<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" version="2.0"> <channel> <title>RE: Statistics of sudden awakenings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_recent_posts?p_l_id=</link> <description>RE: Statistics of sudden awakenings</description> <pubDate>Sun, 19 Oct 2014 00:21:11 GMT</pubDate> <dc:date>2014-10-19T00:21:11Z</dc:date> <item> <title>RE: Pablo's Zen/Taoist Practice Log</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606988</link> <description>Just testing.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 23:23:51 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606988</guid> <dc:creator>Pablo . P</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T23:23:51Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I wanted to delete a post, instead I delete the whole thread!</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606985</link> <description>Thanks Beoman, it must be the refresh of my PC then. Still know when when I look at My Posts, the thread has vanished. I&amp;#039;ll reboot the computer, and everything will be alright. Thanks again.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 23:10:13 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606985</guid> <dc:creator>Pablo . P</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T23:10:13Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Four "noob" questions</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606979</link> <description>&lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/closed_eyes.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 22:59:33 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606979</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T22:59:33Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Four "noob" questions</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606957</link> <description>Heck no!&lt;br /&gt;Everytime one of you post - I learn something!</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 22:35:57 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606957</guid> <dc:creator>Doug M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T22:35:57Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: The end of suffering - is it actually possible?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606953</link> <description>I still go through pain, depression, fear, anger, anxiety, , low self esteem, confusion, general angst , highs, lows, bliss and desire but I havent actually suffered in about a year and a half at this stage. </description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 22:35:18 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606953</guid> <dc:creator>wylo .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T22:35:18Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Positive Disintegration &amp; the DN</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606948</link> <description>I can definitely relate to this, in my early teens, coupled with some traumatic life-events (expulsion from my high school, living with relatives apart from my nuclear family, multiple suicide attempts, intense study of Astrology to discover the causes of my shitty-life-events, investigation from school authorities as to the possibility that I was a danger to myself and my fellow students etc) I entered a long, protracted period of intense depression and &amp;#034;existential coasting&amp;#034;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I believe (from my brief reading of the article) that I suffered from his Unilevel Disintegration, after the crises I was mute for two years, I spoke to no one. I was deeply religious and superstitious, I possessed no &amp;#034;activity&amp;#034; (I literally did nothing), I feared that my fellow classmates would spontaneously stab me to death, I was deeply paranoid.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;However!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Because of this total absence of &amp;#034;being&amp;#034;, (it was an existential crisis), I, in parts, overcame these problems one by one.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;First cognitively, then feeling-fed, then existentially in the soul, I experienced several awesome and besorbed altered states of consciousness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As it stands currently, all I do is bhushuku (literally: eat, sleep, shit), I am perfectly and totally happy and content. I&amp;#039;m in college and still working towards my degree, however on academic probation, because I literally (still) do nothing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yet I am plagued by literally &lt;strong&gt;zero&lt;/strong&gt; existential problems, moreover my sexuality is now integrated and something I am wonderfully at peace with. All I do is leisure, leisure, leisure. I smoke cigarettes and have non-dual (emptiness) experiences and listen to music.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So I&amp;#039;m often amazed by how much I changed in the course of about 6 years, for the first 15 years of my life, literally went through nothing, I am almost amnesiatic about it (I don&amp;#039;t remember much of it). I was only truly alive in the latter quarter of my life.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;bhushuku,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;James</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 22:30:19 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606948</guid> <dc:creator>J J</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T22:30:19Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: The Most Profound Suttas</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606933</link> <description>One of my favorite recent ones:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;dharmafarer&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wordpress&amp;#x2f;wp-content&amp;#x2f;uploads&amp;#x2f;2009&amp;#x2f;12&amp;#x2f;1&amp;#x2e;4-Udumbarika-Sihanada-S-d25-piya-proto&amp;#x2e;pdf"&gt;http://dharmafarer.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1.4-Udumbarika-Sihanada-S-d25-piya-proto.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In this sutta the Buddha gives a challenge to a group of outsider wanderers claiming that it would take them a maximum of 7 days to complete his challenge (arahatship). In the end none of the wanderers accept the challenge as they are overcome by Mara.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The peculiar part of this sutta is that the Buddha claims that it is not necessary for any of them to give up:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;-Their notions of wholesome and unwholesome.&lt;br /&gt;-Their current teacher.&lt;br /&gt;-Their livelihood.&lt;br /&gt;-Their training.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The specific wonderful passage may be found here:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;i&amp;#x2e;gyazo&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;c02e923a0989d8017c52c3aeb38be846&amp;#x2e;png" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;i&amp;#x2e;gyazo&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;07d2c4ef0182af7e5dddb82ee8af0d7d&amp;#x2e;png" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And as a bonus, here is some conversion magick for you!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;dharmafarer&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wordpress&amp;#x2f;wp-content&amp;#x2f;uploads&amp;#x2f;2013&amp;#x2f;04&amp;#x2f;45&amp;#x2e;8-Licchavi-Bhaddiya-S-a4&amp;#x2e;193-piya&amp;#x2e;pdf"&gt;http://dharmafarer.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/45.8-Licchavi-Bhaddiya-S-a4.193-piya.pdf&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 22:16:44 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606933</guid> <dc:creator>J J</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T22:16:44Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Four "noob" questions</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606930</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I think you mischaracterized the theravada practices a bit. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hmmm no. The characterisations are loose and jokey, but I&amp;#039;m making a point about general principles rather than strict definitions, we can do that if you want. &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The whole point of noting, as I understand it, is to see that sensations exist in and of themselves.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eventually, but yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The point of samatha practice (&amp;#034;I&amp;#034; am focusing on &amp;#034;that&amp;#034;) is to make the awareness stable enough so it can abide within non-duality and gather insight (and samatha is a big part of tibetian buddhism as well).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sure&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt; Theravada teachers don&amp;#039;t advertise jhana as an insight practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Indeed.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; Your #1 non-dual practice sounds more like thervada insight practice to me, actually. All sensations are welcomed.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Truth be told, it could be any practice. To whit: &amp;#034;I am focusing on that (the feeling of air moving on my uppper lip,)&amp;#034; Samatha; &amp;#034;I am focusing on that (changes in my aural field,)&amp;#034; Insight; &amp;#034;I am focusing on that (Chenrezig&amp;#039;s rainment,)&amp;#034; Tibetan tantra; &amp;#034;I am  focusing on that (shit happening,)&amp;#034; Soto Zen. Like I said, general pricipals. Principals that you have not addressed thus far. Sigh.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You could say Actual Freedom practice is dualistic - &amp;#034;I&amp;#034; am self-destructing so &amp;#034;that&amp;#034; (the body) can be freed. Also Christian mysticism - &amp;#034;I&amp;#034; am merging with &amp;#034;that&amp;#034; (god) in a divine marriage.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I believe you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; Anatta is pali for &amp;#034;not-self&amp;#034; as in, &amp;#034;the five aggregates are not-self.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thanks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;EDIT: Maybe you&amp;#039;re referencing the idea of a &amp;#034;ground of being&amp;#034; or a natural state?  Rigpa type practices are common in mahayana and not in theravada.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, not really. But we can go there if you like.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;EDIT2: I hope I&amp;#039;m not hijacking the thread here, haha.  It was just suprising to hear theravada called dualistic.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hijack away, I thought this site was all about the unexpected bun fights. But its Doug&amp;#039;s thread, maybe he&amp;#039;s getting pissed off with us? &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 22:16:07 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606930</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T22:16:07Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I wanted to delete a post, instead I delete the whole thread!</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606927</link> <description>The thread is still available, see &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;view_message&amp;#x2f;4620018"&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 22:12:49 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606927</guid> <dc:creator>Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T22:12:49Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: McMindfullness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606916</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;It is a frequent topic of conversation here, a major rant in my book, and you should definitely check out the work of Willough Britton, who talks about that all the time..&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Daniel, I presume you&amp;#039;ve seen Willoughby&amp;#039;s conversation with the Dalai Lama that was videod at Mind and Life XXIV? Any comments on what was, as far as I could make out, a reaction of mild confusion on the part of HHDL when Willoughby talked about dark night issues. It was as if he&amp;#039;d never heard of them. Before he spoke, I half expected his reaction to be one of &amp;#034;Ahh, so you guys are finally taking this seriously and are seeing results.&amp;#034; But as I say, at best he seemed to be reacting as if to say &amp;#034;What? That sounds weird!&amp;#034; If I&amp;#039;m right in that interpretation then various explanations come to mind. For example:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1. We western types aren&amp;#039;t  &amp;#034;doing it right&amp;#034; and so should figure that out. For example, maybe we&amp;#039;re not placing enough emphasis on morality training?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2. We&amp;#039;re seeing stuff that the Tibetans aren&amp;#039;t, because *they* aren&amp;#039;t doing it right.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That&amp;#039;s a far from exhaustive list, and I&amp;#039;m using &amp;#034;doing it right&amp;#034; in a completely vague way. But I&amp;#039;d be interested in your thoughts.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 21:58:01 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606916</guid> <dc:creator>Tee P Kay</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T21:58:01Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I wanted to delete a post, instead I delete the whole thread!</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606907</link> <description>Thanks for your help. My thread is &amp;#034;Pablo&amp;#039;s Zen/Taoist Practice Log&amp;#034;, and you won&amp;#039;t find it in the Practice Logs section. Please see attachment below. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;How it happened? As any new post was added as a reply to the previous, after nearly 30 posts the identation was reaching the right side, so I made a reply to the original first post of the thread. After posting it, I tried to edit the fonts but didn&amp;#039;t manage to, so I decided to delete the entire entry and post it again. But when I delete that post, the whole thread dissapeared. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If it&amp;#039;s impossible to recovery it, don&amp;#039;t worry, I&amp;#039;ll re-enter the whole thread.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 21:56:40 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606907</guid> <dc:creator>Pablo . P</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T21:56:40Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>4th path?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606891</link> <description>Could 4th path (and maybe anatta in general) be defined as &amp;#034;effortlessness?&amp;#034;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 21:39:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606891</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T21:39:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Positive Disintegration &amp; the DN</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606884</link> <description>This is fantastic! I love psychology, actually, so I&amp;#039;ll never frown at you. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/closed_eyes.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I like that this is less standardized than nana&amp;#039;s. I think it&amp;#039;s true that most people who are meditating are looking for relief. To say that everyone follows the same order of emotional events, though, never seemed right to me. This model frames the path in a reactionary and developmental way - which is probably more accurate. I think it&amp;#039;s true in my own experience that I have come up with an ideal personality and am trying to move towards it.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 21:13:44 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606884</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T21:13:44Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: I wanted to delete a post, instead I delete the whole thread!</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606879</link> <description>I&amp;#039;ll second Beomans question and ask how did you go about deleting the thread? Deleting single posts is unrecoverable but that doesn&amp;#039;t remove the whole thread (unless perhaps it was a single post thread?). Deleting an entire thread is recoverable, but I checked the deleted threads and didn&amp;#039;t find one from you.