On the February 2nd started sitting practice again. Noting aloud then yesterday calm-abiding. Today ... ? Well ... will see once the sit is over (about to sit). 

I'm officially confused. Have no fucking clue how to proceed or which direction to take. It's like standing on the crossroads and no sense of direction. 

All these practices are the same to me. Why? There is this "knowing" of them happening or unfolding. 

So what? Am I to look at this very "knowing"? 

Also to mention; stopped with nicotine use approx 2 weeks ago and I'm still feeling rather unstable, emotional and restless. Something psychological has the need to be numbed down by this ugly habit. 

Lots and LOTS of memories from the past. It's not even funny anymore. It's a truckload if it. As if I'm about to die and all life flushes before the eyes. 

Preassure in the usual spot of the skull. Top right side. 

Every day making sure to go for a 30 minutes brisk walk in our forest. 

I think that's it for now I'm off to just sit ... maybe I will do mantra now! Dunno. Will see what happens. 

I'm officially confused. Have no fucking clue how to proceed or which direction to take. It's like standing on the crossroads and no sense of direction. 

If I'm reading you right, I don't think you give a fuck about PoI right now, dark night, EQ, whatever. To me, this is the best moment in both: "I'm officially confused. Have no fucking clue how to proceed or which direction to take. It's like standing on the crossroads and no sense of direction." This is what all the work was all about. There's sure no going back. I personally need the merest whisper of technique here, with no expectation of results, just the iteration of the technique dry as fuck, and completely gratuitous. A doing nothing that gives you something to do, done as little as possible, without urgency or fear. A futility, busy work, think of it as you will. A fingerhold in the abyss. And then just sit there. It will stop hurting, if it's DN; it will ease and lighten, if it is EQ, but they're basically the same here. All your work has come to nothing. Perfect. Now do that work anyway, for nothing.

Don't worry about being at the crossroads, them roads don't go nowhere anyway, lol.

Just my two cents, of course. You'll surface from your first sit in a few minutes and make this irrelevant.

Nice going with the nicotine stop - you can do it! 

​​​​​​​

Thanks Emil and Tim! 

Lots of memories from my old practice. There is this familiar feel but is not the same. Almost like the feeling you have of going back to the city you once loved and knew so well and then you come back to it after many years and it's lost it's shine, kind of sad really as it's same but not really. 

Emotionaly agitated. Drumming in ears and high pitch frequency above it (trough it ... ) 

Tired in body, stiff lower back, right shoulder blade and neck. 

So yeah, smells like a mixture of 3C's and DN. Such a lovely place, such a lovely place ...  

​​​​​​​This is a great place to be! 

Papa Che
Such a lovely place, such a lovely place ...  

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!

There's also something about quitting smoking, which is that you're changing habits quite a lot, and there is just this free time which gets freed up all of a sudden, and your days are just spent in a different mental place (not affected by the nicotine), which takes a while to get used to.

It feels "empty", not necesarily because there's a "hole in you" that nicotine was filling up, but because the act of taking nicotine, the ritual around that, and the mindstate which became the norm, are just NOT THERE ANYMORE all of a sudden, and THAT is actually the hole-emptiness one feels after quitting... You just don't know what to do with yourself and this can be disturbing like any change. But eventually you settle into a new mode, a new normal, which is actually really nice and much more functional !

That has been my experience anyways. Also, thinking that there's a hole in you that nicotine was filling up, is kind of the essence of what being addicted to nicotine means, whether you actually consume the substance or not, IMO. See what I mean ?

this is when i usually recommend Ken McLeods Wake Up to Your Life -- at a certain point, MCTB needs to be left behind and WUTYL needs to be picked up. (Don't worry comming back to MCTB happens again a bit down the road.)

Thanks Olivier! Yes it takes time for a habit to slow down and eventually just stops. 

It's nice to be reminded that these things eventually pass away  

That book is beside my bed since last time you mentioned it I'm yet to open it up and stare at it  

Will do my best to start reading it from the start and see what inspires. 

Thank you S! 

One piece of advice on WUTYL --- don't try to read it straight through like a book. It's too dense. Just flip through it and let yourself be caught by something, something that seems curious, bizzare, or interesting.  Be random and playful.

