Previous logs: https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/view_message/26177579
Next logs: TBD

Summary of past logs: I had gotten off a 2 month mahasi retreat, before which I had been DN/low eq cycling. That retreat got me to more high EQ places, and got me unstuck. I still had a bit of head attachment, and would cycle. That gradually lessened over time. My ability to do jhanas came in during my daily sits. I had some cool visions. Largely, I think I stabilized into EQ now.

Today was interesting. I had two sits. An hour long one in the morning, that started off with sensations flowly. I figured yesterday I was probably overefforting near the end, since there isn't actually anything to do to be present. This was a lot more gentle. About four times I felt things slow/down and lighten up. At first it was just slowing of thoughts, but each time the sit got much more peaceful.

The second sit was similar. My mind was excited a bit more, and kinda wanted to drill into head pressures more, but then would just go back to wide observing. Similar just letting go periodically, but not as many or as deep. Had some shaking, and combo (eye twitching, pressure strobing) in my head. At the end the head pressure disappeared, and peace was had in the lands.

I do think at this point I'm stabilized in EQ a bit. So I've noticed that you can get reinforcement loops in meditation (a feeling of craving might lead to thoughts of craving, which leads to a stronger feeling, etc) until the loop is seen through. I think this is mainly what was going on with the head pressure was that it would cause 1. identification (zooming in) 2. grasping (holding onto it) 3. unpleasent mental states 4. Aversion, but I think at this point the cycle is broken. It doesn't seem to be tightly coupled anymore, and seems pretty bearable, last much shorter, less intense, etc. I don't really "zoom into" it at all anymore either.

You might be thinking, "wow thats really not that much meditation for Geoffrey". And that's because its been an interesting day. Some people came in to put 24k gold foil on our buddha statues and what not. During lunch, something about the food tasted awful (like it had dishsoap), so I chucked my plate and just ate rice and springrolls. Afterwards they started foiling one of the Buddhas, and it became clear that a bunch of people were getting food poisoning. The worker was mostly interesting in doing her work though, and I was interested in watching.  Early watching, I realized tons of gold leaf was blowing off, so I went to get a bag to start collecting it. I did this for several hours (instead of meditation), and got quite a nice bag of 24k gold foil. At one point someone came over to see the process, and they instead went and started vomiting in the bushes nearby (so this is going one while one person dilligently works and I'm going around picking up expensive trash). After the foiling was done, I mostly spend the rest of the day helping take care of people, and hauling around statues. Basically everyone got sick except me, and a monk, who, due to the fact he is in his early twenties, had naturally decided to opt for the rice/springroll lunch because that's what you do when you're young. So like later in the evening, I literally had to take him away from tending to the sick so we could haul these golden arhant statues inside.

On the bright side, even if I dont end up getting SE here, at least I will have a bag of literal gold as a consolation prize. It has it's downsides, though. It's super thin, and basically turns into dust if you handle it, and its essentially just the fine art equivalent of glitter. Like that shit is everywhere now, on my clothes, in the building (from everyone not just me), like caked into my phone screen.

Welcome to my second practice log!

Woo !! May we all be coated in gold foil !!

Thanks for starting this new log, Geoffrey.

PS: I made your previous log URL clickable.

- Chris

You see what did now Chris?! You scared Sha-Man away into a new log! 

But he found gold here so ... not all causality leads to bad outcomes!  

May he find other stuff of benefit in this new log of his!  

Best wishes and May this log be of benefit to many! 

You see what you did now?! You've got me thinking about Goldfoil guitar pickups! Damn it! Hm ... i am starting a new Telecaster build so ... Hm ... maybe Goldfoil pickups could be an option ... Hm ... pondering ... 

You should go for a chrome/mirror spray paint. It looks essentially the same (except it's silver), but it's much cheaper and won't get everywhere forever. 

I ended up taking one of the monks that got hit hard by the food poisoning to the hospital, and it turns out he has COVID, so I'm preemptively isolating for a few days to see if anything develops. 

practice has been gone well. The head pressure is still there but basically a non issue at this point. It usually just feels like it's part of the show. Sometimes when I start meditating it feels like there might be swirls of stuff, like thought, cravings or being uncomfortable. But that generally settles fairly quick. Usually things keep settling in big chunks all at once. Starting again to see thoughts appear. Mostly things a are chill, maybe a bit boring 

Good !! 

​​​​​​​Best of luck with the covid. I had it recently wasn't too bad. 

So my inclination to practice these last few days is basically nil. Still doing a couple hours a day, not too much. When I do practice it is usually nice and peaceful. Everything flowing in a broad 3d field of flux. Nothing too strange happening (but I'm probably not putting in the hours to have the concentration or energy build ups). I'm probably going to start a new job soon. Which will mean leaving the monastery and finding a new place to live. I'll probably keep living out of my two bags of clothing mostly. My mind tries to spin worries about this, but the worry is really not found in experience. 

In summary of everything, I just can't be bothered to care really. Ive been reflecting a lot on how everything prior to Now is just gone. It's a double edge sword. It was helpful dealing with the annoying sits, but it leaves me with an apathy towards the future.

however when meditating the other day, when interest did arise, I found it so space curious. There was a part that was trying to understand, but it was just a part in space. That space is being known is strange. I don't think I can rule out a giant knowing super space quite yet.

Each aspect of the journey is just that, an aspect, and while early on these aspects fascinate us, in time, they become just more grist for the mill. 

"Concentration and energy build ups" - Sneezes and piss shivers.

"I'll probably keep living out of my two bags of clothing mostly" - I live out of one ;) Good luck with whatever course of action you choose.

Practice sounds good. Keep doing it. There's nothing special about it and there doesn't need to be. It's just plain old -wide and inclusive- relaxation.

"I don't think I can rule out a giant knowing super space quite yet" - All in due time my friend

Sometimes we notice a sort of disenchantment with the self and its activities. This disenchantment leads to less attachment, there's less activity to occupy us, it can be a little boring or unusual at times. There's a strange sort of emptiness where  "we" (and all our usual sculduggery) used to be

Best wishes Sha-Man with opening to life and letting it unfold! Worry is a normal thing for this human being. Of course this worry will be a moving factor to find a shelter and a job etc ... if there is a thunderstorm approaching I wound be wreck less to just sail into it without worry it will crash and sink my ship!  

Worry is fine ... however being utterly absorbed in a worry is heavy suffering. But if the worry is part of the whole experience , swirling and flickering within myriad of stuff , then the Dukkha aspect is far less. In High Equanimity this is very evident. Stuff can be unpleasant-ish, pleasant-ish or neutral-ish ... suddenly this "-ish" becomes a thing. 

