I wrote this as a response to something Tommy wrote in the middle paths thread and thought it best to split it off if others wish to discuss it. This is what I wrote about PCEs and Direct Mode that is taught by Kenneth Folk. Please feel free to criticize what i wrote. It is my current opinion. Always open to being wrong.


Hey Tommy,

I would be careful equating Direct Mode and PCEs. I believe Direct Mode is just being attentive to sensations within the body, grounding "emotions" in the physical body. PCEs may result from this practice, but I do not believe them to be the one and the same. The sensations that one has to keep the hand on as the "deadman switch" are not something that one needs to even worry about nor keep any hand on (as a deadman switch) in a full blown PCE. Here I am distinguishing from those experiences which we may call a low grade PCE but really they are just a high grade EE. Direct mode can be a way to get a PCE, but I think they need to be distinguished and not seen as the same as.

You say it is just a mode of perception, yet why does Kenneth teach Direct Mode? Is it not to teach a yogi to "ground emotions" and see emotion as compounded and thus cutting out the mental component leaving just the sensations? I think Kenneth talked of it as a way to train the mind to stop "glomming". A PCE, as far as Ive experienced them, is one step further. It teaches and convinces one that the sense of "being" is equal to affective feelings, cause and effect, where suffering seems born from. And with such constant continued experience of PCE mode, "I" as that sense of "being" is eventually convinced to not arise anymore.

I believe that both Direct Mode and PCE practice seem to have a common goal of sorts. DM, as far as I understood Kenneth, aims to impress on the mind/body organism that "glomming" is not necessary and is in fact peaceful to not glom, especially unpleasant emotions. In my experience DM lead to a continued "glomming" of a subtle affective equanimous sense of wellbeing. But I think it stops there unless one wishes to use it as a tool to trigger PCEs.

PCE practice goes one step further. It shows that a sense of "being" is not necessary and without it it is in fact peaceful in a non-affective way. This whole mind/body organism with a sense of "being", is shown that "me" as that sense of "being" need not continue. DM in my experience falls short of this. It may trigger PCEs, but it is not the PCE. It helps to cultivate very subtle affective equanimity and sense of wellbeing but the sense of "being" is still continuing. The proof, at least it was for me, is experiencing enough full blown real PCEs over quite a bit of practice (and not just bordering high grade EEs which need to be distinguished from PCEs).

My 2 cents :--)

I'm happy to admit that I don't know enough about either of these to make a detailed comparison, I said what I said based on my experience which involves only recent practice (sporadically over the last month or so) of DM practice and the two full-blown PCE's I've had in the last year. Obviously this is not enough to examine either experience thoroughly enough and so my statement is based on minimal data.

Perhaps you're correct in saying that Kenneth's technique might lead to PCE, and it's more accurate than me equating the technique with the potential outcome of the practice. You also have considerably more experience than me in both areas so I have no reason to dispute the issue with you, my current understanding will likely change over time, as did yours, so I'll avoid direct comparison until my own practice either confirms or refutes this. Even then it's still subject to change.

I understand that AF and Buddhist goals really are 180 degrees apart, but I think there's some middle ground between them which interests me. I've been reading your blog lately of course, and I was wondering how you view this apparent distinction and what, if any, major differences you see between the two in terms of outcome i.e. "Enlightenment" as an ongoing developmental process vs. Actual Freedom?

I'm genuinely open to the whole AF thing, but right now I'm still a Dharma-head and so my bias is in that direction and I make no secret of that. Good thread though and it'll be interesting to see what everyone's got to say on both sides of the discussion.

- Tommy

Hey Tommy, No probs! :--) Been there, done that. Hehe!

Firstly, I have been pretty open in voicing my disagreement with the term "arahat" corresponding to MCTB 4th path. I don't think that is what the term "arahat" (which i think means destroyer of foes, foes being the fetters) nor stage of arahat means nor corresponds to. MCTB 4th path seems more so to correspond with 2nd stage sakadagami in the fetter model.

