Hi there ya'll.

I was wondering if any of you know of insight coaches? Of course someone who has SE or more...
I thought of this after reading a bit in another log a while ago. It seemed as if Michael Taft was coaching?

I am getting a job soon and could therefore afford a coach. Yay!
I would love to have one for insight practices. Perhaps one where I could check in once a week or something like that.
Does that exist? "Enlightenment for hire"? Lol.

Or perhaps just someone you can hire to wack you with a stick if you doze off?

Or someone who can sit crossed (eyed) legged, one you can go to and talk about your practice after which he/she just yells "MAKYO!!!" and continues to confuse you with riddles and pointless stories.

Anything..?

Of course writing in here and getting some response/feedback is good. And very much appreciated (dhamma badasses, you know who you are!)
But being able to talk, in depth, with someone who know what questions to ask, what I should focus on instead, etc. That would just be ri-goddam-diculously valuable.

If this thing doesn't exist, I'm sure there's a market!

Hit me up with your vast knowledge, fellow Dharmies.

Love
 

I highly recomend Abre Fouriner who a bunch of use on this forum. She's way past SE. She really knows her stuff. Let me know if you want her mail.

I've been working with Abre for a few weeks now and am getting lots of value out of it so far.

Michael Taft would also be a good bet I think. I watch his YouTube livestream guided meditations and Q+A he does weekly on Thursdays... and they'are always really, really good.

I would like to formally complete this tripartite endorsement for Abre by including my own. Been working with her since May of last year and have had an excellent experience. She also offers a sliding scale that is the most accesible I've found so far.

Others to consider:

Miles Bukiet. I've chatted with him before and he is a swell guy with lots of experience and high standards. Not sure what his rates would be. https://www.milesbukiet.com/services

Deep Mindfulness. I think they've got the experience, but I found their coaching prices to be a bit high. https://deepmindfulness.io/mentorship

I don't know how to PM on this new Liferay. But, I'd like her email please. Does she work with pre-streamenterers? Is she dana-based or flat-rate> 

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She takes pre-streamenterers. She is sliding scale. Send me a message to mscoree42@gmail.com

Abre is a friend of mine, never my teacher or coach but...  I'll jump on the Abre Fournier bandwagon!

Sorry for offtopic but I am dying to know how this topic fits "Births and Deaths" category?

I would say you need good Zen teacher XD

Ninurta you are a party pooper  

I set him up with Abre.

Hi Sam

​​​​​​​Sending you an email as well :-)

Looks like Abre is about to get a yogi bomb.

She will be filthy rich  

<blockquote><p>"I highly recomend Abre Fouriner who a bunch of use on this forum. She's way past SE. She really knows her stuff. Let me know if you want her mail."</p></blockquote>Yes, please. Thank you I'm also sending you an email!<br /><br /> 

I just forwarded a link to this topic to Abre so she's been given a heads up 

Buddhist Geeks does one-on-one sessions:

https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=16763938

This is good, soon we will be able to blame all DhO shortcomings on Abre!

​​​​​​​Also, if someone has a breakthrough while working with Abre, is it called a "Fournier Transform"?

Ouch.

​​​​​​​That's a "complex" subject.

(ba dum tss)

I have worked with Ron Crouch (approx. 10 sessions - he stopped teaching), had 1 session with Abre Fournier and 3-4 with Vince Horn.

Ron was my teacher at a period of my life where I wanted to explore the progress of insight map and my experience with him was superb.

When he stopped teaching I had a session with Abre Fournier. I found the one-on-one price very high, especially compared to my previous experience with Ron who accepted dana. She also referred to me being "a client" and as I didn't want to be one, I decided to move on. Based on the 1-hour experience with her, I'd say that she really knows her stuff and she will be more than enough for those that can pay to receive POI based pragmatic coaching.