I just wanted to voice my continued support for your nicotine withdrawal. I think it's like olivier said. There's a big hole in your life. But everything is impermanent. It will change. 

I thinkk shargrol's advice on WUTYL is a good one. I think its your next step.

After reading a few parts from Ken McLeod , basically saying to always examine the momentary experience no matter what it is and how it feels, he made me realize that Noting and Satipatthana is the way to go really. Mind can spin all sorts of stories and perceptions but if momentary mindfulness is applied in the matter of fact experience then there is awakening in that experience. This is all Noting/paying attention/profound mindfulness/awareness ... 

So I'm back to noting aloud freestyle and will see to find time to do it every day.
Will update every once in a while. 

2 days ago stopped 26 seconds before the alarm and today stopped 29 seconds before the alarm. Some mix of boredom and restlessness towards the end. Applied McLeod way to invite the boredom and restlessness and experience them raw. They would vanish fast but return again. Not easy to re
​​​​​​​ally soak into them. Btw, 45 minute sessions. 

Started session with lots of resistance so applied words "there is ..." before each note and after a few minutes the murk took over the image space (open eyes focused on a Kasina spot) and then purple haze was there etc ... Noting aloud was all from 1-5 per second throughout. 

Ok let's see how this goes. 

"There is..." is a great variation of noting. Another good variation of noting, for people who do NOT have depersonalization problems, is "look at it..."  Basically you treat your experience like a third person narrator, including any internal material that arises. 

So "look at it worry, look at it struggle, look at it debate, look at it being frustrated, look at it being bored, look at it fidget, look at it get depressed, look at it making excuses, look at it becoming prideful, look at it being ambitious..."

There's a heirarchy in noticing/noting. The highest level is Ken McLeod's "directly experience the moment, be in the moment without worrying about survival, control, or trying to be somebody". Normally he teaches is by the following sequence:
1. be mindful of something and develop attention
2. without losing attention, be mindful of the entire field of experience that surrounds attention and develop awareness, (This is like walking through a crowd with a full bowl of scalding hot soup -- you need to watch the soup so it doesn't spill but you also have to be aware of the crowd so you don't bump into anyone.)
3. now include internal psychological material, like the many flavors of anxiety and ambition. (This is like not repressing fear or frustation as you move through the crowd, so the psychological pressure of moving through the crowd never builds up and blows up.)
 4. experience all at once --- this is presence. Now keep including all experiences within presence. Directly experience whatever arises in this moment.

That direct experience of the entire field of the moment is pretty much the highest form of noticing.

When attention or awareness is degraded, then the various noting methods provide the necessary scaffolding. There is... Look at it... etc.  The downside of noting is that it doesn't do much to chip away at the sense of an independent observer, which is where fundamental duality and fundamental unease is created. 

So, the next phase after noting is noticing. And the challenge of noticing is not lack of mindfulness (lack of attention) it's the lack of a full field of awareness. Usually it's the subtle emotional/psychological material that prevents full awareness.... and the solution is to find those knots of emotion and _include_ it in awareness. When you bring past psychological conditioning/patterns into awareness the energy of the knot is released. Awareness and fixed patterns can't co-exist for long.

The core challenge with awareness based practices is that when we are truly present, we aren't "somebody". So moving into awareness often has an edgy feeling, a argophobia feeling, almost like we're afraid of dying or disappearing. And that basic tension quickly complicates into having preferences about the moment (we want it to be different from it is and focus on that instead of the moment) and that quickly complicates into having an identity in the moment (I am someone who is doing something to get somewhere besides this moment). It all happens in about a half a second.

So in the same way that with noting we get lost and then we wake up and return to noting a mind object... in awareness practices we fall from direct presence and get lost in feelings of preference and ideas about identity, but then we wake up return to presence. And it's the waking up and returning that is the practice, so it's no big deal if we get lost 1,000,000,000,000,000 times because that means we have trained waking up and returning to presence 1,000,000,000,000,001 times!

​​​​​​​Hope this helps in some way.

Welcome back to the noting aloud family Che Happy to see you back in full swing! Looking forward to some juicy reports as always. Wishing you the best!