If you check on Kenneth's site for his letter to friend about him talking about himself being an arhat for real, you see that he has taken it down with a little message stating that he now no longer agrees with what he said in that letter.
http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/What+is+an+arahat%3F+(A+letter+to+a+friend)

We are seeing that the fetters can be eradicated. So why ignore the fetter model anymore? If there is still a sense of "being" in one's expericne, even at MCTB 4th path? Yes indeedy! There is a flow of becoming, of existing still that manifests as affective feeling and the fetters of sensual desire, ill will, conceit, restlessness are all affective in my opinion.

4. sensual desire
5. ill will
6. material-rebirth lust
7. immaterial-rebirth lust
8. conceit
9. restlessness
10. ignorance

These fetters get dealt with at AF AND the fetter model arhat. I'm open to being wrong but I am also very open to them being one and the same. It is hard to not continue being a Dharma head myself when I come across quotes by the Buddha like the following:




In my humble opinion:


* Concentration = what is needed to be attentive to the mind and body in the moment.
* Uplifted energy = felicitous feelings
* Equanimity = apperception and a non-reactive mind (as far as I see the epitome of a non-affective equanimity, apperception
and PCE mode is it.
* Stopping the fermentations=Temporarily subdued in PCE mode and forever at AF (in my humble opinion ;-)




This is the very practice, literally, which I believe I am doing with PCE practice. No doubts about that. "I" am my feelings and me feelings are "me" and "I" ("You" in the above quote) am not present when practicing seeing in the seen, hearing in the heard. The PCE is as literal as you can get.

And before you say what about compassion, equanimtiy, sympathetic joy and metta? Do they dissapear?

Well, not sure what to say there but this little nugget of info may explain something. Not sure it explains the affective feeling of sympathetic joy and loving kindness though:



P.S. I could well be talking out my arse still though! Hehe!

On page page 364, Visuddhimagga, under "the Development of Equanimity", Bikkhu Nanamoli translates three actions of karuna:

1. the condition of suffering in others causes persons to be moved
2. it attacks the condition of suffering, demolishing it
3. karuna is scattered upon people

Being endowed with karuna is to be glad, gladness.

This was an interesting meaning to me:


Further on page 311 [1]


Page 312 continues with the near enemies of equanimity and how seeing an object is effected by this house-life (ignorant) equanimity.

The description of the ploughman is comparable to the actualist method of cultivating felicity, a well-being-joy beginning ("gable rafter") from which to build, to escape ill-will and grief, then eventually having "no further concern such as 'May all beings be happy'...mind has become skilled in apprehending what is non-existant in the ultimate sense' and mind becomes applied to "the absence which is non-existent as to the individual essence of consciousness, which is a reality...so equanimity is a basis of support for the basis consisting of nothingness, but not for what is beyond that... The Great Beings' minds retain their balance by giving preference to beings welfare, by dislike of beings' suffering...by impartiality towards all beings....They constantly arouse energy, having beings' welfare and happiness at heart."


If there is 180' of separation, Tommy, I cannot see it. What is this view?


[1] I changed sentence formatting to single lines here for my ease of reading and understanding.

I'd like to take this opportunity to provide a bit of trivia about the fetter of conceit: in Khemaka Sutta, there is this passage:

[indent]"In the same way, friends, it's not that I say 'I am form,' nor do I say 'I am other than form.' It's not that I say, 'I am feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness,' nor do I say, 'I am something other than consciousness.' With regard to these five clinging-aggregates, 'I am' has not been overcome, although I don't assume that 'I am this.'

"Friends, even though a noble disciple has abandoned the five lower fetters, he still has with regard to the five clinging-aggregates a lingering residual 'I am' conceit, an 'I am' desire, an 'I am' obsession.[/indent]

Ven. Khemaka then goes on to say that he assumes that more insight practice (paying attention to arising and passing away) will eventually free him from the "I am conceit". At the end of the sutta, more than sixty monks (including Ven Khemaka) were released from the fermentations - so he was not quite correct regarding his assumption that more insight practice would do the trick.