Then I had 3-4 sessions with Vince Horn (like Ron he also uses the dana model). At first I did not like the fact that he was not like the others. He was not "one size fits all". The sessions with him were more like a conversation with a spiritual friend and less like a student-teacher experience. When contacted him, I really had the need for a typical relationship. I needed a teacher to ask me to do a very specific practice and then report. Vince did not do it. On the contrary, he tried to understand my mentality and came back suggesting a different meditative approach. He suggested that I should try different techniques etc.. Then, I was not ready for this. Now, I know that these conversations with him were an eye opener for me.

Please note that I am not an advanced practitioner and that as I am writing these words I consider my path very far away from both the traditional and the pragmatic POI/4-path ones.

Hey just wanted to tag on to this -- at what point does it make the most sense to pay for instruction? Beyond the obvious, "When you need the guidance"?

Does it make sense to begin with one if possible? In that case maybe you will have one person who can very accuratley chart your progress and provide feedback? That would seem to if not accelerate things, then at least reduce all of this diagnostic confusion that seems to go on with mapping progress. 

I'm looking at it from a general life perspective, where common sense approaches tend to end up, well, making common sense and often the handwavy dismissals of things like, "incorporate later, just get started today" or, "eh, see if it goes ok, THEN hire a structural engineer" tend to look like arbitrary/ strange later on...That being said I'm choosing this community as my square one guidance so probably more likely than not to take the consensus opinion, at least for awhile. 

From my limited experience, I would say find a teacher once there is a clear forward momentum of practice. For me, this came after my A&P where there was no doubt about making a commitment to practice.

Prior to this point there's a real question of whether or not you'll be able to put the time in to make it worth the money or effort of either party. It also makes sense post A&P since that's when all the destabilizing stuff can happen, and it's a really good idea to have an experienced guide at that point.

Thanks for the input. Makes sense. 

One thing to consider is that, once your local covid restrictions are sufficiently lifted, there is a lot of sense in finding a teacher in the community. You may find a face-to-face sangha that sits together weekly and is lead by an experienced teacher who may be able to give you pointers specific to your situation. This is probably the most traditional way of going about meditation practice, and it's generally free (with options for donations). It's comparable to joining a local tennis club, while hiring a personal teacher is comparable to hiring a private tennis coach. Of course, this is more difficult if you don't live in a large city, but there are some online assemblies out there too. 

@Martin 

the problem with that is the so called "mushroom culture" of western dharma . That teachers treat students like one grows mushrooms - keep them in the dark & feed them shit .

edit - to clarify - I enjoy going to local dharma groups for a sense of community & for silent sitting in groups of nice people in beautiful spaces.  But I don't expect to have real practice conversations or get technical , awakening oriented advice .

@Noah D

I agree with both the original message and the edit. Also, while the quality of instruction will vary from group to group, in general, sitting groups that are recruiting from the general population are going to tend to be oriented at the beginner level.

I just did some googling because I was curious about what had come of some of the "teachers" I had "worked with" a number of years ago.

I saw this thread and see there's a lot of recommendations for Abre Fournier and I'd like to take this opportunity to offer a contradicting viewpoint regarding her competence.

I was in a state needing some serious guidance a number of years due to health factors and I wound up, for shit reasons, doing a lot of meditation. I thought I needed a full system upgrade. 

This was honestly absurd. 

But even if it wasn't, I can still say that these teachers are not worth their while. 

When we first met, for each one of them, I quoted a health concern that I was worried might pose problems. 

In retrospect to me the contents of that concern are an obvious indicator that, at the very least, I needed maintenance on other aspects of my health/life before journeying into a supposed process of insight. 

And yet, only one of the teachers I found through pragmatic dharma were able to see this an recommend a reasonable approach. 

Is that because this one teacher was an extreme expert in that other approach of doing things? No - it's because that one teacher could simply see what was right in front of their face.

In that regard, I can say that Kenneth Folk, Ronald Crouch and Abre Fournier are completely incompetent. They don't see what is right in front of their face. It doesn't matter what's right in front of their face. They will just regurgitate their pedantic dogmas.