Yes! Thank you shargrol THAT sure does help alot! Very simple and to the point. Im not much for all the "imagine and visualise all sorts of stuff" but rather what you said in this post; the reminder that stuff gets narrow then widens up, stuff gets zoomed in then zooms out, karmic seeds popping up in rappid fire, push and pull between awake state (presence) and the absorption state (either jhana or scenario spin or emotional spin, what-have-you spin), roller coaster spinning.

I really prefer the way Kenneth Folk presents it as 3 gears to shift depending on whats presenting itself and how. At this time I certainly sense resistance and that to me is shouting for 1st gear (noting) which will help strenghten the attention, then into 2nd and 3rd gears depending on what is there etc ... Its good to know that this terrain is always and utterly Unknown so having a few gears to use is a good thing I guess. The big question "Is Awakening free from the Law of Anicca?" 

Also when you sense psychological/emotional "knot" being released in the awareness do you actually experience strong surge of energy from the head rushing down the body towards the earth? Like a release. Like a big swoosh! ? Happening to me at times when I sink into such emotional stuff.

Hi Louis and thanks! Nothing much to report but a rather diffused zoomed out image space (eyes not clinging to stuff in a sharp way), long long outbreathing and very short inbreathing, sore lower back and crackling sore neck, in ear nada sound high pitch with some low freq rummbling under it, a bit numbed down mental power to think or remember stuff, the conscious presence is a bit chunky and unstable and feels kind of unsettling the more I "do something" with it and is less of an issue if I just let it do what it does. I dont know right now Im trying to note all whats happeing but in the sitting practice its more around the "seeing, hearing, touching, vibrations, stiffness, itch, don't know, innability to find words, rememering/comparing/planning thoughts, mind images, feet and legs and arms and hands were like baloons filled with air and the skin filled with bubbling up sensations. 

Im not sure I will spend time every day to actually report everything as I have some family stuff to attend to also but will update this log every so often.

​​​​​​​Best wishes and practice well!

Here is a question to kenneth folk from this thread https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5664311 where the notion of "being with things as they are" is brought forward in relation with Burbea's conception of meditation, where the notion the things "are a certain way that you can be with" is criticized. Thoughts ?



​​​​​​​

Kenneth Folk, modified 6 Years ago.RE: Q & A With Kenneth FolkPosts: 439Join Date: 4/30/09 Recent Posts
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Jason Snyder:
You Wrote on Another Thread:
"To summarize, the idea of not-self as a prescription is less than useful. And the hope of cultivating "not-self" as a persistant experience is counterproductive and based on a misunderstanding. But the exploration of experience, with the aim of finding out whether there is a self, leads to liberation."


My Question: Have you read Rob Burbea's new book: Seeing that Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising? In it he recommends cultivating different ways of intentionally looking, including the 3C's as provisional tools to recognize the inherent emptiness of selves' and phenomenon. In other words, to use wisdom as a tool, as a lens, and not just wait for it as a result. He argues that the advice to always just be with things as they are is not good, because "as things are" involves all kinds of assumptions and reification of "things" that are in fact empty. This seems to be counter to what you are recommending here, i.e, not using the 3C's as prescription. Is it? Here is a quote from Burbea:

"To some, this second mode of insight practice, where liberating ways of looking are intentionally cultivated and sustained, may initially sound unattractive... may involve a belief that 'being' and 'doing' are really different...'just being' is regarded as preferable or somehow more authentic...it turns out, though, that whenever there is any experience at all, there is always some fabricating, which is a kind of 'doing'...in states of 'just being' which we might image are devoid of self, a subtle self is actually being constructed anyway...What seems like 'just being with things as they appear' will undoubtedly involve all kinds of views and assumptions, mostly unrecognized, about what is perceived. Thus it is actually a way of looking; or, more likely, it will subsume, at different times, relatively diverse ways of looking...My experience in my own practice, in teaching, and in talking and listening to others, is that meditations using only the first mode of insight - that is, relying mostly on insight as a 'result' - will very probably not be enough on their own to overcome the force of deeply engrained habitual delusion that perceives and intuitively feels things to have inherent existence. As we have said, some element or aspect of a phenomenon will remain reified if it is not consciously and profoundly seen into. The overwhelming tendency is to unconsciously impute inherent existence to things, not to see emptiness. We need, therefore, to practice views that actually dissolve or remove this illusion of inherent existence."