I'm not trying to shoehorn AF onto the Sutta accounts here - there are Sutta descriptions of Arahants which run against descriptios of AF. However, what's interesting to me is the description of the "fetter of conceit" as "the conceit 'I am'" - which parallels Richard's observation of the feeling of being, (where feeling is not vedana but more like passion/obsession from the Sutta description).

On the other hand, I found it essential to take the 180° thing at face value, because it really encouraged me to drop all the religious and philosophical baggage I'd been accruing during the past few years of spiritual practice (beneficial as that practice was). Maybe my basic atheist stance lulled me into a false sense of security that I could never fall into the trap of "playing with the gods", as Richard puts it, but hey, I was wrong. Here's a good passage:

[indent]Yes, phrases such as ‘we are all one’ (as in an oceanic feeling of oneness) are meant to be taken literally (as in ‘there is no other’) ... as is ‘I Am That’ (not the ego-‘I’ though) or ‘Thou Art That’ meant to be taken literally.

And if the mystic is really coy (which I was) they say ‘There is only That’ – hence the ‘Anatta’ (‘No-Self’) doctrine of Buddhism – and either decline to comment on after-death states or declare there is no such thing as death (such as I did).

To awaken in the dream is to be but dreaming lucidly ... and is not to be taken as being awake[/indent]

Cheers,
Florian

In my experience of Emptiness (the Absolute) there were no feelings of existence, but there is still fear and love. It's more like 'I am not' than 'I am'.

Hi Rin,

Care to elaborate on that?

:-)

Nick

Hi Nick,

Please ask anything you like. It was a brief insight into Emptiness (I'm not in that state now) where the feeling of existence dropped away. So did volition, action, and some other things.

Hi Rin,

Ok, Thanks. :-)

You said love and fear were still present? Yet, you say there were no feelings of existing? What was fearful and feeling love? Those affective feelings were still arising?

Welcome to the DhO!

:-)

Nick

Thanks Nick. It's good to be here.

Yes, there was just fear of that state and love for it, but no entity present, no object, no felt existence. Affective feelings were still arising.

Hey Rin,

What about a feeling "me"? Would you say there is still something believing it must fear and love? What was loving and fearing that state?

:-)

nick

As far as I remember, there was no feeling "me". Just the Emptiness.

Florian Weps


If not playing with gods, or being spiritual or accruing religious and philosophical baggage, nor needful of a community of way-of-thinking, nor needful of an ultimate answer or cure, nor needful that all studies reconcile to a tidy same-end-point, nor desirous to "take down" a claimant's (e.g., Richard') claim of being the first in history to do [xyz/AF], nor in craving this way/that way, nor in humility-seeking, then 180' is superfluous, not even a vestigial tail.

The realization and permanency of here-now without identity/arising generic i/i-ness may be shoe-horned without success or conviction into a single camp, a single method, a single era, a single person.

The realization by one person who wishes for others to know the realization results in a method or methods. HAIETMOBA, noting, oblation, aestheticism, worship, dana, purchase of indulgences, conquestism, unilateralism, supremacy, knowerism. Bunk. Break-through, helpful/hindering bunk.

Based on its etymology, all of it is conceit: "something formed in the mind, thought, notion," from conceiven

(edits: format)

It's a view which is as arbitrary as any other. I don't particularly want to get into a philosophical discussion about it, I prefer to adopt this belief in the meantime so as create a distinction between what I see as being two different practices which run contrary to one another. Consider it a perceptual filter which is consciously put in place so as to direct my efforts towards my current goal.

