Introducing myself and seeking guidance

Tony, modified 3 Years ago at 7/16/20 1:31 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 7/16/20 1:10 PM

Introducing myself and seeking guidance

Post: 1 Join Date: 7/16/20 Recent Posts
Hi all, this is my first post.

I'm going to try and describe where I feel I'm at and what I'd like help with, with as little rambling as possible.

I've been practicing daily for about five years. The teachers I've found myself watching/reading the most are: Rupert Spira, Adyashanti, Eckhart Tolle, and several others. As of now I have very little knowledge of the Buddhist traditions regularly discussed here.

Early on in my practice I had what I'd describe as an experience of 'awakening'. If I had to put it into words I'd say it was a deep sense of effortless freedom and happiness. A recognition that happiness would never be found where I'd traditionally been looking for it (relationships, work, etc.)

I feel my practice is headed in the right direction because of progressive positive changes I've seen in my life, less anger, less need to escape my pain by eating junk food, small but good stuff like that. Practice feels like a way of undoing the mechanisms within me which keep me from experiencing the aforementioned effortless peace.

Things have become feeling stagnant however which is why I'm seeking some outside perspective.

A large part of my practice up until now has been deconstructing the sense of a separate self, the "doer". I want to continue this work, but my usual way of approaching it isn't yielding great results.

The primary ways of doing this deconstruction that I've learnt is pondering questions like Who am I? Where/when am I? Who is meditating? etc. as well as "paying attention to the sense of the I am".

When I try to do these inquiries these days it just feels like an effort to receive pleasure. It feels like an effort by my ego to 'win'. This is what happens for me with nearly all spiritual exercises right now.

And so I've a feeling what I need to progress is a more sophisticated way of seeing through the illusion of the "doer". I was listening to Daniel Ingram on a podcast recently where he was describing noticing intentions arising in the same way you'd notice thoughts. This simple direction was and still is useful to me and has given me some small but significant breakthroughs. I hadn't heard that method of investigation worded like that before, it was fresh and useful.

And so my main motivation for posting here is to hopefully find more direction like that. Or any advice the community deems potentially useful. I'm very happy to receive "go and read X" as an answer.

Looking forward to reading your replies.

Tony
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Ni Nurta, modified 3 Years ago at 7/16/20 2:17 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 7/16/20 2:17 PM

RE: Introducing myself and seeking guidance

Posts: 1072 Join Date: 2/22/20 Recent Posts
Hello
Did you read Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha?
Lots of terminology on this site can be found there and generally it very good dharma book.

If you have not tried it before Mahasi Noting is good meditation practice. You can do it on cushion (or whatever position you meditate) and during most of the time in normal life. It generally trains your recognition skills quite well and helps transform internal verbalization to something more straightforward to work with.

As for happiness imho only helping other beings can make you truly happy.
Meditation however can make you experience very pleasurable. My advice would be to never pass on pleasure. Not cling to it but always strive to make your practice as nice as it can be. There might be temptation to do something which is unpleasant because it might work better but it almost always lead to bad results. Is better to make effort to make any practice you do worth doing by the way it feels alone and any supposed benefits treat as secondary thing. Meditation is much more efficient that way.

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