Thoughts?
Hi Jason,

I haven't read Burbea's book, but I love the quote you reproduced here, and agree with his views as summarized by you in the first paragraph of your question. The idea that there is one right way to be, or a lensless lens from which to view the world, is one of the most common misconceptions among meditators, and I appreciate that Burbea is able to so clearly address it.

Hi Olivier and thanks for joining in! 

I dont know who Burbea is and only heard here on DhO that he died from cancer last year I think it was.Thats all I know and that he teaches Jhana if Im not mistaken. 

However just wanted you to know that Im not in state of mind clear enough to reflect on any of this (my reply to sharglrol was alos rather unclear but I did get his message) as I feels rather ... dull, slow, dumb, diffused, unclear and also chunky some sort of a mixture between 3rd Jhana stuff and DN stuff and 3C's stuff if we are to use the POI Gotta do some noting to see this one through and then maybe I might have the clarity to join in and say a few things or even learn something from it  
But I do hope others join in! 

I'm reading Seeing That Frees right now. I think it fills a gap in insight practice that doesn't get covered by noting and 3C's stuff with the whole emphasis on emptiness. I'm really digging it right now.

Hey papa, after I posted this i thought to myself "shit this is gonna be confusing, not helpful !", glad to see it wasn't

Hey PC, the bits of WUTYL that I found really helpful were Chapter 5 (realms) and Chapter 6 (elements). I went through a period where I suffered from the dull unclear state a lot and it was really helpful for me to see it characterized as ‘void element’ - a common emotional reaction pattern - rather than some affliction which was being thrust upon me by life itself. That gave me more ability to accept it rather than resist and I remember being surprised by how quickly it would evaporate with acceptance as it seemed so impenetrable before. Obviously sometimes you just need more sleep (especially with young kids lol), but often I would notice that the dullness was a reaction against some element of my experience which I would really rather ignore.

Thanks George but I really much more appreciate Lord of the Rings than Tibetan Realms  

I see that some folks need new concepts (realms/elements) to understand void etc ... I on the other hand just stare at this void or what have you. It's like an empty white canvas ready to be painted or not. That  very staring at that white canvas is void. I would use that void to get creative energy from. I would just stare at the emptiness of canvas for days until something would spark and woops a painting was done to my surprise  

I would just stare at the emptiness of canvas for days until something would spark and woops a painting was done  to my surprise  

Well, I sort of think this is how it works. This really could be as good as it gets, in my humble experience. If it wasn't for woops, surprise, there's nothing but void. So thank Void for surprise.

O, Art, thunder of being !

Tim, you heard of Maldiney ? He said stuff like what you just said, " Surgere is what reality does "

​​​​​​​Papa, where can we see your paintings ?

Olivier, I hadn't heard of Maldiney, but he looks like a kindred Sung landscapist, lol.

from the description of his book, ouvrir le rien, l'art nu : 
ce qu’est l’œuvre, l’artiste n’en sait rien avant d’être surpris par elle. Maître d’ouvrage, il n’est pas le maître d’œuvre. Une œuvre, dit Malevitch, doit sortir de rien. Elle ne procède d’aucun étant, même d’un néant étant, mais du rien qu’elle ouvre. Sa manifestation a lieu dans l’ouvert pour autant qu’elle s’ouvre en elle sous la forme du rien.

Or, as John X said, nada, nada, nada, nada, nada, nada, and even on the Mount, nada.  (Then maybe a poem, lol.)

You can glimpse some of Papa Che's art on the wall behind him in some of his music and noting videos. But more, Papaji! Pix!

Another BIG aspect of moving from MCTB to WUTYL is a focus on noticing "pychological imperatives". These are how a "somebody" is created by reacting to experience rather than fully experiencing an experience. So looking at your reply above, lots of great material that could be explored. "Can't be dull, can't be slow, can't be dumb, can't be diffused, can't be unclear, can't be chunky.... must be clear. Can't learn from it, must be different." ---- all of this is a reaction to experience.

These are likely pointing to something deeper in your psychology, probably some flavor of "not being good enough" or "need to perform well" or "need to change" that runs in background all the time... basically really subtle ways of devaluing your experience in this moment and looking for something in the future that will somehow add the value you think you need. (It might seem like a exaggeration, but these things really are clues for where we are psychologically defending ourself from experience. This is the subtle work of the higher paths.)