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Simon</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 21:09:32 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606879</guid> <dc:creator>Simon Ekstrand</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T21:09:32Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Challenge to the Arahants...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606873</link> <description>Thanks Jeremy, appreciate your openness</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 21:06:58 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606873</guid> <dc:creator>Rod</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T21:06:58Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Log toward vanishing the mind</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606870</link> <description>&lt;u&gt;&lt;strong&gt;18Oct14   Direct Looking :&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Feeling tired and not interested in anything and can&amp;#039;t get interested in anything &amp;#034;important&amp;#034;; running away from importances; the mind running away from me -- how to be complementary with that?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So I can not get into any importance and it is like chasing the&lt;br /&gt;mind. My partner suggested I do a reverse vector and run &amp;#034;no&lt;br /&gt;importance.&amp;#034;   That made me yawn somewhat so I agreed to give it a&lt;br /&gt;whirl.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;4p.m. &lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Create an Importance&amp;#034; - 6 Directions&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;”&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;The importance of having no importances&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;yawns already&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;it&amp;#039;s funny when I realize how much I identified with the mental state I was experiencing. Thinking it is me.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;I&amp;#039;m creating “nothing is important” and putting it all around me -- a swirl of nothingness&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;yawns&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;feels good &amp;#x2013; a deep deep sinkhole in a vast empty space, taking a break&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;apathy, apathy, apathy and more apathy&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&amp;#034;I can&amp;#039;t, so I won&amp;#039;t”&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;the Maitreya being keeps sending aspects of himself here as Buddhas, over and over again. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;How has that been working for him?&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Why is “nothing” always black? &lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Scene of a white universe &amp;#x2013; that was “something”&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;eyes non-seeing  --  is this how one creates black screens?&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Must not know and must not be known &amp;#x2013; tired of and overwhelmed by importance of “something”, &lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;i.e., must know and must be known&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;[&lt;em&gt;note to self: occasionally may need to run reverse vector on importances&lt;/em&gt;]&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;mind contains importance of attachments to be-do-have and importance of&lt;br /&gt;aversions to be-do-have. I can see a game being played with that.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“How does nothingness seem to you now?” Don&amp;#039;t feel an aversion to&lt;br /&gt;be-do-have. No longer feeling apathetic -- feel calm and willing to be here.&lt;br /&gt;I can see that I was in a games condition with my mind until I went complementary with its desire.&lt;br /&gt;Whatever the mind can do, I can duplicate.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;End&lt;br /&gt;of sit.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 21:06:20 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606870</guid> <dc:creator>Colleen Karalee Peltomaa</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T21:06:20Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Statistics of sudden awakenings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606854</link> <description>Thank you &amp;#039;sharp sword&amp;#039;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 21:00:18 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606854</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T21:00:18Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Conceptual Proliferation</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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: I wanted to delete a post, instead I delete the whole thread!</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606841</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Pablo . P:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Fortunately, I had a copy of the thread, my practice log. But, how is it possible to recover it from the system? &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Hmm I&amp;#039;ve asked Simon before and he said deleted stuff is unrecoverable. But did you click &amp;#034;Delete Thread&amp;#034; or you just deleted the top post? If you just delete a post it shouldn&amp;#039;t delete the whole thread.. and you shouldn&amp;#039;t be able to delete other people&amp;#039;s posts if they were in your thread, I don&amp;#039;t think.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 20:47:22 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606841</guid> <dc:creator>Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T20:47:22Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Challenge to the Arahants...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606828</link> <description>SiFi Sufi Rumi &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 20:23:18 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606828</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T20:23:18Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Positive Disintegration &amp; the DN</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606824</link> <description>&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;gen&amp;#x2e;lib&amp;#x2e;rus&amp;#x2e;ec&amp;#x2f;book&amp;#x2f;index&amp;#x2e;php&amp;#x3f;md5&amp;#x3d;c27eff0adf55aef995421b6084922879"&gt;Positive Disintegration by Kazimierz Dabrowski&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Positive_Disintegration"&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Disintegration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Theory of Positive Disintegration&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;TPD&lt;/strong&gt;) by &lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Kazimierz_D&amp;#x25;C4&amp;#x25;85browski"&gt;Kazimierz Dąbrowski&lt;/a&gt; describes a theory of &lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Personality_development"&gt;personality development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;Unlike mainstream &lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Psychology"&gt;psychology&lt;/a&gt;, Dąbrowski&amp;#039;s theoretical framework views psychological tension and &lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Anxiety"&gt;anxiety&lt;/a&gt; as necessary for growth. These &amp;#034;disintegrative&amp;#034; processes are therefore seen as &amp;#034;positive,&amp;#034; whereas people who fail to go through positive  disintegration may remain for their entire lives in a state of &amp;#034;primary integration.&amp;#034; Advancing into disintegration and into the higher levels  of development is predicated on having developmental potential, including overexcitabilities and above-average reactions to stimuli. Unlike some other theories of development such as &lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Erikson&amp;#x25;27s_stages_of_psychosocial_development"&gt;Erikson&amp;#039;s stages of psychosocial development&lt;/a&gt;, it is not assumed that even a majority of people progress through all levels. TPD is not a theory of stages, and levels do not correlate with  age.&lt;br /&gt;...&lt;br /&gt;Dąbrowski&amp;#039;s theory of personality development emphasized several major features including:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;personality is not a given universal trait, it must be created&amp;#x2014;shaped&amp;#x2014;by the individual to reflect his or her own unique character (personality shaping)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;personality develops as a result of the action of developmental potential (DP) (overexcitability and the autonomous factor), not everyone displays sufficient DP to create a unique personality.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;developmental potential is represented in the population by a &lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Normal_distribution"&gt;normal&lt;/a&gt; (bell) curve. Dąbrowski used a multilevel approach to describe the continuum of developmental levels seen in the population.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;developmental potential creates crises characterized by strong anxieties and depressions&amp;#x2014;psychoneurosis&amp;#x2014;that precipitate disintegration&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;for personality to develop, initial integrations based on instinct and socialization must disintegrate&amp;#x2014;a process Dąbrowski called positive disintegration&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;the development of a hierarchy of individual values &amp;#x2014; &lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Emotional"&gt;emotional&lt;/a&gt; reactions &amp;#x2014; is a critical component in developing one&amp;#039;s personality and one&amp;#039;s autonomy, thus, in contrast to most psychological theories, emotions play a major role in this approach&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;emotional reactions guide the individual in creating his or her individual personality ideal, an autonomous standard that acts as the goal of individual development&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;the individual must examine his or her essence and subsequently make existential choices that emphasize those aspects of essence that are  higher and &amp;#034;more myself&amp;#034; and inhibit those aspects that are lower or &amp;#034;less myself&amp;#034; based upon his or her own personality ideal&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;critical components of individual development include autoeducation and autopsychotherapy&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I know psychology is somewhat frowned upon &amp;#039;round these parts... but I couldn&amp;#039;t resist. The parallel with the nanas is too compelling. So far, this theory is little known in the mainstream psychological world, but it&amp;#039;s found applications in understanding gifted children. I figure understanding Pragmatic Dharma yogis might be another application. As mentioned &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;3285651"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, PD theory might help the Pragmatic Dharma movement get more mainstream recognition. Its existence might help normalize the &amp;#039;Dark Night&amp;#039; and convince some people that it&amp;#039;s a &amp;#039;positive&amp;#039; experience. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In terms of &amp;#039;developmental potential&amp;#039;, it seems plausible to me that &amp;#039;over-excitable&amp;#039; (cf. &lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Highly_sensitive_person"&gt;highly-sensitive&lt;/a&gt;) people are more likely to reach a breaking point where it&amp;#039;s seen that current structures are inadequate. Or, in insight terms, it seems plausible to me that &amp;#039;over-excitable&amp;#039; people are more likely to notice the true nature of phenomena, and hence are more likely to experience intense A&amp;amp;Ps, and so intense DNs. I&amp;#039;m unsure the extent to which an analogy can be drawn with the progress of insight.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Given their genuine (authentic) prosocial outlook, people achieving higher development also raise the level of their society. Prosocial here is not just support of the existing social order. If the social order is lower and you are adjusted to it, then you also reflect the lower (negative adjustment in Dąbrowski&amp;#039;s terms, a Level I feature). Here, prosocial is a genuine cultivation of social interactions based on higher values. These positions often conflict with the status quo of a lower society (positive maladjustment). In other words, to be maladjusted to a low-level society is a positive feature.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Also, what a relief this is &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/tongue.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hope someone finds this useful. Thoughts, questions, comments?</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 20:14:24 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606824</guid> <dc:creator>Droll Dedekind</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T20:14:24Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Four "noob" questions</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606817</link> <description>I think you mischaracterized the theravada practices a bit.  The whole point of noting, as I understand it, is to see that sensations exist in and of themselves.  The point of samatha practice (&amp;#034;I&amp;#034; am focusing on &amp;#034;that&amp;#034;) is to make the awareness stable enough so it can abide within non-duality and gather insight (and samatha is a big part of tibetian buddhism as well). Theravada teachers don&amp;#039;t advertise jhana as an insight practice. Your #1 non-dual practice sounds more like thervada insight practice to me, actually. All sensations are welcomed.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You could say Actual Freedom practice is dualistic - &amp;#034;I&amp;#034; am self-destructing so &amp;#034;that&amp;#034; (the body) can be freed. Also Christian mysticism - &amp;#034;I&amp;#034; am merging with &amp;#034;that&amp;#034; (god) in a divine marriage.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; Anatta is pali for &amp;#034;not-self&amp;#034; as in, &amp;#034;the five aggregates are not-self.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;EDIT: Maybe you&amp;#039;re referencing the idea of a &amp;#034;ground of being&amp;#034; or a natural state?  Rigpa type practices are common in mahayana and not in theravada.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;EDIT2: I hope I&amp;#039;m not hijacking the thread here, haha.  It was just suprising to hear theravada called dualistic.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 20:04:15 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606817</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T20:04:15Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Statistics of sudden awakenings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606767</link> <description>This discussion at Awake Network covers a bit this matter: http://awakenetwork.org/forum/100-dharma-refugees/7910-how-rare-is-enlightenment</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 18:41:16 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606767</guid> <dc:creator>Kim Katami</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T18:41:16Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Four "noob" questions</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606764</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Not Tao:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;What do you mean by saying theravada is more dualistic?  I thought non-dualism was referring to anatta and emptiness was just another way of describing anatta.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m sorry I&amp;#039;m not a scholar, so I&amp;#039;ve no idea what anatta means, awful I know, but I&amp;#039;m too old to change. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/unsure.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Okay, examples of what I am calling dualistic practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1. &amp;#034;I will keep my attention on that object.&amp;#034; Is a common samatha pracitce, v popular with Theravadans, note the emphasis on &amp;#034;I&amp;#034; and &amp;#034;that,&amp;#034; subject and object clearly defined = dualistic.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2. &amp;#034;I will notice that category of sensation and formaly label or &amp;#034;note&amp;#034; that sensation using my mental faculties.  