If you are so desperate that you need to pay $$$ (absolutely ridiculous, just take a roadtrip, or go to the local zen center, or just shut up and have a spiritual revelation already) then you will surely be able to pay your money in return for their pedantic recitations of misplaced methods that can only haphazardly produce success. 

But I would advocate you don't. These people are idiots, frankly. They are nothing but lucky that until recently no one talked about enlightenment as if you can just crtl+alt+delete this into your experience. That's their only "contribution". 

I would instead advocate you just mind your own business, read some books and follow your own intution. Which doesn't include these uncreative, dogmatic pedantic accounts these "teachers" portend have substance despite that they have nothing to do with your experience. 

Why these people have a platform at all, is beyond me. It is evidence that platforms, beauracracy, "reputation", institutions, are not of any true virtue but just a bunch of dumbass monkeys running around saying what is convenient to them - despite causing everyone who needs true advice nothing but suffering.

So who was the one that could see what was right in front of them?

It would be fair for you to be a little more specific about this since you're accusing three reasonably prominent people of utter incompetence. More details would be very helpful for our own evaluation purposes. What did these people miss that the other person saw?

Oh, and did you join DhO today just to post that one comment?

Because I value anonynimity and desire to leave this unmitigated disaster squarely in the past that these morons lead me directly into, the following is all I will say.

The health concern is enough that it should have been obvious to inquire the potential effects it had on my life. In my evaluation now, I can fucking not understand at all how this was omitted or thought to not be valuable. It would have been obvious that I should have cultivated a basis for relaxation before engaging in the practices they administered. 

Instead, they threw me head first in to the "progress of insight". Unbelievable idiocy here on the part of people who consider themselves intelligent teachers who demand a ludicrous $150 an hour or more for their time. Because please explain to me how a teacher and much less a skillful practitioner would tell someone to do a practice, see that they are not making very fluent progress, that it is even exacerbating their prior symptoms to an even more uncomfortable level, when even the OFFICIAL CANON of the teachings knows this will happen. 

Please tell me how they are supposedly intelligent teachers when not only do they allow this individual to further dilapidate their experience but are too dense in the first place to consider how general health/attitude/poise would allow someone to do any practice, much less the one they intend to so pedantically teach?

That's what you get for $150 an hour. A scam. Honestly, $150 for that - a real crime. Treat yourself better, treat the world better - give it away instead of giving it to these people. Give it to a charity. Invest it in a pro social business.

Or just burn it - see if it gives you a spiritual experience. 

There is no excuse here. It was obvious and would have become more obvious with only a handful of questions. Or not even that, since the correct cause and direction was picked up on by the other teacher who was not an abject injury to my life. 

There are also several other individuals I know who have remarked similarly. When talking to these "teachers" having the "teachers" simply be caught up entirely in their own preconceived ideas, to have them announce some admonition against something the "student" wasn't even doing, instead of concerning themselves with the pupil's actual experience. 

I am sure these teachers would say that what they are saying is just the practice. They are just teaching the practice by saying these stupid platitudes and regurgitations of some process somewhere. There is really no way around just doing the practice - that's the "challenge". 

Allow me to urge you to consider the opposite. 

They are just morons incapable of artfully knowing where you are coming from and artfully conveying the required next steps that will allow you to succeed. Instead they will just gaze into the void of their navels and expect you to follow regardless of the suffering it will impose upon you for one reason or another.

They have no philosophy. They have a small book of pedantic instructions. Their time is not worth your money.

Simply participating in this forum is more than enough. You do not need to get on a video call and pay an extravagant sum so someone can give you a shot in the dark. You already have it. Right here, right now. If you truly need spiritual evolution so much, all you need to do is do is go for it by your own self.

​​​​​​​Paying an extravagant sum is the last thing you should even want to do. 

Wow, it sounds like the experience was extremely painful for you, event to the point you don't want to go back to it much. And that you'd now like to protect others from going through something similar...?