how about just good old fashioned paying attention to the moment. practice with perseverence and let things take care of themselves.

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/29/13 6:13 PM as a reply to J E B.
J E B:
You'll have to excuse me. I don't really even have enough energy to cut and paste what exactly it is that I am quoting you about, so I will just say it outright in my sentences: If the insane half does not know that it is insane and in need of help, then what makes you think that it is possible to side with the sane half seeing that both seem to think that they are sane, HS?

Or perhaps the side that thinks it is sane, is really mistaken, also.


The only way to know for sure is to become as sane as we can on our own and in doing so the sane twin may take notice of our efforts and reward us with the gnosis of the greater universal sanity. I of course think that the Buddha was a physician who taught humanity how to move closer towards this gnosis, but he was not the only such physician. In a sense this sane twin is not actually separate from yourself, perhaps you can think of it as your higher self. Many great authors have written about this. Philip K Dick referred to the sane twin as the Plasmate, and he referred to the Deranged Twin as The Empire. I believe that once you achieve this gnosis then you know for sure that you're dealing with sanity. In other words you become sane enough on your own then your sanity can recognize its larger self as well as recognize the realm of derangement, but the reverse is not true. "the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. "

Since I brought up PKD in my last post I will share with you more of what he had to say on this subject, just click here

There are many other frameworks in which to explore this kind of thinking of course. You mentioned the Kabbalah so I will quote to you from that perspective too:


Jung writes, “In a tract of the Lurianic Kabbalah, the remarkable idea is developed that man is destined to become God’s helper in the attempt to restore the vessels which were broken when God thought to create a world.” Commenting on this novel idea, Jung writes, “Here the thought emerges for the first time that man must help God to repair the damage wrought by creation. For the first time man’s cosmic responsibility is acknowledged.” Jung was appreciating the Kabbalist’s (r)evolutionary insight that humanity was playing the crucial role of co-partnering with God so as to complete the creative act of his Incarnation. The radical and taboo thought was, “for the first time,” emerging into a monotheistic worldview that, to put it into religious language, humanity didn’t just depend upon God, but that God, as if to complete the circle, depended upon humanity as well. From the Kabbalah’s point of view, God did not just create humanity, but in a joint venture, humanity is reciprocally helping to create God as well – talk about a “cosmic responsibility!”

According to the Kabbalah, it was as if divine sparks, psychic/spiritual treasures were encoded within us and hidden throughout the physical universe. It is a Sethian notion, as expressed by Hippolytus, that the darkness “held the brightness and the spark of light in thrall,” the wording of which suggests that the darkness seems to have the light under a magical “spell.” This is quite remarkable, considering that, as mentioned earlier, the darkness parasitically requires the energy of the light in order to maintain its seeming existence and appear real. Ultimately speaking, the light has used its own creative energy to constrain its infinite radiance, as if the light has cast a spell upon itself. Seen as a reflection of a process happening within each of us, this expresses how something so incredibly powerful (i.e., ourselves as the radiant plenum – the boundless luminosity which is the very fabric of our being) can fall under the spell of a nonexistent phantom appearance that arises from the immense creativity of our own mind such that it entrances the light within us into believing that this imaginary, illusory phantom of darkness is more powerful than the light that we are. These apparition-like “darker forces,” the result of a timeless, acausal, nonlinear and insidious feedback loop within our own mind, only have power over us to the extent that their illusory nature is not seen through. The powers of darkness cannot take our intrinsic power from us, rather, they can only take on seeming reality by tricking us into giving our power away to them.

The idea of sparks of divine light becoming trapped in the dark denseness of matter, and this state of affairs being linked with human salvation is a quintessentially Gnostic idea. The Gnostic Gospel of Phillip says, “I am scattered in all things, and from wherever thou wilt thou canst gather me, but in gathering me thou gatherest together thyself.” It was as if sparks of the divine, of our very Self were dispersed throughout the manifest world, waiting to be discovered and liberated.

To the Kabbalists, it was humanity’s divinely appointed task to find, extract and free this light that is hidden in the darkness of the material realm (this is called “The Raising of the Sparks”), thereby helping this light return to its divine source. It is the mission of each one of us to raise the sparks hidden within those kelipot that reside within our soul or that come our way over the course of a lifetime so as to fulfill our part in the healing of the world.

http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/the-kabbalahs-remarkable-idea/

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/29/13 9:11 PM as a reply to Adam . ..
Adam . .:
J E B:
Yeah, like I said none of that really helps me any.


hey how about just good old fashioned paying attention to the moment. practice with perseverence and let things take care of themselves.


That is all that I do. I have very small but good algorithm for meditating that keeps me in the moment, relaxed, and continuously returning to equanimity all the while focusing on the breath as if it were cut up into smaller and smaller frames of now where there is no center and no separation between what appears to be the body and the rest of the vast, wide universe. I do this constantly. However, my entire life seems to be a dark night no matter how much inner peace that I have in the moment. Society does not seem to allow me to have success or respect. Perhaps this is just really bad karma that must burn, but it does not seem to ever go away.