To generalize, MCTB approaches (forgive me Daniel for glossing like this, it really isn't true, I'm exaggerating to make a point) focus on discrete mind objects, WUTYL brings in reactive patterns and ways we make meaning, especially the "imperatives" that seem like self. These unquestioned imperatives are exactly where the false self hides from investigation.

just wanted to make sure shargrol's excellent latest post doesn't get lost in the grass back there mid-thread. In general, it seems like a good idea with this new DhO format to reply to the last post on a thread, and copy and paste what you need from higher up, because directly replying to posts higher up on the thread, the replies go up there too. I'd hate for this one to get overlooked on technical difficulties.


Papa Che Dusko
Hi Olivier  and thanks for joining in!  I dont know who Burbea is and only heard here on DhO that he died from cancer last year I think it was.Thats all I know and that he teaches Jhana if Im not mistaken.  However just wanted you to know that Im not in state of mind clear enough to reflect on any of this (my reply to sharglrol was alos rather unclear but I did get his message) as I feels rather ... dull, slow, dumb, diffused, unclear and also chunky  some sort of a mixture between 3rd Jhana stuff and DN stuff and 3C's stuff if we are to use the POI  Gotta do some noting to see this one through and then maybe I might have the clarity to join in and say a few things or even learn something from it   But I do hope others join in! 


Shargrol
Another BIG aspect of moving from MCTB to WUTYL is a focus on noticing "pychological imperatives". These are how a "somebody" is created by reacting to experience rather than fully experiencing an experience. So looking at your reply above, lots of great material that could be explored. "Can't be dull, can't be slow, can't be dumb, can't be diffused, can't be unclear, can't be chunky.... must be clear. Can't learn from it, must be different." ---- all of this is a reaction to experience.

These are likely pointing to something deeper in your psychology, probably some flavor of "not being good enough" or "need to perform well" or "need to change" that runs in background all the time... basically really subtle ways of devaluing your experience in this moment and looking for something in the future that will somehow add the value you think you need. (It might seem like a exaggeration, but these things really are clues for where we are psychologically defending ourself from experience. This is the subtle work of the higher paths.)

To generalize, MCTB approaches (forgive me Daniel for glossing like this, it really isn't true, I'm exaggerating to make a point) focus on discrete mind objects, WUTYL brings in reactive patterns and ways we make meaning, especially the "imperatives" that seem like self. These unquestioned imperatives are exactly where the false self hides from investigation.

Here is some stuff I did from 1998 to about 2011. Make sure to choose the web version and not the mobile phone version because of the side links. 
http://duskobojic.blogspot.com/2006/03/blog-post.html?m=0

Yes. You certainly got that one right. Psychologicaly speaking there is this huge part that got abandoned by my parents in a very early age. Living with new family every year and also changing schools and cities every year. Never was I safe and I always had to adjust to the new environment. Also always sad wanting my parents back. 

Im sure all this has much to do with what you say. Include war experience and some important people dying on me ... well, it does add up. 

However this meditation stuff must mean simple direct experiencing and release rather than full blown psycho analysis which I did in the past btw. 

I think this self-inquiry "Look how it's ..." together with Noting might be enough to investigate Thisness and all its aspects. 

I don't have a clue what else to do as I really find it hard to even write these words right now the mental focus is out of the window. I'm having difficulty to even follow what my kid and my partner are telling me. Need some sort of practice I think. 

Thanks Tim. I did miss that reply from Shargrol. Now answered above. 

Here is a short video update on my current practice which is a mix of freestyle noting aloud and self inquiry "Look how it's ..."
https://youtu.be/A1Q5T7JhtKE

No worries, not much else to do beside digest what is happening. Meditation is sorta like therapy, except there is less of a focus on "the story" and 1000x more focus on the experience itself.

In general, therapy provides a kind of narrative framework to help us make sense of our life "of course you are exhausted from anxiety, you never felt safe as a child and then adult stresses started piling up, and you never learned how to rest and recover"  So it helps us understand who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. And this can reduce suffering immensely.