Sitting with "boring-just-stuff-in-space-sitting-here" is your best friend. Once a day just sitting for 45 minutes looking at the room you sit in is a fine practice. 

​​​​​​​Best wishes!

Who can't be bothered to care? What can't be bothered? Look into that.

You aren't practicing to rule things out. You're practicing to directly experience. Go >into< that giant knowing super space experience and check it out. Check out the mind that knows. How does knowing happen?

Today was a good day. It started off with me testing negative, so I was freed from my covid prison. I had coffee which I hadnt had in a few days, and when I went to meditate before my job interview (its most like hashing out details at this point, they want to employ me and i want to join) I was too nervous and restless to make it past 20 minutes. Everything felt just kinda terrible. The interview went well until my rural internet shat itself hardcore, but we will resume it tomorrow. I had DI's acutalism blog post open on my laptop from who knows when, and I looked over it and this caught my eye


And I was like, why dont i do that? That sounds nice. So I did. And it was. My mind immediately chilled out about stuff, and started making metta magic materialize, and even the more abrasive sensations it chill out about and got interested in.

Meditated a bit before taking a nap and it was interesting being this thing hanging out in space but not different than space. Everything was pretty soft and gentle at this point. Crazy dreams during my nap (and also last night too. I had a dream about Bobby Hill and his two AI robot brides. I'm going to need a master craft Jungian to detangle that one).

Did a two hour meditation tonight. The head pressure came back, but it was pretty grippy. Everything was soft and nice. The head pressure died down until it just felt like my right ear needed to pop. Then it came back and it was super vague (like I couldnt tell you how big or where it started, it was perfectly blended), but pretty strong. Eventually it died down some more, but at this point, everything was super sharp and 3d. My body was well-defined. Things felt ordinary. I got some piti, but it was unusal. It wasn't the nice la-di-da piti I was getting recently, it was very sharp, clear, and had a very distinctive electric feeling (like I was getting little 9v shocks or something). It kinda was just brewing off and on. Then things would kinda alternate between sharp/clear/ordinary (and also getting faster) with going back to being soft and diffuse and relaxing, until my mind just said fuck it, and jumped into a j4.j6 type deal. Then it was nice, everything was just going by itself in a relax peaceful manor. The head sensations gently dropped. The j4.j6 really only lasted maybe 10 minutes, then I came out and ended the session (with no head pressure!).

So funny enough, I did toss out my vapes that I had smuggled into the monastery last night. This morning I was definitely more like fidgety, but it wasnt too bad. Overall, today my body and mental states feel clearer and less like just kinda gross?

Things have also been chill today. Went on a hike for a few hours.

I only meditated for 1.5. At first, it felt like my attention was grippy at my head pressure when i tried to just sit there. So I switched over to trying to be with the current moment pretty actively. At first this was relaxing the grippiness and things felt flowy, but eventually things would kinda solidify out of the flow and I'd end up back in the sort of just sitting there mode of attention. I tried this a few times, but the same thing happened every time, so eventually I gave up and just sat there. Things were pretty boring. My body felt well-defined. Still head pressures, but not super annoying. I feel like there was something interesting insight wise I was doing or learning but like I cant remember and this was like 30 minutes ago? Ooops. Just imagine it was deep and wise I suppose.

So this morning before breakfast there were a few minutes where my heart just exploded and body felt like it needed to run. My mind was perfectly calm though, and it asked "so is this a panic attack without the panic". Then after breakfast, I felt sick for a few minutes. So no cigs is going great haha.

I meditated for like 1.5-2ish hours this morning. When I sat down, at first things just felt perfectly still. There was no need to do anything, I just existed. The thought "What can't be bothered?" came into mind. After a bit, it seemed more interesting to ask yesterday when attention was shifting between two modes (flowly and solid), how did that work? That seems like there must of been a controller there. After thinking about that for a bit and trying to notice the flowiness of sensations and to see how that changed by itself, I noticed "oh bothering is back". It was a small sensation in my head (which felt mostly vanished and just like space at this point), but it had a bit of struggle to it that created the sense of a doer. That doer sensation fluxated a bit, before finally just fading. There was a much gentler sensation of pressure, which creates the feeling of a center at my head. That flucated in and out until it stayed. Eventually my body just started to feel awful and I remembered


So I just did that for probably an hour or so, so when the tension and awfulness came up in my body it was just allowed to relax.

The other two sits (maybe 3 or 4 more hours) looked a decent amount like the last part of the morning sit. But what was different about all today is this feeling of struggling has never really came back today. Like the entire day I've just been pretty contented with whatever has been happening then, not trying to rush to the next thing.

I've also been doing a side practice. For awhile I've been reflecting on how the past is basically vanished, and the present is constantly slipping away and changing. This has been really helpful getting me to be less aversive on a moment to moment basis, but has also been helpful keeping me from sinking into memories of the past. However, one thing that slipped by the radar was I've still been letting the future stuff bog me down. Yesterday I was talking to another resident here and he told me a story. One day at a monastery, a guy was rushing to finish the dishes. A monk saw that and asked "what's after this?" and the guy explains that he is rushing so he can go meditate. And the monk asks "and what's after that?", and the guy says the next thing. And the monk asks "and what's after that?". And so on. I think just as the reflections on the past can be used both on a momentarily level and a narrative level, so can the future reflection. I think between the past reflections, the future reflections, and settling into the present as outlined above it seems very well-rounded.

I will say, today has just felt like the most present and content day I've had so far.

Today really started off with a walk. During that walk a got hit by a five minute wave of depression, and then some bursts of anger-craving (where there is just so much idiocy that you should smoke to calm yourself down) and some hide-somewhere-and-die-craving (where you just want to shrink and disappear, and smoke because its so pathetic).

During the first sit of the day I was interested in what craving is. I had three ideas to test out, as the emotionally charged craving had made me wonder if I had ever seen bare-craving. The ideas were 1. Craving is a component thing you can point to, like heat 2. Craving is an illusory thing you can point to (like the things you mistake as a doer) 3. Craving is actually the name for a sequence of (unpleasant emotion -> thought or action to mitigate). In that sit I was being hit with waves of different emotionally charged craving. It did seem like there was something subtle to tag them as craving, instead of that emotion. Eventually, I did see "bare-craving" as a thin mass element in my chest (similar to how the sense of a center is created by like a thin mass element in my face).  Interestingly enough, it kept triggering craving thoughts. And between the thoughts when I looked, it definitely seemed more neutral, but identifiable as craving, but I do think the sole reason its identifiable as craving is because of the craving thoughts. So I think 2&3. Then I had an idea for fun. The bare-craving was not stable. But I started to think horny thoughts. At first nothing happened, my mind seemed disinterested and had a hard time sustaining them. But then eventually, I got it to sync with the bare-craving and made it into lust! How neat. Eventually that died down and after that I just kinda sat there peacefully for maybe 20-30 minutes, not really doing anything.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon I got micro-hits of depression that would usually last maybe 30s or so.