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/29/13 9:36 PM as a reply to J E B.
J E B:
Society does not seem to allow me to have success or respect. Perhaps this is just really bad karma that must burn, but it does not seem to ever go away.


The Tao-Fool does not seek to escape his ignorance but, instead, makes ignorance his reverend teacher. He is fully aware of his limitations, and never under-estimates his own ignorance. It is a virtue that makes him truly wise. Being as a blank canvas, he can read the inner nature of others who come in front of him, and his estimates are clear and true. Thus, he knows little of disappointment from deception or betrayal. All who come in front of him are seen for who they are, their true nature's naked before his deep and lustrous eyes. No masks, charades, games or camouflage conceals the face they think is hidden. Seeking nothing from anyone, the Tao-Fool is never dependant. Nor does he ever seek to make others dependent upon him. Thus, when he speaks, he does so without hypocrisy or care for what others will think of him. Their judgments are an anathema to him. Friend to himself, he needs no other. The "relationships" of the unawakened are to him a prison to be lamented and avoided. His silence and his darkness are companions and guides enough.

While he quietly smiles, the clever and motivated over-achievers charge tragically about him infatuated by the chimeras of halos, transfigurations, bleeding saviors, badges for excellence, palaces in the sky, social and intellectual utopias and conversations with god. Their nirvana is but exhaustion, the cessation of a lifetime of infatuation and utter folly. Their religions, creeds and dogmas are founded not upon understanding, but upon their perplexity, expectation, and hubris. Their holy books, altars and idols are their jealous prison wardens. To them, silence and emptiness are horrific and morbid, and should be avoided at all cost, banished by the din of prayers, choirs or wars. Those who have been caught in the webs and "mind-forged manacles" (Blake) of the Adversary, who know little more than pain, sorrow, loss and struggle, are bound to imagine that their temporary release or unsustainable freedom is the highest Satori, and that anyone who throws them a coin is a saint. Their very attachment to what they attain becomes the tethers of further enslavement. Their tight fearful hold on what little love, light or truth comes their way, ultimately suffocates and destroys such gifts. We never guess that it is our propensity for holding on so tightly which pushes away what we most value and require.


The Pure Men of old acted without calculation, not seeking to secure results. They laid no plans. Therefore, failing, they had no cause for regret; succeeding, no cause for congratulations. And thus they could scale great heights without fear...They did not know what it was to love life and hate death. They did not rejoice in birth, nor strive to put off dissolution. Quickly come, and quickly go - Chuang Tzu


The Buddha-Fool carries no load, and does not care where his paths lead. He seeks no direction since he knows that all roads lead from, and back to, himself. The Christ-Fool can dine with the lepers or the emperors and teach both something new while, himself, learning what cannot be communicated. These Sage-Fools are the uncontained because they do not seek to contain, and are free because they do not aspire to possess anything or anyone. Like the invisible air, they exist above, below, on either side, behind and within all that can be apprehended by the senses and the brain. They have learned to inhabit the "negative space," and come and go through the portals between exhale and inhale, dream and nightmare, failure and success, laughter and tears. Though we never see them, they watch us as we sleep, and work, love and cry. They are ever near, always walking at our side tending our existence. They are our inwardness, the peculiar forgetfulness of self, which comes to some from time to time. They are that Beauty which is there when we are not, when the "I" is not. They are the Ancestors of all, but they belong to no one. They are the Shepherds of Being, and their omnipresent embrace is known as Compassion.

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/29/13 9:42 PM as a reply to J E B.
I do this constantly.


constantly.. except for the "however" eh? and the "however" is "my entire life"?

However, my entire life seems to be a dark night no matter how much inner peace that I have in the moment.


ok I think you are using "dark night" differently than it is usually used here... "dark night" is an absence of inner peace.

Society does not seem to allow me to have success or respect.


this doesn't sound like an innerly peaceful attitude. you seem to be taking this as an objective truth rather than a passing thought. a tendency of dark night perception.

I propose a brief meditation:

The present moment is totally free of any of the following: "society", "me", "success", "respect". Look around the physical space you are occupying, notice the totality of your perceptual universe without any added interpretation. is this problem (of lacking success and respect) actual, rather than imagined? Can the problem exist in the absence of imagination [1]? Even if you are imagining a world you label as "better" where you are respected and successful is this imagined world anything more than an imagined world? Does it necessarily indicate that something is wrong with the world you are in?

when there is genuine inner peace outer conditions have a tendency to follow in my experience, though not always. and when they don't, the inner peace (if it is genuine) doesn't mind.

[1] an absence of imagination as such basically being what meditation is about. you don't imagine any "other world" to compare with this one. you just are present to this one in genuine meditation. effortless acceptance of what is actually the case is utterly pervading when you stop creating 'other worlds.'

p.s. I know the game of "I can practice fine except there is just this one problem which I can't just practice through." it is the same old "I would be happy if I just got a new car" with a spiritual mask. I have had such thoughts and mind states many times. the trick is to stop believing that they have genuine relevance/importance for your life. this can be achieved through non-judgmental observation.