This is called &amp;#034;Noting&amp;#034; popular with Theravadans, note the emphasis on &amp;#034;I,&amp;#034;that&amp;#034; and &amp;#034;my.&amp;#034; Subject and object clearly defined = dualistic.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;3. &amp;#034;I will conentrate on and area of my body and oberserve all sensations I perceive, then I will move my attention and repeat the process.&amp;#034; Goenka tequnique, popular with Theravdans who don&amp;#039;t like to admit to it in public. Note the emphasis on &amp;#034;I&amp;#034; and &amp;#034;my,&amp;#034; subject and object clearly defined = dualistic.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Examples of non-dual pracitce.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1. &amp;#034;All sensations are golden/love/buddha/god-head...&amp;#034; delete as applicable. Popular with some ceremonial magicians, Tibetans (same thing.) No reference point at all. No subject or object = non-dual.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2. &amp;#034;All is god, I am god, god is me.&amp;#034; Popular with nutters, various branches of Vedanta, all kinds of new age types. Reference point is pretty much everything at once, therefore no subject or object = non-dual.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;3. &amp;#034;Breathe in love, breathe out love.&amp;#034; This was a meditation instruction give by a recording of Thich-Nhat-Hanh at last week at my regular sitting group. Popular with Thich-Nhat-hanh. Love is not really an object or subject but what happens when you start to let go of both at the same time. You could argue that the injuction to &amp;#034;breathe&amp;#034; is an object, however I&amp;#039;m going to argue that it is not an object but a process. In any case when the practice warms up, you&amp;#039;re just abiding in love anyway and the breathing aspect drops away. Love is not an object or a subject = non-dual&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now you will find examples of the 1st three all over Theravada in various forms, but rarely the 2nd three. You will find examples in various forms of the second three all over Mahayana Buddhism and the first three sometimes, but not so much. So when I say that Theravada favours dualistic practices and Mahayana non-dual, I am saying that that is what they actually do on the cushion, irrespective of what the books say. I&amp;#039;m also only really talking about the tools utilised to attain to certain goals. Not the goals themselves. More than one way up the mountian is the thing. </description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 18:37:26 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606764</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T18:37:26Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: meditation making me feel spaced out</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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: Four "noob" questions</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606749</link> <description>What do you mean by saying theravada is more dualistic?  I thought non-dualism was referring to anatta and emptiness was just another way of describing anatta.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 17:35:45 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606749</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T17:35:45Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: McMindfullness</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606745</link> <description>Maybe a good way to do it, since you can speak from experience, is to leave the terminology out and only speak from experience.  That way, you can be genuine and personal - no one will feel you&amp;#039;re trying to explain their own practice to them or make assumptions about what they&amp;#039;re doing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For example, if someone is in the dark night, you can say, &amp;#034;Ah, I went through a similar experience like that, and a few people I&amp;#039;ve talked to also had that problem.  I think it&amp;#039;s caused by X, Y, and Z and I was able to make progress through it with this technique of labeling sensations.&amp;#034;  That just sounds like someone trying to help, you know?  If you go in with, &amp;#034;Aha, you&amp;#039;re following the progress of insight!  Right now you&amp;#039;re in the dark night, which happens to everyone, and soon you&amp;#039;ll be here,&amp;#034; etc and so on, an egotistical or vain person will hear, &amp;#034;you&amp;#039;re just like everyone else, and I&amp;#039;m more experienced than you,&amp;#034; and a person having a hard time will hear, &amp;#034;your suffering isn&amp;#039;t anything special,&amp;#034; and a fluffy bunny will hear, &amp;#034;your idea of buddhism is all wrong, and I know better than you,&amp;#034; and someone who isn&amp;#039;t a buddhist will hear, &amp;#034;all meditation follows buddhist maps, and buddhism is the only real solution/ultimate truth/thing you should practice.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A good question to ask yourself is, where is my intention to help coming from?  Am I weaving my aversion towards other people into my advice for this person?  Am I trying to be helpful with their specific trouble, or am I preaching the gosple?  People are very receptive to emotional tone, even in text, and mental development is a very personal thing for most people.  Giving advice or telling people about themselves from our personal viewpoint and context usually sounds egotistical or evangelical, even if that isn&amp;#039;t our intention.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 17:28:01 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606745</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T17:28:01Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Four "noob" questions</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606742</link> <description>You&amp;#039;re welcome, have fun with it!</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 17:04:58 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606742</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T17:04:58Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>An interesting discovery re: concentration always leading up the maps</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606735</link> <description>I would like some feedback on something I just noticed today in sitting:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the past (especially post A&amp;amp;P) I have never been able to concentrate reliably in a way that leads to stronger concentration, without zipping up the maps (and my 3rd and 6-10 nanas tend to be extemely rough - even my A&amp;amp;P is rough for some reason nowdays)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;- So the issue for me tends to be then that I get stuck somewhere in the DN, everything gets sticky, etc and I never seem to be able to make progress or disembed from any of those states long enough to get up to 11th nana. My gut feeling is that either I need an x day retreat with solid noting or I need to build concentration before &amp;#039;using it up&amp;#039; so to speak. So far I have been cyling between building up some unification of mind then blowing it all on insight, which seems to allow for progress but in a very slow way... &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So I continue to try to discover how this mind works, how I can use it more skillfully.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What I discovered today, and would like to know if this is true for anyone else (or if they noticed it) - is that when I have been &amp;#039;concentrating&amp;#039; I push into the object/raw sensations too hard and also tend to allow the self, or the feeling/belief of &amp;#039;me focusing on that&amp;#039; fade away and of course what happens is things get rough, itchy/burny/ then neck movements/contractions/shaking then eventually go non-dual and superfast (A&amp;amp;P) - and then on from there in a typical maps pattern. (although it is extremely painful to do it that way for some reason)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What I found is that I could keep myself from going that way(up the maps) and charge up the concentration better if I did NOT allow the feeling/belief of &amp;#039;I am focusing on that&amp;#039; to slip away while doing it...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Does that make sense then? First Jhana/access still incudes the nonverbal duality while second and by association A&amp;amp;P drops it? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If thats the case then the reason I have been unable to concentrate for so long is that I am either allowing the duality to slip away or pushing it away enough to go in that direction. I will experiment with this more of course but does that seem to jive with other people&amp;#039;s experience?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:59:25 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606735</guid> <dc:creator>bill of the wandering mind</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T16:59:25Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>I wanted to delete a post, instead I delete the whole thread!</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606726</link> <description>Fortunately, I had a copy of the thread, my practice log. But, how is it possible to recover it from the system? </description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:40:01 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606726</guid> <dc:creator>Pablo . P</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T16:40:01Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Did I almost reach jhana? I got scared...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606721</link> <description>What was this strange feeling like?  Jhana is exceedingly pleasant, IME, &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/closed_eyes.gif" &gt; but piti is described in a number of strange ways in the progress of insight, which might be startling if you aren&amp;#039;t expecting it.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:34:38 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606721</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T16:34:38Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Challenge to the Arahants...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606716</link> <description>Hey all, &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So towards the end of my latest meditation session this morning, the thought /word fragment arises in the mind &amp;#034;Mars and Jupiter&amp;#034;  , I thought nothing of it, phenomenon arising and passing away.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then I go to Dho, read Jeremy&amp;#039;s post, then click on the link, which says see what an atom looks like , but is actually a link to a video of the helical model of our solar system and depicts how the sun is actually zooming through space (like a comet) with the planets gravity dragged in tow, which is closer to correct, except (sun isn&amp;#039;t going in straight line but is also in orbit around the center of the galaxy, and the galaxy is also zooming along, vortexing), so relatively straight.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyway the link is really cool thanks, Jeremy, here again below&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;facebook&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;video&amp;#x2e;php&amp;#x3f;v&amp;#x3d;858654304147057"&gt;https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=858654304147057&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;So, at first I had tried to find associated thoughts earlier as to why &amp;#034;Mars and Jupiter&amp;#034; arose in my mind, was is reference to Greek or Roman gods? And I haven&amp;#039;t watch any astronomy docs lately, so I just dismissed this as phenomenon, which it is.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then I clicked on the video and see the model of the planets, this is a new model, to me, I have known this as reality, but never seen it as a model.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then later the synchronicity possibility clicked, and then I posted ...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Synchronicity subject has come up before, and just how many have to happen for us to see the patterns?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Just Sharin&amp;#039; phenomenon&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Psi Phi&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;P.S. @ Jeremy   Indeed it is hard to communicate, the universe being infinite and all is interconnected, patterns within patterns, words and symbols, religions and myths, philosophies and science.  It all expands and it all contracts, leaves and returns, all comes back to our self, which paradoxically isn&amp;#039;t really what we think it is, so the awareness goes out again and again seeking home, then returns to &amp;#034;home&amp;#034; which isn&amp;#039;t there, endlessly repeating, nowhere to rest, nothing stable, nothing solid to cling to and nothing that is there to do the clinging.  So maybe once reality is finally embraced as it is, then?! &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; Is it possible to embrace the Universe and Let go of it at the same time?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;May all be well&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Leaves are falling all around, It&amp;#039;s time I was on my way. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Thanks to you, I&amp;#039;m much obliged for such a pleasant stay. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;But now it&amp;#039;s time for me to go. The autumn moon lights my way. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;For now I smell the rain, and with it pain, and it&amp;#039;s headed my way. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Sometimes I grow so tired, but I know I&amp;#039;ve got one thing I got to do... &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Verdana&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:31:31 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606716</guid> <dc:creator>Psi Phi</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T16:31:31Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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/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/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: Did I almost reach jhana? I got scared...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606698</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;rich r a:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I&amp;#039;ve only been meditating on a regular schedule for 2 weeks... is it something that my head decided to make up?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Is thinking you&amp;#039;ve entered a jhana something your head decided to make up? Sure sounds like it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;rich r a:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;It also occurred to me that it would be extremely beneficial to me to have a teacher. What is the best way to find a teacher who is knowledgable about jhana? I am in the bay area in cali if that helps.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Shaila Catherine is in Mountain View. She trained with Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw and has written a few books on the subject. You might try to attend her weekly sits.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 15:15:34 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606698</guid> <dc:creator>Small Steps</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T15:15:34Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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: Did I almost reach jhana? I got scared...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606691</link> <description>Leigh Brasington is a knowledgeable jhana teacher. I highly recommend his retreats. You can ask him questions about your practice during the interviews.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 14:57:57 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606691</guid> <dc:creator>Derek Cameron</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T14:57:57Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Challenge to the Arahants...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606681</link> <description>I don&amp;#039;t want to sound like I&amp;#039;m boasting about anything.  But maybe you will see parallels? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When I was 4 I spoke to my mom about remembering my past life.  I started preaching about compassion, using scriptures from buddhism/christianity.  People thought I had absorbed conversations around me, but I did not grow up in a religious family.