My second sit was maybe like 1.5 or 2 hours, but I just sat there. No head pressure or anything notable really. At least if i recall correctly?

My evening sit was 1.5 hours. The first 45-60 minutes or so there was some head pressure. What was interesting is that the sense of a me hasnt really been here at all today or any head pressure, but during this sit was the first it came. It wasn't a super solid sense of it either, but it was when the head pressure comes and its kinda grippy but that grippiness is somehow mistaken as "I did that". So it was really just flaring up for quick moments. But the whole show eventually died down, and came back and forth a few times in a more neutered form. In between that, I just kinda sat there doing nothing really.

I did come across this snooping around Martin's log today. I find it rather interesting because it's analogous (pun intended) to the VR analogy that Angelo Dillou uses in his book

 "I just kinda sat there peacefully for maybe 20-30 minutes, not really doing anything."

This is where I usually suggest, instead of toilet paper, using sandpaper! It is very effective during the High EQ stage! Choose the sandpaper grit which resonates best with you, of course!






​​​​​​​

Something very interesting happened last night/ early today. I was playing around more with this idea of constructive meditation. Like what I was doing the other day with "sync into the beautiful qualities" and that creating beauty. So I tried to do that with other qualities, where I might say "relief" and then I could feel myself let go a bit or "anger" and I'd feel the tension rise. This seems to work with a ton of things I tried (happiness, sadness, anger, relief, depression, excitement, tired, relaxed, basically anything I could think of). It also seemed to work with weired things like slow/fast (which would tune awareness into slower and faster freq things) or 2d/3d (which would tune into the spatial relationships or not [when then kinda makes it more like a 2d painting of a 3d space]).

It was interesting throughout today when something like anxiety would pop up, I'd go "no im actually happy", and then it would turn into happiness. Really I think what's happening is the "vibe" of the present moment is shifting (like the emotional overtone), and then a bit of how the stuff in the present shifts as well (like maybe the grip loosens or softens or becomes more vague or more pronounced, etc). The only time it seemed to create new stuff was when i did "excitement" and that made some piti in my hands. Really the reverse noting only misfired once that I saw, and a few times didn't really work.

My first I probably played with that for half the sit or so, and then just kinda sat there for the second half (at least I think I did that?)

My second sit, I just kinda sat the whole 1.5 hours. There was some head pressure. About an hour in I opened my eyes and that was fun, because when you stare into space eventually color turns off, and things go gray and blobby, and occasionally you can see outlines of objects made from almost like blue lightening really quickly. This also helped degrip the pressure in my head and made it more flowy. But after maybe 10 minutes my eyes were pretty dried out so I just went back to just sitting.

Head pressure stuff today. When I was doing laying meditation, it felt so fant, 3d, and out there. It really felt similar to body tension, and would periodically disappear completely.

1:45 sit tonight - head pressure started off lighter like body tension, occasionally disappearing. Then it came back and would more intense, as a kinda wall of pressure across my head. Eventually it just cycled through lots of it. Doesn't feel like I'm controlling it or anything now, but still has a sense of being "inside" my body somehow (vs say like the piti in my hands which feels like its part of the environment). Around the 1:30 mark are the pain in my body just switched on all at once, and energy started swirling, and more electric distinct piti started up in my hands.

Okay so practice wise the last few days have been kinda meh, with today as an interesting exception.

Basically most of the day has consisted of just walking around, where everything is chill and happening where it is. Then when I meditate in the evening (or try to go to bed at night) the head pressure builds up, does its thing and is still kinda annoying. Interesting enough, when I walk around or do any kind of daily activities the pressure goes away.

Today however, I tried something new. Basically, I was inspired by a comment Metizinger made in his talk that DW posted on the other thread. He talks about how a lot of times when people have these 'pure consciousness experiences' they realized that there is something there to regular experience, thats always there, that they never noticed, that's a relief. I remember learning about this a little bit (or something that sounded similar) in Dzogchen, but not knowing too much about it. I think I always assumed it was something along the lines of an active process where you unhook your attention and put it on space itself. I decided to try to look for this subtle thing that is always there. The rules I was playing by are

1. It should be effortless
2. It should lower dukkah
3. it should be subtle but once realized it should be somehow 'persistent'

I think I found something along these lines? It's basically like becoming aware (without the need to shift attention, change objects, or put any effort into) the negative space that is always there regardless of if stuff is zoomed in, out, there are/aren't objs etc etc. It's more 'bare' awareness, and so it feels unbound, spacious, and just kinda nice. And its a thing that seems always there. Plus as I tried to be aware of it during tonights sit, the things I noticed were that 1. the head pressure didn't build up on itself as it had been the past two days (it was still there, but less frequent, less magnitude, and less feedback loopy?) 2. it shifts perspective away from a me here with space there, to a blank awareness canvas that has things painted ontop of them. And the things ontop of the cavas arent as a big of a problem.


I also started a book 'The nonexistence of the real world', which is basically the emptiness philosophy, but built up through modern western thought and tools. Like the emptiness is called irrealism. And its very interesting. So the idea is we have a few of these models for reality. There is direct realism, which is basically that there is a material world, that we are directly aware of (like a very what you see is what you get kind of logic). This obviously has problems with things like hallucinations. The next step is indirect realism that has something along the lines of

Perceiver -> perceived || veil of perception|| <- object

Then a popular idea here is representationalism, that basically we have a little virtual reality in our head. Here though, people vary wildly on how good that map in our head is. You have some people that believe it is essentially correct - like we see rocks, trees, etc and there is a world of things itself that has groups of atoms that are rocks, trees, etc (they might not have say color in the way we think about it), but that we really are navigating a material world. Then there are camps that are basically saying our map is basically useless. So the analogy is a computer GUI, the GUI has things like a mouse, files, an hourglass, etc but none of this looks remotely like the insides of the computer. We couldn't make the slightest deduction about the insides of the computer from the GUI. The problem with these is 1. we have no idea about how accurate these maps are 2. there isn't really any compelling evidence of the existence of the world from them.

