Besides the popular/traditional answer "awakening is good for nothing"... why should anyone pursue this?

I'm in need of some motivation. Please feel free to let it fly!

If I had to describe the last few weeks: Impatience and doubt were really huge. It felt like there was no point in meditiation. I'd rather be the 25 year old that I am and behave as such. I am at a weird point in my life where I just want to be an irresponsible 25 year old, but I really don't think I can ignore 'dharma practice'. 

Trying to find the balance between awakening quickly, yet still having a social life, and not burning myself out. 

Hey Malcolm,

You don't owe me anything The fact that you kept a practice log at all was a boon to myself and others. I am bummed that you were not able to make it to the NYC meet up with Daniel. I really wanted to meet you since it seems like your practice log up until that point was getting the last knot to untangle. If you're ever available to Skype, I'd love to hear more about your path and how it unfolded. I'm sincerely happy for you!

As far as my question: that is pretty much what I wanted to hear/read. I really appreciate the framework you laid out. I am very familiar with the 4 path model, but your model seems very related to Western psychology in a way. I can relate to some of it, but I also have the feeling that I haven't even hit the first stage of your framework in a way (or not how you experienced it at least). Energetic rapture and luminosity would not describe my experience if I had to be honest, especially when luminosity seems to show up post 3rd path. 

This is what really does it for me though:   At this point in my young life, I really want all of that stuff to some degree (sans drugs maybe), but I have seen how it doesn't really get it done. Even though all that stuff is sexy, one can still have/participate in that sort of lifestyle and be miserable. I suppose that is why that quote is so good for me to hear. 

My reason for making the post: The flip side is, I am only 25 and everyone around me is pursuing their careers, social lives, exotic vacations, nice things, etc. I have the means to pursue the same material stuff, but I am also afraid to invest multiple hours a day into this awakening project. It is pretty lonely as there are very few people who are pragmatic dharma oriented. There is a lot more to this point, more than I want to expand upon here though. 

Anyway, thank you for your response. It is super inspiring and I really hope that we can talk soon! Either via Skype or face to face since you don't seem so far from CT, although I could be wrong! Good luck with the sankharas you are probably working with now! I really hope to be able to experience the same territory some day!

Thank you for everything Malcolm! Please feel free to rave any time: I'll always read what you have to say! 

Warm regards,

Alex

Hello T DC! 

I've seen your posts both here and on the reddit stream entry page! I suppose that I have been burned out for quite a while by some people's measures, but maybe pushing through some of the doubt is worthwhile...

From what I've seen, you progressed quite rapidly within a short amount of time which is really inspiring. At the same time, it induces a bit of fear in me since I feel that any break in practice will lead to regression! I feel that dharma practice will be a harder nut for me to crack than it was for you. These things vary from person to person. 

I feel a certain level of suffereing on a daily basis, mostly related to my lifestyle and the fact that I feel stuck and am afraid to make big changes in an effort to find more meaning in my career. I also notice the suffering inherent with the various issues that come up when living in society: the various things that cause contraction are endless. 

The irony here is that I want to get to a point with all of this where I can just carry on with my life. I have a feeling that it will take some time. 

Do you have any additional thoughts? If you're ever available to talk on the phone or via skype, please let me know! I'm interested in how this all unfolded for you!

Besides the popular/traditional answer "awakening is good for nothing"... why should anyone pursue this?

I'm in need of some motivation. Please feel free to let it fly! 

Besides the popular/traditional answer "awakening is good for nothing"... why should anyone pursue this?

I'm in need of some motivation. Please feel free to let it fly! 

If I were given two options:

1. Die tomorrow, which would mean just one more day with things as they are, or
2. Live another 50 years in good health plus winning the lottery but having to go back to things as they were

I would choose option 1 without hesitation.

What's going on with your practice, Kid?

Hey Kiddo,

I really appreciated your good wishes a month or so ago, so I guess I owe you a reply  :-)  So here is one perspective on how the whole thing proceeds.

First - Your certainty about yourself and the world gets exploded by some energetic rapture or glimpse of luminosity.  Which of course leads to all sorts of stuff coming up, as your carefully crafted defence mechanisms are also disrupted.