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And like all of us, I forgot my past life.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;At 6, I was so unusual I was scaring my family.  They took me to a lot of psychologists.  My !.Q. measured 130.  My hometown school (they did this back then) gave me a very individualized education.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;At 12 I started singing for shut-ins, going to church, praying for residents of nursing homes.  I began to understand, though, that something was wrong with Religion.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;At 16, I started preaching my version.  My services quickly gained more people than the town itself.  It freaked me out.  Luckily, I was picked to go to a special school.  My IQ had reached 150.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I had always been tormented.  The world was in pain and I could not live for myself.  I went through many suicidal phases, many dark nights.  I rejected all religions.  I felt alien.  I graduated by the skin of my teeth.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I had a nervous breakdown in college and abandoned the whole charade.  Two years later, the psychologist measured my IQ as immeasurable, having the highest test score of my county&amp;#039;s history.  This did not make me feel better.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I joined the Bohemians and i had peace for the first time.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;4 years later, I found the Buddhists and sat with them a couple times.  It was Easy!  I learned to calm myself.  I realized I understood something they didn&amp;#039;t, however, and decided to use my new skill.  I joined Family Dollar.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Very quickly I rose in the company until I was over 20 stores.  Then I got very ill and had to come home.  I was in bed for months.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When I got better, my... psychic abilities had become too severe.  I found out that people had always thought of me as a prophet or a psychic.  I am neither.  But now, there is no one close to me that does not believe I am one or the other.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That was two years ago.  My own meditations became something else, naturally.  I began to understand EVERYTHING but could not speak of it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I had strange experiences.  I had to seek information about what was happening to me.  What I knew by MEMORY, I typed in the Omnibox. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The only person I could find, that was living, was Daniel, when I searched for someone who understood what I knew.  I joined this site and tried to Dharma talk.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I wrote all these things during a week when I couldn&amp;#039;t sleep for a freakin week.  That had never happened before...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I tell you all this because our Practice is natural.  We don&amp;#039;t need to be taught.  We meditate naturally from the time we are children and naturally we come into ourselves (unless we doubt ourselves).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Now, I have no more depression.  It has been over a year since I felt any sort of thing even like depression (was extremely bipolar).  I no longer have a subconscious.  I no longer care about anything but our family.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;We are not like most people.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Dreams are not random.  Nothing is random.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;These cryptic posts are mixes of language and history, showing that our history, itself, is written in code.  Socrates and Plato were the same person!!!   History is a Joke!  Our Joke!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Magdala-phallus&lt;br /&gt;Mandala-ovum&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;No one is teaching me these things.  You, also, don&amp;#039;t need a teacher.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Want to see what an atom looks like?  https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=858654304147057&lt;br /&gt;Nerve cell:  &lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;www.youtube.com/watch?v=rENyyRwxpHo&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This was kinda... personal.  Please reply.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 14:05:52 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606681</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T14:05:52Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Hacked the Path with drugs -- now not sure where I am</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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: Pelvic area contraction and a weird energy burst</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606646</link> <description>I keep noticing a pressure moving around the chakra points lately.  &amp;#034;Trying&amp;#034; in general is what gets it stuck, so I think the best thing to do is accept it where it is.  You might notice that, when you finally leave it alone, it moves up the body.  Very weird stuff, haha, but just go with it, eh? &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/closed_eyes.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 12:43:29 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606646</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T12:43:29Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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/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/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>Pelvic area contraction and a weird energy burst</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606615</link> <description>Hi,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have some sort of energetic contraction in the pelvis area and it kind of gets stronger when some negative situations happen.  I&amp;#039;ve tried being mindful of it but it still stays there in the body in the pelvic area. Like a glob of negative stuff.&lt;br /&gt;Does anyone know how to ease this or is there anyone else who has felt/ is feeling this?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And the other weird sensation that I have is from time to time involuntarily there is an urge of the body to break through. Like an instant warm sensation will appear mainly in the head and shoulders area and it does appear like the body is trying to either disintigrate or teleport and it lasts for a split second&lt;br /&gt;Does anyone have more information on this? This has happened a lot of times.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thank you.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 06:16:32 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606615</guid> <dc:creator>John</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T06:16:32Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Challenge to the Arahants...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606598</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jeremy May:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Apollo loves You!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hi Jeremy,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Have you talked about your own practice on a thread here or elsewhere? If so, can you point me to it? I&amp;#039;m wondering where you are coming from with a lot of these cryptic posts. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Nick</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 04:11:06 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606598</guid> <dc:creator>Nikolai .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T04:11:06Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: What if breathing isn't pleasurable?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606576</link> <description>Oh it&amp;#039;s not painful, you&amp;#039;re right, it&amp;#039;s more annoying than anything. I was just kind of wondering from a hypothetical perspective. Does somebody who has to experience a lot of physical pain have a harder time achieving jhana? And can something that is painful be turned into something pleasant through concentration, and jhana can be achieved by focusing on an object that is initially painful?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thank you for your post by the way. The idea that the key is concentration itself that brings about pleasure and leads to jhana made things a lot more clear to me.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 02:17:26 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606576</guid> <dc:creator>rich r a</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T02:17:26Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Did I almost reach jhana? I got scared...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606569</link> <description>There&amp;#039;s no way I could be near jhana, right? This has to be all in my head?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve only been meditating on a regular schedule for 2 weeks, though I have been reading about it for years. Just now, after about 30minutes into my session, I had a new and somewhat frightening experience.I felt my concentration on my breath getting stronger and deeper. Then for a couple seconds I started to feel an overwhelming feeling throughout my body. It wasn&amp;#039;t bliss, but perhaps it could have been if I let it. Instead, I got scared and felt anxiety and fear. Then I was too confused and weirded out to continue the session so I ended it, and here I am typing this post up.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This has never happened to me. I&amp;#039;m usually a very grounded person so I am kind of shocked that I experienced fear. I thought I would embrace that experience, not be fearful of it. One of the main reason I started meditating again was because I wanted to experience something out of the ordinary, and now I am being fearful of it...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What do you guys think happened to me? Can it really be a glimpse into jhana? Or is it something that my head decided to make up?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It also occurred to me that it would be extremely beneficial to me to have a teacher. What is the best way to find a teacher who is knowledgable about jhana? I am in the bay area in cali if that helps.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 02:14:21 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606569</guid> <dc:creator>rich r a</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T02:14:21Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Challenge to the Arahants...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606563</link> <description>Apollo loves You!</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 01:41:10 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606563</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T01:41:10Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Four "noob" questions</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606555</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;[quote=&lt;br /&gt;]&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short version. Do you have control of the itch? If yes, then the itch is part of you (self); if no, then not part of you (no-self). And trust me, you don&amp;#039;t have control. Its pretty easy to see this and its not much of a mystery. But what about your beliefs, moods, attitudes, memories, political perusasion. Do you have control? The same rule applies. Now it gets interesting.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Well that makes entirely too much sense. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks Howard that&amp;#039;s actaully gonna be a big help.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 00:45:13 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606555</guid> <dc:creator>Doug M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T00:45:13Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Log toward vanishing the mind</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606551</link> <description>&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;If this earth turned into a Garden of Eden... I must have my reasons for thinking so... and my reasons for knowing it won&amp;#039;t last....&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The left hand not knowing what the right hand does...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Look at SriMala responding to our story that i wrote last night... but just now posting...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;Emperor Pala had a young prince named Thotha.  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;Thotha was beautiful, loved everything, wanted everything.  As he grew, he dabbled in evil, in good, in filth, in beauty, in lies, and in truths.  &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;When he grew old enough, he went to his father, Emperor Pala, and said these words:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&amp;#034;Father, I Still Want.&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;Pala, with Infinite Wisdom, looked at his young prince with such love that the stars melted, saying, &amp;#034;I know Young Prince and I have waited for the day you would ask such a thing.  I will now step down, from this golden, luminous throne.  You may have my Gardens, my Harem, my Library, and my Lands.&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;So Thoth sat on the luminous throne, partaking of all things, tasting, smelling, hearing, and touching all things.  He had so much bliss it was if he lived a NEVER ENDING story.  But one day, when the boredom came, it came like a storm of Nothing.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;The storm ripped out the eyes of his people, replacing them with Buttons.  It tainted the Gardens and made them Cemeteries.  It ate his Library.  It made waste of his Harem.  Thoth couldn&amp;#039;t care.  It was the echo of his own heart that had been the storm.  He was desperate.  He would seek his father once again.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;He found Pala wondering the deserts, blinded and dying.  He said:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&amp;#034;Father, I Still Want&amp;#034;. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;Pala answered, &amp;#034;But Child, I am nothing.  I have given you everything.  What do you want me to do?&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&amp;#034;Can you make me forget?&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;Pala looked with such a love that the stars, again, melted.  This time, they melted into Rain.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;He loved Thoth more than himself.  He knew what to do.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;He ripped out his son&amp;#039;s heart.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;The heart became a baby.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;He said, &amp;#034;Now I call you Gotha.  I will raise you all over again.&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Very Good, brother...  You let me Play!&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2014 00:09:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606551</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-18T00:09:00Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: meditation making me feel spaced out</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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: Shaktipat, Transmission, Emptiness Vibes...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606545</link> <description>Still haven&amp;#039;t investigated me?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;No, not buddhist.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What Buddhist use to be.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 23:39:54 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606545</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T23:39:54Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Four "noob" questions</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606542</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Doug M:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Howard Maxwell Clegg:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;[quote=&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BTW 20 mins to investigate one itch? Sounds like good concentration to me.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go Doug!