Sorry to chime in so late about this. My experience of working on 3rd path, especially late 3rd path, was to spend a lot of time reflecting on what I was still confused about, until I got some kind of idea of what I was missing; once I found a clue, I would do some perfunctory noting and get a pathlike cessation and a permanent change in my moment-to-moment experience immediately. I never did anything like what the RT crew seem to be doing, but I have absolutely no doubt that it would have been *invaluable* and that I would have gotten 4th path very quickly that way. The biggest thing that held me up was trying to figure out what about my experience I wasn't seeing clearly, and a one-on-one with someone who could point out exactly where the confusion was (and call me on my bullshit when I thought my attainment was higher than it was) would have been like proceeding directly to GO and collecting $200 without having to even touch the dice.

So, I will personally vouch 100% for the effectiveness of what they're doing. The caveats are that I'm only vouching for it for

* certain types of people (for whom the reflective / freeform method is appealing)

* working on later paths, where insight into what's missing is more important than the basic perceptual improvement that seems to be needed for 1st/2nd/maybe early 3rd

* when they're working with someone who is more advanced than they are, who uses similar language to the language they do when they think about what their own experience is like

* and who doesn't blur together the distinctions between the way sunyata presents at stream entry and the way it presents at later paths. (in other words, they need much more precise language at RT than the unwavering insistence on "there is no self"; that made sense to me at stream entry, so it wouldn't have helped me go further without a precise explanation of what I didn't actually understand about the full meaning of it.)

I briefly describe my experience working through various paths here, including 3rd path using the reflective method: http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/4641050/first+ever+practice+journal!

(I know it's kind of douche-y to link to another forum for this info, but there is no way I'm re-typing any of that.)

Anyway, I would offer to work with anyone trying to get 4th path or trying to deepen 3rd path, using the RT method, if the reflective / freeform / direct pointing method is something that appeals to them. I don't guarantee that it will be successful (I've never done this); but I think it has a good chance of being successful, because it would have been a sh*tload of help to me when I was working on those things. We would do it by chat / instant message, but the conversations would be posted here afterwards as a public record to document whether direct pointing is effective.

can you provide that precise explanation to your stream-entry self? i'm curious how you would phrase it

In brief, I would have focused on the fact that "self" isn't an object, there isn't some monolithic percept called "self", and the self delusion manifests in all kinds of relational ways even once it's realized that there is no object called "self", such as e.g. the sense that some pleasures "touch" me or "satisfy" me or "soothe" me and some don't (read http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn36/sn36.006.than.html) are manifestations of being deluded, and also that these relational self delusion things are not gotten rid of all at once (so that if I thought one relational way was no longer manifesting, I should look harder for subtler ways in which it was still manifesting).

I do think that "everything is observed, nothing is observer" is a really pithy way to sum up the end goal; it's just that at stream entry I thought I knew what it meant, so I can't imagine it being helpful at that point. It might be helpful again at late 3rd path once it's been recognized that there are all kinds of partial, still-confused understandings of that point which have been believed and then abandoned.

I also think that what I would have said to my past stream-entry self is not necessarily what I would say to someone else (or what would work for them); the way people think about this stuff is idiosyncratic.

Also, I would point out that if I thought "an experience of no longer thinking that a self is perceiving all this" is what it meant to understand "all phenomena are not-self," that was just an indication that I didn't really get it.

And just to clarify that last point...the difference between pre-path and stream entry was that my new experience was no longer thinking a self was perceiving all this. The difference between that and 4th path was more like, the part of my mind that conceptualized "i am a self / i am not a self" and framed experience in that way died and left nothing in its wake.

right.. that last part is making sense now. i seem to have had really ingrained habit about thinking "oh if X happens that means that i still have a self" and "ah perceiving Y in Z way is the way to perceive it, as if no-self". now those tendencies still happen but it seems their fuel has been cut off and that they are slowly falling away.

Very well said. I think this is the reason why practice after stream-entry is so self-propelling: "I now know me is not here so why is me still here?".

Right! Everything is always no-self, all the time, and the key to 4th is looking for the stuff that you think is specifically self or specifically no-self and seeing why it's all the same. (Easier to look at the self stuff in my opinion.)

Haha! This is certainly the dilemma isn't it! I had a big laugh at this.