Not looking for philosophy. It is the Tommy M which writes "I was wondering how you view this apparent distinction and what, if any, major differences you see between the two in terms of outcome i.e. "Enlightenment" as an ongoing developmental process vs. Actual Freedom?" and " It's a view which is as arbitrary as any other." Arbitrary? Wow. how many sites do you subscribe to, El Tommy M? That truly sounds completely open right now to be based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

Demarcating territory for my self personally is different from demaracating territory outside of my self. One is assumptive, ignorant and truly synthetic crap (Spc. Katy reporting personally on this, seeing the same in words like "I understand that AF and Buddhist goals really are 180 degrees apart"), and one is apt, surgical, useful and ultimately disposable (i.e., "I think there's some middle ground between them which interests me").

"I'm genuinely open to the whole AF thing, but right now I'm still a Dharma-head and so my bias is in that direction and I make no secret of that." What is genuinely open within in a can of kipper-dharma-head-snacks? Same for the AF Once and Future King isolationism. bah. Monkey bars to swing from and release.

Is saying "I make no secret of that" defensive (again, I would know about creating defensive for nothing)?


Best wishes,
completely open to being a jerk right now

Yeah, the 180° thing was a break in the comfortable conceit that I had some sort of right big picture of everything and I only needed to fit in more details. Thus, it was helpful in de-bunking the bunk which I had somehow mistakenly assumed to be immune to. Apart from that, I see your point about turning a tool into dogma.

Cheers,
Florian

the practices, though they overlap a bit, do seem different in one important aspect: 'i' am 'my' feelings and 'my' feelings are 'me' vs. anatta. a practitioner might take the latter to be dis-identifying with feelings, while the former is more un-dis-identifying (loosely summarizing one of Nick's recent posts).

Not looking for drama.

I don't quite understand your problem here and, to be honest, I have no desire to get into a conversation with you about this. View that however you want, you'll think you're right anyway.

Metta

Tommy M -

Your goal is enlightenment. You're hitting your sixth month mark on the DhO soon, having made some interesting encounters (NS in winter?). As you know, I've read your threads and sometimes commented.

Identifying with conditionality, forms, constructions (and getting caught in them, i.e., asserting a belief in the righteousness of jerkness-beings) is the road block to ending suffering. Whether you believe or are mirroring that AF and Buddhism are 180' apart, it doesn't matter. You are holding yourself to the surface of "firm" skandhas about two concepts - you are enforcing their existence when you don't even need to consider these transient clouds. Unless you are going to dig in and figure out why you create these mental skandhas in the first place.

Being fiercely attentive as to where you allow (or don't allow) yourself to rest in skandhas could be very useful. Word skandhas are diagnostic tools, but only you can know what's going on.


cheers,
completely open to your getting enlightened

I think you're basing your judgment on incomplete information here, I no longer post my own practice notes on here which may account for this to some extent but bear in mind that I've worked within several different traditions over the last twelve years or so and have had many interesting encounters/experiences/non-experiences through other practices.

When it comes to beliefs, I see them as another tool for exploring manifest reality. They're perceptual filters which colour experience, and this can be tested, experimented with and a more useful meta-belief system built with which to experience reality. Would you disagree that what you believe influences your experience of reality?

"Enlightenment" is the one exception to this rule that I've come across so far, it's not anything which changes or can be changed. AF also appears to be the same (I say this because, having not become AF, I don't know for certain), which is why I'm open to exploring it further in future, but the belief system, the mental map required to get there is just, and bear in mind that this is only more opinion, another tool. A means to an end, like the techniques of vipassana or zazen.

As for identifying with phenomena, I can assure you, if it's even necessary to do so, that this is the least of my concerns. Making a firm statement? The only firm statement I can make is that things are as they are, there's no need for them to be otherwise.

What exactly are you trying to achieve here through your inaccurate analysis of my viewpoint?

A'ra best.

Tommy M 5/4/11:


travel back in time...

Tommy M 4/29 statement 7:19 PM as a reply to Nikolai Blue Mountains Bush Yowie*:


What is the utility in this phrase? What do you understand? What is 180'? What insights of your practice (notes no longer posted on line) are the basis for such a conclusive belief?