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;]&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I should qualify that to say ... it would take me 20 minutes to wrap my head around the three charactersitics of said itch.  &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;How/why an itch relates to no-self is still quite a mind trip for me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short version. Do you have control of the itch? If yes, then the itch is part of you (self); if no, then not part of you (no-self). And trust me, you don&amp;#039;t have control. Its pretty easy to see this and its not much of a mystery. But what about your beliefs, moods, attitudes, memories, political perusasion. Do you have control? The same rule applies. Now it gets interesting.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks folks - good info above.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Still curious as to people&amp;#039;s opinion of zazen as insight vs concentration... &lt;br /&gt;or is it some weird special version of concentration that is also insight. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All the Mahihana schools tend to do more of a compound practice including insight, concentration but also cultivation of the bramaviharas. The schools are upfont about this to a greater or lesser extent. Zen is on one extreme of this spectrum of disclosure. Also Zen is a non-dual school, Therevada more dualistic, so they have fudimentally different takes on what it means to practice. Confused? Yay! Join the club.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 23:00:25 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606542</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T23:00:25Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shaktipat, Transmission, Emptiness Vibes...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606538</link> <description>C&amp;#039;mon man, there is no real me, is this a Buddhist site or what?</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 22:41:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606538</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T22:41:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Rude &amp; Terrifying WTF experience upon waking</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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: Nanas &amp; me.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606526</link> <description>Doug - that all sounds great!  I don&amp;#039;t really have any more advice but glad to hear you are seeing some real-life benefits. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think that difficulties in day-to-day life can be some of the best motivators and sort of catalysts for good practice.  But that is just me!</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 22:16:03 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606526</guid> <dc:creator>Mike H.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T22:16:03Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Nanas &amp; me.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606520</link> <description>Thanks Mike - great simple advice I needed to hear. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If it helps - here&amp;#039;s a brief bit of background on my practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;Been &amp;#034;playing&amp;#034; with meditation in no serious way and with no serious consistency (mostly for stress relief) for a number of years.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;A year or so ago started doing it a bit more consistently in response to difficulties in a relationship. (realized that if I had a problem it was because I was making a problem - and wanted to become less easily provoked.)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Saw AMAZING results and wanted to learn how to do it right.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;About 6-8 months ago started devouring buddhist thought/teaching (being careful to stay secular). &lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;The creation of a formal practice in addition to the dharma has increased the already great results I&amp;#039;ve experienced from an interpersonal standpoint.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Budding interest in progress, path, and eventual liberation began about 4 months ago.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Lots more reading since then.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;I don&amp;#039;t specifically remember any epic A&amp;amp;P experiences but have certainly had moments of exquisite calm, and joy. Even experienced the &amp;#034;laughing for no real reason&amp;#034; that I&amp;#039;ve seen described. These things occurred for me while out in the real world, not during a sit.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t specifically remember any obvious dark night either, but hey - we all have ups and downs in life.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So that&amp;#039;s where I am.&lt;em&gt;.. really not sure where that is... &lt;/em&gt;but that&amp;#039;s where I am.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 21:20:46 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606520</guid> <dc:creator>Doug M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T21:20:46Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Nanas &amp; me.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606516</link> <description>Doug - You have some fair questions there.  You might be in stage (nana) 1, 2, 3, 4...?   It would be hard to say without considering your history of meditation practice.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As a general matter, it is said that people &amp;#039;cycle&amp;#039; through the stages of insight.  So you might be in daily life and feel some aspects of a certain stage of insight, but then you might move into another stage during the course of that same day, or whenever.  In other words, you don&amp;#039;t really &amp;#039;lock in&amp;#039; your insights from a certain stage of insight and then go about embodying that in real life all the time (unless we are talking about stream entry etc., and that is a wholly different question).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the end my advice is to &amp;#039;keep on truckin&amp;#039;, but be aware that the hardest stages for most people are yet to come.   You might be in #3 given the back pain, (I had a lot of shoulder / upper back pain at that time).  But really the advice is the same if you are coming out of three or still in stage 2, just follow your meditation instructions to the best of your ability, and keep learning about the dharma - make adjustments to your practice as necessary.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 21:02:47 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606516</guid> <dc:creator>Mike H.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T21:02:47Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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/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/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/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/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>RE: What if breathing isn't pleasurable?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606478</link> <description>Haha, well I just thought your clogged nostril was more annoying than painful.  I don&amp;#039;t think you&amp;#039;ll get to jhana by focusing on unpleasant things.  Acceptance of annoying things and concentration on something in the present will take you to jhana, though.  I was just trying to point out that it&amp;#039;s the stable awareness, not the object of awareness, that&amp;#039;s important.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 19:30:42 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606478</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T19:30:42Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Nanas &amp; me.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606463</link> <description>I&amp;#039;m trying to get fix for where I MAY be in relation to the nanas.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;u&gt;Nana 1) Mind and Body:&lt;/u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I understand this as a general understanding of one&amp;#039;s ability to be aware of physical things that perhaps were previously never considered consciously. &lt;em&gt;&amp;#034;Oh I actually CAN notice thoughts as they arise.&amp;#034;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;u&gt;Nana 2) Cause and Effect:&lt;/u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I understand this as a general understanding of the fact that things lead to other things.&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;Intent precedes movement.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Lifting the foot precedes stepping forward.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Reality TV makes me stupider&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;Of course feel free to correct my understanding if needed, but assuming I&amp;#039;m not too far off base...&lt;span style="color: #0000ff"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My First question is:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve got #s 1 &amp;amp; 2 ... when I&amp;#039;m paying attention or meditating.&lt;br /&gt;But when I&amp;#039;m answering a client email, or driving to work I&amp;#039;m pretty much back on unconscious autopilot.&lt;br /&gt;Is that the way it&amp;#039;s supposed to work?&lt;br /&gt;Or would one only consider themselves &amp;#034;past&amp;#034; these nanas if we were somehow able to be this aware ALL the time?&lt;br /&gt;cause that would feel pretty darned enlightened to me &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;u&gt;Nana 3) Three Characteristics:&lt;/u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is where I get confused.&lt;/strong&gt; I sense myself making progress on the three characteristics but I wouldn&amp;#039;t go so far as saying I&amp;#039;ve come to any stage of insight on them.&lt;br /&gt;BUT - This nana is often said to accompany LOTS of physical pain even though sits used to be just fine.&lt;br /&gt;AND - I&amp;#039;ve also seen this nana named &amp;#034;Mastery&amp;#034; and described as: &lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #800000"&gt;he [the meditator] now sees clearly the beginning, middle and end of the experience he is examining. This stage is called knowledge of mastery because the meditator acquires mastery in his understanding of impermanence.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Which I can certainly do, but again wouldn&amp;#039;t claim to have gained any impressive amount of insight as to no-self from it. (though perhaps a little.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000ff"&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, My Next question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Given the alternate description, and the fact that my back is WRECKED during meditation lately (seriously like my ENTIRE back) ... am I in nana 3?&lt;br /&gt;Can you be &amp;#034;IN&amp;#034; nana or is it just a binary done/non-done thing?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #0000ff"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Last Question (for now):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If I am in fact past #2 ... and perahps passING #3 What should I do to help tease out the lessons of no-self &amp;amp; impermanence that seem rather shallow to me now?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thanks for all the help and direction folks.&lt;br /&gt;I sincerely apprecaite it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 18:44:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606463</guid> <dc:creator>Doug M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T18:44:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Rude &amp; Terrifying WTF experience upon waking</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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/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/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: What if breathing isn't pleasurable?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606431</link> <description>Thanks for the quick replies guys.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So it is not that the breathing needs to be pleasurable, but rather, concentration itself becomes pleasurable. Is this the general consensus that everyone agrees on to reach the first jhana?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So hypothetically speaking, if I were to choose an unpleasant or painful object, such as a severe itch or ache on my body, can jhana be just as attainable if I focus on those spots? Would the pain or unpleasantness turn into something pleasant just from the concentration on the object?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;d actually rather not switch objects just because I&amp;#039;ve been doing the breath for so long, and it indeed is easier to keep my concentration on it because the unpleasantness of it draws my attention to it more. But I wonder if this is holding me back?</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 15:44:38 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606431</guid> <dc:creator>rich r a</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T15:44:38Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Log toward vanishing the mind</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606420</link> <description>&lt;u&gt;&lt;strong&gt;17Oct14  Direct Looking :&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If it weren&amp;#039;t fun would you be being/doing/having it?  If you say you are not having fun maybe that is a lie, this universe being dual and all.   Some beings get hooked on rollercoaster experiences.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The practices towards Nirvana should be fun and fruitful.   Comparing notes with other practicers is fun and fruitful: The surprises of self-discovery won and shared.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m beginning to get a clearer view of some limiting postulates or importances and an amazing view of how I could be so much free&amp;#039;er and happier without those.   Last night I indulged myself with self-enquiry:  &amp;#034;What am I?&amp;#034;   Somatics and an &amp;#034;ask no further&amp;#034; feeling, but could I fully &amp;#034;have&amp;#034; it when I&amp;#039;ve always known myself by how much I be-do-have?   I know myself by my importances -- without them what am I?   Exactly.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Once the &amp;#034;created one&amp;#034; always the &amp;#034;created one&amp;#034;?  A sovereign &amp;#034;created one&amp;#034;?  oxymoronic?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;There, there, dear, don&amp;#039;t cry -- you can always create new importances, don&amp;#039;t you see, you&amp;#039;re doing it now, and see who is doing that?   Why, this time it&amp;#039;s you and not that entity you&amp;#039;ve come to rely on -- your mind.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;6:48 a.m.  &lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;#034;Create Something&amp;#034; - 6 Directions&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What would an unlimited being create?  Surprises -- other beings to surprise me -- worlds of surprises -- beings fashioned after me who also like surprises.   If I always know then it cannot be a surprise.&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;Surprise&amp;#034; degrades into fulfilling that desire through chaos and confusion and amnesia.   Life is scales, harmonics and hierarchies.   There is a scale of goals and a scale of sensations = scale of surprise.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am a surprise to myself now -- vanishing the mind gives me the surprise of finding myself; self-discovery has a surprise factor.  Surprise is sort of a tickling sensation (yawn).   But how am I going to with full knowledge surprise myself?  Wouldn&amp;#039;t I have to not-know myself or at least partly?   Wouldn&amp;#039;t I have to create a via, a &amp;#034;not-self&amp;#034; conceptual mock-up?  Remember, as an unlimited being, if I merely say the &amp;#034;WORD&amp;#034; it can be done.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Is this why the universe is dual -- opposite experiences are surprising?  When I think it is all black and suddenly there is white, is that a surprise?   The left hand not knowing what the right hand does in order to have surprise?   &amp;#034;Experience&amp;#034; implies we don&amp;#039;t know something beforehand.   &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Was there ever a prior time when I knew the construct of this universe of mind and I&amp;#039;m just pretending I don&amp;#039;t know so I can have an &amp;#034;experience&amp;#034;?   