Here comes irrealism. This is basically saying no the map is the territory, there is nothing outside the representation. (Like we have this idea of trying to see 'the objective world' but there is no we in that world...). Like the virtual world is this all consuming thing. Any evidence we have of something outside of it, or statements we can make about an outside world, or whatever exist within the virtual world. (Basically direct realism assumed there was a material world and no veil of perception, irrealism assumes there is no veil of perception, but no material world).

fwiw they arent denying there is a world out there, or matter, or objects or anything. But how its explained in the book is


But even this idea that there is an outside world, is a concept within the VR that is useful to help navigate the VR.

I read this book by Donald Hoffman (UC Irvine) about a year ago. It's right along the lines you're thinking about now:

The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes

Bonus - a related video interview

Now you're speaking my language!

There is a part of me that thinks, "well duh!". Like there are things like this littered over our perceptual makeup. Like humans are the only primate that sees red (probably for finding food), our eyes are extremely sensitive to green (ever see a green laser pointer? You can see a weak battery powered one for miles), disgust gets turned off when we are aroused. It's interesting that people just assumed that our senses would evolve to be accurate (like this seems like some kind of enlightenment bias [and not the fun kind of enlightenment]). But like it feels almost obvious to say "the selective process that biases things towards thing-replication would result in perceptual systems that are themselves biased towards biological replication".

Okay it is almost lunch, so I will have to take a break from this interview. However, I do think this is getting into this interesting logic that irrealism is about. Because this guy is talking about how physicist think we're done with spacetime (it doesnt work when you get to 10^-30 whatever), but you basically need these crazy mathematical geometries, and weirds sets of equations, etc. But is this actually getting to the core of what reality is? Like sure, it may give us equations to predict things better. But is reality really an amplituhedron that

Or is it better to say that these amplituhedron model the world of appearances really well? Like an amplituhedron is also just an appearance.

I do actually fuck with this guy. Like okay if we're starting to make a theory, why not assume consciousness experience as the primitives (because that's what we have access to?) and build things out from there. I think Ill look into his book and his papers

Today was good practice wise. I've been doing more of what I did yesterday, which I might describe as "immediately accessing the 6th jhana element there in normal experience".

First sit - tired. My experience got super light and easy, and my head kept slumping down.

Second sit - head pressures came up but were no bother. Seem to be coming out more from the background of lightness, and my attention never really sank into them

Third sit - similar to the second, until at one point on the crown of my head started to vibrate for a few minutes. It felt similar to hair standing up or when you have pins and needles from falling asleep. After that the head pressure seemed much smaller and gentler (I think it released some of the attachment?), and would also flicker more and more.

The book is the best place to start, IMHO. In it, Hoffman lays out the modern science history of consciousness studies, explains the inadequacies of some and the promise of others, then proposes his ideas and answers its common critiques. The book gets pretty geeky - so you'll probably like it 

Morning sit - similar to yesterday, where everything became peaceful and clear, and i probably became a little sleepy

Afternoon sit - cant remember well
 
Even sit - lots of head pressure, this then started lots of crawling/tingling/itching/tickling in my skin. At one point my head was in pain for a little, then my stomach immediately after. At one point my head muscle began to pulsate. Did a couple cycles of head pressure. Sitt lasting just shy of 2 hours, pretty organically.

About a week ago I had a session where I was trying to pay attention to the current moment, and I noticed there was an urgency to it. Upon further investigation, there was a bit of tension in my chest that I hadn't really noticed, and that was creating the feeling of this restlessness, and as i noticed it, my attention on it loosened and it went away. This made me realize that there were probably things I wasnt noticing because my attention was too broad. I tried zooming in on my head, so that my whole head was the center of attention, so not narrow nor broad, and there were a lot of little pressure waves going in the background behind the big sense of pressure. These small pressure waves corresponding to things like feeling tired, annoyed, shifting view points, etc. A good amount of them got released during that meditation sit, and since then there has still been some pressure, but magnitude/frequency wise it cut down to maybe 25% what it was.

Since then I've been keeping my attention mostly at a head level, and a lot of the action up there has simplified. There are still some subtle pressures and stuff, but before where there was maybe 4-5 things happening with one big thing in the foreground, now there might be 1-3 things.

I met with a teacher about two weeks ago. I gave him my backstory, and talked a bit about the head pressure and formlessness like stuff I've been experiencing lately. I also talked about switching from "object-view" to "frame/flow-view". He brought up an interesting point that Noting tends to reify objects and form and doesn't necessarily build up insight into the deathless.

He gave me some interesting things to think about.

1. What is this underlying space made out of?
2. What happens at the edges of space?
3. Where do things come from, and where do they go? (He phrased it as what exactly is the deathless?)

I started off practicing this, then went down the side road that I was describing last time where I noticed a lot of self-processes happening in the background that had skated by without deep investigation. Today however the side road merged back into the regular road organically.

It started off me focusing on the little bits of tension in my head that indicate things like effort, sleepiness, dissatisfaction, etc. At a certain point it was noticed that they were changing very rapidly, and my attention switched from an object view more to a change view (but was still very zoomed in). The little bits of tension were just kinda splashing in and out of existence. The interesting thing I noticed was that these tensions were still creating a sense of a 3d thing onto/separate from  a 2d background. At a certain point I decided to play around with viewing everything as a 2d image. This automatically made my attention zoom out to do everything, and suddenly the grippiness that created the separated 3d head stuff went away. Everything just felt broad and flowly then (and also very 2d), without a big sense of seperation.

The interesting thing is the answers I'd give to the questions. To answer 1. experience feels almost like a watercolor with thin colors. Even though there are chromatic differences across the page, you can tell the whole thing is paper. It's like the stuff I feel is like a thin thing ontop of something else. But the stuff in the picture seems almost conserved in a certain sense. Like its not being created nor destroyed, but morphing itself into something else every moment.

The answer to number 2 (from my earlier investigates a few weeks ago), was the edges seeming inaccessible in a weird way. Like if my attention tries to get close, usually a mental image of a boundary arises (like the walls of a room or something). It also just seems like there is nothing there really. Like space doesnt seem to exist in a real way (behind me doesnt exist until I look for behind me, for example), and when im looking broadly there doesnt seem to be anything there around the edges.

I think you've made a good decision to take this new track.

Experience plays out from a view, a lens of sorts. We can sometimes choose the view to use, so what we experience is changed by our assumed view. It can also be changed by our expectations. This is logically obvious when we grok that the mind is the source of experience, but practicing using different suppositions (views) can help make this a deeper, more "felt" insight. Views are also prone to develop as habits over time, so we walk around in our lives assuming things like the mental maps we have to "see" where we are in space, or time. Really investigating these things can help free us from all manner of assumptions, which at some point becomes really handy in the awakening process.