Then - You get a glimpse of Truth that knocks the supports away from the central delusion in your life. Whole heaps of angst and suffering fall right away because they were based on that delusion. Those levels of angst and suffering will never ever return. It is an extraordinary milestone.

Then - A whole series of false starts and shifts eventually culminate in thorough understanding and control of form, feeling, perception, voilitions and consciousness. It’s like you have finally been given the user manual to yourself!  There is some difficult stuff on the way as you figure out and rewire your control mechanisms, but eventually you break free of unconscious urges and can mostly choose your state of mind and actions (but only when you think to do so).

Then - Then you work steadily through sensory development and the chain of dependent arising until the whole thing inverts, and that central subject (you) and object (the world) blends into something ineffable, with access to a blissful and unified expanded perception in a state of flow. This is an almost perfect state, except it comes and goes, and there is still a knot of something there, a nagging imperfection, a stone in the sandal, and your effort and identity get a bit devoted to being in this state of non-dual bliss.

And finally - Unbinding. Seeing through the last knot of clinging and going to the state beyond states. This is the ordinary humanity. Back to the beginning.  Waking up happy every day, feeling completely liberated, not needing anything. It is The Cure - the death of the memetic virus that had been inhabiting your mind and pushing your buttons. It’s like you are  a giant steampunk factory with levers and dials and gears and belts and subsidiary machines, and the central powerplant just gets disintegrated. You are liberated.

There is still pain, and actually a little suffering as the subsidiary machines (sankharas) run on for a bit, and the dukka nanas seem to be have a bodily rhythm and so continue on in some way, but with much much less force. You can easily access whatever absorptions you had achieved, but being in an absoprtion (even non-dual bliss) becomes completely optional.

And you would rather be unbound and looking at the stain on the wall in a jail cell, than not be unbound and living with all the money, drugs, artworks, connections, cars, sex that you can imagine. Once you are rid of it, you don’t want that damn memetic virus back.  All it does is makes you suffer to get what it thinks it wants, but can never actually have. 

But you have no limits now, no fetters. So morality is the last training, if you want to live in society.

Just my ravings.

Malcolm

Let's bump this back to the front of the line! There's great stuff here, well worth remembering, plus maybe we can add to it.

Besides the popular/traditional answer "awakening is good for nothing"... why should anyone pursue this?

I'm in need of some motivation. Please feel free to let it fly! 

A Stream-enterer (Sotāpanna) is free from:

1. Identity view (Pali: sakkāya-diṭṭhi), the belief that there is an unchanging self or soul in the five impermanent skandhas[4][5]
2. Attachment to rites and rituals
3. Doubt about the teachings

A Once-returner (Sakadāgāmin) has greatly attenuated:

4. Sensual desire
5. Ill will
A Non-returner (Anāgāmi) is free from:

4. Sensual desire
5. Ill will

An Arahant is free from all of the five lower fetters and the five higher fetters, which are:

6. Attachment to the four meditative absorptions, which have form (rupa jhana)
7. Attachment to the four formless absorptions (ārupa jhana)
8. Conceit
9. Restlessness
10. Ignorance

Besides the popular/traditional answer "awakening is good for nothing"... why should anyone pursue this?

I'm in need of some motivation. Please feel free to let it fly! 

Besides the popular/traditional answer "awakening is good for nothing"... why should anyone pursue this?

I'm in need of some motivation. Please feel free to let it fly! 

The best part of waking up, 

Is Folger's in your cup!


This is my best explanation for why awakening is desirable. It's like coffee. 

This is pretty much claming a very high attainment.
How are you so sure in those 50 years you aren't going to deepen your realization or figure out there's a lot of new ground to cover?

This is my best explanation for why awakening is desirable. It's like coffee. 

This is pretty much claming a very high attainment.
How are you so sure in those 50 years you aren't going to deepen your realization or figure out there's a lot of new ground to cover?

Thanks for reviving this, Laurel. So many great hidden threads buried in here for those of us who haven't been around awhile.