In general, meditation does some of this, but soon leave the story behind and moves into the felt experience. This is somewhat similar to somatic therapy, except it attends to very very subtle yet very very pervasive stuff. Most people doing somatic therapy haven't developed the sensitivity that a meditator has. So meditation works on much more subtle and pervasive level of material. This stuff doesn't tend to be outright trama stuff, it's more the odd creepy crawly, unease, haunting, abstract anxiety stuff --- stuff that is weak, but because it's so weak it gets overlooked and underappreciated. This is the subtle stuff that makes us drink or overeat or smoke even when we aren't really aren't that stressed. It's more the vague feeling of being "less than" that motivates us to do something to fill the void.

The trick here is any "less than ideal state" is still just a state. If we can hold the state in attention, it no longer traps us --- we see it as a state "in" us, but not truly who/what we are. That means we can still take appropriate actions even though we don't feel 100% okay --- and that's how these subtle clingings and aversions and ignorings get defeated over time.

Eventually, these "state traps" are completely seen for what they are and they lose all power... but it takes time. It takes time to build capability to hold these states in attention. It takes time to appreciate that this really is the important work we need to master. And it takes time doing it well in order to eventually defeat the pattern. Slow, consistent, non-heroic training. High repetition, low intensity.


So no need to rush, just slowly develop an appreciation that this is the sort of work that comes next.

Thank you shargrol. It's appreciated. 

+1 to shargrol's comments above.

ignorance can seem like the hardest territory to traverse. but it's pretty damn amusing once you get going and can see all the subtle ways the self is basically just a never ending hot-take on virtually all aspects of experience - always wanting to get its word in edgewise, giving its unsolicited opinion on every damn thing that happens.

"and can see all the subtle ways the self is basically just a never ending hot-take on virtually all aspects of experience"

dont you feel a bit seasick from it? I find it to be rather seasick or motion sick from all the spins, and in and out surges and waves and wobbles and zoom in and zoom outs and what not. I mean on cushion with sufficient concentration this can be fun but off cushion in every day lifeing situation it really can be rather ... whats the word ... unsettling maybe? Not sure whats the word. Its almost as if all the show is going on without you and "you" is being dragged behind the last wagon of that hectic Samsaric Darjeeling Train, 1001 wagon long toooot tooooooot!!!!  

yea but then you have to just look at the unsettling feeling. for a long time i think i got stuck in this frame of mind where i found the self really annoying and even developed an aversion to it... like wishing it would just go away. but then i realized that was yet another mindtrap and decided to just roll with it and eventually found it amusing.

(i liked the paintings!)

me too!

Most def. Around my way, self will pop up with some comment, and then a second instance of self will pop up to comment on the fact that the comment was necessary, and so on. That is a variant of things getting quiet in a sit, and this internal voice coming up to say, "Thank god that internal voice has finally shut up."

I love the paintings too!

​​​​​​​for anyone who missed the link upthread: 
http://duskobojic.blogspot.com/2006/03/blog-post.html?m=0

My kid and I like your paintings too! 

Cheers ya'all! You are too kind  

Awesome paintings, very powerful. Some things really are better said without words.

Thanks Steph! 

it makes sense; look at This unfolding in whatever shape or form that selfing is manifesting. First annoyance then look at the amusement then ... whatever manifests I guess. No rest for the wicked lol 

I mean what can I say Picasso was my brother from another mother  

Practicing "Look how it's ..." and it seems to open up some new experience ... as in, there is this knowing of how it's looking at it's looking experience and there is basically no one there but yet another looking at the "look how it's ..." experience. 

There is this flow of punctuated impermanent, not self knowing. 

Badically there is no "firm ground" to stand on. All is transient to the point of ... giving up on tracking it all as tracking seems to introduce Dukkha. 

So what is left there? To back off. To just listen, just look, just openess in wonder. 

Anyway, will continue with this practice. Noting also happend and becomes part of "look how it's (noting)" practice. 

I've also tried the "Look at it.." trick and i find it excellent. Shargrol, did you invent it ? 

It is a good practice as it really creates that push-pull between the arisen experience and the knower/knowing of the experience. What is more real; this knowing that is saying "look how it's ..." or the very It that is doing/having any given experience? 

Which one is real? These flip flop and yet are the same ; Momentary impermanent, not self Thisness. 

However there is a creating of a new perspective with this practice. A new angle that exposes the way selfings occur and remain or not remain for long. 

I first heard about this practice from Kenneth Folk's book.

Agree, I heard it from Kenneth first.