Trick me, recruit me, lie to me, betray me, knock me unconscious and implant me with commands -- I need more and more surprises.  Let&amp;#039;s all do it to each other, okay?  Let&amp;#039;s create vengeance so that we will never know and be surprised when it is done.  Let&amp;#039;s create the surprise of birth, then death and then the surprise of the astral realms.   By simply &amp;#034;not-knowing&amp;#034; we can do this over and over and over again.   Like a low-budget movie.  But what about our audience?  Won&amp;#039;t they get bored?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sometimes people say, &amp;#034;It would really surprise me if __________&amp;#034;.   Here, let me try one:  &amp;#034;It would really surprise me if this earth turned into a Garden of Eden&amp;#034;, so I would have to have some certainty (and many reasons why) it would not happen.   Aahh, yes!  those &amp;#034;not-selfs&amp;#034; and their predictability and unpredictability.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Let&amp;#039;s look at that more closely, namely, predictability and non-predictability?   The predictability comes from operating through the mind -- the mind is predictable because it can only repeat and repeat and repeat. The unlimited being - how can it be predictable if it always wants surprise.   Even to itself it is not predictable.   &amp;#034;I am a surprise unto myself&amp;#034;.  Say that out loud and see how it feels.  Ticklish laughter I feel when I say that.&lt;br /&gt;Even delusion serves me because of the surprise factor when I lose the delusion.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As long as you are not me and I am not you and we are both in fairly good condition as games players, then we can both have fun surprises.   If I am you and you are me, what value is it to know that and never be able to not-know that?  What sensations then?   What am I really? and what am I really all about?  When I am one am I Life?  When I am many, are they life?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What I&amp;#039;m getting right now is that there has to be a home base, an awareness of awareness from which all unreason proceeds.   To create unreason there must be analytical and logical thinking.   A knowingness of what one is doing to and for self.     Therefore, it seems perfectly analytical and logical to me that I would create &amp;#034;not-selfs&amp;#034; who would surprise me and become sovereign and unlimited and !wow! the surprises I could have then.   Isn&amp;#039;t parenthood a mimicry of this?  Or is this the first and final lie of the mind?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When an artist goes &amp;#034;into the zone&amp;#034; he is surprised in his creating, in his writing.   When someone says, &amp;#034;I just let life live through me&amp;#034; then there can be surprise.   Not planning, being &amp;#034;Present&amp;#034;, not knowing what words might come out of your mouth next.   Words become offensive because one has experienced them too much -- non life goals are less surprising and more predictable than life goals.  &lt;em&gt;Or am I simply running this subject into the ground? &lt;/em&gt;  Being &amp;#034;Not Present&amp;#034;, being in trance (entranced) -- &amp;#034;!wow! what just hit me?!? I never saw that bus coming!&amp;#034;  Game strategies exposed -- no more surprise -- are no good anymore.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;I am detached, I am disappeared, I am exteriorized from my body ...my mind is gone ... my mind is somewhat here but I am not it.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Could I let go of the need for surprise?   When I vanish my mind and be unlimited with all that potential, well, would I have any desire?   I am so blissful and happy with my-one-self would I would like to duplicate myself - with likewise unlimited potential? -- perhaps. Or not.   &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Can the viewpoint of &amp;#034;The One&amp;#034; be duplicated?  My partner says:  &lt;em&gt;It can be mirrored, only, lets pretend, and lets never stop pretending, it&amp;#039;s a spirit of play with no desire to forever stop playing.  &lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Okay, I&amp;#039;m fading here and it is now 8:40      &lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;#034;Create Something&amp;#034;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What importance can I give the mind to chew on?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The color yellow&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t see anything wrong with creating an importance that parallels the mind, do you?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;put yellow all around me and immediately turns on the compulsive create of the mind -- creating all possibe variants of the color yellow.   Poor thing, it can only dig into its memory banks.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The difference is I am consciously giving the importance to the mind instead of the mind (unconsciously) giving me the importance.   This allows me to consciously view the associations and identifications with past importances and make a conscious decision to let go because, once seen, it no longer has the surprise factor -- game with my mind reduced to that degree of seeing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There is a fun factor or delight in discovering my analytical and logical thinking abilities.   I can then go fully into a game knowing always that it is &amp;#034;unreasonable&amp;#034;, or I can go goal-less.   The &amp;#034;Game-Maker&amp;#034;.  The Master of Games.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Depending upon my condition, a game can either feel restrictive or expansive.   A game may feel expansive but actually be restrictive when covert game strategies are employed, and cravings for sensation triggered (for example, &amp;#034;sting operations&amp;#034;).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;A &amp;#034;surprise&amp;#034; behind that yellow door.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;the self-importance of being-doing-having yellow - status over the &amp;#034;not-yellows&amp;#034;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;yellow says to look and to be looked at, to shine and to be shined on, to admire and to be admired.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #545454"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;Yellow&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #545454"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt; is the most luminous of all the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #545454"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;colors&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #545454"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt; of the spectrum. It&amp;#039;s the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #545454"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;color&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #545454"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt; that captures our attention more than any other &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #545454"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;color&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #545454"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="color: #545454"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 10px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Yellow says, &amp;#034;Know me&amp;#034;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt; a sun is a recruitment agency&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;yellow fades to white -- it is an effort to keep it mocked up&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;resistance to hard, solid, glaring yellow   --  heat -- acid&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;everytime I put it around me it keeps disappearing on me - where did it go?&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;#034;How does yellow seem to you now?&amp;#034; &lt;/em&gt;  When I look around I&amp;#039;m seeing it almost everywhere, except I don&amp;#039;t see it in the blue, but there seems to be a bias for yellow.  I don&amp;#039;t feel as enamored of it as I was.  I can see it as a concept, a construct.   It was created and different importances/significances were assigned to it and some of that appears funny, ridiculous that a being would do that to itself -- but then ... games don&amp;#039;t make sense ... it seemed like a good idea at the time. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What problem was yellow trying to solve?  The problem of &amp;#034;white&amp;#034;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;10:43  take a break</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:46:11 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606420</guid> <dc:creator>Colleen Karalee Peltomaa</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T14:46:11Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Had a great/terrible experience. Where do I go from here?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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/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/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/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/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: Four "noob" questions</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606406</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;[quote=&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BTW 20 mins to investigate one itch? Sounds like good concentration to me.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go Doug!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;]&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I should qualify that to say ... it would take me 20 minutes to wrap my head around the three charactersitics of said itch.  &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;How/why an itch relates to no-self is still quite a mind trip for me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks folks - good info above.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Still curious as to people&amp;#039;s opinion of zazen as insight vs concentration... &lt;br /&gt;or is it some weird special version of concentration that is also insight. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:25:47 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606406</guid> <dc:creator>Doug M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T13:25:47Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Had a great/terrible experience. Where do I go from here?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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: Practice Log toward vanishing the mind</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606396</link> <description>Ha!  &amp;#034;Read only left hand pages&amp;#034; -- makes one examine one&amp;#039;s approach to life -- the nonsense of it all.  Life and nonsense = fun.   Are we having fun yet?</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 10:46:30 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606396</guid> <dc:creator>Colleen Karalee Peltomaa</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T10:46:30Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: What if breathing isn't pleasurable?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606392</link> <description>The key to jhana seems to be stability of attention.  It isn&amp;#039;t that you try to make the breath pleasant, so much as concentration itself is pleasant, and most people are watching the breath.  If you have any pleasant sensation anywhere, you can simply watch that.  If nothing seems pleasant, just watch anything at all - whatever captures your attention most easily.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My first forrays into jhana were accidental. I was a teenager, and I was trying to learn telekinesis (hehe).  I was staring at a psi wheel for about 10 minutes, and I began to notice how incredibly beautiful it was.  I looked around and everything was glowing vibrantly with color.  I didn&amp;#039;t know what it was at the time.  Later on, when I started meditating, I liked to do body scanning - where I just placed attention on different body parts in sequence for a few seconds - and after a while each thing became very pleasant until the whole body was buzzing with pleasurable tingles.  From there concentration is very easy, so you can just go along for the ride.  It seems very easy just to stay with anything once you&amp;#039;ve stabilized the awareness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So you can concentrate on anything at all, just remember it&amp;#039;s the act of stabilizing your attention that makes the jhana, not any particular object or sensation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A good way to think about it is trying to stop a train that&amp;#039;s going down hill.  The movement of attention has its own weight and momentum, so the first few minutes of applying the breaks might not make a noticable difference when you first start.  Try not to think of it like you&amp;#039;re vieing for control over your mind, but rather you&amp;#039;re slowing it down with every moment of sustained awareness of a single thing.  Every time you notice you aren&amp;#039;t concentrating, just hold the attention on something.  You will get carried off by the momentum again, but then you&amp;#039;ll have a moment of clarity, and you use that to go directly back to the object.  There&amp;#039;s no reason to scold yourself or anything because that&amp;#039;s just keeping your foot away from the brakes.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Lastly, if you find your clogged nose distracting, that means you&amp;#039;re already focused on it, so why not just use that as your object of concentration.  &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/closed_eyes.gif" &gt;  Anything can become pleasant if you keep your mind open to the possibility.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 10:45:07 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606392</guid> <dc:creator>Not Tao</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T10:45:07Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: What if breathing isn't pleasurable?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606389</link> <description>Another popular object is a visual object called a kasina.  This can be a colored circle drawn on something or a candle flame or other light source shined into the eyes.  After staring at the light the eyes can be closed and then the after-image on the retina can be concentrated on.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 10:42:08 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606389</guid> <dc:creator>Tom Tom</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T10:42:08Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Fast muscle contractions, weird breathing patterns</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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: Questions about the The Pre-Vipassana Stages</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606379</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;3. Also I would like some feedback on my practice. Right now my practice consists of noting without the notes. Just simply noticing and observing reality around me, feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells, seeing, touching. Occassionally I&amp;#039;ll toss some notes in there especially when the mind hasn&amp;#039;t really setlled down yet and I get lost in thought. But I always become aware of this and continue to observe.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You&amp;#039;re doing everything correctly.  Increase the dose or keep sitting as you&amp;#039;re doing and you&amp;#039;ll make progress.  Just keep going.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 10:22:28 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606379</guid> <dc:creator>Tom Tom</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T10:22:28Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: What if breathing isn't pleasurable?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606347</link> <description>Samatha (pure &amp;#034;concentration&amp;#034;) practice should be pleasurable/blissful, yes. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Proper samatha should suppress the 5 hindrances of sense desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness, and doubt.  