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Gonna drop the red ink, it looks a bit imperious on the page, not my intention.Not Tao]For me, it'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'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.
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?Identity refers to personality, like who you feel that you are.
Yeasss well, that'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 "goes away" in a PCE, is that an accurate observation? It's what causes emotional reactions. For example, if you believe you are good at math, and then someone tells you you'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 "is" - 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.
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?The physical sense of existing doesn't go away in the PCE, though. When Richard talks about the "actual," he'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.
So "meat space" 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?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.
Still sounds like equanimity; just saying. Also your not saying much about narritive thought processes in PCE. I'm assuming that you don'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?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.
It's difficult to diagnose other people's mental states, so I'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'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.
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!The mild joyfullness I described earlier has no real center it tends to be a field awareness thing. It appears to already be "out there," as if it were a natural component of sensation and just needs to be "allowed." 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.
When it migrates out, are you still thinking of yourself (as in, "I feel so joyful!") or have you forgotten yourself (as in, "everything is perfect.")? If you think about yourself suffering in the past, do you feel compassion, or are you baffled that you've ever had problems?
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.For me, it almost feels like I've become a completely different person who'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.
Sounds cool and like I said, congratulations. But how persistent is this? And also, something I'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?Oh yes, who is Richard, I'm assuming a significant teacher?