Is it accurate to say you've expressed (and may hold) an assumptive belief on the heels of admitted ignorance and that paying close attention to such words (creating needless (and assumptive) skandhas) can be useful to your awakening?

kind regards,
kicking the tires

I think you're misunderstanding where I'm coming from with this, and I also think you're wasting both our time with this pointless little to and fro. This is nothing to do with assisting anyone with awakening, you're basing an entire line of questioning on an off-hand comment which, when I think about it now, was posted fairly hastily and with not a great deal of thought involved.

What did I mean? Does it even matter to you? Seriously, give it up.

Maybe. Wasting my time has not and is not my conclusion or my any intention. A lot of Tommy M's posts had to be re-read over recent weeks to tease up potential inherences in your goal of enlightenment.

In your words, you are coming from:
In your words, you are also coming from:

This is a conclusion to which 12/4 Tommy M could say


Not really. you've been assumptive previously, and errantly, in your own words. Now, I've put it out there that there may be something to this attribute (exhibited in one small phrase here) weighing in. I have been assumptive too and perhaps have a soft spot for it as a diagnostic tool.

I am just kicking tires for air: it will be a safer drive for everyone on the road, and you may get to your goal faster and more fuel-efficiently.

If your intention is housed in assumptive, applauding, parroting, assimilative, deferential-to-superiors, acquiescent phase - well, I've tried to kick such possible flat tires.

While for you, the formation of thought believes "this is nothing to do with assisting anyone with awakening", speaking for my self, my own formation here is about assisting (provoking) intention for enlightenment. I am wondering about the intention that can sustain nirodha samapatti so efficiently, then stalls. I had a great wave intention several weeks ago: useful.


In your words, 12/30/10 11:01 AM,
This was about 6 weeks after getting the book MCTB. So expeditious!
So, I have wondered about Tommy M estranged goal and intention for enlightenment.
Whatever shift is needed to accomplish your goal of enlightment, may it come your way and be recognized.


May I ask: is commanding others the Emotional-Territorial Circuit from one of your previous 12-years' practices?

Advising my self, I prefer the edict to let the lasagna fly...


with...


© ©
( ❂ ❂)
(")(")
sankharabear!

Guid luck and best fishes to you.


[format, one clarification and spelling edits...]

Without a doubt my entire perspective has changed since I started these practices, and as I've also mentioned repeatedly that I have no problem with being corrected. Yes, you'll find plenty of inconsistencies in what I've written over the course of the last however long I've been posting on here and I'll likely contradict myself plenty of times again.

Either way, all's cool now and it's all good on both sides of the proverbial fence.

Metta & Mudita,
- Tommy

Tommy - your willingness to engage with me on this landed me in release today, out of the blue. If it's none of my business, then it's none of my business. My care about your goal - well, you never asked for my thoughts, thus it's none of my business. Relaxing.

Wishing you well and every opportunity to achieve your intentions.

Tommy - I should have and can only speak for my self:

From my only perspective, mine, I can only be talking to my self here. This "you" business is bunk.

I have been wondering how I was keeping me from sustaining abeyance at length. When I attach to something outside of my self's realm of experience - i.e., attached uninvitedly to your progress of intention, for example - I "has" a major flaw. This has been what keeps me from getting durable abeyance/PCE/the not-even-a-generic-self-dissolution.

It was self-perception; this is a little different than hostile feeling (the tone is piercing above, but hostile feeling is not behind that). A raw spreading of self into others' territory/overlaying/covering what-is, an "ownership-feeling". It comes with tension. I suppose the tension is relative (relatively large, relatively small) until it is gone, and then it seems absolutely useless. Odious waste.