 "object-view" to "frame/flow-view"

This is important. Noting has to become noticing. I've mentioned elsewhere my own beginner practice went straight to this kind of meta awareness and I struggle with knowing when to point this out to people or knowing whether or not they've grokked it. I guess because my own practice did not originate in the context of Buddhism or noting. 

1. What is this underlying space made out of?
2. What happens at the edges of space?
3. Where do things come from, and where do they go? (He phrased it as what exactly is the deathless?)

So, experience is happening in a space and you can be aware of that space in a surfy flowing way; reality can sort of stream past your ears. Then, you can notice that the stream, both all of it and its various components, are impermanent, disatisfactory and not self. The flow and its parts happen on their  own, no lasting pleasure can be found in them and they are made of lots of shimmering particles. The phenomeonology of that recognition isn't something that's pointed at it is something that is felt to be true about reality itself. The whole realization is flowing, from one moment into the next and the more we return to the space, the more we free ourselves from particularly sticky thoughts, patterns, worldviews, etc. You'll notice the sticky stuff often happens habitually without any awareness of the space around it but as we return to awareness of that space, time and time again, the neurotic habits starts to relax, they start to be just more experience in space.

Anyway, good, cool, nice... good luck !!

* I firmly believe a deep reading and re-reading of the three characteristics chapter in MCTB points us to "flow-view". But, I also think the significance of this chapter is missed by many people (Not you specifically Geoffrey, I'm just venting something into the ether)

Some kind of evolution seems to be happening. It seems like doing the 2d relaxes the feeling of a self in a peculiar way, where the 3dness gets squashed into 2d and that naturally makes my mind let go. Last night, I did the trick I learned months ago from feedback from Bahiya, where first I do it intentionally a few times, then I just try to notice it happen on its own as consistently as I can, then it just becomes a kind of mind habit.

Today's sit had a few different states. There was a primary state where it just felt like my whole body was sitting there, no center, but with a little bit of solidity in my head, but not feeling like I was attaching to it (like my whole body feels relaxed, even with the head solidy. Nothing is fighting its existence anymore). A state where there was some flat solidity in my head that appeared to center the frame there, and an in between state where the solidity was there and subtlety different, and I could feel like had whatever this quality been turned up, my attention would be centered there, but it wasn't. But in all the cases, this 3d gripping that feels a bit self-creating and self-perpetuating was gone. Most of the slight feeling of dissatisfaction/nausea in my head is gone as well.

It does just seem like my mind has learned significantly how to just let this aspect of self creation go and to just be.

The way I think about flow state is that at a certain point, the movement of attention itself needs to be studyed.

It sounds impossible when "I am" is identified with being "the observer" but at a certain point, especially in EQ, there should be a sense that we can just watch where attention moves to next. Attention moves on it's own, which suggests that "I am the observer, I am attention" isn't quite true. 

This shift is very important for the kind of letting go that needs to occur for Stream Entry. 

I wish to describe the few weeks before SE happened to me ... if I can ... certainly "flow" would be too romantic of a description.  

Ehm ... lemme see ... I'm doing this without any pre pondering ... so ... 

A bit like an empty pot, a pot without substance. A bit ... dream like and slightly numb. A bit like just not knowing and stuff is just stuffing itself but without such pondering. 

There certainly ain't no meditator or one who knows this. There is knowing but has no weight. A bit like a wind. Not sure. Control has fallen away, but I dont know this. 

Had a very chilled out meditation this morning. It mostly felt like waves rocking on a boat.

Had a second meeting with the new meditation teacher. My notes from his suggestions.

1. zoom in (to the head pressure), examine things in detail, see emptiness/nothingnessness. dissolve it once and for all
2. try for cessation. two kinds of cessation. Low arousal mode (expanded, things just fizzle out), high arousal mode (focused into something, space disappears). This wont be obvious without short term memory (looker goes away before cessation). look for the blips and reflect on them.
3. try to look for thing-ness getting attachted to things (ha). It has a phenomological quality, but it is going to be very quick, and you'll have to use amodal attention (like how things are known in a non-direct way, like how a head tension might be just known as a doer).

Played around with 1 and 3 today. For 1, I found when I zoomed in, it was much easier to let attention manage itself (it seems like trying to manage it is refocusing on subtle sensations around the sensation of interest). It does seem like the big pressure is bits of little pressures, similar to what got dissolved a few posts ago. At one point my sinus like twitched, which has never happened before. For 3, it seems like thing-ness is a specific moment when things just become really clear? Like it doesn't happen for all objects, but for some object it feels like there is just a moment where something "pops" and because more clear and defined. I noticed there were a few instances of thing-ness seeming to last for a few fractions of a second, where something seems more objecty than the normal flow. It didn't seem like everything ever was a thing though.

I actually think just subtle noticing things is the way to go here. When I sit, there is subtle flowiness, which is hard to spot during daily life (unless the head pressure comes back, in which case its noticeable but not intrusive). Even counting my breath has been helpful, because getting the mind that little bit more settled helps me notice more subtle things. But the last few days have been a bit more hectic, so my meditation has been a bit more haphazard.

Today was interesting though. I used breath stuff to calm my mind down. I noticed one aspect of self that had flown over the radar, when my head pressure changes rapidly, it creates a bit of an impulse, which comes before thoughts sometimes, but gives it the feeling that I'm thinking my thoughts. I watched that for a good while today to see the times where thoughts happen with no impulses, and impulses happen with no thoughts to try and destick that a bit. When my mind was calm, a lot of the headpressure felt formless, like no edges or shapes but I could still feel like it was there. The other interesting thing I noticed was there are moments where it feels like the system stutters a bit. They might be single moments where it seems like my vision flickers out (to black), or it feels like an energy impulse through the body? (kinda hard to tell because it happens so quickly), but there is a bit of that like system startling.

Nice, subtle relaxed awareness is the gateway to things noticing themselves.
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This kind of meta awareness is great !!

The thing about High EQ stage is it seems as the head is in the clouds but not "up there" and rather all THIS is just in the clouds and stuff is stuffing itself and I just cant even do stuff as I have no clue about any of this. I think High EQ is the one stage one can not just imagine and make a thing out of it. As one can do out of DN for example or other lower stages so to speak. One can think oneself into a DN Dukkha and make a holy shit out of oneself (speaking out of experience). Low EQ is of no benefit and is best to be regarded as "fake EQ" if you ask me so do not cling or hold onto it. keep NOTING all its aspects ...  Not sure what I wanted to say here but yeah ... I guess Best wishes! May my words be of no harm! 