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/29/13 10:08 PM as a reply to Adam . ..
Adam . .:
I do this constantly.


constantly.. except for the "however" eh? and the "however" is "my entire life"?

However, my entire life seems to be a dark night no matter how much inner peace that I have in the moment.


ok I think you are using "dark night" differently than it is usually used here... "dark night" is an absence of inner peace.

Society does not seem to allow me to have success or respect.


this doesn't sound like an innerly peaceful attitude. you seem to be taking this as an objective truth rather than a passing thought. a tendency of dark night perception.

I propose a brief meditation:

The present moment is totally free of any of the following: "society", "me", "success", "respect". Look around the physical space you are occupying, notice the totality of your perceptual universe without any added interpretation. is this problem (of lacking success and respect) actual, rather than imagined? Can the problem exist in the absence of imagination [1]? Even if you are imagining a world you label as "better" where you are respected and successful is this imagined world anything more than an imagined world? Does it necessarily indicate that something is wrong with the world you are in?

when there is genuine inner peace outer conditions have a tendency to follow in my experience, though not always. and when they don't, the inner peace (if it is genuine) doesn't mind.

[1] an absence of imagination as such basically being what meditation is about. you don't imagine any "other world" to compare with this one. you just are present to this one in genuine meditation. effortless acceptance of what is actually the case is utterly pervading when you stop creating 'other worlds.'

p.s. I know the game of "I can practice fine except there is just this one problem which I can't just practice through." it is the same old "I would be happy if I just got a new car" with a spiritual mask. I have had such thoughts and mind states many times. the trick is to stop believing that they have genuine relevance/importance for your life. this can be achieved through non-judgmental observation.


Yes, of course that is the way that I meditate. There are times when I cycle back to a dark night in my meditation, though. That is when I also see the dark night of my life, which may not be a common use of the word on this site, but it is common in almost all other spiritual circles. If I am left alone by the world, then I can always go immediately back to equanimity, but yes there is a however, HOWEVER, the world, most of the time, comes knocking loudly on my door letting me know that all is not really as peachy as I might be able to make myself feel, inwardly and detached from it all.

You too, like most people that I encounter in these types of meditation circles seem to have no idea what real hardship is actually like. I can KEEP detaching from the world around me, but the problems are always still there. AND sometimes, I do not have peace, because I get tired of continuously forcing myself to meditate to that place of equanimity. I get very tired of it all sometimes, and at those times, I just don't really care whether there is peace or not. Sometimes I get very angry and yell so loud with such pure hate and rage that the whole universe seems to reel.

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/29/13 11:09 PM as a reply to J E B.
In the Thai Forest Sanghas some monks live accepting only 1 meal per day and accepting only the food that is placed in their bowl as offering. They are never allowed to specify that they would rather have this or that. They do not allow themselves to touch money, they do chores all day and often go on dangerous hikes through the jungle with bare feet where they could literally be savaged by a tiger or rhino, yet some of these beings are among the happiest people on earth, truly.

Here in the western world we have been conditioned to expect a certain thing, and therefor when we get something that runs contrary to our expectations we suffer. In the Thai Forest beings condition themselves to expect very little, and so almost everything that they get including every meal is a blessing, and their daily lives are also experienced as blessings. This is not an exaggeration.

They do not detach from their lives, they live their lives skilfully but they perceive the living a very different way. The path they tread is The Way of the Noble Ones.

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/29/13 11:15 PM as a reply to Hermetically Sealed.
Hermetically Sealed:
In the Thai Forest Sanghas some monks live accepting only 1 meal per day and accepting only the food that is placed in their bowl as offering. They are never allowed to specify that they would rather have this or that. They do not allow themselves to touch money, they do chores all day and often go on dangerous hikes through the jungle with bare feet where they could literally be savaged by a tiger or rhino, yet some of these beings are among the happiest people on earth, truly.

Here in the western world we have been conditioned to expect a certain thing, and therefor when we get something that runs contrary to our expectations we suffer. In the Thai Forest beings condition themselves to expect very little, and so almost everything that they get including every meal is a blessing, and their daily lives are also experienced as blessings. This is not an exaggeration.

They do not detach from their lives, they live their lives skilfully but they perceive the living a very different way. The path they tread is The Way of the Noble Ones.


It would be easier to live that way there, too. No one is going to fill a bowl with food in this country. Not where I live, but I can still find food for myself in the woods until they send helicopters to pick me up and send me to the state hospital. I think that I would actually be more apt to be peaceful living that way than living here in the states. Most of the anger and hate that I feel is towards this imposing trap of a place that I live in.

RE: I've achieved Dark Night! Yippee!
Answer
8/30/13 6:52 AM as a reply to J E B.
I've experienced hardship that seemed real at the time and I know it sucks. like months of oscillating between suicidal ideation and general depression. with really intense ruminations that made me think that they were "voices" and thinking I was going insane. that was all right before and during the first few months of meditating.

that said if you blame your suffering on outside sources and convince yourself that they genuinely terrible, your not leaving much room for improvement. what are you going to do if your problem is with the trap of a place in which you live? start a revolution? if you want relief that comes a bit faster then question your thoughts and live in the moment.