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This forum doesn&amp;#039;t seem to talk about the 5 factors of samatha much (probably because the focus here is geared toward vipassana), but the 5 factors of jhana are vitakka (applied thinking)-vicara (sustained thinking) and piti (rapture)-sukkha (bliss) and ekagatta (one-pointedness).  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the first jhana these 5 factors arise and the 5 hindrances are suppressed.  Each subsequent jhana eliminates the factors as a more and more refined level of absorption is obtained.  In the second jhana the forceful attention (vitakka-vicara) is dropped.  In the third jhana the piti (rapture) is dropped.  In the fourth jhana the sukkha (bliss) is dropped and the result is a very refined state of equanimity.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In practice all of this happens automatically whenever an object is selected and concentration on that object is maintained for a significant length of time.  Knowing all of this terminology is unnecessary, but helpful.&lt;br /&gt;&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; My sinuses cause my nostrils to alternate so usually only one is open at a time. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #111111"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&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;Is this going to be a problem to achieving jhana? Or can I learn to find some kind of pleasantry in the sensation of breathing if I spend more time being mindful of it?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t have any significant trouble with sinuses (though sometimes), but often I would notice that at certain stages one or the other nostril would inhale more air than another.  There is probably some kind of &amp;#034;meditative-energetic&amp;#034; correlation as to which nostril is inhaling, but I&amp;#039;m not sure what this is.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If the nose is not working for you as an object of meditation, then pretty much any other object concentrated on for long enough will produce jhana.  Another popular spot is concentrating on the belly a little bit below the navel.  You might want to try the belly as an object instead of the nostrils.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 08:22:25 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606347</guid> <dc:creator>Tom Tom</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T08:22:25Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: meditation making me feel spaced out</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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>What if breathing isn't pleasurable?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606333</link> <description>Hi everyone. I read the stickied thread of this forum, and it mentioned that the key to achieving the first jhana is to focus on pleasant sensations.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is news to me, I didn&amp;#039;t pleasure was a requirement for jhana. I always thought all I needed was to cultivate my mindfulness and concentration.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The issue is that for some reason, I have developed a distaste for breathing out my left nostril. I&amp;#039;ve seen doctors about it and they said it&amp;#039;s not too abnormal to require surgery. Anyway, at this point i don&amp;#039;t have money for that. It&amp;#039;s not necessarily painful, it just feels clogged up and unpleasant to breath through. My sinuses cause my nostrils to alternate so usually only one is open at a time. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Is this going to be a problem to achieving jhana? Or can I learn to find some kind of pleasantry in the sensation of breathing if I spend more time being mindful of it?</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 07:47:09 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606333</guid> <dc:creator>rich r a</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T07:47:09Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: New Moderation Policy</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606263</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Anyone else got something smart to say about fairies being real or not?I didn&amp;#039;t think so...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I believe the term is not &amp;#034;smart,&amp;#034; but &amp;#034;smartass.&amp;#034;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 05:24:32 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606263</guid> <dc:creator>Tom Tom</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T05:24:32Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Questions about the The Pre-Vipassana Stages</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606257</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; 1. I have not yet attained stream entry. Would this be considered pre-path or first path? I have crossed the A&amp;amp;P however. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This would be considered pre-path, but you&amp;#039;re working on getting 1st path.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 05:01:52 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606257</guid> <dc:creator>Tom Tom</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T05:01:52Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Statistics of sudden awakenings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606254</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Droll Dedekind:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;My previous post seems needlessly critical, sorry.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To put it more positively: if LU gave short surveys that asked pointees about their previous meditation/spiritual experience, then success rates could be put into more descriptive brackets. Like, Average Joe Success Rate 15%-20%, ..., 10+ Years of Meditation Success Rate 90%. These stats would be more interesting. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m gonna give LU a sincere try soon. I&amp;#039;ll post here if I have to eat my words &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/tongue.gif" &gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;As their method has worked for over 1000 people in just a few years I think it is pretty safe to assume that among those people are pretty much all kinds of people with all kinds of backgrounds you could imagine. Personally I am more interested whether it works for not for anykind of people, background or no background. Like it was said before in this thread there are other stages on the spiritual path too. Stream entry is just one of them, the first one, realisation-wise.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 05:01:16 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606254</guid> <dc:creator>Kim Katami</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T05:01:16Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Statistics of sudden awakenings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606250</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jeremy May:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Did this message not get to you?  There was a server reset on the night I sent it...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;Do you want your sudden awakening?  Colleen has it in a little box under her bed.  She has been saving it for you, waiting to give it to you on your BirthDay&amp;#034;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;What message? I don&amp;#039;t get it.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 04:57:12 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606250</guid> <dc:creator>Kim Katami</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T04:57:12Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Practice Log toward vanishing the mind</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606232</link> <description>You give me such good presents!&lt;br /&gt;I sang my song all day.&lt;br /&gt;It was one of the first songs I knew.  My uncles gave it to me before I was Kissed.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I got another good present today:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t34.0-12/10726398_1486082121671019_363106376_n.jpg?oh=acd11dc26c0dd49f35bd745650ba188a&amp;amp;oe=54425DB6&amp;amp;__gda__=1413654230_ab9d5fc878fda78231c91bfb88e40453</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 03:59:39 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606232</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T03:59:39Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: meditation making me feel spaced out</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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>RE: Practice Log toward vanishing the mind</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606219</link> <description>&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;u&gt;16Oct14  Direct Looking :&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What does an unlimited being be-do-have when he has no compulsive need to be-do-have?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Spoke with a fellow practicer and he tells me his creative process takes around 10 minutes; mine takes hours and my only complaint was not enough time left for doing the core practice, which I am not as eager to do as I am my creative practice.   I sense a resolution to bring things into balance.  Peacefulness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My partner is now on board with the creative process which he came to value after he saw me doing solely that for over 40 days straight -- and he saw how I smoothed out and he perceived it to be a solution for his own rollercoaster&amp;#039;ing.   He now loves it possibly as much as I do.   However Buddhist teaching warns against becoming enamored with even a refined mind, and since doing the creative practices I&amp;#039;ve realized a mind from the far past, before it became so degraded.   Just another layer of the onion though.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yesterday&amp;#039;s creative process got me to realize something: without the past, without the mind, a squirrel is just a mock-up of a squirrel and acorns are just acorns -- once the mind goes quiet.   That informs me.&lt;br /&gt;Our lives and thoughts are complicated because of unclosed goals and purposes and problems from the past.... the seen and the unseen.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;&amp;#034;Have Another Create Something&amp;#034;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;  - 6 Directions&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A teacher creating a perfect curriculum for children&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;right away, putting it all around me, I see that if one is simply &amp;#034;Present&amp;#034; a curriculum is merely an outline at best&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;purpose to help them trust in thinking for themselves, analyzing, logicking&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Socrates&amp;#039; school of inquiry and self-enquiry&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Boolean algebraic logic&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;education is a hot topic of importance for the mind&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;yawns&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;a wise teacher&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;less enforcement, more complementary to child&amp;#039;s goals&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;no teacher, no school&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;only meditation schools&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;hands on creative visualisation&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Must create and must not create&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;children must create an effect  --  teacher willing to experience this effect&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;children must not create an effect  --  teacher willing to not demand an effect be created&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;children must have an effect created upon them  --  teacher willing to create an effect&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;children must not have an effect created upon them -- teacher willing to not create an effect&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;teaching by consent -- no shame/blame/guilt/ridicule&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;if I were a child how would I wish to be taught?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;--  showed how to practice to handle my fears, my emotions&lt;br /&gt;--  simple meditative techniques -- develop self-mastery&lt;br /&gt;--  communication skills&lt;br /&gt;--  body scanning techniques and physical exercise&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Back to the basic separation incident -- the first instruction as a created one&lt;br /&gt;every postulate implies some degree of enforcement&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;How does teacher seem to you now?&amp;#034;  Fine, no energy on it, mind quiet about it.&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 02:00:20 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606219</guid> <dc:creator>Colleen Karalee Peltomaa</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T02:00:20Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>meditation making me feel spaced out</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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: Questions about the The Pre-Vipassana Stages</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606157</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jake WM:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;A few questions:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1. I have not yet attained stream entry. Would this be considered pre-path or first path? I have crossed the A&amp;amp;P however.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2. With the above taken into consideration, would my insight cycle include the pre-vipassana stages (mind &amp;amp; body, cause &amp;amp; effect, three characteristics)?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Yes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;you always start at ground zero.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; I ask this because I am beginning to see a recurring theme in my meditations. I am sitting 20 minutes 3 times a day in quick succession, so usually a 20 minute sit, 10-15 minute break, 20 minute sit, break, sit again. I don&amp;#039;t have the capacity yet to sit for 60 minutes traight. However, my sits usually go something like this... Start observing the six sense doors, usually hearing and feeling and thinking are most dominant, sometimes get lost in thoughts (no more than 10-15 seconds before I realize this), note &amp;#034;thinking&amp;#034;... Then around the 30-60 minute mark, I begin to clearly see cause &amp;amp; effect in terms of how thinking correlates to a bodily response, triggers a response, but also other sense doors like reacting to bodily tension. This becomes overwhelming during the 40-50 minute mark where my upper chest/delts begin to ache, my upper back, traps, and neck begin to tense up and ache, lots of dull pain. Also the quads and lower back and knees. This could be related to long periods of being in the seated position, but it seems to correlate with the pre-vipassana stages that MCTB describes. During this period I start to kind of twitch and my body contorts (sometimes I do it intentionally, sometimes it feels like I am watching my body react to this stuff).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good reporting, this does sound the 1st 3 nyanas.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;3. Also I would like some feedback on my practice. Right now my practice consists of noting without the notes. Just simply noticing and observing reality around me, feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells, seeing, touching. Occassionally I&amp;#039;ll toss some notes in there especially when the mind hasn&amp;#039;t really setlled down yet and I get lost in thought. But I always become aware of this and continue to observe.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This type of noting tends to be referred to a &amp;#034;noticing&amp;#034; and has a more gentle feel. Don&amp;#039;t be afraid to go back to a more formal style if you have trouble concentrating, all noting is good noting.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sounds like you are in a groove, good work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thank you!