Dear Mindful1983,
Hey, greetings from a gathering of DhO'ers here in Minnesota. Tarin (theprisonergreco), Trent (yabaxoule), Chuck (Chelek) and Antonio (postreptilian) and a few lurkers are all here hanging out after a nice breakfast and are happy to try to help.
Instructions for meditation now:
Chuck and Tarin say: "Don't do anything!"
Trent says: "Meditate a lot!" and laughs.
Daniel says: "Continue to investigate the Three Characteristics and read my book!" (What did you expect?)
Chuck adds: "Just be present with what is going on and follow a more relaxed, intuitive approach and go with the flow," but he is from California.
As to getting close to three: emptiness/luminosity/centerless in realtime, says Daniel, subtle dualities, less fascination with cycles, more about being here now as this being it, more about it all happening on its own.
Does attaining third path require long retreats: huge no: three people sitting here on this couch got it without long retreats, and all in daily life, and Chuck was watching a movie about a schizophrenic.
Daniel says: As to stability: no promises that all bumps and complexities are over, not by a long shot. You never know what might come up. A few sitting here had hard times in late third, and I have had a bunch of friends who had really, really hard times in second, but there is great variation.
Tarin says: it really doesn't have to be hard, and we all agree.
Let us know if this helps, and perhaps when we have our next gathering you can show up,
Daniel, Chuck, Tarin, Trent, and Antonio
CCasey just showed up and says shut up and don't talk to a lot of people about this, balance your life, asks what are you drawn to, notice what you resonate with, and follow your intuition and go for it and go with the flow, and she is not from California.