When I went into Home Depot in the morning on Thursday I found myself "improving processes" throughout the store. Visiting a friend later in the day and discussing the self-overlay, the person just said "[Yeah, I learned to mind my own business too]". Shearing. I got and had a headache until bedtime, but was relaxed. That's when we chatted here briefly. [Edit: I went back to Home Depot and: marvel. Interesting people, laughter, seeing people's specialities/joy/points-of-care, hand-made signage, free-from-me-processes].

Thank you for engaging me. It gave me a chance to see how PCE is unhindered (for me). The process seems very much automated now, on its way.

I live in clean-water-flush-toilet-safe-bed circumstances and, when self is ruminating today, this is the thought: what a churning waste of my's time [edit: meaning, self's perception/overlay].

Thanks, Tommy M.

Thanks Dho.

Just wondered if any of you guys on the AF path has had any marked cognitive improvement as a result of practice. The impression that I gained is that the actualism method is an excellent tool for becoming happy and harmless and that's about it. Personally, I'm more interested in cognitive advancements as I have a relatively stable and enjoyable emotional life. Partly because I want to keep my intuition, I'm not interested in expunging/deleting the affective faculty. I think that intuition and cognition form a formidable duet when used correctly, supplementing and complementing each other. That's how I see things at this stage.

I am not really on the AF path, so read the following with that in mind. I have reached what seems to be direct mode, with the fading of self into the present moment. I have, however, studied the subject of intuition and it's role in cognition from a philosophical/psychological/cognitive perspective, which hopefully will help. I also hope it is understandable, my writing tends to get somewhat dense when discussing these sorts of things.

Now, i'm not sure what exactly you mean by intuition, or what the actually free people mean by it. But there are a couple of ways in which we could look at this.

Affect, of the sort that seems to cease in direct mode, is, in addition to being a cause of suffering and (seemingly) self, also a mode of representing information. I know certain things through the arising of emotions, directly about my own state (especially said self and the way it relates to things), and indirectly about the state of my surroundings. This knowledge-presenting-as-affect is usually subtle, such as a sense of fear, dislike or attachment in regard to some object. When i argue that knowledge-presenting-as-affect actually tells us something about the world, it is because these responses come about through repeated interaction with the world. Through this interaction we learn skilled ways of responding and acting, ways that do use the linguistic/conceptual mind.
You do not think through how to turn on a bicycle, the master artisan has a complexity of "feel" for the tool and object that language is at a loss to express.
Now, what i call intuition a subset of the arising of "nonconceptual" knowing of this sort - Intuiting something means that you get a sense of knowing, but have no knowing of the reasons why this knowing should be correct, or how you arrived at it.
Here comes the point. This knowing can, but does not necessarily, present itself as emotion, and the affective faculty may in some cases be a part of whatever nonconscious cognitive process allows you to arrive at this result.
Thus, i would, hypothetically, expect some period of adjustment and some loss of the immediacy and flow of your skill in some areas, as you adjust to new ways of processing and representing knowledge.

That said, based on my own very small experience, i would also expect several other kinds of cognitive ability change. For much of what we do, affect seems more a distorted filter and a distraction than it does an aid. The increased clarity and reduction of distractions should increase your ability to think clearly and avoid some mistakes that come from attachment and dislike (yes, even in math).
Additionally, the ability to actually get anything useful done with your cognitive ability seems very bound up in affective factors. If i recall correctly, conscientiousness (in the five-factor personality model) is more important than all cognitive measures in predicting academic and workplace success. This is one that can swing both ways. Many major academic works seem to me the result of affective obsession, and an AF person might not be as motivated to undertake life-consuming projects, and thus also miss some of the cognitive benefits of working 24/7/365 on a specific task, such as more and more mental faculties turning towards the work, to the exclusion of everyday concerns.

I hope this helps you a bit. I'm going to finish with my best (but very uncertain) estimate: AF will be an enhancement of your ability to do meaningful cognitive work in general, but might be a hindrance to working at the very highest levels in a given field.
Some of the experienced actualists on the forum can hopefully tell us how wrong i am in all this.