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 00:38:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606157</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T00:38:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Statistics of sudden awakenings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606154</link> <description>My previous post seems needlessly critical, sorry.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To put it more positively: if LU gave short surveys that asked pointees about their previous meditation/spiritual experience, then success rates could be put into more descriptive brackets. Like, Average Joe Success Rate 15%-20%, ..., 10+ Years of Meditation Success Rate 90%. These stats would be more interesting. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m gonna give LU a sincere try soon. I&amp;#039;ll post here if I have to eat my words &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/tongue.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 00:34:46 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606154</guid> <dc:creator>Droll Dedekind</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-17T00:34:46Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: the dharmaoverground logo</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606136</link> <description>A buddha is a buddha... The purse is temporary.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 22:37:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606136</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T22:37:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: the dharmaoverground logo</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606129</link> <description>And you are past the point of being wrong.&lt;br /&gt;I am not past the point of being shocked by you.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 22:23:33 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606129</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T22:23:33Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shaktipat, Transmission, Emptiness Vibes...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606115</link> <description>First, you must know the Real You.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then, I won&amp;#039;t need to answer that question.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 21:02:18 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606115</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T21:02:18Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Statistics of sudden awakenings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606112</link> <description>Did this message not get to you?  There was a server reset on the night I sent it...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;Do you want your sudden awakening?  Colleen has it in a little box under her bed.  She has been saving it for you, waiting to give it to you on your BirthDay&amp;#034;</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 20:57:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606112</guid> <dc:creator>Jeremy May</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T20:57:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Conceptual Proliferation</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/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/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/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/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: Biographies of great masters . . .</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606067</link> <description>Hello, Kim, your point is well taken and the natural progression... well, one does at least initially sort through the biographies and theories and practices and then find out where they are, dhukka-wise, select a practice that indicates to them, make a commitment, and mostly have fun doing the practice.   Nirvana  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For example, my partner saw me -- with my severe dhukka case -- doing my practices and he saw the changes in me and he started doing his own practices, likewise realizing how much fun and profitable it is even for someone in a not so severe dhukka-case.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The whole Maitreya-Buddha-arahants-practicers game was an experiment in a democratic hierarchical loop.... the operative word being &amp;#034;loop&amp;#034;.   Playing within the rules of this set-up one must ensure the success of self and everyone and cannot leave the loop.  Therefore the full truth and practice for nirvana will never be found and Nirvana is nothing but an incomplete carrot held out on a long, long stick.  A beautiful fakery. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;An individual could leave the loop and vanish it from his mind, but the other beings would continue to play that game, awareness practices being limited towards simply becoming a better member of the group, but never leaving.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now probably the game did not start out that way and was much more lighthearted and playful -- but you know how things always get more and more serious as time goes.  Your mileage may vary.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One could imagine they are now outside that loop and it is just themself and their own mind with its fixated mishmash of goals and purposes -- that&amp;#039;s all it ever was.  Take someone with you if you can.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;  </description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 16:40:41 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606067</guid> <dc:creator>Colleen Karalee Peltomaa</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T16:40:41Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Four "noob" questions</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606057</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Doug M:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Hi folks,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m tearing through the MCTB book (not easy as a noob this is deep, technical stuff) and I&amp;#039;m getting into the weeds with part III &amp;#034;Mastery&amp;#034; now. I have a few questions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I hope this is the right place to post this, I couldn&amp;#039;t find any section named &amp;#034;Questions so basic you may not even know how to classify them&amp;#034;... so I went with this one. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Firstly I&amp;#039;d like to clarify my understanding of Zen.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Just prior to finding MCTB I had just finished &amp;#034;The three pillars of Zen&amp;#034; - a book I picked up more as a cool read than an instruction manual. However, I was rather amazed to discover that the type of sitting I have been doing would very much qualify as zazen.&lt;br /&gt;This strikes me as a concentration practice vs. an insight practice, but Daniel often implies in the book that zen does indeed lead to insight. I suppose I could see how the use of a koan could force someone to solidify something so ridiculous it actually destroys the illusion, but beyond the koan could zazen be classified as an insight practice, or is my understanding above correct?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I&amp;#039;ve been asking the the same questions for years. All to no avail, I&amp;#039;ve all but given up, which is a shame, because it is an elegant and profound tradition.  In most of the contact I have had with Zen praticioners they usually refuse to discuss, detail, definitions, maps or anything else for that matter. I went to a Zen sitting group where the the presiding monk not only discouraged questions/discussion but implied that the need for this behaviour was evidence of moral weekness. I shit you not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My advice when dealing with Zen is take it on its own terms or not at all.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;u&gt;2) Secondly I&amp;#039;d like to ask for a watered down piece of advice.&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Since concentration practices are invaluable at least in the beginning, but insight practices do develop concentration to some degree... where should I spend my time as a relative noob while I take the required time to really dig into MCTB? &lt;br /&gt;(for me noob = serious practice has been happening for less than a year.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are using the MCTB do Noting, old school Mahasi style. From what I understand the book is written from this perpecitve so the terminology and tone will make much more sense if you are also in that perspective. Dont worry quite so much about samatha the very early Mahasi practices on working with the breath tick that box well enough. You might want to consider Kenneth Folks&amp;#039; take on Noting which involves actually verbalising your Notes. It sounds wierd, but it works very well. You can find Vids on Youtube I belive, if you want instructions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) When to say when?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I live in the Indianapolis area and despite lots of google querying I just don&amp;#039;t see too many good Insight teachers near me. Since I&amp;#039;m not likely to have that type of resource - how would I know that I&amp;#039;ve probably done enough concentration and could/should move on to insight? Do I wait for some sort of &amp;#034;event&amp;#034; or simply make the jump when I can stay reasonably focused for most of a 20 minute sit? - fyi I&amp;#039;m pretty much there.&lt;br /&gt;(I suppose question 3 there assumes your answer to #2 is that I should spend some time doing concentration practices.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I started with a lot of concentration and found I was getting all kinds insight without doing any formal insight practice. Some people practice for years and report getting very little. The general rule of thumb is that if you can attain to 1st Jhana you are ready for insight. The trouble is that spotting the attainment is often much more difficult than it sounds. This is because the descriptions that we have of the experience are often written by monastics who get to perfect their technique in &amp;#034;laboratory&amp;#034; setting i.e. a nice quiet monestary, with no sick relatives to look after or work stress to manage ect. My personal feeling is the bar is quite a bit lower. In any case, many vippassana systems like Mahasi noting get around this and are a &amp;#034;one stop shop.&amp;#034; An even better example would be the Goenka system of 10 day retreats. Personaly I don&amp;#039;t like Goenka very much but it was my first proper experince of Theravada buddhism. Even though I hated the retreat I came away with all the tools I needed for my next couple of years of insight practice. You want a &amp;#034;boot camp&amp;#034; thats a good place to start looking.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;u&gt;4) Noting - Quantity or Quality?&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Noting is really interesting to me. I had tried it before to great benefit prior to finding MCTB but the description of it in the book really helped. I don&amp;#039;t know that I&amp;#039;m doing it very well though - and given the lack of teacher - thought I&amp;#039;d ask you all for some feedback. I can&amp;#039;t dissect incoming stimuli very well at the moment without getting lost in thinking about them. Thus one little itch could take my mind down quite the rabbit hole if I were to try and investigate the three characteristics. It may take me the full 20 minutes for that one little itch. Alternatively if I just note the existence I can get more stimuli noted. So a note may be reduced to &amp;#034;chin&amp;#034;, &amp;#034;pain&amp;#034;, &amp;#034;thinking&amp;#034;, etc. &lt;br /&gt;Which is better - sticking with one stimuli, or going for speed using fairly lo-fidelity noting?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Okay, on one level any practice is good practice especially at the begining. So many people who claim to meditate, never even get to the cushion. So you need to congratulate yourself. Seriously. Secondly the whole concentration v insight debate feeds directly into this issue of mind wandering. This ability to &amp;#034;stay with your object&amp;#034; is exactly what is being trained in concentration practice. The more of it you do the more focused will be your insight, simples. But the mind wanders off and does its own thing anyway and this will always be a &amp;#034;problem,&amp;#034; its in its nature to behave badly. &amp;#034;Perfect&amp;#034; concentration is rarely possible or even desirable. BTW 20 mins to investigate one itch? Sounds like good concentration to me.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go Doug!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks folks, I appreciate the guidance!&lt;br /&gt;Doug&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 16:19:55 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606057</guid> <dc:creator>Howard Maxwell Clegg</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T16:19:55Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Biographies of great masters . . .</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606047</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jeremy May:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Ah... &lt;br /&gt;What is for me, is for you.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;There is nothing we can do.&lt;br /&gt;What is for me, is for you.&lt;br /&gt;Ah...&lt;br /&gt;We just have to face it this time, we&amp;#039;re through.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Breaking up is never easy I know &lt;br /&gt;But I have to go&lt;br /&gt;What is for me, is for you.&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s the best I can do.&lt;br /&gt;[Cure instrumental then verse 2]</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 15:24:37 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606047</guid> <dc:creator>Tee P Kay</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T15:24:37Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: The Most Profound Suttas</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606042</link> <description>Chachakka Sutta   Majjhima Nikaya #148&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This , to me is profound, due to the Sutta&amp;#039;s history of bringing &amp;#034;Sudden Awakenings&amp;#034; upon being heard out loud and understood.  Buddha the Direct Pointer.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;talks&amp;#x2e;dhammasukha&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;uploads&amp;#x2f;1&amp;#x2f;2&amp;#x2f;8&amp;#x2f;6&amp;#x2f;12865490&amp;#x2f;mn-148-dsmc-bt-110825&amp;#x2e;pdf"&gt;http://talks.dhammasukha.org/uploads/1/2/8/6/12865490/mn-148-dsmc-bt-110825.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Edit adding one more, &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sammaditthi Sutta  MN-9 Right View  Profound , shows full path to cessation&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;talks&amp;#x2e;dhammasukha&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;uploads&amp;#x2f;1&amp;#x2f;2&amp;#x2f;8&amp;#x2f;6&amp;#x2f;12865490&amp;#x2f;mn-009-010824&amp;#x2e;pdf"&gt;http://talks.dhammasukha.org/uploads/1/2/8/6/12865490/mn-009-010824.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Psi Phi</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 15:16:56 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606042</guid> <dc:creator>Psi Phi</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T15:16:56Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Statistics of sudden awakenings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606036</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Colleen Karalee Peltomaa:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Kim Katami:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Jeremy May:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;You are wise.  I&amp;#039;d like to speak to you.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You calling me a wise guy huh? &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; I&amp;#039;m best reached through email: kimkatami(at)hotmail.com&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Hello, Kim, would you mind if I contacted you for some clarification?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Colleen,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;No, I don&amp;#039;t mind.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Baba</description> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 14:51:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5606036</guid> <dc:creator>Kim Katami</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-10-16T14:51:35Z</dc:date> </item> </channel> </rss> 