Yesterday was an odd one. The pressure felt higher, but like it was "being forced over to the other side". Like, sometimes it feels like its gripping onto itself and creating a "this side" but yesterday the mind decided to be donezo with that i suppose. Today, the pressure stuff feels much lighter through the day and always feels on that side. During the meditation, with no pressure, it just feels like everything is completely flowy and wavey and nothing has to happen for meditation to happen, awareness/objects just flow into creation. When the pressure comes back, it feels on the other side, but an interesting thing is you can see attention alternate between to things rapidly, which if you werent paying attention would feel like two things existing at once. This alternation feels really clean, like the objects arent appearing or dissapearing or anything (existentially) but are just appearing and disappearing from the mind in sequence.

But it feels like the self is thawing out ultimately

I think I figured out the next step forward! I had a flight yesterday, and I meditated for the bulk of the 4 hours. I was trying not zooming in on my head pressure, but instead trying to stay with everything as it came up. What ended up happening was I started to notice more and more things that weren't my head, and as that happened my head pressure would soften, and the system naturally learned to automatically divert focus to start softening the head (and it learned to start naturally lowering the levels itself). But it got to the point where it can soften it out of being the center of attention/fairly distinct thing. It feels that on some deep level im relaxing something that I wasn't able to relax before. And things are getting more flowy.

It split over into today's meditation. The focusing on other stuff softened the head pressure to the point where it felt like it was just energy. Although still unpleasant. I've started to get glipses of witness consciousness, where the stickiness of the head pressure disappears, and it seems like everything is happening in this 3d space that is untouched by anything it contains. I've noticed that it helps to get into super-flow-mode, which isnt an active thing (because you dont have to do anything to notice things as they occur), but requires that deep level of relaxation. As I spent more time in super flow mode today, it became the flowiest state ive achieved, and the head pressure stuff seemed to lose it's unpleasantness.

Can't say about you and your developmental journey but the sense of "solid" witness knowing all this, happened to me back in 2010 and I see it as happening after the experience of the thinking self falling far into the background and all what's left was that "awake witness" watching all this stuff. 

I described it to Kenneth Folk (years later) as if it was a witness (felt like true self/subject) looking though a transparent curtain (breath awareness) out into the world (objects). 

btw that sense of a thinking self falling far far away into the background didn't last more than that one session. However it did show that I am not these thoughts. But the rumbling stuff came back to the forefront again of course. It's part of this human stuffing. 

There hasn't been any big things that have happened in the last few days so I havent been logging as much. Overall it feels like the head pressure has thawed out a bit, it now feels much more goopy, morphy, and "organic". The overall intensity is down, consistently across the board, and I dont really seem to get the big flare ups late at night when im trying to sleep.

For practice, usually when i first go to sit, the combo of head pressure and restlessness will make it feel like my attention is behind (temporally) and trying to catch up. Eventually, though, things "click" into place, and it feels like everything is exactly where it is, where it needs to be, and just doing it's thing, like it doesnt feel like anything is off or there is anything to do (or really that there is any separation). From there its just chilling with everything with no real effort. Sometimes things can feel a little jumpy, sometimes they can feel calm and my head sort of slowly nods down, sometimes things can start to flow fast. But there is that level of peace.

Outside of practice, life has seemed to flow by pretty effortlessly since leaving the monastery. It feels like good times, bad times, boring times, etc just flow by.  I feel less existentially stress out, and before where I was comparing my life to my friends, now it just feels like we're playing different games. I am a bit blown away how sharp and precisely, I feel emotions now.

Nice !! Lots of love .. Great practice !!

I decided to investigate the head pressure today. It was interesting, at the start, parts of it would feel very well defined, like beads. So I'd look at the beads, the would quickly fade, then there would be like this burst of aversive/unpleasant/"oh god" energy. That would quickly fade too, and then I'd rinse and repeat. Basically, I would just put my attention on the most salient part of the head pressure. It also felt like some of the head pressure would make muscle contract a bit, which would add, and so the system would just periodically relax itself (without a strong feeling of me doing it).  Over the course of the hour however, the bursty aversive stuff just kinda faded, and the well-defined bits just seemed to become less defined and more spacious. Overall things feel much more pleasant and nice right now, and I have a feeling that if I just sat and really did this exercise for half a day maybe I could dissolve everything.

A few days ago I had a long flight. I wanted to meditate through the flight. I decided to work on trying to see when the mind makes sensations into things. I decided to try using noting. So really examining the process of sensations -> thing construction -> labelling. One of the interesting things is that the thing of construction isnt really apparent, the whole process really just seemed very smooth. The big side effect though was I really realized that thoughts are independent of head pressure. Phenologically it felt like thoughts are kinda operating in a different space (they have no weight to them), and it sort of felt like body and thoughts were separable (like happening independently, and not "touching" each other). I continued to meditate for a couple more hours and it climaxed at a point when there was annoying head pressure, but all the sensations in awareness became really transparent, and it sort of dawned on me "even if things suck there doesnt have to be any suffering, thats being created". It reminded me of an old teacher who used to say "awareness passes through all objects" or how the non-dual people talk about "awareness can hold all objects good or bad without being effected".

Over the next few days the relationship to my head pressure changed a lot. The first day, I would actively remember "even if things suck there doesnt have to be any suffering", and I could feel the system relax, awareness broader, and the head pressure feeling more as an object "over there". Over the next few days, the remembering to do it faded and it felt like it became more and more automatic and default.

Today I went to meditate and I figured out the why.  I noticed what was happening was attention is would alternate between the head pressures (which would tend to become an attention sync), and space itself. The amount that attention would focus on one versus the other would create a feeling of a persistent self or of equanimity, and I think since the flight the percentage of where attention would naturally land had shifted. As attention would broaden, and I felt like "I" became everything, it dawned on me to ask what exactly the "I" was. Im not 100% sure about this, but it feels like when things go broad, there is still a bit of thin "substance" that attention is landing on (vs thick "substance" which makes up the head pressure, attachment, etc) - like its almost like a thin wall, with fuzzy edges, that is very big. Eventually even the thin wall faded, and there was a deep sense of peace (like the peacefulness you could spend eternity in), and at this point my mind intended to just surrender into the flow. This was probably about an hour into the sit, and I stayed in the calm mode for another hour. At a certain point, the head pressure and stuff came back, but it felt so soft and nice in comparison in to how it normally feels. I also noticed that the constellation of self would come up periodically, and it had this effect where sometimes it seemed like it was over on this side, sometimes on the other side, but it would just switch (like that optical illusion of the old lady and young lady from the same picture), and my mind would just interpret it differently sometimes.