I like this descriptiong from Daniel Ingram, time stamped from when the description begins.

https://youtu.be/W3kHi0LLzJs#t=30m25s

I'm with john on this. i have a gentle lean toward death. Every outbreath, that gift of the release of what is used up, is bliss, and peace, and sweet relief. And on the cusp, without bias, if the next in-breath does not come of itself, that is preferable, gently. and if the in-breath comes, as it has so far, beyond any argument or reading by me, so be it, and i'll just have to fucking see what's what, and do what presents itself as interesting enough to do.

That experience of sweet "relief" that you are talking about is something that I deem as very unskillful.
All it does long term is induce more suffering and even short term it is pretty low quality pleasure.

It is the best to eliminate it from experience completely. It rely on suffering and will stimulate suffering. It will also hinder efforts to find true solution to suffering.

Or in other words experiencing will cause depression and suicidal thoughts. Essence of relief is death/suicide...

I like this description from Daniel Ingram, time stamped from when the description begins.
https://youtu.be/W3kHi0LLzJs#t=30m25s

MaxAnte: What are some of the actual, real world, tangible benefits of full Enlightenment?

Daniel Ingram: This kind of painful process that was literally sort like a ‘low grade headache’ (best way to explain it) stopped. That was just delightful, and in its place there’s a sense of synchrony. Synchrony just feels really nice. Everything synchronizes with itself. Before, everything feels out of phase. There is this that and then my knowing of it. There where this that and then this, and I was here and I was there. There was this always sense of jarring out-of-phaseness, which somehow experientially is just unpleasant. It’s suffering. It’s a fundamental type of suffering.

And when that stopped, the sense of synchrony and naturalness is substantially more delightful, just experientially. And that keeps on being substantially more delightful, moment after moment. It’s like a pleasure you don’t get a tolerance to. It’s a niceness that every moment is just as nice as the moment before, in that specific way.

That doesn’t mean that things can’t be unpleasant, but that quality is also there, even in very unpleasant things. So I’m not meaning to say there’s not the perception of pain or that everything is always nice. It isn’t. There’s still pain, but that quality of synchrony is simply delightful and is always happening. Actually, I’ve come to appreciate it more as time has gone on it. Continues to sort of be like ‘yeah’, almost like there’s like … as it sort of cascades through all other aspects of mind and situations and conditioning.

It’s fascinating to see some memory –I may not have had in 20 years– come up, and now it arises in this totally different space, where identity is nothing like the solid sticky thing it was before. And now it’s just a thought and space. That rewires something in the brain that now that memory –which might have been painful or complicated– is now arising in a space that is so much more clear and open. And in which thought, rather than being contracted into, is literally just this super wispy thing in this big echoey room that is so much nicer … Also, there will be meetings and I’m looking around like I’m the only person in the room full-time. If you’re the person who’s really in the room and everybody else isn’t in the meeting, that’s a real advantage!

MaxAnte: So, you think there are some actually real-world advantages here that you’re experiencing ongoingly?

Daniel Ingram: Sure, because people are constantly like “oh, I wasn’t really present for that … I wasn’t really into that”. Well, now the cool thing about being awake is that the holodeck no longer being filtered through the serial line that was constantly getting interrupted, and turning to the imagined holodeck –there was another holodeck– would tuned out the sort of consensus holodeck when it’s tuned to its internal holodeck … well, that’s not happening in that way. The default is now the consensus holodeck (as much as anything can be a consensus when we all have our own advantage points).

Speaking in relative terms, but ignoring all the ontological problems –I don’t want to go into that–, basically the room and being in the room (or the space or the field or wherever you are) is the default. Whereas before, tuning out was the default. Being lost in thought was the default. The default mode network being activated to-not-really-be-here was the default. Now the natural default is to be here. And by the way, if I really need to, I can check my calendar and perform a cognitive task that for some reason like to do that high level function I really kind of need to tune out the room a little bit, that can happen. But then the room is back as soon as that stops. Whereas before, it was the other way around. This is substantially better.

