Hi Daniel,
Daniel M. Ingram:
1) As I look more carefully at the PCE, I begin to wonder how long it lasts in what I would call its "pure form", and I currently think that it must be less than a second before subtle feelings of being arise. Again, exactly where it ends is tricky, when it transitions to an EE or fades entirely is hard to determine until some clearly coarse feeling arises, but I am wondering if what I have previously though of as PCE's were substantially more tainted than I previously thought. While this at once feels like a sign of progress, it also feeling like falling back, as previously it would seem that PCE's could last for some longer period of time, and now they seem subtly flawed in some way even from the near beginning.
I remember having the same confusion as well. Some time after having that realization, I spent a lot of time wondering if I had ever had more than 1-2 "real" PCE's, which experience was the "real one," which one would be like the end (after AF), and other related worries. The trick to this, I found, was to just ignore all thinking and feeling about this completely. Try to see the lack of utility in even figuring out which is which; or at least see the opportunity cost of doing that rather than enjoying this moment of being alive, or investigating the triggers for one's issues, or whatever other form of practice you prefer.
There was one PCE-- which began at the gathering I met you and Tarin at a few years back in MN and which lasted for 2 to 3 days-- which was very similar to how AF is. Randomly during the first few days of AF I had memories of the things I had smelled during that PCE, things I had looked at, things I had felt with my fingers, things I had eaten...There were points in time, when I would be trying so hard to figure "it" out, that I would try to call up that experience and to no avail. I knew-- because of the quality of the experience-- that it was significant in many ways and could be very useful, but I just could not really remember why, or how to call up the useful information about it, or do anything very practical about my knowledge of that experience. But the memory-- just the memory without anything else-- that said "that is where I want to be forever" kept me going through the times like those; times where I deluded myself into thinking I did not know what to do, did not know where to go, did not know how to finish the thing, and so on. It turns out that none of that mattered at all-- and I knew that in some way (hence the frustration), but the thing basically finishes when it's finished, and all that really means is being here and now as calmly and peacefully and delighted as can be.
As the actual world is always here and now, any frustration at not being able to "get it" is mostly going to be frustration about frustration (frustration will loop in on itself because the frustration will be the cause and the effect). It may be worth thinking about why you want to be AF, what value you find in that proposition, and why it is frustrating to not be that way right now; there may be an emotional investment to getting it done, or getting it done at some speed, or getting it done before some event, or getting it done because of (etc).
Daniel M. Ingram:
2) Seeing that has raised an interest in delving more into exactly what is the "feeling of being" so often mentioned, as I currently believe I am missing more on this front than I suspected. Sorting this out is very slippery, it seems. It is easier to see the results of the feeling of being than itself, the results being nervousness and the like, but sorting out exactly what it is, a physical sensation, mental images, some complex pattern of these, and how this is exactly different from just this flesh and blood body is vexing, and at one level probably illusory, yet, with the vexation itself obviously arising from the feeling of being, and likely the drive to investigate it arising from the feeling of being, and perhaps the investigation itself arising from the feeling of being, which makes me wonder if there is some common element of all those that can be known as it happens and clearly distinguished from just physical, actual reality. Strangely enough, last night I preferred eyes closed practice to just try to track down what the thing was and to watch it in the body second after second, blip after blip, which feels again like insight practice, except I was looking for something different, that feeling itself if it can be found, and whether or not I am just falling back to old habits is unclear, or whether I am just subtly panicking and frustrated, as I suspect, is perhaps more clear, but the assumption that clear seeing must be at the heart of the thing keeps returning, and so it goes.
The feeling of being and the results of the feeling of being are the same thing-- "I" am "my" feelings and "my" feelings are "me." If that is not realized deeply enough, I suspect it would lead one to have notions of "it" being very slippery, probably illusory, and so on. Which is to say: it really is those things, because the whole dhrama is 'you' chasing 'your tail' around in circles, whilst accidentally ignoring the fact that the actual world is not clear and stable while one is dizzying about.
Daniel M. Ingram:
3) Related to this is the fact that the mind is a fantastic mimic and capable of producing images and sensations that themselves are clearly designed to be mimics of every positive concept and hint regarding AF and can do so with lightening speed. Distinguishing this from the ordinary discriminating faculty of mind itself is again bedeviling at a microscopic and macroscopic level in a way that I didn't notice before. It seems that following each instant of anything and everything direct is the imagination grabbing and manufacturing some imitation of it, almost seeming like an attempt to perpetuate the problem for reasons unknown, habit? fascination?, I have no idea. Obviously the bedevilment is part of the problem also, as the PCE shows that this is all just illusory conflict, and yet, as the PCE itself seems to be less of what I thought it was, the whole thing comes into question again. While PCE's, however long they actually last, are still great, at this point it seems only AF will do, and it must be substantially different in some ways.
I had similar notions / experiences for what seemed like quite a long time. I do not recall ever having done anything directly to address this...the tendency to sense that or be that way just slowly faded away. I had a sense of this type of thing going on until maybe a day or two before AF, and I think it may have been something to do with the fundamental sense of being itself, or some part of the identity that had some ethical / moral beliefs about AF ideals (whether I or others should / should not be AF and the like). I draw that correlation because the few days prior to AF, there had not been much of a sense of 'me' / 'I' at all.
Much of the process is in trying to eliminate things which are in the way of actuality and to mimic actuality as close as 'I' can. At a certain point, it seems that the self which mimics actuality is slowly and subtly replaced by actuality itself, until there is simply no more left to replace. In other words: this may be par for the course. Has anyone else reading this experienced similar?
Daniel M. Ingram:
4) On the flip side of this, there is substantially less emotional difficulty in general and substantially more immediate satisfaction and happiness and appreciation of the rich textures of life, and yet, the flaws and gaps in it are more apparent. I have noticed this sort of paradoxical progress before in insight practice and assume similar things must apply to AF.
The gaps will become more apparent until they are no more; which is part of the fundamental package of having a 'self.' What is left to be done will fixate on itself (those things that seem worthy of obsessing about, those things 'I' think are critical to 'my' survival) until there is nothing left to fixate on; and so as the diversity of things to obsess about becomes lower and lower in quantity, the obviousness of what is left becomes more and more apparent. Understanding this very clearly is important, as it places great emphasis on being honest about what is being experienced. In other words: look for possible issues lying in "no practice zones" (those things you may have inadvertently put out of bounds), or look for thoughts to debunk such as "I don't know what to do next" (because what is next is probably actually pretty obvious if you're able to muster the courage to look it in the eye).
Daniel M. Ingram:
5) One last thing regarding felicitous feelings: often in the PCE there will be this subtle thrill of hairs rising on my arms or of a similarly charged though sometimes subtle sensual enjoyment: how much of this is just natural and how much is part of the problem? If it is a problem: what to do with it beyond just see the process that creates it?
Personally, I did not see that as any part of the problem; those feelings seem to extinguish themselves when the time is right. You may also want to keep an eye out for A&P qualities, as I think I was tricked by a few particularly strong A&P-EE's several times, and those seemed like the "holy grail" for a while, which had me resisting forward progress because I knew that I was moving away from said grail and simply did not want to accept that as being necessary. That issue could also be related to the other questions above, especially #1.
Trent