I think it's wise to question whenever something becomes seen as A Big Problem. What I've noticed is that often it's a bit of a smokescreen for a higher/deeper sense of uncertainty. Does that make sense? I'm drunk posting.   

Sometimes people need their Big Problem as a protection mechanism as the move into a vagueness/uncertainty. Usually the Big Problem is a constellation of sensations that are confused (fused together) into a fetish like object.

I only know this... because I've been guilty of it.

"even if things suck there doesnt have to be any suffering, thats being created"

Yes, everything is being created. It can be fun to get curious about the mechanism. When is there suffering and when is there no suffering even though things suck? What's the difference between the two states? Are the states stable? How does the suffering come about? What time scales do these things operate on? 

Just as questions, even without answers, they are interesting. 

Since I posted a few days ago, the head pressure stuff has been much less of a bother. It's not a problem unless I make it a problem, eh?

Today my sits were very easy and peaceful. I just sit and my mind naturally goes from thing to thing. Things all feel very flowy, and without distinct boundaries. The pressure in my head feels like a contraction, and it just comes and flows and goes away. I can feel the little bits of it that before trigger a feeling of unease, and this part flows in and out of existence. My mind doesn't feel squirmy, even when attention rests of this part for awhile (its seems to have lost some of the self grippiness).

Over the past few days I've noticed more and more of "social" things just happening automatically - like talking or writing this blog post.

A good practice at this stage can be 'Look How Its ...' as suggested by Kenneth Folk.

Look how its thinking it has figured it all out. Look how its looking at the automaticity of self. Look how it feels flowy and without boundaries. Look how its thinking its Mind is not squirmy. Look how its walking. Look how its hearing and knowing ... Look how its (add what ever is actually arising). Such practice doesnt need to go fast. Just now and then Look at what Its doing ... Look how its ...

Or ignore it if it doesnt resonate of course. (if indeed you are in high EQ then not much really can be done and best is just to be, even that can feel like too much effort in high EQ)

​​​​​​​Best wishes! 

Gave "look how its" a shot today, and it seemed weird. Like im not doing anything, stuff is just doing itself, and it seems like its in contraction and expansion cycles so im not sure what it's doing. I've been doing a modification of what shargrol was talking about by going to myself "what seems to be the problem officer?" whenever unpleasant things come up.<br /><br />Today there were more contractions in my head pressure. It seems to have a couple things it cycles through. At a certain point, there felt like there was a distance between observing and what was being observed. It occured that it might be interesting to minimize the distance (trying to "become all of the sensations). The distance seemed to collapse. What was interesting is then I could see little tiny bits of unpleasantness (maybe the size of grains of sand or rice) around the edges. My attention looked through each one of these, and after a few minutes they dissolved, and while there was still pressure (and no distance), everything seemed to flow really smoothly.

Ugh I never liked officers! 

Practice over the last few days has been going well. It feels like good portion of the head pressures are naturally releasing. Right now it feels like self-like, the weightiness to it has dropped off, and it feels like attention thrusts itself/centers around it a lot less now. A lot of the time it just feels like a boundless sensation floating there on a big screen.

What I've been doing practice wise for the last few days is to really dial back the effort and let everything just be as it is. After about an hour of this usually this leads to a spot where everything feels like and easier and flowier. My concentration has gotten good the last few days, with me feeling consistent piti, a little bit of head bobbing, and getting into a 2nd jhana effortless state today. It seems that by dialing back effort (in a way i didnt realize i was efforting), it relaxes the feeling of trying to control how the meditation unfolds. Today I was able to get into the zone where I just completely surrendered to the flow. This felt like the best way to practice atm, because it seems to cultivate a subtle but pervasive form of equanimity. There are points where I can see attention flow between head stuff and space to create this easier non-self creating view. The flow stuff also creates a strong effect where it seems like everything happens automatically.

tI'm pretty optimistic at this point. I think the way I've started to practice is the way that's going to get me to the finish. I meditated for three hours today, and everything head pressure/"self" wise felt much much lighter than yesterday. It also seems like whats going on is there is the zoomed in self mode, which when done from a place of deep relaxation and equanimity softens the dualism. Then when that get's softened enough, there is no zoom in, and these pressures are just there in a big spacious place, not really being different from everything. My hunch is that when Im in the second mode that is also slowly releasing the pressure. Three times during the meditation today I went into these periods of everything getting much lighter, zero effort, the sense of trying to hold things (very subtle) disappears, and if feels like attention can just lightly feel everything. There have also been more "bit" of self that have seemingly been ultrasoften (like a little bit of a feeling of nervousness in my stomach for example), to the point where they no longer pop up as an issue. The general geometry of everything going on has simplified a bit as well.

Sounding really good. 

One thing I've sorta debated mentioning is the idea of "dropping any worrying about head pressure as a expression of deep optimism". By that I mean, it can be good to have something that sort of propels us to practice, some core problem or some core question, e.g. fixing head pressure... but the other side of it is then everything is sort of forced through that "view" and the possibilty of creativity/surprise in our practice is kinda crushed.

Sometimes when were trying to fix a problem with our practice we miss out on all the insights that have nothing to do with that problem. And ultimately the big things like SE/nibbana are completely outside of our own personal relationship/battles with reality -- really the whole point of this spiritual stuff is to drop our narrow and personal focus and get a sense of the bigger picture...

In a way, I'm kinda thinking along the lines of how Daniel talk about dropping "the big issue" as part of maturing in practice: 24. From Content to Insight – MCTB.org

So for what it's worth, I think it's totally okay to just let practice go where it wants to and to follow along with where it goes. It seems like you are in a very good place now. Of course, it is still important to have a consistent daily non-heroic practice, but "just sitting and watching where it all goes" seems to match where you are at right now. 

Okay I've had a whirlwind of a few days, so lots to say and please bear with me.