The other thing is the proportionality, which is a hard thing to explain. 99% of this room –even if I’m in pain somewhere– has no pain. And this is the vast experience, so the whole room is the experience evenly in some kind of way. Let’s say I have a pain in my knee: it’s no bigger than it is. In comparison to the volume of the space, it’s still really small. And the mind is also not doing that contracted exaggerating thing it used to do, where it would take the pain or make this big thing out of it and ignore all the areas that were neutral or even pleasant, that it becomes the sort of fixation. Whereas (now) even when I have pain in one place, most other places are neutral and or might even feel nice.

And so, also things that feel nice are much easier to perceive as I’m here. You can’t see me now because this is an audio, but I’m moving my hands around and like the coolness of the air on my fingers, it’s delightful. There’s something about the echo in the room that sounds kind of cool, like even that little click of your fingers, like it has a sort of nice little snap to it. There’s the glistening of the light on your hair, which is just naturally kind of cool when it’s just allowed to be itself, and that sort of childlike wondrous way of people perceiving things when they’re just in it, like you’re watching a beautiful sunset, you forget about the day and you’re just in the beautiful colors …

Well, everything has something of that to it in some way, because there’s the immediate sensate experience and it’s wrought on rock (35:49?) because we get everything kind of processed, but as raw as you can get with the human brain that receives everything kind of processed, and so there’s something really nice about that. The proportionality of though also. So emotions are mostly thoughts and then you get contracted into the thought rather than having it just be this wispy thing in space. And then because when you contract into the thought it then becomes a huge part of your world and then that distorts how much of a reaction you have to it. And then that costs a much greater release of all the stress chemicals if you’re having some unpleasant thought, because the brain is now taking that as a total world or whatever you get lost in the anger or whatever and then that creates a whole much bigger stress response and all these chemicals.

Well now it’s not that they aren’t stressors and things, but the thought arises in the room, is proportional, and in terms of experience the thoughts are really small wispy things most of the time. And then the stress chemicals that result from that, even if it’s really unpleasant thought, are vastly less because the experience of it wasn’t contracted into and the brain didn’t freak out that now this is a total world cut off from most of the room, which again is fine, and in fact pretty nice. So, it’s not that it made all bad emotions go away, but the relationship to it and the physiology of it is really different.

And the envelope of these things thus is a lot different, meaning the sort of attack, sustain and decay –the music synthesizer terms in terms of sound–. The attack is really fast because things are clear, but the release is also really fast because the thought arises and then it disappears. And the maybe some little stress chemical arises and then those bodily sensations hang out for a little bit, and then they disappear. But there’s nothing like the sort of feedback loop in the way that it used to be before, where this hurts and this cost of the thought and this thing and then that causes stress chemicals and they would loop and loop and loop… and this really exaggerated distorted way long after the thing had happened. And you’re just sitting there most of the room is fine, like why is the brain doing that? It’s just torturing itself, it doesn’t have to. It doesn’t benefit from that. And so the default now is to not do that, whereas before the default was to do that. So it’s not like some small sort of short versions of that can’t happen in extreme circumstances, but it’s vastly shorter and it’s vastly milder. So that’s better.

All of those things have been substantial upgrades … like unbelievable upgrades. Like I would give it all the stuff I lost getting this, I would give that again and more … many more times, to get this. This is such a benefit in terms of the actual living feel of it. I can’t even tell you.

Does it perform exactly like the old text said it would? No. Does it beat the crap out of what I had before? Absolutely yes. And the cool thing is this is reproducible and it’s based on really straight forward assumptions, just sensate clarity about intentions, mental impressions, thoughts in the room, experience, spotty mind, Six Sense Doors, and just noticing that clearly. That’s really straight forward and portable. And so that’s one of the supercool things about it. And it actually is reproducible. So people were able to do this, they were able to tell me how to do it and it’s like ‘yeah!’ so I like that. It satisfies the empiricist in me. It’s very egalitarian. Like here you are, here’s your senses, perceive them clearly. This can be yours.

Thanks Brandon! 

I transcribed a couple of questions whose phenomenological answers seemed very interesting for practice. If any fellow member finds an error in the transcription, please let me know. At 35:49 there are some words I couldn't understand.