A few nights ago, after reading shargrols comment, I decided to give it a try when I was having a huge amount of difficulty sleeping. I wanted to focus on trying to see beyond my head pressure, so I decided to try and look more broadly. Ironically, after a bit thing cleared up and I got a big insight into the head pressure workings. It was built up on lots of little insights that have been happening over the past few weeks that I haven't been super vocal about. Let me explain - imagine you pull up MS paint, and in the center you draw a filled yellow rectangle. Great. Now imagine you come in with a tool to draw half translucent orange balls, and you just start covering the yellow rectangle, and you just keep doing this randomly like 20 times until you have a blob of mostly orange, some parts darker than the other. Now I think naively I was meditating like this whole thing was one object, but then occasionally I'd see one ball kinda by itself and it would become less of a problem (and these balls have kinda a 1-1 "interpretation" where before I would say something like "oh i feel irritated" because a specific ball would be present). But tonight the interesting thing was all the balls cleared, and I just saw the yellow rectangle (its not actuall rectangular) - this kinda substance-y, pressure, thing. But it was separate from all the moving energy, and like this is the thing my mind was picking up on that made the whole monster object seem so different than everything else on. The other super interesting thing was that, these brief periods where it feels like there is a "me"  is when attention zooms in on the movement/morphing of one of the orange balls and that perceptually creates this feeling of two planes of existence. But this process stopped that night, and my mind just stopped zooming in on the energy balls, and since then reality has felt very screen-like with just one plane of existence.

Okay so that leads into yesterday. Now, life wise, I've been in a bit of a rut and I was starting to feel like I was stalling out with a lot of big life choices to make and no clear direction. So I decided to do some DMT. I had three small, sub-blast of trips, but they were all kinda right on the line.

Trip 1 - Very pleasant. My body dissolved, and I flowed through a dazzling scene. Mostly this trip seemingly snapped me out of my life funk where the conclusion was "holy shit reality is so beautiful, why am I letting myself basically waste my time on social media". In terms of spiritual questions, the big one I was left with was "where the fuck did this magically reality come from, where did it go?"

Trip 2 - Very eerie. It started off with a bunch of eyes looking at me. Then a rusty metal box appear, and the feeling of having a body was like projected onto a box. So my big head pressure problem was on one corner, my chest was on another, my other body parts were distributed around the box (and the box was "over there"). Coming out of this, with a completely rearranged body it really did force me to focus on "why am i making my head pressure be an issue?" Like this thing is just sort of arbitrarily being made into a body? Why is that corner over there so special and so different and so problematic? Also what the fuck is looking at this whole thing? How can those eyes over there be looking?

Trip 3 - It felt almost like a test I guess. Like an evil feeling entity appear (I got the vibe of a medusa gorgon thing). And the entity came in and probed me, which felt like my body kinda got more energetic solid, but not earth element solid, and it just felt like each little bit of it was being known (by both me and the entity). Then after that, I spent some time in shadow prison, where there was just dispair everywhere, negative thoughts, etc. But it felt so breezy and easy, like bim-bam-boom now we're done with the shadow prison and that was a nothing burger, and then there was a big feeling of confidence and it felt like I had passed some test. The big spiritually thing that my mind has seemingly shifted beliefs into the existence of other worldly spiritual. Like I've seen them before, on psychedelics and never on meditation, but if you had asked me if they were real I would have waffled, but now my mind seems more onto the idea that like they exist, as real as any other phenomena, but the ontological status is questionable. But I am left wondering if perhaps the world is more magickal than expected, and probably more biased in that direction.

Then that leads into practice today. I wanted to focus more on exactly why the head pressure was being made into a big issue. So what I did was more or less try to keep attention loosely on the breath at the stomach, so that it wouldn't just fall into the head pressure as a force of habit, and just try to notice things more in the totality. What became quickly evident was that there was a lot of negative stuff happening elsewhere, like feelings of aches or irritation or whatever, and so I let those be my primary object, and I would just feel them wash over experience. A few interesting things happened. One as negative stuff washed over me, I realized that I was subtley ignoring them and they were building, but by noting them specially, they go away and overall negativity doesn't build up as much. Occasionally I would see it flare up across the whole system and then settle. But all these negative objects were different things going on, outside the head pressure, and they were providing the context of a problem because they weren't being seen. Also at one point, all the negative stuff disappeared, excitement arose, and all of a sudden these head pressures became fascinating, alive, and wonderful and seemed like a great object of investigation. Over time, by maintaining this kinda J3 peripheral awareness style, the head pressure was in the background, but eventually went away and would occasionally come back very minorly. There was then a good amount of rapture (my eyes fluttered for a bit, and I got two rounds of full body goosebumps). I think doing this style of investigating into dukkha-vedana for a few days seems like a good practice plan, to help my mind detangle and de-react to everything that's going on.

So overall, Im excited about life again. Practice seems like its going well. My overall existence today feels much better than the last few weeks.

One thing I'm thinking about now, is I feel like there has been a bit of a blind spot in my practice - namely, I'm biased towards this "things are the way they are and you have no control over it". Like 99.99% of it has focused on deconstruction and tranquility, and Im curious if maybe adding in some constructive/imaginal practices could help round this out a bit or if its better left for the future (since Ive gotten the impression this stuff is useful much later on). Like the two experiences making me lean this way are the body-box, and my big problem becoming super cool for a brief moment. Like clearly, things are more arbitrary and constructed in a particular way than I've given it credit for, but I still feel a bit clueless for how one might go about systematically practicing and studying this. Thoughts?

You were dead on the money!

It sounds like you may be meditating with an objective in mind - a target kind of reality, a certain assumption about the universe, a map, or oeuvre, if you will. Drop that. Just let experience play out on its own (which it does anyway), but by trying to force-fit it, you're obscuring the real breadth and depth of what's happening.

I get what you're saying, and I am a bit worried that I might be a little like "oh wow a shiny new thing!". However, I think the reason I'm interested in it is not for a specific targeted reality, but instead to see a range of reality to try to shake up the view that things are a specific way, or happen in a specific unfolding, etc. Like to see to shake set views on stuff that I dont even know I've internalized because its always been that way.

Like it seems like different practices have different functional side effects. Concentration still the mind so you can see clearly and see more subtly, vispassana lets you see the pieces, and when you see the pieces the whole breaks apart, and imaginal practices let you rewrite stuff so you can see the non-substantiality of it all.

That still strikes me as an attempt to engineer the process. I'm suggesting neutral observation. It's pretty easy to make this stuff complicated and even easier to think we can determine how to goes. My experience has been that doing this creates more difficulty, takes more time, and can lead us down into box canyons.

Stream entry came for me, if you get my drift. It came while I was just letting reality roll on just as it was, watching an object arise and fall over and over, just doing its thing. 

Replying to your edit:


Doesn't vipassana help you see the non-substantiality of it all? Isn't that called "impermanence?"

You no doubt think I'm being a picky asshole, and I probably am being that. But I'm trying to get you to see that manipulation of the process ain't where you probably need to be right now. It could be getting in the way of your next big step. Or, as Ingram might say. "Keep noting because that's the gold standard of getting to stream-entry.

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